This is my first O.C fic ever so please be nice and review. It's a little Ryan POV from the last episode when Anna leaves, it takes place when they're saying goodbye, and also it's a Ryan/Anna fic which I know most of you don't like but read it anyway. I don't own anything so please don't sue.

In between the lines

When I saw her I couldn't help but smile and be sad all at once. She was there, tiny and blond and funny and leaving. Something pulled at my heartstrings, causing an ache that I didn't know how to put out. I'd never had this before, never needed to deal with it, never wanted to; but she made me want to.

"Here to say goodbye to Seth?" I ask, knowing that I'd masked the pain that she wasn't here to say goodbye to me.

"Yeah," her voice is airy and breathless and for a brief moment all I could picture is me and her with half our clothes gone, lying on my bed, lost in each other. Quickly I push that thought, and my little 'friend', down before she looks back up at me. My face lights up, I think my sprites do to and I find myself smiling like an idiot at her; she doesn't notice.

"Will you give this to him for me?" she gently slips a ruby pink envelope into my hand and I find myself slipping it into my jacket pocket without so much as a word. She continues, as if she feels the need to explain herself to me.

"It's supposed to say all the things I couldn't but now that I see him I can't seem to say anything at all." Her blue eyes flicker, the spark and mischievous humor leaving them for a moment before slowly returning.

"Yeah, sure." She could have asked me for the moon and I would have gotten it, I don't know how but I would have. Something in the back of my mind reminds me that Theresa is standing, no shifting uncomfortably, right beside me but I can't seem to make myself care; what at least I introduced her. She's looking at Seth again and I can't help but feel jealous of him and what to smack him for hurting her.

"Thank you." She whispers it, under her breath, but I hear and I smile; she doesn't have to thank me.

"Goodbye Ryan," she turns to me, a weak, sad smile plastered on her face and I pull her into my arms, relishing in the feeling of her petite body pressed up to mine. She smiles like milk and honey but her hair smells like apple and the combination of the three drives my scents crazy. I know, at the moment, that whenever I smell any of the three scents I'll think of her; they're her smells now. The skin on her lower back is smooth and soft and it makes me wonder if the rest of her body is like that and, if it is, it must be heaven to kiss. From a quick, almost non-existent second she nuzzles her nose into my shoulder before slowly pulling away from me. My hands linger at her sides as I speak.

"Thanks for teaching me how to waltz," I laugh, she does too and I know I'll never see anything so beautiful again.

"Have the best life, Ryan, you deserve it." She locks her piercing eyes with mine; she understands me, she was the only one that ever truly did, not to mention she always cared. I nod at her, the full weight of the fact that she's leaving finally sinking in and I want nothing more then to pull her into my arms and never let her go. Beg her to stay and promise her the world but I have no right to, we were never anything more then friends and now we never will be.

"Bye," she mouths to Theresa well giving a little wave and I don't know how someone could ever choose Summer over her. Theresa returns that farewell even thought she doesn't even know the blond girl in front of me; Theresa would have really liked her. Her hand drops back to her side and I can see that she's forcing herself not to look back at the guy I think of as a brother; she wins. Turning, she stops, only for a second, before brushing past me and down the four or five stairs but not before her fingers brush mine and I do everything in my power to savoir that feeling; her touch. She bounces down the stairs because even when she's sad she's bouncy and heads for the door but I see her turn and look at Seth, she couldn't stop herself and I can't stop myself from hurting. Then she's gone, pushing through the people and out the front door as if she'd never been here at all. That thought kills me because the people of New Port will never know exactly what they've lost, but then again people like me and her, we never really fit in places like New Port and New Port didn't like different people. Still, she was special and if anything I wish she would stay for me so that I would have someone who was always on my side, someone for me. I move out of the lights of the cameras because the only real light in New Port was going to be getting on a plane out of here, and fall into one of Sandy's black leather chairs. If only the people around me could see, really see, they would pick up how perfect she is, or how everything isn't what they seem or how I'm totally in love with the little blond pixie girl but they don't. People in New Port, well they don't like change and it's what they'd find if only they read in between the lines. 

-Girlygirl