5/6
Seth was an idiot and having Ryan a few feet away from him reminded him of that fact. Why did he call home again? It was a stupid mistake. Of course they would track him down. They probably had the phones tapped or something like that. Yeah, he could picture it now: a lot of fancy equipment, a dozen or so officers and a mountain of Kirsty Creme's... Or maybe, just one really good P.I. his father knew. That was probably closer to reality.
"Uh, hi," Seth finally said after getting over his shock of seeing Ryan alive and well and in front of him. He tried to smile, though it didn't quite make it to his lips.
Ryan stepped closer. He was unreadable. "You okay?"
Seth could barely meet his eye. "Yeah, fine. You?"
Ryan dodged the question and fired back with one of his own. "Why'd you leave? Everyone's worried...your Mom, your Dad...Summer." He looked tired, weary.
Seth didn't fail to notice that he'd left himself out. Ryan seemed detached, cold. He tried not to seem angry, really he put a lot of energy and concentration into it...he just couldn't help himself. "So, that's it, huh? You came here to drag me back. Doing my parents one last favour?" he affirmed with dejection.
Ryan took a step closer. Seth backed away. "Seth, it's not like that."
Seth held up his hands. He'd been unprepared for the influx of feelings that seeing Ryan had ultimately drudged up. "Forget it, I didn't mean that. Look, I just..." He rubbed his forehead, sighed. "I had to get away," Seth said finally. He could feel his heart pounding hard in his chest, wondered if Ryan could see it.
Ryan shifted his weight. "Seth... I-I'm sorry."
"For what?" There was something strange in his voice that even Seth himself couldn't explain.
"I had to go," he answered, simply. Ryan struggled with the rest. "Theresa... It... The... She needed me."
Seth nodded slowly. "I know." And he did get that. He knew why Ryan had to go; that it was the right thing to do, but that didn't make the sting any less potent.
Ryan's eyes scanned the room, falling on the picture Tyler had drawn of Seth a week ago after they'd come in from sailing. He stared at it, his jaw tensing. "What's that?"
Seth's eyes darted across the room where Ryan's gaze was fixed. "That's me as a superhero," he answered, picking it up and thrusting it at Ryan proudly. "I look all buff and manly there -- clearly, it's an exact replica of how I look in real life only in cartoon form. Good, huh?"
Ryan studied the paper carefully. "You drew this?"
"No," he answered, hesitating, "A friend of mine did."
Ryan looked up, his eyes dark. "A friend? What friend?"
"Just this guy. Not that it matters to you," Seth answered bitterly remembering his anger. Taking the picture back, he set it down on the bed.
Ryan frowned. "I get that you're mad at me...that things are different now, but can't you at least come home?"
Ordinarily Seth was the one keeping his cool and Ryan was the one with the out-of-control temper, but somewhere between the long road to Chino and the white-capped coast, their roles had been reversed. "No, Ryan, you don't get it. And what home? You mean back to that house and that school where I was a total loser?" Seth's gestures were even wilder than normal, his hands spoke with a quick rhythm that was dizzying. "Yeah, okay, I'll get right on that. Maybe I'll even shave my chest and don a Speedo while I'm at it...a red one!" Even angry, Seth held a firm handshake with sarcasm.
"Seth."
Seth turned his back on Ryan. He couldn't stand the intensity of his eyes any longer. "I'm not going back. I like it here."
"You like it here?" Ryan asked incredulously.
"Seth, man, you ready?"
Both Ryan and Seth looked at the door where a tall boy with jet black hair and blue-green eyes was smiling at both of them. Tyler stood brandishing sparklers and firecrackers under his arms, seemingly oblivious to the tension.
"Yeah, I'm ready," Seth said, picking up his jacket from the chair. "Tyler, this is Ryan."
"Oh, hey, man. Heard a lot about you. You coming with?" Tyler juggled the firecrackers and held his hand out to Ryan. Ryan gripped his hand tight and they shook.
"Firecrackers on the beach," Seth explained. "You know, for the fourth of July?"
Ryan nodded, though he was still staring at Seth with a confused look on his face. "Right. Sure."
Seth bolted past both of them, not caring if anyone remembered to lock the door. He knew their talk wasn't over and by the end of the night Ryan was either going to convince him to come home or knock him out and drag him there.
Down on the beach there were fire pits blazing and people all around. It was easy to get lost in the crowd. The first thing Seth did was grab a beer from the closest bucket of ice. Twisting off the cap with more effort than he would admit, he took a large swallow and stared out at the ocean where a small fireworks display was being tested. Controlled explosions tinted the night sky red. The air smelled of sulfur and the sea. Seth seated himself down in the cold sand, not knowing or caring where Tyler or Ryan had gotten to.
He didn't have time to conjure up any crazy ideas of Ryan deciding the whole trip was a mistake and taking his misguided sympathy somewhere else because a minute after Seth sat down, he found himself sandwiched between Ryan and Tyler. They all made a very funny picture, or so Seth imagined.
They were opposites, contradictions. The blonde with good looks, blue eyes and brooding shoulders to his right, the black-mopped, often funny, chameleon-eyed almost stranger to his left. They sat in a row, crowded together like peas in a very peculiar pod. And it was funny how Tyler had told him more about himself in three weeks than Ryan had in ten months and he still leaned closer to Ryan; desired to be nearer still, breathing the same air, sharing the same artificial stars as they skyrocketed into the atmosphere and exploded into a million broken pieces.
Ryan was very much like those burnt, broken pieces and the ocean they fell into after fizzling out: unstable, rough and vast. There was so much to Ryan that he would never get to know, so much that Seth could never see or understand and yet just being able to know Ryan, to touch, to feel a small portion of him, to be in his life, was enough; enough to understand how the pieces fit in the summit of the waves. There was a terrible silence about waves, they crept up undetected with a grace only magnified by their hard-hitting impact...just like Ryan.
The silence stretched until Seth couldn't take it anymore and finally gave in to the need to speak. Mostly, he talked to Tyler who in turn tried to engage Ryan into their conversations, but Ryan watched their exchange with sceptics eyes. And when Tyler touched Seth freely as he told a story Ryan didn't do anything to hide his disapproval, though Tyler didn't seem to notice.
When all the fireworks had been set off and most of the people on the beach started to turn into the night, Tyler stood and pulled Seth up with him. Suffice it to say, the evening had not gone as planned. It had been a very tense, very jumbled, evening.
"So... I guess you're going back soon, then?" Tyler asked, having run out of safe topics.
Seth eyed Ryan before answering. "No," he said, feeling his palms begin to sweat, "I'm staying here."
Ryan spoke up, "no, you're not. We're leaving tomorrow."
"Actually, Ryan's leaving tomorrow and I'm staying." Seth swallowed, his mouth felt sticky and his throat sore.
Tyler looked between them, his discomfort evident. "Hey, listen, I gotta go... I work early tomorrow." He stuck out his hand and offered it to Ryan. "It was nice meeting you."
Ryan's face was impassive. He did not take Tyler's hand.
Tyler shrugged.
Seth panicked.
"Why don't you just stick around for a little while? you can come back to the hotel with us if you want." Seth asked hopefully. The last thing he wanted to do was spend the night caged up in a room with Ryan who had become more moody as the night progressed.
Before Tyler had given his answer, Ryan grabbed Seth's upper arm, pulling him aside.
Seth smiled at Tyler as he was being dragged a little ways down the beach. "Be back in a minute," he called over his shoulder.
"What?!" he snapped when they were out of earshot.
"What's going on with the two of you?" Ryan's eyes were intense...and hurt?
"What'dya mean? We're just friends."
Ryan licked his lips and Seth hated that it turned him on. This was exactly the kind of thoughts that had driven him away in the first place. "Seth, he's a...a..."
"What? He's a what?" Ryan remained silent. Seth's eyes narrowed. "Say it!"
Ryan looked past Seth, his eyes falling on Tyler who was fiddling with the zipper on his jacket and shifting his weight.
"He's a fuckin' fag, Seth!"
It felt like he'd been slapped. Seth took a step back.
Seth was the same. This was not the same Ryan. Not the Ryan that would take punches from half the water polo team to protect him. This Ryan looked like he wanted to throw a few punches of his own. Was this how Ryan had been in Chino? Was this Ryan capable of hurting Seth? This Ryan seemed dangerous and Seth was scared. He'd never been afraid of Ryan before, not even after the whole Oliver debacle, but now... It was a hard pill to swallow. He choked on it.
He gathered up the courage he knew he was going to need and put everything on the line. "Yeah, well, so am I." Seth ripped his arm out of Ryan's grasp and braced himself.
Ryan's face was unreadable. A solid mask. "No, you're not. You're...just confused."
He wished that was the truth. "Right, I'm confused."
"What does that mean?" Ryan barked, crowding him.
Seth backed up even more, keeping his eyes hidden. "Nothing." It was hard to speak past the lump in his throat. It was even harder to keep his voice steady. "I'll pack and we'll go tomorrow. No fuss." He did look up then and Ryan's eyes were so blue against the moon that even if Seth wanted to hate him, he couldn't. It wasn't his fault Seth was like this. "Happy?"
Seth didn't wait for a reply. He stormed down the beach and headed back toward Tyler.
Much later, after Seth had exchanged all the necessary information with Tyler to keep in touch--they were going to keep exchanging ideas, with Tyler's drawings and Seth's winning dialogue, they just might create a comic that had the potential to be published--he made his way up the street toward the hotel. The door to the small laundry room-housing a payphone and small television set-was askew. Seth could see Ryan through the gap. A chair with Ryan in it was pressed against a wall beside the phone and Ryan's feet were on the table opposite. There was a beer nestled between his thighs and the receiver was in his left hand. He spoke into it and closed his eyes.
Seth listened in, straining to hear and being rewarded by bits and pieces of Ryan's conversation. "Yeah, I found him." There was a long pause. "Yeah, everything's fine... Yeah, he seems okay." Ryan sighed, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his palms. "We'll head back tomorrow. See you then."
Ryan hung up.
Seth slipped away. He went back to his room. It was a long time before he heard the sound of Ryan's boots trudging down the hall and then standing outside the door. Slipping into bed, Seth turned off the lamp and pretended to be asleep.
Ryan had trouble with the lock and seemed to stumble when he finally crossed the threshold.
Seth sensed Ryan next to him more than saw him and waited for something to happen. He waited and waited. Nothing happened. Ryan just stood over the bed watching him for the longest time until he finally swiped a pillow and made the floor his bed.
Ryan had promised Seth earlier that summer that they could take the boat out, go sailing like they had the first time Sandy brought Ryan home. Ryan had kept his promise. It wasn't quite right. Sure they were on the boat together, but they were sailing back to Newport, back to all the problems Seth had run away from. He'd imagined their reunion a thousand different ways. But nothing like this; not at his favourite time of the day when the sky was big and cloudless, the sun just a little too bright and hot on his back and Ryan looking at him like he was less than sea crud.
They'd left later than they'd planned, mostly because Seth didn't want to wake up Ryan while he looked so peaceful and Seth was pretty sure Ryan had been drunk when he came in the night before. Waking up with a hangover was only going to make things more strained. Seth didn't want to deal with an irritable Ryan. And plus, it gave Seth a chance to watch Ryan sleep one last time before he decided never to speak to him again. After his revelation last night, he was fairly sure Ryan was going to keep as far from Seth as possible.
Now, on the boat alone, with nothing but silence to occupy them, things seemed more dire than ever.
It was Ryan that broke the silence. "Why are you so angry?" he asked.
"As if you didn't know," Seth scoffed, his eyes to the sky. He'd learned that the eye roll was a very effective way to get a point across. Of course, he'd learned that from Summer so he wasn't so sure it applied so much to Ryan. "I know what you think about me. Tell me the truth, you hate me don't you?!"
It didn't take a genius to figure out that Ryan was starting to get pissed off. The vein in his neck was beginning to throb. "You want the truth?" His eyes were raw with emotion and so open, Seth was sure Ryan was about to do something so drastic he wouldn't live to tell about it. Instead of leaping up and pummelling him to death, Ryan caught himself and closed himself off once again. The no-nonsense Ryan was back.
Seth managed to squeak out a yes.
Ryan scooted forward just a little. "I think you're being a spoiled little brat because you couldn't have what you wanted and you wanted me to come after you. You want me to keep apologizing for leaving, but I'm not going to. I don't hate you and I don't care if you're gay," Ryan finished and looked down at his shoes.
Seth hated that he felt anger and relief at Ryan's words. Why couldn't he just pick one emotion? He knew he was selfish and he knew he could never have Ryan the way he wanted, but he didn't want it thrown in his face. Ryan didn't hate him and that outweighed everything.
Seth was really going to make an effort not to be spoiled and selfish...but, dammit, really, why couldn't he have Ryan? He'd been so sure there was something there. It hadn't just been a one-sided thing.
The silence grew uncomfortable.
He couldn't hold his tongue any longer. "I suppose you think everything can go back to normal, that we can just pretend none of this happened? Well, we can't. You're still gone and it doesn't matter how I feel."
Ryan shook his head, refusing to speak.
Seth couldn't take it. Everything was building inside him, threatening to spill over. Why wouldn't Ryan just admit that he felt it, too? That there was something real between them, something that wasn't just friendly and certainly not brotherly. And if Theresa wasn't in the way they'd be free to have mad monkey-love right now on the open water. Seth had never known Ryan to be dishonest...until now. He felt sick and it wasn't from the sea. "You know what, I'd rather swim back than be on the same boat with you."
Ryan looked up, alarmed. "What?"
Seth attempted to dive into the ocean, but Ryan grabbed his shirt at the last moment. Seth swayed, getting off balance and tumbling into the water, slicing his hand on the way. A trace amount of blood slicked the deck. Seth groaned in the water.