Ryan pulled in to park across from the galleries. He noticed some stairs leading down to a beach. "Do you mind if I don't go with you to the galleries?" he asked Kirsten.

Kirsten looked at Ryan and at the beach. "Not at all," she said. "Why don't we meet back here in about an hour and then we can decide what we're doing from there?"

Ryan looked at his watch. "An hour sounds good. I'll see you then." He watched Kirsten cross the street. Then he opened up the car and got his sketchpad out and went down to the beach.

An hour later, Ryan returned to the car and Kirsten was there first. She noticed his sketchpad and told him, "Some day you're going to leave that sitting out somewhere and I'm not going to be able to resist taking a peek."

Ryan ducked his head and nodded. He knew Kirsten wanted to see his work but he didn't feel comfortable showing other people, especially when he was there.

"Should we stop for supper here?" Kirsten asked. "Or," she added with a glint in her eye, "Pismo Beach is only about an hour away, and I hear it's known as the Clam Capital of the World."

Ryan grinned and shook his head at her. "We wouldn't want to miss an opportunity to eat clams in the Clam Capital of the World, right?"

"That's exactly what I was thinking," Kirsten said.

Once they were in the car and on the road, Ryan asked Kirsten how the galleries were.

"They were interesting. There was one that was all local artists. It was exactly how I always pictured mine would be."

"Yours? You were going to open a gallery?" Ryan asked.

"I was majoring in art history when I met Sandy. When we lived in Berkeley, my dream was to open a gallery in The Mission. But Sandy wasn't making much with the PD's office, and Seth was still little so I couldn't work because I was looking after him."

"Your dad wouldn't help you out?"

"No, he wasn't happy that we were 'living like Bohemians', as he put it. He would never deny Seth anything, but he said he wasn't going to do anything to enable us to live like that, which is what financing the gallery would do. I didn't even ask him for the money; I just wanted him to co-sign a loan. But he said no. And then my mom got sick and we moved back to Newport and I forgot about the gallery."

"How did you go from being an art history major to running the Residential Division of The Newport Group?"

Kirsten laughed. "Good question. When we moved back and I started working with The Newport Group, I took some business courses at night so I'd know what I was doing."

"That's impressive, Kirsten."

"Thanks, Ryan. So what did you do while I was at the galleries?"

"I did some beachcombing. There were some really cool rocks on that beach. All crystally, like geodes."

"There's information on those in the travel guide." Kirsten grabbed the book and started flipping through it. "Yeah, here it is. It says you can find jade, jasper, agates, and moonstones on the beaches in Cambria."

"Well, I don't know what any of those look like so I could have found them and not known it. But some of them were quite intricate. I found them fascinating."

Ryan and Kirsten were quiet for a few minutes and then Kirsten suggested putting some music on until they got to Pismo Beach.

"As long as you don't pick Harry Chapin, I'm up for it," Ryan told her.

Kirsten looked through the CDs. She figured if Ryan was going to make fun of her love of Harry Chapin and folk music, she'd give him lots of ammunition. She found her Cat Stevens CD (she refused to think of him as Yusuf Islam – he would always be Cat Stevens to her).

After Ryan heard the first song he rolled his eyes. "Kirsten, you're killing me over here."

She smirked at him. "That's what you get for making fun of my music. Just be thankful my Carpenters' CD isn't in there, and that I decided to spare you from Peter, Paul, and Mary. Remember, things can always be worse."

Ryan nodded. "That's one thing I always remember."

Kirsten's face softened and she smiled at him. "Yes, but they can always get better too."

Ryan pursed his lips, nodded and gave Kirsten a half smile.

As they drove into Pismo Beach, they saw a roadside restaurant with a big sign out front reading "Best Fried Clams in Pismo Beach". Kirsten pointed it out and said, "Well, that's where we need to stop."

Ryan pulled into the parking lot. Kirsten went to the order window while Ryan went to find a picnic table for them. Kirsten ordered fried clam strips with fries for both of them. She got a beer for herself and an apple juice for Ryan. Both were poured into plastic glasses. As she carried the food to the table, Ryan raised his eyebrows at her. "Beer?" he asked.

Kirsten laughed. "Not for you. Yours is apple juice. I'm trying to make up for the last two years."

"But if the choice was beer or apple juice, I'd pick beer," Ryan countered.

"Yes, and in three years, that will be a viable option for you. But not today," Kirsten told him.

When they finished eating, Kirsten and Ryan decided to find a hotel for the night since they were about halfway home. Kirsten remembered a resort hotel she and Sandy had stayed at a few years ago. It was right on the beach, and each room had a fireplace and a hot tub on the balcony.

In Ryan's mind, it was way too much for a room they only needed for the night. He'd have picked a cheap motel if he was by himself or even with Seth, but he'd never suggest such a thing to Kirsten. He was surprised she ate fried food outside at a picnic table with beer tonight instead of at a restaurant with cloth tablecloths and wine. He figured that was as close to slumming as Kirsten Cohen would come. She could talk about the days when her parents didn't have lots of money, or even her Berkeley days with Sandy, but those days were long ago and she was used to finer things.

Ryan knew that he was used to finer things too. Not as fine as Kirsten because he hadn't been around money for as long, but he certainly would find it strange to go back to the life he had in Chino. He was used to fully stocked fridges. He didn't care what kind of juice was in the fridge; the fact that he could open the fridge and there would always be juice in it was enough. He was used to having cars that always worked when he needed to go somewhere, and if they weren't working, always being able to get them fixed right away. Even now, he was having a hard time remembering what it was like to try to fall asleep when he was all hot and sticky because the air conditioning wasn't working and his mother had the only working fan in her room.

When they walked into the hotel room, Ryan dropped into one of the green wicker chairs. Kirsten sat in the one opposite him and asked him what he wanted to do that night. They were both tired from driving so Kirsten pulled out a deck of cards that she had picked up earlier in Cambria. They sat at the table in the room and played gin rummy. Kirsten won the first round and gloated about it through the whole second round, which Ryan then proceeded to win soundly. The rubber round was close, and it came down to who would win the next hand. Ryan went out first and took full advantage of being able to gloat over Kirsten.

The next morning, Ryan decided to go for a morning swim at the beach before they started out. He asked Kirsten if she wanted to come with him.

"In the ocean?" she asked. "With the fish? No thanks. I'll wait here for you."

She watched as he carefully removed his things from his bag, looking for his swimming trunks. Then she watched as he carefully put everything back. Everything except his sketchpad, which he left lying beside his bag as he went to change.

Before he walked out the door, Kirsten told him, "You left your sketchpad out."

"I know," Ryan replied.

"But I told you yesterday that I didn't know if I could resist looking if it was left lying out," Kirsten reminded him.

Ryan swung his towel over his shoulder and opened the door. "I know," he said, and went to the beach.

Kirsten looked at the tablet, then walked over and picked it up, not sure if she wanted to open it. She was being silly. The pictures inside weren't going to unlock the mysteries of Ryan. It was significant that Ryan was letting her see them, but the pictures themselves weren't going to be significant. She should just open the book and stop dwelling on it.

She opened the book and found sketches of the pool house from every angle imaginable. She came across a picture of something that at first she didn't recognize. It was tall, thin and bent in shape, and looked to be textured with diamonds. Then Kirsten realized it was that ugly lamp in the corner of the pool house.

It had been a house-warming gift from her friend Taryn when she and Sandy had moved back to Newport Beach. Her mom had been sick and Kirsten had been busy, so she put it in the pool house and had forgotten it was there.

Most of Ryan's sketches were done in pencil but Kirsten came across one where he used pastels too. It was a sunset, but from inside the pool house, probably from the bed. The pool house was quite detailed in pencil, and everything outside the windows was done in pastels. Kirsten was impressed by the contrast between the black and white inside and the colours outside.

When Kirsten came to the Golden Gate Bridge, she knew she was near the end. She had only had a quick glimpse of it the first time she saw it and now she could take the time to appreciate it. He was really quite good.

She turned to page to a scene she didn't recognize. She thought back to when he had had the opportunity to draw on this trip and realized it must be from the night he woke up and took his sketchpad to the bathroom. But this wasn't the bathroom in the hotel. This was the inside of a house Kirsten had never seen before. The strange thing about it was that there was no furniture in the house.

Kirsten turned the page and saw the rocks from the beach Ryan had drawn earlier that day. When she heard Ryan coming back into the room she quickly closed the book and put it back where it was. She knew he knew she was looking at it, but she thought she'd keep up the pretense that she wasn't, for his sake.

"I'm just going to grab a shower and then we can get on the road again," Ryan said as he came into the room.

"Take your time. There's no rush," Kirsten told him as he disappeared into the bathroom.

While she was waiting for him, she thought about the drawing of the empty house. What could he have dreamt about that made him draw his house in Chino after his mom left?

TBC9