A/N - The War is almost over. I decided to separate the final portion into two segments, but it shouldn't be too long of a wait for the final chapter at all. .
Thanks for all of the reviews on the last chapter. Of course, special thanks to my wonderful betas/technicians (techies!),Sister Rose, Cradle Robber,littleMiss Sugaand, of course,Brandywine.You guys make my life so much easier and I can't thank you enough.
A different kind of thanks goes out tomuchtvs, who inspired this chapter. It wouldn't have existed for quite a while if it wasn't for you!
Now, to everyone that reviewed the last chapter with skepticism toward Ryan's sudden hospital release, I want you to put yourself in Kirsten's shoes…now. Read on, my friends.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Chapter Seven
The purpose of all war is ultimately peace. -- Saint Augustine
Sandy eased off the gas and crawled across the last few feet of driveway, slowly pressing his foot onto the brake pedal to minimize any jolting that would result from the shift in momentum. He listened to the careful clicking of the gears as he watched the letters on the shift take turns lighting up, finally coming to the stop when the capital "P" was illuminated. Satisfied that he'd managed to drive nearly the entire way home without the inertia of sharp turns or sudden stops, Sandy sat back and let out a nervous sigh. In the seat beside him, Ryan's badly battered body hadn't moved.
Ryan sat slumped against the support of the seatbelt. It had been raised enough so as not to put pressure on his broken collarbone. Instead, the thin black strap rested against his cheek, cradling his head as he slept. The boy's mussed hair was draped over his eyes like a blond mop, but through the tangled strands, Sandy could see the tops of Ryan's eyelids. He was still asleep.
Sandy didn't want to move him. He didn't want to reintroduce Ryan to the burden of pain. He didn't want the kid to have to endure another stifling wave of consciousness. Unfortunately, what Sandy wanted didn't matter. The second he turned into the driveway, he realized he'd handed the reins over to his wife. His flustered, control-freak of a wife who'd made it clear that she had no confidence in his parenting abilities. After this weekend, Sandy couldn't argue with her. She'd been right, the kid should've stayed home. She was always right.
"Mr. Cohen?"
Sandy jolted slightly at the tentative voice floating in on a whispered cloud of air from the backseat. He'd all but forgotten Luke was there.
"Yeah," Sandy answered just as lightly, running a hand over his tension-etched face.
"Are you going to wake him?"
Sandy almost laughed at the question. He surely wasn't going to let Ryan sleep off his assortment of ailments strapped into the front seat of a car. It was obvious that the kid had to be moved, but Sandy didn't want to be the one to do it. His eyes lifted and stared at the immaculately painted door of his home, willing it to open and reveal his wife.
"Can you go inside and ask Kirsten to come out?" Sandy was frustrated with himself. He hated the fact that he felt useless and helpless without his wife by his side. Had he become so dependent on her that he required her to guide him through all of life's little traumas? It didn't make sense. He was Sandy Cohen. He'd left home at a young age, supported himself whichever way he could, put himself through school, made a name for himself in the world of law, but he couldn't wake up the frail 17-year-old boy next to him. He needed his wife. She wanted his head on a stick right now, but he needed her.
Since Luke had yet to emerge from the vehicle, Sandy turned around and glanced over his shoulder. Luke was biting his bottom lip in concentration as he tried several different strategic approaches to pull himself up onto his one good foot.
Sandy shamefully shook his head. "I'm sorry, Luke. I forgot about the…." He waved his hand around in the air as he fought for the words to accurately describe Luke's condition. Finally, exhaustion and worry having taken their toll, he offered no further words, but gestured toward Luke's bad ankle before reaching for the button to pop the trunk so the kid could retrieve his trusty crutches.
"Sandy?"
Sandy turned back toward the shiny black door to see his wife step out to the edge of the first step. She hesitated for a moment, stealing a glance at her feet as if contemplating whether or not to worry about footwear, and shook her head before trotting down the remaining steps in her stocking feet.
Their eye contact was fleeting, but from the split-second glance into his wife's troubled eyes, he realized just how anxious she'd been. Her bitterness toward him notwithstanding, Kirsten had been worried sick. That much he knew for sure.
She tiptoed over to Ryan's door and held a hand up to the tinted glass of the window to get a better view of her "patient". After several squinting seconds, she obviously realized that Ryan was far from the land of the wakened and she lifted her gaze to give her husband a disgusted scowl.
"Right," Sandy mumbled in his frozen state, feeling extraordinarily useless more than anything else. Reaching down, he hastily unbuckled his seatbelt and leaned down to do the same to Ryan's.
The release of the seatbelt coincided with the click of the passenger door opening. Before Kirsten could react, the seatbelt recoiled rapidly. With the sudden lack of support, Ryan's head fell forward, bringing with it his upper body. Kirsten reached out to stop his descent but couldn't prevent the hard silver latch from smacking Ryan upside the head.
His eyelids shot open while he simultaneously gasped.
"Jesus, Sandy!" Kirsten scolded under her breath, one hand gently pressed against Ryan's abdomen, the other trying to disentangle the seatbelt from behind the kid's head.
"I'm sorry, Ryan. I didn't think it would…. Not how you'd want to be awakened, is it?" Sandy tried to cut through the thick tension of the air inside the car, but not without receiving a disapproving shake of the head from his wife.
"Hmmm," Ryan responded, opening his eyes slowly and blinking deliberately several times as if testing his eyes in the sleepy haze through which he was still fighting to emerge.
Kirsten reached out with one hand and brushed the kid's shaggy hair from his eyes with a gentle stroke of her fingers, to which Ryan responded by squinting harder. "Do you have a headache?" she asked in a softened tone, motherly instincts dripping off every carefully formulated word.
Sandy watched Ryan carefully, allowing his wife to appraise the kid despite his bewildered state of mind. Ryan didn't answer her question immediately; instead, he swallowed deeply and tilted his head to the side, away from her touch.
Kirsten took a step back, pressing her palms down on the top of her thighs and pushing herself upright. She didn't look the slightest bit offended as she struggled to formulate a plan for extricating the broken teen from the vehicle.
Sandy glanced back at Luke, who'd finally arranged his crutches into a manageable position and was shutting the trunk quietly. Aware of his idleness, Sandy spurred himself into action, pushing into the door as he pressed on the handle, stepping out onto the driveway and starting to work his way around to the other side where the action was taking place.
"Mom? Is Ryan home?"
Seth could be heard seconds before his form appeared in the open doorway.
Sandy locked eyes with his son's, who no longer required an answer to his question. Seth jogged lightly down the steps, slowing as he neared the vehicle.
"Is he gonna stay in there?" Seth whispered to Luke, loud enough to be overheard by his parents.
"Seth," Kirsten warned, but turned to face her son nonetheless. "Help me help Ryan from the car," she demanded.
Seth nodded stepping forward.
"It's okay," Sandy interjected, drawing all eyes to himself. "I'll help."
Kirsten glared long and hard at her husband, placing one hand on her hip and setting her jaw in a way that conveyed every ounce of the bitterness she was so obviously feeling toward her spouse.
"Right…," Sandy conceded in quiet defeat, stepping back and allowing his son to follow orders.
Luke awkwardly hobbled over to stand beside Sandy, and both watched as Seth and Kirsten took hold of Ryan in areas they figured could do no harm, and gently tried to turn him to his right.
Once both feet were firmly planted on the black pavement of the driveway, Ryan wordlessly swatted at the helping hands and leaned forward on the side of the leather seat.
Sandy watched the light rise and fall of the large "27" stitched on the back of Ryan's tattered jersey, and turned his attention to his wife after several seconds of nothingness. Kirsten had one arm wrapped around her slight midsection while her other hand hovered loosely around her mouth, almost hiding the lines of worry creasing her features.
She met her husband's eyes and for a split second, he saw just how scared she really was. Sure she was mad, and rightfully so, but above and beyond all that, she was terrified. It was a look Sandy had only seen once from his wife, several years ago when a very young Seth was hospitalized for an inexplicably high fever.
Both adults stood in place, neither wanting to push Ryan faster than he could move. Finally, after realizing his parents had fallen off the control bandwagon, Seth took several steps forward and crouched down beside his friend.
Sandy tilted his head, struggling to make out the whispered hush of Seth's words with little to no success. Kirsten's expression changed from concern to curiosity, but she didn't move an inch from her spot on the driveway. She allowed her sons to communicate on a level which she'd never been able to accomplish with either of them. Luke turned away, suddenly awkward observing what had turned into a family affair of glares.
Ryan gave a slight nod and Seth patted his knee lightly at the end of his mysterious speech. Without any further help, Ryan slowly maneuvered up and onto his feet, blinking rapidly and moving his lower jaw in slow circles as each new wave of pain revealed itself.
Kirsten and Sandy leaned forward simultaneously to offer support, but Seth held up a hand, closed his eyes and gave a quick shake of his head. Both parents, aware of the high intensity that would cause Seth to resort to actions rather than words, stood in their place and allowed their son to work his connection with Ryan.
Seth walked alongside his slow-moving friend without touching but providing a supportive presence nonetheless. As the boys slowly made their way past the overwhelmed parents, Seth turned and raised another hand to his mom and dad, indicating they should keep their distance for the time being.
Sandy turned to watch as Seth guided Ryan around the house as opposed to through it, and was impressed that his son would've thought enough to avoid the unnecessary stairs that would accompany the alternative route.
Kirsten let out a tension-riddled sigh and turned toward her husband once the boys had disappeared behind the corner. "Go," she pointed to the car.
Sandy could see Luke stepping backward and turning away in anticipation of the domestic squabble.
"Excuse me?" Sandy shot back, his voice just barely above a whisper in his shocked state.
"Go fill his prescriptions. I'm assuming you haven't done that yet?"
Sandy felt a wave of relief sweep through his chest at his wife's reasoning. She was right. He hadn't filled the prescriptions.
"No," he confirmed her assumption, running a hand through his hair again, his scalp still tight with tension.
"Well, he's going to need a dose of Vicodin in half an hour."
Sandy's brow furrowed in confusion as he watched his wife cross her arms over her chest, giving him a knowing glare.
"How d'you…."
"I called the hospital, Sandy. I talked to his doctor."
"You…. When? Why?"
"Why?" she growled, stepping forward and lowering her arms, fists clenched at her sides as she addressed her husband. "What did youexpectme to do,Sandy? You call and give me this cryptic summary of what happened, blurting out that he has a collapsed lung, among a million other things. In my mind, I immediately start going over what arrangements will have to be made to airlift him to Hoag, and then you tell me you'redrivinghim home? You scared the hell out of me! I assumed you had some halfwit intern for a doctor who didn't know the difference between a scapula and a scalpel. So yes, Icalledthe hospital."
Sandy flinched after his wife's speech, but knew the woman well enough to know that she wasn't yelling out of spite, but more so out of fear. He stepped toward her tightly wound form and rubbed a supportive hand on her arm, all the while assuring her, "It's going to be all right, Kirsten."
"No." She shook her head and shifted her eyes to the ground but didn't pull away when she responded, her voice thick with emotion, "Everything would've been all right ifyouhad just listened to me. He shouldn't have gone anywhere this weekend…."
"I'm…going to go inside…call my mom," Luke's voice rang out after several seconds of silence. Both Sandy and Kirsten turned to watch the crutched boy flee the scene for the refuge of the Cohen house.
Sandy sighed and made a conscious effort to compose himself. "What did his doctor say?"
Kirsten held up her hands, her face twisted in confusion. "Didn't you talk to him?"
Feeling belittled by his wife's comments, Sandy shook his head and closed his eyes in an attempt to hide his humiliation before he formed an answer. "Ryan didn't…want me there." He took another breath before rambling, "And then he came out and I wanted to talk to the doctor but I didn't want to make Ryan wait while I…. No, I didn't talk to him." He met his wife's gaze for a minute and latched onto something that, in any other situation, he would have perceived as sympathy.
"I heard the words 'collapsed lung' and I panicked," Kirsten started, significantly calmer as she explained the situation to her husband. "I remember back in high school, Megan Price was in a car accident where she suffered a collapsed lung. I remember her being in the hospital for two weeks on some sort of pressure stabilizer…." She shook her head, returning to the present. "So when you told me about Ryan, my head started spinning. But the doctor explained that it was a spontaneous rupture that collapsed only ten percent of his one lung." Kirsten thoughtfully looked up at Sandy's weary face. "I just thought…."
Sandy reached forward and placed a hand on his wife's shoulder, squeezing his fingers several times before slowly pulling her forward and into his embrace. He could feel the tension dissipating as he continued to hold her close, rubbing his thumbs in circles as he'd always done to comfort her.
"He shouldn't have gone anywhere this weekend," Kirsten said again, her words muffled through the fabric of her husband's shirt.
"But he did…and yes, he's worse off, but he's home now. And you and I at each other's throats isn't going to help him feel any better."
He placed a kiss on the top of her head and felt her nod against his chest.
She pulled back with a sigh. "Go fill his prescriptions and I'll see if Seth lets me near the pool house." Her lips curved into a sad smile at the truth in her own joke.
Sandy allowed himself to join in. It felt good to smile. It felt good to be home. It felt good to hug his wife.
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Seth rummaged through a pile of sweaters on a shelf at the back of the pool house, letting out a successful, "Da, da-da, DA!" when he stumbled upon the desired, full-zip hoodie.
He fiddled with the zipper as he turned around, aware of Ryan struggling to lower himself onto a corner of the bed.
Seth knew his foster brother well, and with that came the knowledge that Ryan Atwood thought that there was nothing Ryan Atwood needed help with. Ryan Atwood helped others, even when it was so ridiculously out of his direct line of duty. Seth knew that, unlike himself, Ryan Atwood wouldn't put on a show. Ryan Atwood wouldn't exaggerate his own plight for attention. Ryan Atwoodhatedattention. With all of this in mind, it was more than clear to Seth that Ryan was in a great deal of pain. Real pain. Not the I'm-the -hardest-done-by-drama-queen-in-world kind of pain,realpain. So when Seth saw Ryan shivering, he didn't ask whether he was cold, cover him with a blanket, or something equally awkward or gay, he simply retreated to the stash of warmer clothes and searched for something to offer his ailing brother.
Seth jumped off the step and approached the side of the bed, holding out the chosen sweater. "Dude, the grunge look was, like, 10 years ago." Seth pointed to Ryan's mangled jersey. "I'm going to suggest you switch it up a little."
Ryan held out his un-slung arm and Seth dropped the sweater into his brother's open palm.
Seth plunked himself down on the floor, leaned back on his hands and laughed out loud. "I think I'm gonna have to go identify Dad's body. Mom ismad."
Ryan half-heartedly fiddled with the sweater, awkwardly impeded by his single arm and battered, objecting body.
"I think Mom had some sort of panic attack when Dad called. She was, like, gasping and pacing, and all I kept hearing was how she was going to kill Dad." Seth pushed himself forward, bending his knees until his feet were flat on the ground. He scanned the scenery through the pool house windows. "So far so good. I have yet to hear a single gunshot."
A quick glance to his left showed that Ryan had made little to no progress with the sweater. Seth put aside all of Ryan's weird I-don't-need-help beliefs, and jumped up onto his feet. He grabbed the sweater out of Ryan's hands and opened it up.
"Dude, I know you hate this, but it's painful to watch," Seth teased, draping the sweater over Ryan's shoulders.
With the new close proximity of the two boys, Seth could hear the audible shiver in Ryan's breath. He put aside all knowledge of the Ryan Atwood Way, leaned forward and tilted his head down until he could see Ryan's eyes. "Dude," he started in a more tentative voice, "Do you want me to turn off the A/C?"
Seth held his position and waited for some form of response. Ryan hadn't spoken a word since he'd been retrieved from the car, and though limited vocal use wasn't all that uncommon or inconsistent with his personality, the extended silent treatment was making Seth feel mildly uneasy.
Ryan quietly raised his good hand, slowly rubbing at his eyes before letting out a sigh and separating his eyelids to reveal an unfocused gaze. Finally, after blinking heavily a few times, Ryan turned his head an inch until he could see Seth's concerned expression. "Yeah," he whispered, immediately turning away and bowing his head again, as if the single word answer had drained what little energy he had left.
Seth bounced up to his feet and strode across the room to the thermostat, bobbing his head to the imaginary beat of the music in his head as he fiddled with the knob. "Done and done," he stated with an accomplished clap on his hands.
"So, Ryan," Seth took a large, exaggerated step toward the bed where the slumped form of his brother was seated. "D'you want to fill me in on what happened? I mean, you know, in the traditional, single syllable words form. Just give me a bunch of nouns and I'll piece it together. You know, like, truck, me, road, schmucked…okay, well the last one wasn't a noun, but you get my point."
Seth watched Ryan raise his head up a few inches, the corners of his lips twitching with a flash of a smile. Once recognizing the reaction, Seth felt an enormous wave of relief and adrenaline all at once, and had to fight the urge to yell, "It lives, it lives!" Not willing to let the humor of the situation evaporate with time, Seth continued to ramble. "Seriously, dude, you kind of look like you've been…steamrollered. Am I right?"
Ryan closed his eyes but a trace of the smile still remained. He shook his head slightly before replying, "No."
"No," Seth repeated as though taking the word out for a test drive. "Well that's a step in the right direction." His mocking enthusiasm wasn't lost on Ryan. Seth lowered himself back onto the ground a few feet from the edge of the bed where Ryan sat so that eye contact could be established without effort. Once settled on the expensive rug, Seth continued. "But really, like,seriously, what happened? I was under the impression that soccer wasn't the most violent of all games…."
Ryan let out a tired sigh. "Tomorrow?" he asked in such a pathetically exhausted voice that Seth had no choice but to abandon his own version of the Spanish Inquisition and postpone his curiosity for at least another 12 hours.
"Fine," he mumbled, his disappointment blatant. "But when you're good and drugged up, I want an explanation. One with, like…verbs…andadjectives. Lots and lots ofadjectives."
The ghost of a smile returned and Ryan agreed with a slight tip of his head.
Seth dragged himself back up onto his feet, significantly deflated after being shot down. He reached over to the head of the bed and grabbed a pillow in his left hand. "Here," he said through a yawn as he tossed the pillow toward Ryan. "Make yourself comfortable. I'll go grab you a movie or something for entertainment…seeing as how Playstation is out of the question." Seth moved his thumbs around on an imaginary controller as if demonstrating how essential it was to have two working arms.
With his good hand, Ryan grabbed the pillow beside him and arranged it carefully in the center of the bed.
Seth took that as his cue and started to make his way to the nearest exit but stopped before reaching the door. He glanced through the glass window, into the kitchen. "And while I'm in there, I'll make sure Mom isn't making any of herhealingfood." He spun to face Ryan again, with his face serious and drawn, his voice lowered in secrecy. "Believe it or not, man, it's worse than herregularcooking. Yeah, it'll heal, all right. Once you've had a taste, your throat will heal shut." With wide eyes, he nodded, enforcing the seriousness of the matter with his expression.
Again, Seth caught sight of the fleeting smile. He took great pride in knowing that in Ryan's worst moment, Seth had made him almost-smile three times. In Seth Cohen's mind, that was success.
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Kirsten opened her eyes into a direct ray of sunlight, immediately reacting by turning her face and blinking the yellow spots out of her vision. As she fought to find her way through the haze, her senses defined her surroundings. The pool house. She stole a quick glance at her watch and let out a sigh of relief when she realized it was 9:23 am. She hadn't slept through the annoying three-tone beep of her watch alarm that would go off in seven minutes, indicating that it was time for Ryan to down another round of pills.
She rubbed at her eyes, caring very little that she was probably smudging her mascara from the day before.
Seth had come in from the pool house the night before and given her a "calming pep talk". Ignoring the oxymoron title her son had given to his speech, she'd listened. When he was done explaining that Ryan had talked, and smiled and was just tired and sore and not particularly fond of words to start off with, she'd relaxed somewhat. But not without glaring at Seth for taking yet another stab at her cooking by discouraging what he so disgustedly referred to as "healing food".
So, after several minutes of deliberation and preparation, Kirsten snatched Ryan's prescriptions from Sandy's hands. She'd organized the pills into six little piles that would last for the next 24 hours, grabbed several bottles of water from the fridge and insisted to Sandy that she'd take the graveyard shift. She then walked purposefully toward to the pool house.
Ryan had accepted the pills, allowed her to remove his jersey and help him properly back into the sweater. Almost immediately, he fell into sleep, his inhibitions regarding attention giving way to his exhaustion. Even though Kirsten knew he needed rest more than anything else, it bothered her that it came so easily. In the previous week, when Ryan had been at the peak of whatever illness it was that should have prevented him from attending the disastrous soccer tournament, he still wouldn't sleep in her presence. The second she'd set foot in the door, he'd turn over, aware. But this time had been different. The drugs and the pain had pushed him beyond caring.
Kirsten had retreated to the wicker chair and set her watch to go off every two hours, following the instructions on the "Caring for a Concussion" pamphlet to the word. Sleep was fleeting, and she filled the hours by reading and re-reading the small booklets regarding Ryan's various ailments. Every time she came across the red and bolded "beware of these symptoms" section, a wave of panic would sweep through her chest. She'd had to fight the urge to seek out a pad and pen to make notes on the warning signs, convincing herself that she was being neurotic.
The first three times the watch went off, Kirsten was already beside Ryan, waiting for the beep before gently nudging him awake with soothing words. She took solace in knowing that the Vicodin was working. From what she could tell, though Ryan was in obvious discomfort, he had little trouble finding his way back to sleep after each waking.
The annoying beep of 9:30 snapped Kirsten's eyes open again and she immediately climbed to her feet to avoid falling into another state of half-sleep. At the crackle of the wicker, Ryan stirred lightly, and Kirsten gave him time and space to wake up while she retrieved his dose from the side table along with a bottle of water from the mini-fridge.
When she rose from behind the counter with the water in hand, she was surprised to see Ryan sitting upright, the weight of his upper body leaning heavily on his good arm.
She stepped lightly across the distance separating her from the bed, twisting the cap off the bottle as she neared. She sat beside him, careful not to shift the mattress too much, and held her hand in front of him, surely in his line of vision. He straightened up and accepted the pills into his palm.
Kirsten forced herself to look elsewhere, focusing on the reflected waves from the pool dancing on the walls. She started counting the layers, stopping at thirty-four when she felt her arm getting tired, and realized that Ryan had yet to accept the bottle of water she was holding out.
After a quick glance back to her right, Kirsten noted that he'd had made no effort to take the pills. His fingers curled loosely around the stash of drugs and the back of his hand rested on his knee.
"Ryan, honey. Are you okay?" She leaned toward him, reaching over and brushing his hair from his eyes.
He twitched at her touch, let out a soft sigh and scrunched his face up for a split second. "Sorry," he croaked, then swallowed before providing more of an answer. "Just dizzy…."
Kirsten's mind flashed with mental pictures of the red, bolded warnings, and scanned her memory for any mention of dizziness. When nothing particular stood out, she did her best to suppress panic as she switched gears and searched through her common sense. She placed a reassuring hand on Ryan's knee and squeezed her fingers lightly. "You know what, honey? You probably just need some sugar in your system. I'll go get you some juice, okay?"
Ryan just set his jaw and blinked rapidly while maintaining a steady stare at the ground.
Kirsten wasted no time exiting the pool house and beelining a path to the fridge in search of sugary liquids.
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Seth flipped shut his cell as he entered the kitchen, rerouting when the main path was blocked by the open fridge door.
"Seth, do you know why there isn't any juice made?" his mom's voice called from behind the giant appliance's door.
"Uh…I don't know." Seth shrugged her off, leaving the kitchen and heading for the pool house before any more inane questions could be asked.
He knocked lightly on the unlatched door, pushing it open as he entered without waiting for a response.
"Dude, you're up!" he exclaimed to Ryan's back. "That's good, 'cause I've gotta talk to you." Seth sat on the bed next to Ryan, flipping his phone over in his hand. A quick look told Seth that the smiles would be a little harder to come by today. "How're you feeling," he asked, recognizing the tension in his brother's posture.
"Sick," Ryan whispered, swallowing thickly.
Seth looked around, inconspicuously slipping his foot under the night table, wrapping his toes around the rim of the stainless steel wastebasket and pulling it out of hiding.
"Just incase," he mumbled under his breath before turning to face Ryan. "Well then, I won't bug you for the detailed recounting that you promised me last night, and I'll get right to the point." Seth held up his cell phone to represent his topic. "Luke called, said he was coming over to talk to you. I told him you were sleeping, which I assumed you were at the time. But he's Luke…you know, kinda slow, and I don't think he caught on. So we can be expecting him shortly."
Ryan didn't move, but audibly inhaled and exhaled slowly. Seth took that as a good sign and continued. "Mom's still mad at Dad and didn't want him near you, for reasons I can't figure out. So he's been riding the Jewish wave of guilt, but he should be back from surfing shortly, and just a warning, he's going to want to talk to you. Something tells me there's more to this than you're letting on…which is…well, nothing, but whatever it is, he's taken moping to a whole new level and it's beyond irritating." Seth paused, tossing his cell up a few inches into the air and catching it with one hand. "Anyway, I just thought I'd warn you. And, you know, wish you good luck."
"Thanks," Ryan finally replied, his voice slightly stronger but his posture remained the same.
"My pleasure." Seth stood, reaching down to pull the wastebasket closer. "I'm going to leave this here…and…uh…good luck with…all that."
Seth heard the short, shaky laugh and took that as a sign that his work was done. He strutted successfully through the door, narrowly avoiding his mother and almost colliding with the large glass of juice she was trying not to spill.
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When the doorbell rang, Seth tossed his comic book into a disorganized heap on the couch and leapt to his feet. Before he could swing the door open completely, he started, "Luke, you could have gone straight to the…." Seth paused when his eyes settled on the unfamiliar figure shifting nervously from foot to foot. ThoughLuke-esque, the guy was not who Seth was expecting.
"Uh…hi." Seth shook his head and tried to organize his thoughts to address the surprise visitor. "Can I help you?"
The jittery guy shifted his eyes around for a second as if searching for a reason for his visit. Finally, he cleared his throat, shoved his hands in his pockets and spoke while maintaining sporadic eye contact. "Is…I mean, does Ryan Atwood live here?"
Seth took a step back, as if inviting the guy in but continued to glare at him suspiciously. Was he another Chino friend? Why was he so obviously uncomfortable? The entire situation didn't sit right with Seth and he suddenly wished he hadn't answered the door at all.
The two stood on the foyer landing for more than a few awkward seconds. Seth finally took the initiative to break the silence in an attempt to get some answers. "I'm Seth Cohen," he started, extending his hand.
"Terry Johnson," the larger boy said, shaking Seth's hand with a sweaty palm and quickly releasing the contact, returning his hand to his pocket immediately.
Seth nodded. "D'you go to Harbor?" he asked. He couldn't remember ever seeing the guy around school, but there were plenty of his "type" and he could have easily blended in with the crowd.
"No," Terry Johnson replied, his tightlipped answers and awkward stance indicating that his uneasiness was increasing by the second. "I went to Pacific."
"Oh," Seth answered. What the hell would some guy from Pacific want with Ryan? It wasn't adding up, but he couldn't bring himself to tolerate the awkwardness of the situation any longer. "Well, Ryan's in the pool house...." Seth paused when he saw Johnson's surprised expression. Whoever this guy was, it was obvious he didn't know Ryan all that well. At all, really. "I guess you could go out there, but he's not really...up to par. I mean...if it can wait...."
"I won't be long.... I just need to talk to him for a second," Terry Johnson promised, his defeated plea breaking something inside of Seth, forcing him to give in.
All of Seth's instincts told him this guy wasn't what Ryan needed right now, but he agreed with a nod. Seth started to make his was through the kitchen, waving a hand, indicating that Johnson should follow. "I don't know how talkative he'll be, but you can give it a shot," Seth called out over his shoulder. He could hear his mother talking loudly on the phone in the dining room, where she always went to pace during intense phone calls.
Seth stood back and gestured toward the pool house doors. He noticed the hesitation in Johnson's steps, and it only served to spark Seth's curiosity and skepticism further. He waited until Johnson finished his slow entrance into the pool house before taking a few steps to his right and positioning himself against the wall. He tilted his head and strained to make out any words he could that might help the pieces of this extremely confusing jigsaw puzzle slide into place.
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The final chapter should be around shortly.