Chapter 1 - A Long Time Ago
She closed her eyes and exhaled loudly as they walked in, that old, nagging, aching feeling in the pit of her stomach sparking up again. She absent-mindedly rubbed her temples with her delicate fingertips, feeling the ebbing of her sinuses cause her to blink and look away. She still can't believe that her mom came to bring her home, pretending to the nurses that all the anger that Julie Cooper had felt when her daughter was admitted had ebbed away. If Marissa had been 15, or if she hadn't witnessed some of the things her mother had done through the years, she might just have believed it. Ryan and Seth hadn't noticed her. No doubt because they weren't expecting to see her there, in her old seat at the coffee house. No doubt because Kirsten and Sandy had told them what had happened the night after they had left for University and they wanted nothing to do with her.
It had been almost four years since their fight; the one that had resulted in him ending it for real, and they hadn't spoken since. They hadn't seen each other in three years, Marissa hadn't seen any of them, and it made looking Ryan in the eye even harder to take.
Seth glanced over at their usual table and saw Marissa staring back at him. He tried to smile, not really sure why he was doing it, maybe to reassure her, but she didn't smile back. He slapped Ryan on the back. "Now would be a good time to talk to her." When Ryan didn't answer, he took his coffee and sat down on the table next to Marissa's, trying to pluck up the courage to talk to her after all these years. "Hey Marissa."
"Hi Seth." She said, bored. "How have things been?"
"Ah...you know...College was pretty hard; just spent the last hour and a half hugging my Mom and reassuring her that I'll never go away again."
Marissa smiled as politely as possible and glanced at Ryan just as Summer walked through the door, the soft tinkle of the bell announcing her arrival.
Summer was sure that she'd never felt so alive in her whole life. She was home; far from the fretting, worrying social alignment of her university course and far from the person she had been when she'd left Newport. She smiled glitteringly around the group and told herself that it was just like old times. Seth trying to break the ice, trying to be funny whilst Coop and Ryan avoided each others eye.
She had meant to visit Marissa in the Center, she really had. She'd meant to that first week that she'd heard; but her work and her studies had bogged her down and suddenly it was a year later and was too late for apologies, and not really the right time for reconciliation. It had made her so mad when she'd first heard. She had spent years being out-beautyed and out-populised by Marissa Cooper and suddenly; as soon as Summer had finally found her place in life, it seemed that Marissa had just wanted to fuck it up. Caleb Nichol had found her conked out; a bottle of pills in her left hand and deep slashes in her wrists, not to mention the half empty bottle of vodka that lay beside her. Julie had apparently gone mad and admitted her to indefinite rehabilitation.
She'd meant to see Seth too. Come to think of it; there were many things that Summer had meant to do over the past few years but had never really gotten around to it.
"Hey Ryan." He glanced at her and shot her a pleading look. She shrugged it off. "Sorry Coop. Hey Cohen." She couldn't help it. She'd missed him. Even the new improved; the new in control Summer couldn't stop herself from flinging her slender arms around Seth and hugging him until she was sure she'd sucked the life out of him.
"They get "Hey" and I get "Sorry" Jeez, where have you been Sum? You were supposed to be my best friend."
"I was going to come and see you but...well to be honest I was mad at you for such a long time that"- Summer rubbed her temple. "Oh, I don't know."
"No. You don't. you know nothing about how it feels to be told the things I was. I wasn't trying to kill myself..."
Ryan stood up. "So what was it? Another famous Marissa Cooper cry for attention? Jeez." He breathed out. I've changed, or at least I've tried to. I know that you hate me for everything that happened between us but I wont say that I'm sorry. I wont beg and plead for your forgiveness because I don't need it. I have got on well enough without it for the past three years."
That was a lie. Ryan knew it, Seth knew it, and by the complacent look on her face, Summer knew it too. Ryan hadn't got on OK without her forgiveness. He'd tried and tried to get over it, he didn't blame himself, afterall she was the one who had cheated not him; but he'd longed to see her, he'd told Seth so many times; by letter, by phone and in the flesh but he'd told him to steer well clear. He'd told him that she was trouble.
Seth stood up and discretely though it was, he placed himself in front of Summer, guarding her from the flailing hands that he was sure were about to rise. "Marissa. Listen. Can you not even begin to understand why Summer was mad? Why Ryan is mad? Why I told Ryan to steer well clear until you were out of there?"