Macy Campbell was perfect. At least she was in Ryan's mind. And that was something that didn't happen often. He was a world-class fault finder, trying to tear people down to their weakest character flaws in an attempt to stave the inevitable disappointment of the day they packed up and moved out of his life. But from day one, when he met Macy at The Bait Shop, he was smitten. And try as he might, he never quite found a flaw that bothered him beyond her tendency to reak of alcohol and cigarette smoke at the end of the night.

She was worth more than any kid in Newport, had every resource for success any kid could ever dream of at her fingertips. Her father, Robert Campbell, was the only man in Newport who came close to challenging Caleb Nichol's stronghold in the community. He had been Man of the Year on seven different occasions, chaired four different community boards, and owned most of the Southern California Seaboard. But if Ryan hadn't pried into Macy's past, asked her all kinds of questions about who she was and where she came from, he never would have known any of that.

If she never wanted to lift another finger in her life, she wouldn't have to. She could have sneezed homes, cars, and servants into existence. But the fact that she chose to take over every day management of The Bait Shop when Alex left Newport impressed Ryan. And the fact that she chose to pay her own rent on a small beach bungalow, while working on a degree from UCI, on student loans, impressed him even more.

The fact that she was beautiful didn't hurt his impression, either. Her dark hair, blue eyes, and athletic figure drew him in immediately. Her acerbic wit, intelligence, and direction had him hanging on for more. And her determination to stay grounded and normal in the "plastic" world of Orange County had cemented his affection once and for all.

The nights when they studied at her place, working on homework and listening to whatever band was coming to the club next, were his favorite. Macy didn't need fancy parties or expensive clothes to numb herself to the loneliness of being Newport's elite. She accepted who she was, but she didn't flaunt it. That was Ryan's favorite thing. Many a night he found himself staring at her while she typed furiously at her HP notebook, biting her lip as she concentrated on what she was doing for her next class.

"Are you okay?" Macy asked.

Ryan's head snapped up from the Physics problem he was working to meet her eyes across the room. Normally, he was staring at her. Tonight, he was trying to stare at the book in front of him. "Huh?"

She smiled. He hadn't turned a page or jotted anything on the paper in front of him in more than twenty minutes. "You just seem kinda distracted," she smiled, stopping her typing to watch him, stretched out on her couch like it were his own.

Ryan gave her a half-smile and erased something on his paper. Or nothing. There was nothing on his paper because he hadn't been able to form a cognative thought all night. He just kept disciplining himself not to stare at her, perched at the kitchen table, working so hard on whatever paper she had to write this week. "I'm fine," he assured her.

Macy pushed her chair from the table. "Ry," she said knowingly, moving to the couch and nudging his feet until he gave her room to sit. "Is this about the charity thing for the library?"

He had mentioned it to her weeks ago, and she had yet to answer. He knew that she did whatever she could to avoid the whole Newport social scene, had since she was in high school, and he respected her discomfort. He didn't want to be around all the fake Newpsies, either. But he had thought that being there together would make it a little bit better, for both of them. "I thought you forgot," he said, smiling as she drew his feet back up into her lap and began to massage his arches.

"You really wanna go to this thing?" she asked skeptically. He had always given the impression that he hated the gala events that went on in their world.

"I want to," he answered sheepishly, as if it were something to be embarrassed about.

Macy rolled her neck and then looked into his steel blue eyes. On the first day they met, at the club, she had thought it funny that his eyes seemed to mirror hers so perfectly. The color, the expression, the clarity, the understanding - it was all right there. It was her favorite thing about him. "Let me rephrase," she said, looking to his feet. "Do you really wanna go to this thing together?"

His eyes grew wide and he sat up, setting his feet on the ground. "What are you talking about, Macy?" he squawked. He rarely ever yelled anymore, especially not at her. "Of course I wanna go to this thing with you. I want us to be together. I want us to be together out there," he pointed to the door. "Sometimes I just think that you'd rather nobody else know about us."

Besides a select few in Ryan's inner circle, no one even knew that he was dating Macy Campbell. Until she started running The Bait Shop, nobody really even knew she was back in Newport. She had spent two years in school at Stanford, and then moved back when Alex called to tell her that she was leaving. Her father had hated the thought of his daughter leaving an ivy-league school for a virtual community college, but Macy was nothing if not independent. Independent in the sense that she would do what she wanted as long as she could hide from her father's expectations in the process.

She curled her feet up under her body and then crawled toward Ryan, pinning him to the back of the couch before straddling his hips. "Listen to me," she said in a low, even tone that made his heart turn liquid. "I don't care what my parents think about my poor decision-making skills." She kissed his neck. "And I don't care if the entire town of Newport thinks I'm the bad-ass rebel rich girl." Her kisses moved to his throat.

After a moment, Ryan didn't think about anything at all. Macy's lips on his chin were causing nerve-endings he didn't know about to spring to life. He gripped her hips and pulled her flush against him. "I don't care, either," he mumbled, seeking her mouth.

But before he could find it, she pulled back, a smoldering look in her eyes. "The only thing I do care about is what you think, okay?" He nodded, his eyes sagging under the weight of euphoria her closeness always brought. "What are you thinking right now?"

He groaned and kissed her hard. It seemed safer than the words that were bubbling on his lips at the moment. But only safer in the sense that he was plummeting to a dangerous depth that he had never experienced with anyone else. Getting close to Macy Campbell wasn't easy. She wasn't one to let her guard down for just anyone. And knowing that he could have her, like this, meant more to him than she could know. Because he knew how much it meant to her.

Finally, she pulled away. "You know I can't take a piss in this town without someone reporting back to my dad, Ryan," she sighed, sitting back on his knees, her arms around his neck. "And I wanted to make sure that we were gonna stick for awhile before I let people in," she started to explain.

But Ryan cut her off with the shake of his head. "I'm stickin' around until you kick me out," he warned her, noting the broad smile that broke across her face. "Jesus, Macy, you're so far up in my head I can't think about anything but you."

She giggled and kissed him before rolling off of his lap and pulling him by the hand into a laying position on the couch. They laid in silence, listening to her favorite band, Dashboard Confessional. She hummed along through a song, and then turned her face to his, so close she could hardly speak without brushing his lips. "Are you thinking about me right now?"

He nodded and closed his eyes. "Always," he whispered just before he kissed her.

But Macy broke the lip-lock with an eruption of laughter. "You are really corny sometimes, ya know?"

He smiled and rested his forehead against hers. "You must bring that out in me."

She wiggled slightly, putting a few inches of space between them. "If that's true, then we have to break up right now," she said sternly.

"What? Why?" Ryan asked, tightening his grip around her waist.

"I refuse to be responsible for reducing the brilliant and somewhat tortured soul of a true poet to nothing more than stagnet cliches and God-awful pick up lines," she laughed as he blushed.

The poet thing had to stop. "I thought we agreed never to speak of the poetry thing again."

Macy snuggled closer to his chest. "Publicly, yes. But since we never go anywhere publicly, I reserve the right to tease you ad nauseum about your poetic prowess when we are alone."

He kissed her. "I think," he breathed as his lips moved to her cheek, "it's time," to her neck, "to get out," to her throat, "more then."

She giggled and brought his face back to her lips while his hands wandered her back, and lower. "I hear there's a charity thing for the new library Saturday," she breathed.

"It's a date," he muttered before rolling on top of her. Saturday night would come soon enough, but or now, he was happy with staying in.