The house in the numbered streets was modest, to say the least. Two floors, three bedrooms, one bathroom, and a fenced in yard. It didn't even have a pool. But Marissa enjoyed the Matthews home more than any she had ever visited. There was nothing excessive to distract from the fact that they loved each other, pure and simple. It was sort of that way at the Cohens, but not the same degree.
She knocked on the door and waited, looking around at the toys in the front yard – barbies and baby dolls and matching pink "Hello Kitty" bicycles with baskets and horns. She wondered if she had ever loved a bike as much as Connor's twin sisters loved theirs. Had she ever valued anything she had like these kids did?
When the door opened, she was almost surprised. Technically, Connor should have still been at soccer practice, but when she had driven by the field, his floppy locks were nowhere to be found. "Hey," he said with a blank expression.
Marissa waited for him to push the screen door open and then she let herself into the living room. "So, I looked for you today – after lunch – but I didn't see you."
He nodded and moved toward the kitchen, examining the contents of the fridge. "I wasn't feeling good. I came home early."
His words were clipped, and she wondered if she had done something to make him angry. She couldn't recall doing or saying anything out of the ordinary, but that didn't mean that she hadn't. "Oh. Well, are you feeling better?"
Shutting the refrigerator door, he turned and looked at her across the counter. "That depends," he said honestly, his heart sinking in his chest.
"On what?" Marissa asked suspiciously, watching him carefully as he made his way back into the living room.
He sat on the tattered brown recliner beside her, distractedly playing with a hole that the family kitten had caused when she discovered her new claws. Finally, he met her eyes. "It depends on whether you're here to break up with me or just to lure me further into your plot to piss your mom off," he said.
All of the air seemed to seep from her chest in a split second. "What?"
Sighing heavily, Connor looked into her huge eyes and ran a hand over his hair. "Look, Marissa, I've been dumped enough to know what it looks like from a distance. Things haven't been the same with us for a couple of weeks now, and then Seth said. . ."
"Seth said?" Marissa jumped in, realization dawning on her. "Since when do you listen to anything Seth Cohen says? Connor, he and Summer have been on this quest to get me back together with Ryan for months now, long before you and I started dating," she pleaded with him to believe her. "I'm startingto think that they would say just about anything to make that happen."
For some reason, she hated the thought of being without him. Or, more honestly, of being without someone. And Connor was just as good, if not better, than most of the guys she had dated. To be honest, he had come the closest to making her happy since Ryan, so she found herself more and more drawn to him.
"So you're not breaking up with me?" he asked. She shook her head and scooted closer to the edge of the couch, reaching out to touch his knee. "Why not?"
That surprised her. Why not? Did it matter? "Um, because I like you?" she answered.
"That's convincing." He shrugged his shoulders and leaned back in the chair, refusing to buckle to the desire her touch was bringing out in him. "You sure it's not just because your mom hates me?"
Had Seth told him that, too? Add Cohen to the shit list, she told herself. Marissa was sure that he would never get all of these crazy ideas on his own. They had been together for nearly three months now, and he had never once worried about what her mother thought of him. Even when she hated him for no reason, Connor had never expressed any concern. "What are you talking about? What does my mother have to do with our relationship?"
"You tell me, Marissa. I mean, I've been thinking a lot about our relationship today, and it seems like you were happy to take this whole thing with us at a fairly pedestrian speed, until your mom found out about my family." He stopped and bit his lip, pain evident in his eyes when he met hers. "I know you don't respect your mom, that you have a lot of anger toward her or whatever, but I don't wanna be the cause of it."
"You're not," she insisted, dropping to her knees in front of his chair, both of her hands on his thighs now. "Connor, I like you. We have fun together. This week has been a little bit weird for me – there's other stuff going on, but it's not you. I don't care what my mom thinks about you, and I would be with you even if she loved you." She tried to lean forward and kiss him, but he turned his face. "What do I have to do to prove it to you?"
He just stood from his chair and pulled her to her feet. "You can't do anything, Marissa. It's in your eyes." He looked away – couldn't keep staring into those huge pools of desperation and pain. He was too smart for her game, but his body was betraying his mind. "She was right," he sighed, shaking his head.
"Who was right? Did Summer say something?" The tears were forming behind her eyes. Sometimes she wished that she wasn't such a baby – that she didn't cry so easily. She wished that she could suck it all up, be tough like Ryan was, let people in and out of her life without emotion. But she couldn't. She couldn't be abandoned again, not like this.
Connor looked out the sliding glass picture window onto the back yard. His sisters' sand box seemed like as good a focal point as any. "Your mom."
"It's bull shit, Connor," Marissa pleaded. "You are good enough for me. I don't care what your parents do for a living or what you're fuckin' net worth is. You are good enough for me."
"I don't want to be good enough, Marissa. I want to be good for you and I want to be enough for you. But I can't be Ryan." He just shook his curls and started to stare at his shoes. He was fairly certain he couldn't say this if he looked back at her.
Marissa stomped. She was ready for the full-fledged temper-tantrum stage of the argument now. If she could just get through this, then he would see that she cared, and he would say that he did, and they would still be together. "Why does everyone keep saying that? I am not in love with Ryan Atwood. We are friends, and maybe not even that anymore. Whatever we had is long over." She took a deep breath and pushed her hair from her face. "Jesus, between you and Seth and Summer and my mom and dad – I'm getting sick of it," she demanded.
He smiled slightly and started to walk toward the front door. "Marissa, if that many people see it, don't you think there might be something to it?" He held the screen open for her and Marissa moved on legs of lead toward the front porch.
He had already let the screen slam when she reached the steps and turned to face him. "Ya know what? The entire population of the world used to think that Earth was flat," she said. He looked at her as though she were speaking in some cryptic tongue. "Didn't mean they were right, either," she said sadly, turning her back and moving toward her car.
Connor shut the heavy door and assured himself that he had done the right thing. Maybe Marissa didn't see it. Maybe she really believed that she didn't love Ryan anymore. But it was there – deep inside that sad expression that glimmered just a little at the mention of his name. It was there, and he was sure that shit was really gonna hit the fan when she realized it.
In the car, Marissa banged her head against the steering wheel and then cranked her radio as she peeled out of the driveway. Of course she knew she still loved Ryan. They all thought she was too stupid or stubborn to admit that, but she knew the truth. When it came to the reconciliation of "The Ryan/Marissa Thing," Ryan was the immovable object. And the harder they all pushed her toward him, the uglier the crash would be in the end.