When he was younger, Ryan had always loved the nursery rhyme "Humpty Dumpty." He felt some sort of karmic connection with the fallen hero. The way that Humpty was just sitting on the wall, not a care in the world. Ryan had felt like that once, like nothing could knock him down. But one strong wind, one inexplicable outside force, and he was tumbling to the ground, filled with terror and confusion, shattered beyond repair.

He remembered a time when he could stare at that picture for hours, the one of the broken Humpty Dumpty, and wish that he had the answer. He wished that he knew how to put the crushed character, and himself, back together, back on the wall. But if all the king's horses and men couldn't fix Mr. Dumpty, no one could ever put him back together, either.

He knew he shouldn't be there, nursing a beer in some dive alone. He knew that alcohol wouldn't solve his problems, or even help him escape them. He knew that being there only made him one more link in the cycle of addiction and depression. But he was tired of caring. He was tired of worrying. And he was tired of pretending.

Seth had moved in with Sandy, after tearfully begging him to come along. And he almost had. They would never know how close he had been to packing up and tagging along with the other men. Maybe they were right. Maybe the only way to help Kirsten was to show her that she couldn't have the perfect family and the addiction. Maybe they all had to be strong. But he wasn't. He could fake tough, but strength was a trait he no longer possessed.

"Hey, Stranger," a voice sounded from behind him.

Ryan turned and offered a half-smile. "Summer," he said as she perched herself onto the stool beside him. She ordered a club soda and drank a few sips before he spoke again. "What are you doing here?"

She shrugged and swiveled on the seat to face him. "I was on my way home from Coop's and I saw your car outside," she said. "Thought you might not wanna drink alone."

He appreciated the gesture, but doubted the motive. She was only going to tell him something he didn't want to hear. They always told him something he didn't want to hear. "Look," he decided to cut her off at the pass. "If you're here to tell me how I'm just fucking everything up, save it," he warned.

She shrugged again. "I'm not here to tell you anything. You know what you're doing, right? I mean, more than any of us, you know what you're doing," she turned back toward the bar, speaking to it as though she had a better chance of getting a response. He knew she probably did. "You've done this thing before, right? But the way I see it? That didn't turn out so well, did it?"

"Summer," he warned with a low growl that was meant to scare her.

But he forgot that Summer Roberts did not scare so easily. She turned her gaze back to his face, meeting him with a firm look that said she wasn't done and she wouldn't go away until she was. "I know that this is hard for you –"

"No, you don't. You don't know shit," he spat, growing more irritated.

"Don't I?" she challenged.

Ryan was tired of it all, and he was really tired of her. "No, you don't. Nobody does. You keep saying that you know, but you don't know." None of them did. They didn't know what it was like to wake up in the morning and wonder if she would. They didn't know what it was like to come home and wonder if this was going to be the time he found her dead instead of just passed out.

"I know you feel guilty," she whispered.

He turned. "Guilty? For what?" He wanted to scoff, but it was too close to the truth. And he was now convinced that the truth was good for no one.

"That not one, but two of your moms have drinking problems. You keep telling yourself that if you do better, if you clean it and cover it up, that they'll stop. You think that you can fix them. And the longer it goes on, the worse it gets, the more guilty you feel for not being enough." She put her hand on his arm and held it there until he met her eye. "I know, Ryan."

She did. He could see it in her eyes, something deeper than words, more than any of them had given him in months. She knew everything that he had wished someone would know. "Twice," he whispered sadly. "It's happened twice."

Nodding, she sipped at her drink. She didn't speak, knowing that he had to do the talking, but she took note of the bottle in front of him. It was less than half-empty. He wasn't trying to get drunk, he didn't want to. He just didn't know how else to cope, how else to solve the problems. This was all he'd ever been shown.

Opening up to her seemed easy for Ryan. If she already understood how he felt, then it didn't matter if he explained it with the right words or not, she would get it. "It's like, I know it's crazy, but I feel like I need this." He took another drink and then turned toward her. "I've been here for almost two years, Summer. Everyone still knows me as the kid from Chino, ya know? I love the Cohens, I do, but I never forget that this isn't mine. It's like, I spend most of my time just waiting for the other shoe to drop."

"And now it has," she responded with the raise of an eyebrow. She knew how he felt, but confiding all of her mother/step-mother problems seemed inappropriate. This was about him. And he was still her boyfriend's brother.

Ryan didn't answer, only stared at the label on his bottle. His fingers went to it of their own volition, peeling at the wet paper as he spoke. "This is what I know. I still don't know which spoon to use for soup at some dinner party, but I know how to do this. I know how to take care of her." Another silence followed. "I can't leave her," he finally said.

Summer looked at the new glass that the bartender sat in front of her. There were a million responses on the tip of her tongue, but none seemed to come out. "But, Ryan," she started.

"Say what you want about whatever you think she needs," he interrupted. "But since the day she let me into her house, she has never turned her back on me. I can't do it to her."

Determined to let him figure it out on his own, she reached into her purse and grabbed her wallet. Opening it, her eyes fell on a photograph. "Sandy never turned his back on you, either, Ryan," she pointed out.

It was true. Sandy, moreso than Kirsten, had always done what was best for him. He had always been the father that Ryan had never known growing up. He was the rock, the one that he always knew he could count on, no matter what was happening. Sandy's love was unconditional, and Ryan had spat on it, turned it away without a second though. He had no argument for that.

Summer tossed the cash for her tab on the bar and leaned on her elbow. "I don't want you to take this the wrong way or anything," she sighed and stood. "But you and Kirsten both have some pretty serious issues that you've never confronted. She's hiding hers in a bottle, but you're hiding yours in her. Neither one of you will ever get better if you don't stop running scared and face some of this shit head on."

And she was gone. Without a good-bye, she just disappeared. Ryan felt like his chest was on fire. Summer was one hundred percent right. He had been living in a fairy tale since he moved to Newport, and he still was. Dreaming of the day when he would wake up, come into the kitchen, find Sandy and Seth back home, and everyone happy – that was his delusion. It was never going to get better, they were going to find peace, until they did something about it. Until one of them took the first step toward healing. And, as he paid his tab and left his half-empty bottle on the bar, he determined that he was going to be the one that stepped first.