That is how they ended up together in an empty Tepa Tequira, sitting in a dark green plastic booth over cokes and half picked at tacos. They had crossed the freeway just outside of the Motel, and gotten food at the Mexican fast food chain across the street. The sun was already half set by the time they sat down, the last of it reflecting in the sky like a mixed pink and purple. Marissa stared out the window into the artificialness of the safe suburbia she had found herself in.

So far from whatever ghost she had left in the empty space that still lingered between them ever since she opened that door. Ever since she ran through the crowd, ever since she collapsed on the sticky sand.

Ever since she could remember. The idea that he was saving her was something she wrapped around her finger, and kept in the back of her mind, where the old Marissa tried to break free. That girl though, hadn't seen the things that the girl picking at a chicken taco staring out the window at the night creeping up on whatever had been that day. Then it happened. She couldn't take this game.

"So, do you go to school?" But she couldn't find that truth yet either.

"Yeah, Berkley. On your sweatshirt." He laugehd a little and gestured to the sweatshirt he had given her to wear, "Sandy was proud."

For an instant a toothy smile spread across her face. She had almost forgotten, wait that was a lie, she had never forgotten but she had tried to block out the details of that life she had left behind. Ryan had a family. Ryan had the Cohens. The Cohens linked to the world she once belonged to.

"This will be my junior year, it's going pretty good." He was different in that sense. He had pride. He had meaning. He carried that around on his sleeve.

"What do are you studing" Focusing on stirring her watery coke around with her straw.

"Criminal Justice. Something in the system, I realized I wanna make things better. I want to work at getting people back to normal. Like the Cohens did for me. I mean maybe I'll eventually go to law school or something and help people out that way." He said it all so happily, like they were just talking again. Laying in the poorhouse after school or something. Yet it was different. After his smile faded a troubled look crossed his face, something she could almost guess as regret.

"Do you remember the week after I met you and Me, and you and Seth were hanging out at that one restaurant we used to all go to. The Crab Shack? I think? It was something pathetically Newport like that. And I was getting to know you, and you were getting to know me. And you saw me. Like really saw me. Even though we'd only known each other 4 days?"

He looked puzzled. But amused at her memory. "Yeah…"

"This reminds me of that." She said completely old Marissa. She was starting to come to her more easily. Like the wall she had built up around her, it was slowly coming down.

"Why?"

"Because we're getting to know each other all over again. We're two strangers who can really see each other." She didn't know why she had said that. She almost kind of regretted it as after it came out. But he smiled. He looked at put aside the utter mess she was, the utter stranger she was, and looked past that to find a piece that he would always be able to read.
"You're right."

And that was it. The artificial mood that had been severed between them was done. It was broken. Thrown aside to find out whatever the hell was, that was going on. Because they just couldn't not.