Disclaimer: Don't own it.

Rated T to be safe.

Cohen rolls over and looks at me, sincerity seeping from his brown eyes. There's nothing but bed sheets between our sweaty bodies.

"I love you," he says.

I know I should be feeling warm and fuzzy. It's just that I don't believe him.

His love feels fake and contrived, like this community he hates so much. His boundless adoration appears and disappears like Julie Cooper's smile. Um, hello? What happened to "undeniable"? I took a backseat to Ryan last summer and the graphic novel this spring. And not only has he shown me that chivalry's dead, but faithfulness, too. I don't know if I'll ever totally forgive him for the skanks in Miami and Las Vegas. Maybe it's because that all pertains to the real world. Something that, because I'm popular and not in all his AP courses, I can't ever touch.

People in the real world can't match the average Newpsie's wealth, but they're just as fake. They can be gossipy and narrow-minded without boob jobs or chin implants. Maybe Newport's shimmering, aloof beauty is the most real thing out there. Or at least the truest to human nature. Everyone is hiding behind a guise of civility, no one feels like they fit in, no one is accepting.

No one is genuinely concerned and they all know it.

But Chino hasn't give up hope. He's dated four girls here (all right, so Alex shouldn't count, whatevs) and he decided to take a chance with the Newport princess again. Chino is still looking for love and acceptance, so some part of him must still believe it exists. He believes despite Sandy and Kirsten's pitying stares and his rough childhood - I must have heard about it from Seth but couldn't say when or why - that has to account for that look in his eyes.

If he can believe, so can I. I think maybe he could help. I think maybe I'm falling for him. I think maybe it's been building since he got here. But it's not like I can pursue him. Because he probably doesn't return the feelings, and even if he does he'll just get bored. It's not worth it for him to lose Coop, Seth, and maybe the rest of the Cohens over. I don't think that Sandy and Kirsten would do that, but I also thought that Kirsten was pretty well put together. Chino has already had so many people he cares about torn from him: his father by greed, two mothers by alcohol, his brother by a girlfriend, two girlfriends who cared about him by circumstance, and an unborn child by a mysterious phone call. No matter what some test said, he would have been that baby's father. I guess he was partially to blame when he and Coop broke up last summer. Then again, the girl did leave him for a friendship with a psycho not even a month after Chino told her he loved her. I can't add to his pain. So I store the feeling away with my feelings of abandonment when my mother left, of anger when Cohen ran away, and of frustration with Coop's inability to suck it up and return my devoted friendship. Still, I love the four people who tear me up inside.

Chino deserves to be happy. I wish there was a switch I could throw, I would pay for it with my father's credit cards and flip it with an expensive manicure, pull out all the stops and make Chino's life better.

I want everyone's life to be better. Seth didn't deserve to be a social outcast. Coop didn't deserve Julie for a mom. I got two perfectly good parents, but I just wasn't good enough for one. And then daddy threw himself into becoming the west coast's best plastic surgeon. We used to really be best friends. Now I pretend that limitless shopping sprees and once-a-month (tentatively) lunches are make me feel loved. I don't know when I'll ever be able to stop pretending. I probably don't deserve to stop. I'm not deserving.So I want everyone else to have fun, to lead fulfilling lives, to be truly loved.

Coop was always a little unstable. We were perfect little Newport princesses when we were little. Then she dated Luke and wanted to be "cool". So I did drugs and let dumb seventh-grade jocks feel me up under the bleachers. And maybe I wasn't resigned quite as much back then as I am now.

And then Coop wanted to be different and listen to punk rock. She asked, "do you ever wonder what your life looks like through someone else's eyes?". Deep Coop. So she dated Ryan and I dated Seth Cohen.

I might have loved him. We had tortured him in grade school and he grew up to be sweet and funny and gorgeous and totally infatuated with me anyway. We got past Anna making it a triangle. We kissed on top of a kissing booth. We got over my dad hating him. And we got over Vegas. Then he left.

Coop and I were boyfriendless and depressed all summer. Tanning one day, she turned to me with a Newport Iced Tea in her left hand, "Sum, we can't keep dwelling on them. We've got to move on. I mean, they showed us they don't need us. So, we can't need them either, right?". I got in a fight with Cohen and July 4th and started quasi-dating Zach. Meanwhile Coop slept with the hot yard guy.

Then the boys were back and we danced around reuniting all year. Then I left Zach at the airport and kissed Cohen in the rain. I just couldn't watch him being miserable anymore. Especially when all it took to make him happy again was me. And I'm sticking with him through embarrassing and almost demeaning obsession, Reid and her stupid comic book, and Miami. Cohen needed me to be happy. So he has me. Coop needed Chino to be happy. And Chino just needed to be happy. We've struck a balance and I'll be damned if I'm the one to disrupt it.

So I sit here while Cohen slips into the bathroom and my eyes water. I want so badly to cry and go on crying until anybody - Cohen, Coop, Chino, Mr. Cohen, Julie, DJ, anyone - makes it better. But I have to hope that these tears never spill, or at least not where anyone can see them.

Please pull some punches. It's my first.