WRITTEN BY: DancingPixie

RATING: T (One swear word)

DISCLAIMER: I don't own the character etc etc you get the idea. Please steal don't this story.

SUMMARY: Teresa reflects on her conversation with Ryan in the O. Sea. Please Read and Review!

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Italics signify text that was from the episode and thus not written by myself.

Making it Right

Even through it was late at night, the air was still warm and a soft breeze made the leaves softly rustle like ghosts. It seemed like there were an infinite number of stars to been seen, all winking down at her. She and Ryan had spent countless nights sitting on her porch on evenings like this - drawing patterns in the stars, talking, teasing and making out. Only now she was sitting on her porch alone. Sipping her beer, she shook her head. Ryan. There was someone she hadn't expected to see tonight.

She had just run out the grocery store, picking up a few items for her mom, taking a breather from her own demands of motherhood. As she walked down the main drag with her brown bag, she hadn't even noticed him till he was right in front of her. Hunched over and talking on a cell phone, like she had seen him do a thousand different times on thousands of different nights. All at once her head was filled a million potential actions: drop the groceries and kiss him so hard he forgot he had ever left, drop the groceries and run...Yet she just stood there holding her bag of groceries, "Ryan?"

He looked up, and all she could think was: he has got another new haircut. "Theresa?"

She had imagined this encounter so many different times. Played out different scenarios, different ways of telling him, different ways of not telling him. She had put them years ahead meeting by accident, she had imagined phoning him up and telling him. She thought she had imagined every possible way for she and Ryan to run into each other, but never had she imagined standing in front of him with a bag of groceries, never had she imagined him looking so lost.

He walked over to her, hands in his pockets. Still stunned, "Hey" was all she could manage.

"How have you been?" they asked each other at the same time. Both of them paused, and then tried talking again at the same instant. Ryan look down and then up again. She smiled, "I was just headed back to my mom's."

He looked up at her on an angle and smiled back with that small shy smile he had, "I'll walk with you. But first let me take that bag." It was always the same, they could go for months without seeing each other and then within two sentences it was like no time had passed.

Together they turned off of the busy main street to the side streets that led to their neighbourhood, "What are you doing back?"

"I am visiting my mom for the weekend. Believe it or not I miss it back here. It might not be paradise, but it is home." That was always the difference between them, it was never home for Ryan, and it certainly was never paradise. He had left and he hadn't missed it at all. He had left and never looked back.

"And Atlanta?" Of course he would ask about Atlanta, her magical ticket out. Her way of showing him that he wasn't the only who could leave.

"It is fine...for now."

They paused. He turned around and looked at her while walking backwards, "You know...I wrote you all those letters." She knew, she had read them. But how could she write back? It clear from what he wrote that he had dived head first back into Newport.

"I know...I needed a clean break."

"Or you were mad because I left." No, she wasn't. Sure, he had come back to Chino to help her with the baby. Sure, he had gone to every doctor's appointment. He had paid the bills and been the 'man of the house', but he hadn't done it for her. She knew he would never tell her, but she could feel how unhappy he was...and she loved him too much to watch him waste away. She wasn't mad at him, she just couldn't stand to make him so miserable. So she made him leave.

"I wanted you to leave...you belong in Newport. Which doesn't explain what you are doing back here?"

"Trey." Ahh...the one person whose faults Ryan could be persuaded to ignore. The devil to Ryan's saint.

"He's out of jail?"

"He was crashing with the Cohens for a little while and things were going good..."

"Let me guess, Trey got into trouble." She knew how this story ends before it even began.

"He hooked up with Marissa." She stopped walking, no wonder Ryan was looking so lost. "He says she came on to him, she says nothing happened. I don't know who to believe..."

"I do. Ryan, Trey has been jerking you around your entire life and Marissa..."

"Has made mistakes." He never wrote about that in the letters. It was obvious Marissa had issues but she understood why Ryan liked her. Marissa had an innocence and a glow that seemed to make all of the shit that went on in Chino go away.

"She would never hurt you like that."

"How do you know?"

" 'Cause last year when I needed you she let you go...even though it broke her heart. They both love you, but between the two of them, Marissa is the one you can trust." Which was true. Trey was an ass, and even when they were little, Trey had been the weaker one. The one who would bow down to the bullies in school and join them. He always took the path of least resistance.

They walked in silence for a few more seconds, Ryan was looking at her like she was saying things he had never thought of before.

"Ummm... this is me." Suddenly she and Ryan were pushed back to reality.

"Is your mom in? I'll say hey." An ugly reality.

"Yeah...but it is getting kinda late." Fabulous excuse. She wasn't ready. She couldn't tell him. This conversation had reinforced what she already knew, Ryan really belonged in Newport, with a family and a girlfriend who loved him.

"Let me help you in."

"No, it's fine. I got it."

"Yeah...you sure?"

"Yeah."

"Okay."

She wasn't going to. There was no need to. Yet Theresa had taken Ryan away from Marissa twelve months ago. Now she was making up for it, she was ensuring that Ryan stayed in his Newport life. "Talk to Marissa, make it right." She was making it right, fixing what she had broken a year ago. She owed Marissa at least that.

"Yeah, well". Suddenly they were at her front porch. They both paused for a moment, then gently Ryan gave her a kiss on the cheek. She gave him a half smile and wave and opened her door.

The bright lights of house brought forced her eyes to open in more then one way. Her mom stood rocking her baby, "Somebody missed you!"

A big grin filled her face, as hard as it was being a teen-mom her son never failed to bring a smile to her face.

"He looks more and more like his daddy everyday."

It was that comment that she had been replaying in her head as she sat on her porch staring up at the stars. It was true, her son did look like Ryan. They shared the same blue eyes that saw everything and even the same half smile. Finishing her beer, she rubbed her eyes. She and Ryan had tried to make it work, but hadn't worked that summer. It hadn't worked at all. She had made him leave the only way she knew how.

Growing up, she had dated lots of guys in Chino, and some of them pretty seriously. But through all of those relationships, there was always Ryan next door. Someone to share the ups and downs, someone to laugh with about the bad dates. With Ryan it had never taken any work, there was a simple, wordless understanding between them. They had never bothered to put labels on what they had, they had never even gone on an official date together. That still didn't mean that without a doubt she had been in love with Ryan Atwood since the 8th grade. But then he left. Without a word, or a note, or even a phone call. She had hoped that when he moved in, when she showed him that they could be a family, that he would be as happy with her as he had been with the Cohens. But his heart had never been in it. He just wasn't ready.

But there were moments like tonight, moments when she realized exactly how much her son was like his father that she wondered she had made the right choice. She knew that one day she would have to tell Ryan about his son, the question was how? Tonight wasn't the night, Ryan was focused on Marissa, but one night she would have to let him inside, she would have to reveal her betrayal. A betrayal worse then Trey's, worse then anything his mom ever did, worse then what he suspected Marissa of doing.

One thing she did know was what she was going to tell her son. When her son asked about his father, the man she walked home with tonight was the man she would describe. The man that asked about her first, the man that carried her groceries. The man that tried to be loyal to both his family and his girlfriend. The man that kissed her on the cheek.

The man she still loved.