Disclaimer: I put in a little mention of Ryan thinking about sex in here because it's SIMPLY NOT NATURAL that he doesn't talk about it, lol! It's just a thought and it's really subtle, but it probably won't be so subtle the next time;) Also, I struggled a little with The Girlfriend, so I hope it's halfway decent.

Chapter Five

"We left off around the time you were deciding to go back to Luke."

Marissa sighed and bit back a retort at his comment that she hadn't decided anything; she knew how he felt about that. "So it's the time period after that guy brought the gun to the party," she said patiently, noticing Ryan relax slightly before she went on. If Ryan was already tense before they got started, it wasn't exactly a good sign. She thought carefully before speaking again; this was going to be particularly difficult to explain. "I guess what I was feeling most of all was confused," she said at length. "At the time, you represented something to me- change, a new life. It was almost like if I decided to accept how much I wanted to be with you, it solidified that my life would never be the same. Luke was familiar. At the time, I stupidly thought he was the safe choice."

"I wasn't trying to represent anything," Ryan mumbled, looking anywhere but her as he remembered that time. "I just wanted to be with you. And it felt like no matter what I did, you wanted Luke more. Every time I turned around, you were with Luke. Every time I tried to reach out to you, Luke got there first." It had been like a fist in the gut, every time he'd seen her with Luke or she spoke Luke's name to him. It was odd, how he could still remember that pain so perfectly after all this time, still remember how it had confused him at the time because he'd never felt like that before.

"I hadn't made any decision yet," Marissa said, gently and carefully. "I honestly didn't know what I was going to do."

"It felt like you had to me," Ryan shot back defensively, crossing his arms across his chest.

"I understand why you felt like that, but the fact remains is that I hadn't," Marissa insisted, still trying to keep her tone on an even keel. "I'm not saying that like I think you should have known; there's no way you could have. I'm just saying that's how it was. I was constantly fighting with myself about what I wanted- and that was you, there's no question about that- and what I thought was safe."

"And what you thought was appropriate," he muttered, still not looking at her.

For a moment, the comment didn't sink in for Marissa. When it did, her face paled. "That's not fair," she said quietly, her voice shaking slightly. "I've never given you any indication I thought you weren't good enough because of where you come from, or that Luke was better than you because he's from Newport Beach and you're from Chino. That never mattered to me at all. Those are not my issues."

Ryan winced; as always, her quiet hurt took him down like no outburst of anger ever could. "I'm sorry," he said reluctantly, meeting her eyes at last. "That was a low blow. You're right; you never said or did anything like that."

Marissa stared at him for a moment, then decided to drop it and move on. "I guess that brings us to the party," she said, her voice dropping to almost a whisper. Ryan tensed, but didn't respond. "I wished I was there with you. I did," she almost pleaded. "From the second you asked me, I wish you'd done it first, or that I'd just had the guts to turn Luke down."

Ryan shrugged. "Seemed to be having a pretty good time to me," he said coolly.

"So did you," Marissa fired back, irrationally frustrated that he couldn't seem to try to see her side of things, knowing she wasn't being much better.

Ryan groaned in frustration. "Fine. Yes, I screwed up. I was hurt, an older woman was coming onto me, and I just wanted to go back to a time when sex meant nothing. Not my proudest moment. I admit that. But it wasn't a good reason for you to run off and lose your virginity to Luke."

Marissa flinched. "No one ever said it was, Ryan," she snapped, restlessly getting off the bed and pacing around the pool house. "You get so caught up in whose fault it is, in whether or not people have a right to feel the way they feel, and you blow right past the fact that people FEEL whether they have a right to or not. Of course it's not your fault I went and slept with Luke! It was a stupid thing to do, and I've regretted it every day since then. But we need to get this out before we get any further, because what I did then wasn't the last time I did something like it. Sometimes people just HURT, Ryan. Right or wrong, sometimes things just hurt and you end up acting like an idiot as a result. It doesn't always matter whose fault it is; people just get hurt." Ending her tirade, she took a few deep breaths as she and Ryan stared at each other for a long minute.

"Well, I guess you told me," Ryan said finally. Marissa softened as she caught the underlying vulnerability in his tone and went to sit back on the bed, taking his hand and feeling relieved when he didn't try to avoid the physical connection.

"I have an idea why you do that," she said more gently. Ryan raised his brows and she elaborated. "You think everything's your fault, so you never really allow yourself to feel hurt. When you do, nine times out of ten you push it aside instead of just letting yourself be. I'm not trying to slam you for some mistreatment of me. You need to be able to say when I hurt you too, even if it wasn't my fault."

Ryan softened, clearly relaxing when he realized she wasn't attacking him. "You've got a point," he admitted, leaning in to kiss her cheek. "Okay. When it comes to hurt feelings, I'll try to back off the blame game a little, whether I'm blaming you OR me." He sighed deeply, entwining their fingers. "So I was…I was hurt when I thought you were with Luke, and I ended up with Gabrielle. And then you came in."

Marissa tried not to flinch; she remembered how humiliated and hurt she'd been. "I wasn't rationally mad at you. I'm not going to lie and say I wasn't mad, but I knew deep down I had no right to me. On some level, I was mad at myself," she admitted. "I'd waited too long and you'd lost interest- or so I thought," she clarified when he opened his mouth to protest. "I had my own insecurities back then, too. I didn't understand why you'd like me any more than you understood why I'd like you." She almost laughed at Ryan's flabbergasted expression. "You don't give yourself nearly enough credit," she lightly teased him. "You were just as fascinating to me as I was to you. I had no idea why you'd be interested in me beyond a pretty face."

The thought was incomprehensible to Ryan; the princess was worried about how the loser felt about HER back then? Still, it made him feel somewhat better. The tightness in his chest eased a little; it helped to know just how close the reasoning behind what she did with Luke was to his for Gabrielle. It helped him say the next part. "So you ran off. And you took Luke with you."

Marissa shook her head; it was strange that she already felt tired so early in the morning. "I've regretted it every single day ever since. I know just about nobody has a great first sexual experience, but I still wish I would have known better. I wasn't happy before and I was even less happy afterwards."

Despite the pain it had caused him at the time, Ryan's heart ached for Marissa now. Ever since he'd met her, events had steadily chipped away at the innocence he'd seen in her during the early days where she rode around on the back of his bike. He wished this hadn't been one more thing. "You know," he began, looking for a way to make her feel better "after you left, Gabrielle came to find me." Marissa gave him a skeptical 'please-tell-me-there's-a-point-to-this-I'll-want-to-hear' expression and he grinned before continuing. "She told me I looked miserable, and then- and it confused me at the time- told me she was jealous. Because if I was that miserable, I must be in love."

In spite of herself, Marissa felt a smile creeping over her face as her heart swelled at the implications of the story and of Ryan telling it to her; he wouldn't have if Gabrielle had been wrong. "Hmmm," she mused. "Maybe she wasn't ALL bad, after all." She giggled as Ryan tousled her hair affectionately, but her smile faded when she remembered their next meeting. "I shouldn't have been so cold to you outside my house," she said sadly.

Ryan pressed his lips together; that memory hurt most of all their early days together. "That was really hard," he admitted. "I know now why you reacted that way; I guess I didn't react much better to seeing you with Luke. But that…" that almost killed me, he silently finished. Some things he just couldn't say aloud. As if sensing the words, Marissa lifted up his arm and snuggled into him, almost like she was trying to tell him he had her now.

"I shouldn't have been like that," she said simply. "More than that, I should have waited just a little bit longer."

Wouldn't have been that little an amount of time, Ryan thought silently but wisely decided against saying that out loud. "So the next time we saw each other, we pissed each other off," he said wryly, referring to their brief meeting in the Crab Shack.

Marissa could smile about the memory now. "I just keep thinking how YOUNG we were back then, even though it technically was a couple of years ago," she laughed. "We were so bratty to each other. I think I hit a low point on the way to TJ, when I wouldn't take the water from you."

"Oh, right," Ryan mused. "You WERE a brat." He ducked a smack, laughing. "We called a temporary truce because of Seth and Summer's lovely little 'bonding' experience-" Marissa groaned "-but we were right back to fighting at the vending machines."

"Yeah, but the only thing I remember about that is you telling me you thought about me every day," Marissa grinned. Ryan flushed a little and the grin widened. He still had SOME of that little boy sweetness she'd fallen so hard for in the beginning.

"None of it seemed important after you got the call from your dad, though," Ryan remembered, glancing up at her from under her lashes and surprised at her lack of reaction beyond a faint flicker of pain. She caught his surprise and shrugged.

"I said it earlier," she sighed. "Things that seemed like the end of the world two years ago? Just don't hold the importance now that they did then. I'm glad it called off our fighting, though." She snuggled closer to him. "I still remember how good it felt to wake up to you the next morning. You know, I was awake for like an hour before you woke up? I pretended to be asleep when Seth and Summer left, but I just wanted to stay there forever being held by you. I kept thinking that this is how it's supposed to feel waking up next to a guy. Honestly, even when I told you I was going to find Luke, I'm not sure how much longer it would have lasted. I just wasn't happy with him, and it was getting so much harder to deny that, particularly with how good you made me feel." She reached up and kissed his cheek. "That's another thing I forgot; how sweet you were about my parents. Trust me when I tell you, it was a nice contrast to Luke's response."

Ryan smirked. "Luke and I came to an understanding, but I can't say that surprises me. Sensitivity wasn't his middle name."

Marissa rolled her eyes. "Understatement of the century." She bit her lip. "So then….we decided to go to TJ."
Ryan looked at her warily. "You going to be okay with this? We can skip it; it affected you more than it affected us."

Marissa shook her head. "No; it's important." She took a deep breath. "You know, right before we ran into Luke at that club…I was thinking for the millionth time how much I wished you were my boyfriend instead. We were having so much fun. I felt so relaxed around you. Then we saw him with Holly."

Ryan still recalled with crystal clarity the look of horror, pain, and betrayal on Marissa's face that night. He still remembered how her pain had cut through him with a knife in the way that had almost become familiar by then. "God, I wanted to kick myself." She looked at him blankly. "For not telling you sooner about what I'd seen at that first party," he explained. "When I saw the look on your face, I thought maybe I could have spared you just a little bit of that pain. I'd even thought about telling you before, but I thought I'd just look like a petty jackass. I wasn't even sure if you'd believe me."

Marissa found that wasn't as annoying as it had been the previous night. "I would have believed you, like I said before. Honestly, I was looking for something to end it, if not that. But I get why you might not tell me. I don't usually involve myself in situations like that, either. And any heartbreak I was feeling wasn't for the reasons you might think. I was humiliated; I felt like such an idiot. He'd been sleeping with half the town and I had NO clue. But heartbreak?" She smiled sadly, reaching up to touch his cheek. "That was about you." It was Ryan's turn to look at her blankly. "I realized I'd lost you for nothing," she explained. "I took what I thought was the safe road and it wasn't safe at all. I realized how incredibly NOT worth it the whole thing was. I think in that moment I accepted both that I loved you and that I'd lost you, all for nothing." She shook her head wearily. "Between all that and everything with my family, I felt totally alone. And we know what happened next."

A shudder went through Ryan's body. As long as he lived, he would never forget finding her in that alley. He would never forget the bone chilling fear, the icy numbness that had swept over him when he saw her lifeless body. "I couldn't let myself think that you were dead," he remembered, his voice husky. "There was a little voice in the back of my head, but I wouldn't let myself hear it. I just couldn't…I couldn't even comprehend it. I didn't want to be in a world that didn't have you in it."

Marissa opened her mouth to speak, but found herself too overwhelmed by his sweet, touching honesty to form words. She simply held him closer. "I'm lucky I had you," she finally whispered. "You didn't give up on me that night, and so you saved my life."