Author's Note: I had SUCH a difficult time with this chapter, lol. Sorry it took so long, and if it isn't on the level of the other ones. I had a hard time sorting through this storyline in my own mind, so needless to say I had a hard time writing it down. If Ryan isn't as angry as some of you figured he would be, some of that will come out more when I go over The Heartbreak (although the first half of the next chapter will be fluff because I figure they need it). I understand the rest of S1 a lot better, so I shouldn't have as much trouble with that.

Chapter Ten

"I guess it's time to talk about Oliver."

Part of Ryan wanted to bolt immediately. This had been hell on their relationship the last time; the situation had spiraled out of control to the point that it had eventually led to the almost complete destruction of their bond. He wasn't sure he wanted to live through the memory of that time again; he didn't know if he'd ever felt that utterly alone simply because he hadn't been EXPECTING to feel alone like that in Newport. The other half of him knew part of their problem was they didn't talk things through and they needed to start if they didn't want things like this to keep happening.

"I was jealous at first," Ryan admitted into the silence at last. Marissa's head snapped up in surprise; she'd prepared herself for an attack right off the bat. "I had no idea he was troubled until after the concert, and even then I don't I really understood until Palm Springs. At first..I was just jealous."

Marissa considered her words carefully; she still wasn't sure if she should say anything, if she had the right to say anything. You said it yourself; this isn't about rights, she reminded herself. This is about how you felt at the time. "Whatever else went on, I was NEVER interested in Oliver like that," she said at length. "Not even a little bit. I just wasn't attracted to him."

Ryan sighed deeply and rubbed the side of his neck. "And on that topic, I can say I was wrong. I felt like he was more sophisticated and interesting than me, and that you were going to realize that at some point. Even though you gave me no reason to believe you thought like that. I was SO pissed off that time we were at dinner at his place." He was almost embarrassed now, remembering how eaten up with jealousy he'd been.

"He was showing off and taunting you," Marissa pointed out, for the thousandth time wondering why she could see it so clearly now.

Ryan shrugged. "Even I didn't really know that at the time; I just thought he could take you to all kinds of places I couldn't."

"I don't care about that," Marissa said simply. "I mean, those things are nice, but I don't care if we perpetually stay in the pool house as long as I'm with you. Maybe I should have told you that back then…"

"You never really gave me a reason to think you thought anything else." Marissa opened her mouth to protest, but Ryan wouldn't let her. "No, you know what, if you can tell me that my life shouldn't revolve around your problems, I can tell you that yours shouldn't revolve around my issues. You can say you like Paris without me flipping out."

Marissa thought it over for a minute, then finally nodded. She knew better than she used to that he had insecurities and she needed to be more careful of them, but he had a point. "So at the concert…"
"I was jealous," Ryan wryly confirmed. "He knew the band and I didn't even know OF the band."

Marissa smiled a little in spite of herself. "You looked SO miserable the entire time," she laughed lightly. "I decided concerts weren't for you."

"And then I stormed off like a woman," he said wryly. "But I've always wanted to ask you about something you said, about him talking to you. Does that really bother you?"

Marissa closed her eyes for a minute; she wanted to say this without it sounding like an excuse. "Not now, no. Not really. It's who you are, and I don't talk to people as easily as I used to, either. It…it was something I was going through back then, and I think it was part of why I accepted him so easily. I…I was such a mess back then. I felt like nothing was in my control. I just…needed to be needed."

Ryan was already feeling himself start to get defensive. "I needed you, too," he snapped, his emotions starting to come before his natural instinct to keep quiet at last.

Marissa bit her lip. "I didn't know that then," she said softly.

"Why, because I didn't have pictures of you wallpapered over my room or I wasn't taking strands of your hair or something?" he shot back, crossing his arms over his chest protectively. "That didn't mean I didn't need you."

"You're right," Marissa said simply, knowing there was no point in getting defensive herself.. "His connection to me was unhealthy; it wasn't something I should have latched onto. Obviously, I know that now. But I was unhealthy at the time. He was always talking about how much I helped him; that felt good when at a time when I didn't even think I could help myself. That doesn't mean I shouldn't have seen it coming, or I should have thrived on that need the way I did. Of course I shouldn't have."

Ryan's anger was deflated somewhat by her simple, calm confession, the way he always was when she didn't respond to her attacks with anger or tears. "Okay," he relented. "And I know I can be a little standoffish sometimes; I hope I've gotten better there."

Marissa smiled faintly. "You have. I hope I haven't befriended any more psychos." Ryan snorted in spite of himself. "So I guess after that you ran in on the whole coke deal?"

Ryan nodded. "That's when I started to notice something was wrong- well, other than the obvious, I mean. I started to feel like he was deliberately provoking me in jail, and trying to find out who I was so he could…copy me or use stuff against me or something. It wasn't obvious yet; I don't know if I even consciously knew it. It was just a feeling in the pit of my gut."

"At the time it happened, I wanted to back off from him a bit," Marissa remembered. "Obviously he'd been lying to me and it made me a little uncomfortable." She recalled how awkward she'd felt when she found him on her doorstep that first time. "But then he seemed so apologetic…I thought who was I to judge? I'd lied and hidden my drinking, too. He offered the trip to Palm Springs and I thought he just wanted to put the whole thing behind him."

Palm Springs. The point the end of that situation had really reached the point of no return, even if Ryan hadn't quite realized it yet. "I should have realized Natalie didn't exist at that point," he said aloud. "It was starting to bug me…but it was in the back of my mind."

"I should have realized it the first time he talked about her." Ryan looked at her in surprise and she shrugged wearily. "Hindsight is 20/20, right? It's so obvious to me now, the way he jumped on the knowledge that I had a boyfriend and the tone in his voice when he first brought up Natalie."

Ryan sighed; he couldn't exactly flog her for it back then. "You weren't looking back then. I mean, really. Who thinks somebody's going to make that up? Hell, even I didn't REALLY see it until towards the end." Another thought occurred to him as he remembered the trip to Palm Springs and his face darkened. "Why did you tell Oliver so much about me? I mean, about Luke and my background and stuff?"

Marissa blinked. "Your background?" she repeated dumbly. "I mean, I told him about how I dated Luke and then I wasn't honest about stuff to either of you. It came up after a therapy thing; we were talking about how we both had problems being honest. I don't think I told him much about your background at all. He knew you were from Chino, just from around. I mean, everyone knows that. And he knows about how you ended up living with the Cohens, of course. Most of the times we talked about our relationship, I was talking about my feelings one way or the other."

Ryan considered her words; Oliver actually hadn't mentioned any details about his background, just alluded that she did. And he had to admit, just about everyone in Newport knew enough about where he came from to rattle his cage. "Damn, he was good," Ryan sighed. "Everything that came out of his mouth was designed to get under my skin and I made it all too easy."

Marissa watched him carefully, trying to understand what was going on in his mind. "I didn't forget what you said that night, even though we were in the middle of a fight," she said hesitantly. "I mean…you're going to come up when I talk to my friends. You're such a big part of my life. But I try not to reveal anything TOO personal about you; I think I even pissed off D.J and Alex because I wouldn't talk about you very much."

Ryan half smiled at that; it was nice to hear that she would care about things like that even when they weren't together. "It's not that big a deal if that's all you told him," he sighed. "I've talked about you too sometimes, so people in glass houses. So the next thing was…the golf game, I guess."

Marissa winced. She'd REALLY screwed up there. "I'm going to say this a lot, but I should have seen it. I didn't think he had it in for you so I wasn't looking for any signs that he was really trying to hurt you, I thought he cared about me as a friend and therefore couldn't be out to get you, but I should have seen it. It's so easy for me to see it now that I don't really understand how I didn't then."

As many of the other moments had been, Ryan felt as if he should have been vindicated, but he simply felt sad. He wished she hadn't found someone who would betray her trust. As much as it had frustrated him at the time, he didn't want her to become suspicious the way he was. So much had been stripped from the girl that had laughingly pushed him into the pool, and it didn't particularly matter whose fault it was, even if it was partly hers. He just wished it wasn't like that. Unable to reply to her admission that she should have known better, he moved on. "Later that night was when Oliver flipped out on me in the kitchen." He could remember it clearly; how utterly shocked he'd been when Oliver had started ranting nonsensically, smashing dishes and hitting himself.

"What exactly did you say?" Marissa asked curiously, remembering when Oliver had finally melted down on her.

Ryan sighed. "He just kept pushing me, you know? He tried to get me to stop washing the dishes, then he did them with me. He was talking about what could he do to make things better between us. I mean, I know that doesn't seem like a very big deal when you say it like that…"

Marissa laughed bitterly. "He knew exactly what to say to you; he knew what would set you off better than I did at the time." It was a hard truth to admit, but it was one she'd thought about in the sleepless nights during the time they'd been apart after Oliver, and come to see even more clearly as they'd slowly built a relationship where they understood each other better. She'd fallen in love with Ryan so quickly, she hadn't completely understood what made him tick and that had been part of the problem with Oliver; she didn't understand why he was reacting so violently to things that seemed fairly innocent at the time. Oliver had known exactly what he was doing because he knew what would set Ryan off.

"Was that the problem?" Ryan asked, honestly trying to get why things had dissolved into such a mess so quickly. "Did you just not understand why I was reacting that way?"

"That was part of it." Marissa struggled to figure out how to explain the next part. "Another part…I mean, in terms of why I didn't just see Oliver's behavior after he said he tried to swallow some pills was so wrong…I guess the easiest way for me to explain it is I was raised in a household of liars. My parents love me. Sometimes now I even think my mom loves me better than my dad. But they're both inherently liars. And I mean, you'd think that would make it easier for me to see lies, but my parents raised me NOT to see the house of lies they'd built around us. I was taught to NOT see lies because if I had, I would have seen how screwed up my family really was. I'm not saying it's all their fault; I've done that so often but at some point I have to say that I'm a big girl and I do things on my own. It's just…the way it is. And it was even harder with Oliver because of the therapy thing."

"The therapy thing?" Ryan repeated blankly. What did them meeting in therapy have to do with anything?

"I was embarrassed about therapy," Marissa said simply. "It seems so totally ridiculous now, of course. But I was doing something I'd basically been raised to believe meant you were crazy. I thought here was this nice guy who's in therapy, so maybe it's not that bad. I didn't want to believe he could be crazy, even when he did things that in the back of my mind I knew made no sense, like transferring into the school, I just didn't want to believe it."

Looking back, Ryan knew it had been obvious what a sore spot therapy had been for her. At the time, he guessed he hadn't understood much better than she understood how Oliver set him off. "And then I stole the letter."

The words sent the room into silence for a minute; for all intents and purposes, it had officially ended there, even with the later pool house break up. "For that one thing, I won't apologize for being angry," Marissa said at length. "Even when you're trying to protect me, I still don't want you taking something like that if I haven't given you permission to. But I should have seen that if you were that desperate, there was a reason for it."

Ryan gritted his teeth in a- likely futile, he knew- attempt to keep his temper on an even keel. "I shouldn't have taken the letter," he agreed. "I knew you would be furious if you found out, even break up with me." He had, although nothing had quite prepared him for the icy numbness it had actually happened. "I'm not surprised when you were pissed off then. I just thought after you had a chance to calm down…"

Marissa sighed; she had a feeling nothing for the rest of the night would be as simply difficult and frustrating as struggling to sort through this conversation. "I didn't feel at the time like I had a chance to calm down," she tried to explain. "I wanted to take every phone call. When I saw you at school before you got suspended, part of me wanted to run to you and tell you to forget everything. But then you would get into a fight with Oliver or call my mother or wait on my doorstep and say things that didn't make any sense to me, and I'd get angry all over again. I was so confused and frustrated, I barely knew what I was doing. I shouldn't have called you pathetic," she remembered. "I even felt bad about that later that night."

That had stung, Ryan remembered. But he'd also known at the time that Marissa lashed out when she was angry and said things she didn't mean. "I knew better by then than to take you TOO seriously when you were that angry," he said aloud, then remembered something that had happened earlier. "Did you know I left you a message that Oliver took?" Ryan asked quietly. Her head snapped up in surprise and he shook his head. "I didn't think so. I asked you to meet me in the library; he showed up instead and said you were threatening with a restraining order. I figured that wasn't true." He rubbed his hands tiredly over his face; he felt like it was midnight instead of barely lunch time. It was hard to explain, especially for him, how he'd felt at the time. He knew some of his behavior had been wildly inappropriate now, especially considering where impulsive actions had gotten him recently. Oliver had provoked him, but he knew in retrospect that Oliver had known he could get the exact wrong reaction out of him, which made him angrier at himself than anyone now. Still…he'd just felt utterly alone. Like what Oliver was telling him about how he and Marissa weren't meant to be together- something that had continued to eat him up inside long after Oliver was gone- was true, and he had no one, just like he always had. "Did you really want to take my calls?" he asked softly at length, hating the vulnerability in his voice but needing to hear the answers all the same. Instead of feeling the anger he'd expected to feel, he just felt hurt. It wasn't as easy to be angry about things like that now, but that left only the hurt behind.

Marissa's heart melted and broke all at once. Was what he really needed more than an apology the assurance that she'd never stopped loving him? "Every last one of them," she responded, tentatively reaching out to run her hands through his hair and cup the sides of his face. "I don't think I slept at all during that time period. It took everything I had not to pick up that phone. I never stopped loving you. I knew even then that I hadn't stopped loving you."

"Then why didn't you listen to me?" He still couldn't quite comprehend that, how she could love someone and listen to someone else.

Marissa shrugged helplessly. "I still don't entirely know why I reacted the way I did. Because everything was piling on me at once, because…I just didn't understand. I didn't understand why you were reacting the way you were back then. I guess I didn't understand you as well as I do now."

Ryan considered that statement and finally slowly nodded. He knew they both understood each other better now than they did then; she'd never been simply unable to hear him ever since. As many of the problems as they hadn't worked through, her not listening to him or trusting him hadn't particularly been a problem since that time period. Maybe he'd just needed to hear from her lips how it happened, that it wouldn't happen again. "Okay," he said simply. "When you didn't listen to me, when nobody listened to me, it hurt me- a lot. I felt like I was right back where I started from. And I know I didn't really make it easy for people to listen to me at the time so I'm not saying it's all your fault, but you said it yourself. Sometimes it doesn't matter whose fault it is when we get hurt. I guess…I just needed to say it, and hear how it happened, and know it won't again, on either side because we both understand each other better. And I do now. So…okay," he said again.

Marissa searched his eyes, carefully making sure they could truly move on from this part without leaving too much in the air as they had the last time. "Okay," she repeated finally.

Ryan smiled faintly. "And after all, when you realized the truth, you called me first." His brow creased. "How exactly did that go down again?"

Marissa groaned. "It was ridiculous, really. I was ridiculous to keep denying it right down to the last second. I found out who the real Natalie was, but I just couldn't…I mean, if I was wrong, I was trusting a lunatic and I'd thrown you away for nothing. I couldn't….accept it until I looked into his eyes. And then I knew. And I think this little part of me had known for a long time. So I called the only person I knew I could count on, even though I thought later on that it wasn't fair that I called."

Ryan shrugged wearily. "It's not about fair. I've never been sorry you called me."

"And I've always been grateful you came," Marissa said simply. Ryan leaned forward until their heads were touching, closing his eyes and drinking the security and trust they'd forged since then in.

"I love you," she whispered. "I'm sorry."

"I love you, too," he returned without any of the hesitation he'd had back then. "And I forgive you."