Chapter Three
Seth shifted uncomfortably in his seat, but he resumed his idiocy momentarily. "Ryan, right?" Seth asked curiously, making sure he could prove his as-a-matter-of-fact point efficiently. Ryan nodded, "Celtic or Gaelic origin, meaning Young Royalty."
"What?" Ryan asked, squinting his eyes in confusion. He shook his head, in order to tip Seth off that he wasn't too comprehensive on what he just said.
"Your name. It means Young Royalty," He waited so Ryan could get the 'light bulb' over his head. When Ryan nodded, Seth continued to speak, "Well, Ryan, this is my palace. I'm the royalty here, and whatever you're planning- you're not going to get the love of my parents, the riches of my family, and you will definitely, never carry the Cohen last name. C'est OK?" Seth spoke as if he was speaking to a child, and Ryan was quite peeved.
"You know Seth, I'm not an idiot. Second of all, I want nothing that's yours, cause it wasn't my intention to come into your house- wait, 'palace'- and take everything away. I don't want it. And FYI, by the way, that means for your information, your father asked me to stay here. Don't worry- I didn't beg him to share his fortune, either." Ryan spoke about a word a minute, as slow as he could so that Seth could too feel degraded and possibly as humiliated as he made Ryan feel.
"That's believable. So, did it hurt?" Seth asked, appalled.
"Did what hurt?" Ryan asked stunned.
"When you brainwashed my father. Did it hurt you, at all? Or was it that kind of solo-impact thing?" Seth asked, making him look like a complete idiot.
"Actually, it hurt lots," Ryan decided to play along, but he wasn't much of an actor, "But you know what would hurt more?"
"What?" Seth asked, as if testing Ryan.
"You getting you're butt kicked in front of the school. Maybe you'd turn out a bigger idiot than you already are!" Ryan testified- he was actually quite giddy.
"You're staying in my house, and you want 'beef'." Seth tried hard to make his first impression more gangster rather then comic book nerd.
"Seth Cohen, I don't know you, but there's a slight chance that you should never say that word 'beef' in the sentence you used it in, again. It's fine when you say, 'I'm having beef for dinner,' or 'Beef is gooooood.' Comic book geeks don't try gangster. Just doesn't work, man." Ryan raised an eyebrow, hiding his satisfaction. He expected Seth to be all 'How did you know' in a moment. Ryan found Seth's type of people very predictable.
"How did you know?" Seth asked, as if he was told to by Heaven knows. Ryan closed his eyes, and laughed to himself.
"You might wanna remove that stack of comic books, before you pretend to be something you're not." Ryan's eyes trailed over to the stack of about 100 or so comic books, standing perfectly aligned beside the night table. Seth raised his index finger, and said:
"Ah, good point." Seth, flushed with embarrassment decided to call it quits- no more touring. "Alright that's the house. Thanks for coming. When you leave, take a brochure so you know Sandy'll always take ya back when you're in the poops." Seth faked a smile, and shut the door quickly as he shooed Ryan out. Ryan stood outside the door drowned in a certain unexplainable feeling toward Seth. Perhaps it was pity, perhaps hatred. Perhaps a bit of both worlds. Seth, of course feeling bad, soon returned to open the door.
"Are you up for a little bonding?" Seth squeaked in a guilty voice. He hadn't meant to be such a freak-maniac to Ryan, but he wanted to feel in power of something. Perhaps he should have known that Ryan was more the superhero rather then sidekick kind of guy. Seth shouldn't have tried to have a little puppy dog slave, because even according to looks, Ryan was pretty intimidating.
"What changed?" Ryan asked, trying to hide a grin. It was so easy to convince Seth that he was no one to mess with.
"I don't know. Maybe because you're a juvenile delinquent, and you can really kick my butt in a blink of an eye." Seth admitted humbly.
"I'm no criminal. I didn't come here to hurt anyone. I, myself, have come to change. I know nobody here, so how about we put all of this crap behind us and start new? It's a win-win situation." Ryan offered.
"You know Ryan, for a delinquent, you're a pretty decent man." Seth grinned and he stuck out his hand in a truce. When their hands met, in a manly confrontation of peace, they both knew it was going to be okay.
"Seth. I'm afraid if you call me a delinquent again, I'm just going to have to kill you." Ryan said seriously, and he cracked a wide grin when Seth's eyeballs almost fell out of their sockets. "Joke joke." Ryan winked.
"I knew that. Ha ha ha. You're freaking hilarious!" Seth said, his voice trailing off by the end of the sentence. He lowered his eyes, in embarrassment. "You're going to be pretty popular at school, Ryan. Hope you don't forget about the little people." Seth walked over to his desk, and started to fidget with a few papers to make it seem he were unaffected- busy.
"I'm not into popularity." Ryan said, seeing that Seth was uncomfortable- but not for the same reasons he had been before. Seth clearly saw a potential friend in Ryan, and the thought of loosing him bothered him.
"You can have any girl. You can be a jock- the best water polo jock. You can have everything. Why don't you dig the big life?" Seth asked confused. Seth was as shocked as a blow fish, that was just recently frightened into puffing up, and revealing countless spikes for protection.
"I already have this one girl. I suck at water polo. I don't need everything." Ryan replied simply.
"Who do you looooove? Cause the minute I saw you, I was hoping to set you up with this one chick… she's the full package, Ryan." Seth said intuitively.
"Her name's Teresa. I don't think she knows I've been 'relocated'." The sadness in Ryan's voice was apparent. He missed Teresa. "I've been with her since I was like, sixteen? Maybe earlier. She's beautiful, brilliant and thoughtful. She's perfect." Ryan was replaying an old memory he had of himself and Teresa, and he smiled.
"You do know phones exist, right?" Seth asked, as if he was surprised that Ryan hadn't called this girl by now.
"I don't know how to tell her." Ryan finally said, after a moment's time worth of thinking.
"You can start by saying, I live in Newport now." Seth assured him.
"That'll mean that it'll be over. No long distance relationships work, and if you try and tell me they do, I might not kill you- but I will knock you so good you'll never feed that crap to anybody else." Ryan said, as he sat down on Seth's bed. Ryan was clearly upset with the fact that he'll have to leave Teresa, with no decent goodbye.
"Once you see Marissa, you'll forget Teresa, man." Seth convinced him gently.
"Teresa is just," Ryan smiled to himself, and he glanced down at his hands as he fumbled with them, "Unforgettable."
"You're in Newport. You haven't seen the wild parties that needless to say I don't get invited to. You ain't seen nothing yet, buddy. If you can't ditch Teresa now, you're going to miss out on the ladies- and trust me they're going to be countless!" Seth remarked, pleased.
"Seth it's not that easy. Once you get tied down to a girl, you can't give her up. It's this feeling- it keeps you grounded. Even though I've had a not too good past, she's the one that changed me. She's the one that made me okay." Ryan said barely speaking, and when Seth heard just a faint squeak, it would be truly silent.
"You must really love this girl." Seth replied. Seth was touched that such a bad boy could be so good at heart. He was shocked, but at the same time knew love did crazy things. He hoped that one day, given the right girl, he would have the same.
"Love," Ryan shook his head and laughed, "Love is overrated. It's a joke." Ryan then shrugged and looked at Seth who, at this point was shocked.
"So what do you feel to this girl?"
"An attraction," Ryan paused, "But not love. Any girl who knows me, knows that I'm not into that crap. It's just so fake. You may 'love' a person in a moment, but other then family you can't love anyone. It's just worthless bull, at least to me. You can't love a stranger, and risk having them break your heart. The pain- unimaginable. That's why love is so useless, and that's why I don't fall in love." Ryan finally stopped when he saw that Seth was completely surprised.
"If what you feel to this girl isn't completely love, then you're out of your mind." Seth commented dumbly.
"It's not love." Ryan finally said slowly, so that it would slow ooze into Seth's dense mind.
"Just call her?" Seth asked Ryan.
"Fine. I'll call her." Ryan replied unsurely.