It had been ten years since they had laid eyes on each other. After graduating from high school, Ryan Atwood and Marissa Cooper had not seen each other since. It was not because they had become the worst of enemies, or had simply lost touch. It was because after everything they had been through together, there was nothing more to be said.
Ryan had stayed in California after graduation, attending the University of California at Berkeley. He became an architect, and worked for a local company. Ryan continued to stay close to Sandy and Kirsten. Over time, he began to view them more and more as being his parents. After seeing his mother when he got out of high school, Ryan realized that Sandy and Kirsten were the people who took care of him and loved him. That is what parents do. That is what made them parents. He was also quite close to Seth, who after taking a year off to sail to Tahiti went to Brown, a year behind Summer Roberts, his high school sweetheart.
Recently, though, Ryan had developed a consuming devotion to something besides his work -a woman. For the past year, Ryan had been dating a woman named Alison Hamilton. She was a physics teacher at a local area high school. In fact, the couple met when they were in college, but were merely acquaintances at that point in their lives. Ryan and Alison met again after college in the local supermarket, where they exchanged numbers, and began to date.
Marissa Cooper, on the other hand, had not been so lucky with her life. After Ryan and Marissa's relationship ended in their senior year, she began to see someone else - Volchok. After her friend, Johnny Harper's death, she felt a sense of comfort in him that she did not feel in the later days of her relationship with Ryan. Either that, or it was the alcohol. Although Marissa had stopped drinking when she was with Ryan, she resumed her ways soon after she began to date Volchok.
Things started off well enough. They would hook up for sex, and to party a little, but soon things took a turn. Marissa became pregnant in the last month of her senior year. Since it was so late in the year, she would never show while she was at school, but it caused her to move out of her house, and back into the numbered streets with Volchok. By the time the baby had come, Volchok had disappeared, not to be seen by Marissa for some time. Although she could not afford it, she continued to live in the numbered streets out of pride. She did not want to have to move back home. She would have felt ashamed.
And now, ten years later, the Harbor School reunion for the Class of 2006 was coming up.
Authors Note: I know this is not what most people would like to see happen to some of our favorite characters, but I just thought that this might be neat spin to put on things.