Sorry that it took me some time to get back to this. I'm glad that so many of you like where this story is going; it makes the process so much better when people want to read it. Hopefully this story will continue in the same vain.

Disclaimer: I still don't own The OC or "Your Ex-Lover is Dead", but I can use them, right?

Chapter 3: We Drove in Silence…

We drove in silence…

As the rain came down on Seth and Marissa they reached the yellow taxi at the foot of the Cohen driveway. Seth opened the door, and Marissa scooted in first.

Marissa was impressed at how nice Seth was being about this whole day. He was the one that just lost his brother, and he still had the decency to hold open the car door.

Seth scooted in next, trying to put as much distance between Marissa and himself as possible. Despite her beauty, something in him thought that looking at Ryan's ex-girlfriend was a moral sin, especially since Ryan hadn't been in the ground more than a few hours.

The cab was quiet after they entered, and it took a minute before the driver interrupted with, "Where ya goin' today?"

Marissa responded, "USC, please. Gamma Phi Delta House, more specifically."

"Sure thing, honey," the greasy man replied. He started the meter and drove out of the neighborhood.

At the mention of a sorority, Seth wanted to respond, but everything he thought sounded stupid. He hadn't thought about Marissa's life at USC at all. He was still thinking about her and Ryan at Harbor. He remembered all their drama, and then he stopped himself. There was no use thinking about the past, he thought, and went back to thinking about her life at SC.

He should have guessed that she'd rush a sorority, since she was such a popular person. Something about it, though, felt odd to him. He knew she wasn't too shallow, and any sorority at SC, he thought, had to be shallow in nature. They were all girls, like the ones at Harbor, who had too much money and too many pairs of Jimmy Choos and not enough sense to think about the rest of the country that wasn't so poor.

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The silence in the cab was killing Marissa. She was feeling so self-conscious after announcing that they were going to a sorority house. She knew that Seth was too awkward to say anything about her being in a sorority, but she felt him looking at her differently.

To her disbelieve, she couldn't believe that she was at Delta Phi either. She'd come to SC after breaking up with Ryan and in desperate need of some fun. After all of the time that she and Summer had made their way to Rush Week for the boys, she decided to check it out as a student.

The Deltas were a nice enough group of women. She liked them, and they liked her. Sitting in this cab with Seth, though, she thought that he'd hate what she'd become. Did he think she was more like Summer? That would horrible, since she knew that their last break-up was really hard on him.

Marissa moved around on her side of the backseat, hoping Seth would notice and say something. She hoped that this silence would be over. Looking out the window she noticed that they were only at the 73-405 interchange. They still had 40 miles to go and with the rain, people were driving like bigger idiots than the rest of the time.

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Seth had noticed Marissa's movements and her wistful look out the window. After all the bravado he'd shown by talking to her at the wake and the ease of their conversation in his room, he didn't know what to do.

It was painfully obvious to him that he was still a loser, like he'd been at Harbor. No amount of time away from Newport was going to change that. He realized that he'd had a pretty good time at Columbia. He'd found people who like Death Cab, were preppy, but not athletic. He'd found a group of people he could stand to spend time with. No one would ever replace what he had with Ryan, but he tried to keep those thoughts from his mind. Ryan shouldn't be thought about now—that was all Seth thought. Just like Grandma Nichol, Ryan's memory was set in stone—no one could talk about him with anything but respect.

Even if Seth's new friends were the more supportive, Ryan was always going to be the comparative measure. He thought about all of his friends at college and wondered if they would fight to keep him safe, like Ryan had done that night he arrived.

His thoughts were making him crazy, but Seth didn't know what to do. He realized that he'd had his arms crossed around his chest the entire trip. Realizing that it wasn't polite to have such hostile body language, he unfolded his hands and put one on the leather of the cab.

The noise that Seth's hand made when it touched the leather shocked Marissa. She turned her head to see what was wrong. As she looked down, she saw Seth's hand. Without another thought, she slowly moved her hand from her leg to near where Seth's hand was. As her hand got closer, she felt something in her urging her forward, towards Seth's hand. She gave in to her inner voice, and put her hand on top of Seth's.

As her hand touched his, Seth felt a jolt of something in him. The quiet was getting to him, and he thought that Marissa's extended hand was a signal to talk. Before he did, though, he thought about it. Marissa was being a friend. He decided not to mess with whatever they had in this moment, and he moved his hand so that the two hands were palm to palm.

And all of the time you thought I was sad…

Well, I don't think that was what most of you were expecting, but hopefully it will keep you reading.

Let me know if that chapter of heavy internal thoughts worked, please. It felt right to me.