A/N: I am very so about my lazy updates. But, finally, I have a new chapter for you guys. I've been working on the final chapter of this story for a while, so at the moment, I'm just trying to figure out how we get there. Thank you all so much for sticking with this expositional, and depressing story for a whole nine chapters, especially since the updates are so slow! Hope you all had a wonderful holidays, love CBS.
A/N II: Please, everyone review! Even if it's just short I'd love to hear from you all, and now I can get back to you all with the new messaging thingo! So please review!
A/N: I thought I'd leave my original author's notes up. I just rewrote this chapter coz I thought it was a horrible and lazy chapter. And you guys definitely deserve better.
She was even less surprised by the look of horror on his face. She knew about emotion walls. She was the Queen of emotional walls. And irrelevantly, she was the Queen of Hearts. Seventh grade. Long story. But more importantly she was the Queen of Ryan's heart.
"Hello lover. Miss me?"
thud. The bar faintly echoed with the sound of Ryan's head hitting the counter as his hand slipped from under his chin. He was drunk and in shock, a dangerous combination for motor skills.
creak. Marissa's face muscles strained as they returned to the once familiar position of the baptized "Ryan smile". It had been too long. Much too long.
"Hey," Marissa said turning to the barman. "Happen to know where my husband lives?"
The barman was a peroxide blonde called Stan, and looked at Marissa oddly. You didn't see women in this bar, not real ones at any rate. And this guy was her husband? He'd figured he drank himself under the table every night because he hadn't figured out how to tell the folks his secret. But he'd been here almost every night for months. And back a couple of months, when the guy had first fallen from the barstool, Stan and Gareth, the bouncer had had to stumble him home between them.
"Yeah, third block of apartments on Woodland, he's in number three. Need any help getting him there?"
"I think I'll be okay. Thanks." The pretty blonde smiled at Stan, and turned and walked out of the bar with her husband draped over her.
Seventh grade, Camp, Santa Rosa.
A giant board of black and white Squares.
She is the monarch, the white Queen.
Together, her, Summer, and the other girls battle against the forces of darkness and testosterone.
But boys always cheat.
And they expect rewards.
A kiss on the cheek, stealing away some of her innocence.
And labeling her the "Queen of Hearts"
To her ears, it's not much better than slut.
The loss is an insult to their intelligence. And a sham. They all knew how to win. Manipulation is something learnt with walking. But the boys cheat and they let them. they always have. That way, they keep the power.
They can stop letting them at anytime.
The girls look on jealously as she is called "highness". For now, she decides who gets away with cheating.
And whose heads roll.
Power was always something she'd had.
Strength wasn't.
She heaved him up the stairs, his heels whacking against one, with painfully long intervals in between. She nearly drops the keys, as she tries to hold her husband in one hand. But she gets in.
For her, he always has an entrance.
It wasn't much. A couch, a television, a coffee table. A small kitchen and a bathroom. A single bed with floral sheets and eight pillows. At least some things never changed.
"Do you seriously sleep with this many pillows in your bed?"
"Of course. Why else would they be here?"
"I don't know, decoration?"
"I can be decorative and practical at the same time,"
"Marissa, you've got eight pillows here. What could you possibly need all of them for?"
"Well, I have two about a pillow width apart, and then two overlapping ones on them. A pillow in the centre of them, two on either side of my and my special pillow."
"Oh, okay. Actually, that sounds quite comfortable."
"And it's decorative."
She settled Ryan in a nest of pillows, and headed to the couch.
Three throw pillows.
Red.
Blue.
Yellow.
She threw the red to the ground and sat. It was a comfy couch. The apartment was quite beautiful really. From bay windows there was a glimpse of the Golden Gate Bridge and the expansive sea of roofs and scenery which completed San Francisco.
It was easy. Easier than what she faced doing in the morning. The window was an escape. It offered her other people's lives, to watch and wonder at, to pretend were her own.
She looked and she saw.
And for every smile she wondered if the world would balance it with a frown. If it worked that way, she had a whole lot of happiness waiting for her. But maybe she'd already been given it all.
There were so many things to explain to him.
And she wasn't sure if he was ready.
How could he be the savior if he couldn't save himself?
He was stronger though. He was stronger than Seth. Seth was supposed to be the one, the one to save Summer from the invasion that burned her body and boiled her blood. The illness that wanted her gone from the world. He was supposed to be her strength. He was going to sit by her bedside and talk to her and believe. And through it all their love would conquer all.
But he hadn't found it. After fighting for so long his reserves were gone. They were dwindling when he sat down for dinner, his mind already contemplating giving up. She was still just out of his reach, and now, he believed, always would be. There were two fronts in this war. The war with his heart, which he had to fight to keep going. And the fight with the creeping sadness which spoke of lost opportunities and what should have been. The sadness which struck in idle times, around three o'clock, when it was too late to do anything, and too early for dinner. The news that the one person in the world who gave him something to hope for was leaving was the atom bomb. It stopped the idea of continuing.
Marissa had figured Seth out. So she knew that the only reason Ryan was stronger was because of what she was going to give him, and what she had already given him.
Love is what saves us.
From a loveless childhood, he was suddenly given the Cohen's. The reason Seth had failed was because, at the core of his being there was a belief. That somehow it was all going to turn out alright.
Ryan had never been so hopeful.
But for all his tragedies and cynicism, he wished these fairytale endings on others.
All she had to do was hand him the last thing to push him back into fighting.
Something to fight for.