Since Forever
It wasn't as if she was his true love. But he'd be lying if he said the thought had never crossed his mind.
I don't really remember when it first started. Partially because it never really started at all. We never met, because we'd always known each other because she's always been there. I remember realizing when she became more popular than me, and the day that everyone in all of Orange County knew she was going out with Luke, but I can't really place the day anything started.
The first day I remember her existing was probably one of the first thousand we saw each other in. We were visiting, staying with my grandfather in his mansion for a long weekend. My mother managed to drag my father and me to dinner at the Coopers.
Which meant us going around to yet another mansion and eating a meal that Julie, the wife of my mom's ex (something I didn't quite understand at that age) beamed proudly about when we pretended we thought she'd cooked it. And sitting uncomfortably between my father and Jimmy Cooper while we watched the most uncomfortable basketball game in history.
Marissa was there too, then tiny and blonde and perfect, following her mother around and sitting on her father's knee. She was already ignoring me.
She was small then, but she grew. Faster than me. By the next time I saw her, when my family moved into the mansion next to hers, she was tall and lanky and into her mother's Chanel. She skipped up our driveway to hug my mom, pretending that she remembered her and not just from photographs.
She smiled akwardly at me, already placing me withing the social hierarchy of the elementary school.
Two years later she hooked up with Luke in the back of the bus. I avoided the sight, and had to undergo an interrogation at the hands of my wildly curious mother.
One more year later, Summer Roberts read her mermaid poem to the class and I was once again singular in my affections.
In the Summer of that year, the situation between my mother and her father was fully explained to me, and I realized that she was almost my sister.
I backed off for a while at that point.
Junior High had way too much drama that I didn't care about. Summer changed overnight, and became even more appealing. Marissa did too, but slowly. She grew up but not out, didn't become curby as Summer had. Her face, which had been slightly awkward in childhood, widened and began to fit, being strikingly elegant instead of just weird. Luke couldn't keep his hands off her. Or off other girls.
I wasn't quite sure of what I wanted, but I knew that once I made the decision I would never mess with it.
Ryan showed up in grade ten, and we both realized that while we had similar interests and probably could have been friends, we'd been too busy ignoring each other and had ended up with more resentment than anything else. I learned that she liked punk music and On the Road and that maybe she and Luke weren't perfect.
Of course it didn't matter, when Summer realized I existed and I fell in love with her for real.
Over the next year, which was the best of my life, we had contact though Ryan but pretty much never on our own. The only time I was even remotely close to her was the next year, when Ryan broke up with her again and she ended up crying on a bench in the pier. As it turned out, it was pretty much nothing. She'd stopped being the girl next door. Somehow she was my friend.
Somehow she and Ryan held together, despite all the stupid stuff she did over the next two years.
Over those two years she became and unbecame my relative again, but it mattered less and less. She was part of us only by association, because Ryan was in love with her, not because we could have been friends by ourselves.
She moved into Summer's house. They shared a bed. It sounded okay to me.
Minus most of the drama, this was how it was. And then it was over, before any of us even got the chance to say goodbye.
Seth Cohen stopped abruptly and looked down at the crowd, dressed in designer black clothing, mourning the loss of one of their own. He knew he wasn't exactly comforting them, that the eulogy that he was making at the funeral of one of the people he'd known the longest was far from appropriate.
He met Summer's eye and smiled slightly, hoping she'd realize that he was just showing his apprecation for Marissa and not declaring a long hidden love. Not exactly. He and Summer would call their first child Marissa, but only because of her memory, and not for desire of a thing lost.
He looked at Julie Cooper, huddled against Doctor Roberts, holding back tears but looking completely broken. At Kaitlyn Cooper, looking calm and aloof.
Ryan he couldn't bear to look at.
Ryan, who had lost the love of his life, who had had to sit by and watch, able to do nothing.
Ryan, of all people, would far from appreciate the sentiment.
"So I'm not in love with Marissa Cooper. Never was. But she was my girl-next-door. No one could live next door to her and not want to be closer, I guess. For most of my life she was everything that I knew I was supposed to be, and the closest I'd ever seen to being perfect."
Seth shoved his assembled notes into his pocket, and looked straight up at the crowd again.
"But then again, I think she was to most people."
Seth calmly walked over to Summer, calmer now, farther from tears. He gently put his own arm around her and let her sob, feeling sad she'd had to listen to him, feeling more than ever how Ryan must feel about it all when he was next to her, with the opportunity to always be.