Laying it on the line

"Ris? I have something to tell you and I want you to promise to hear me out before you make any judgements or decisions?" Ryan asked as he took her by the hand and led her over to sit down on the sofa.

Marissa looked at him and frowned. "Ryan … what is it? You're scaring me?" he had her worried. She'd never seen him like this before. He actually looked like he was going to be sick. The colour had drained from his face. "Is it something about Emily?" she asked panic stricken that Sandy had really had more information that Ryan had kept to himself.

"Part of it. But I have a confession to make to you first and I need to know that you will hear me out and not judge me hastily. I'm scared that you won't want anything more to do with me otherwise."

Marissa smiled thinking that this was all some sort of strange joke. She couldn't imagine anything that would make her feel anything but love for him. "Are you kidding?"

"No." he said bluntly. He didn't know where to start.

Marissa was surprised by his tone but waited ... and waited. Ryan had his head low, his eyes looking at their hands as he rubbed the back of hers with his thumbs. He couldn't bring himself to look into her eyes. Finally she said "Ryan, just tell me."

He took a deep breath and began, still not looking at her. "Well …" he wasn't sure just where to start. "It's about my last semester at college."

Marissa waited. She thought back to that time. How broken hearted she had been after she'd believed that he had moved on with Lindsay. She waited until he looked up and their eyes met; the sorrow obvious in both sets of eyes as they remembered a period that was probably the worst in both their lives. "Ryan … what about it?"

"Well … I guess we both coped at that time the best we could. I haven't told you about what I was like because … well … I'm not very proud of it and I'd like to take it back if I could. But I can't and today it came back to bite me." he said.

"Ryan, I still don't understand." Marissa said bewildered by what he was saying..

"Okay. Well … it's like this. When I thought that you'd moved on to bigger and better things. I didn't know what to do. I hurt … all the time. Whenever I thought of you, it felt like my heart would break all over again. So, to try to numb the pain … I drank … a lot. And …" Ryan hesitated and looked back into the eyes of the woman he loved. Would she understand or would she condemn him?

"And …" Marissa urged him to continue.

"And I slept around." Ryan said as he watched Marissa's face start to crumble. "A lot." He added.

Marissa was stunned but finally asked "How much a lot?"

Ryan shrugged. "I don't know. I didn't keep count. And most of the time, I was pretty well smashed. But I made myself a pact, that I would never let anybody break my heart like that again, so to make sure I didn't even think about getting attached to anyone, I never slept with the same girl twice. It was a continual progression of one night stands. It was the best way of making sure that nobody ever got close to me again."

"It sounds like there were plenty of girls got close to you." Marissa stated. She felt partly numb. It seemed that she didn't know how to process this information so her body was pretending that it didn't matter. But somewhere in her heart and mind she knew it did. It mattered ... a lot.

"No." Ryan corrected her. "Maybe physically close but that was it. What I was doing was trying to forget; thinking that for a short time my mind and body would be able to think about something other than you with someone else. It didn't work of course. I'd still wake up every morning and you would be the first thing I thought of."

Marissa still sat stunned. She didn't know what to do; how she felt about all this? And then something in her brain registered and she was puzzled. "And why are you telling me this now? What's it got to do with Emily?"

"Because … it turns out that Charlotte was one of those girls." He stated.

"Charlotte? As in psychologist Charlotte?" Marissa asked.

"Yeah. I didn't remember her. But she assures me she was." Ryan replied.

"No wonder she was looking at you like that." Marissa stated.

"Like what?" Ryan asked.

"Like … I don't know?" Marissa felt sick as she recalled the look on Charlotte's face. "But it was definitely odd. She gave me the creeps." Marissa said "And now I know why."

Ryan hung his head. "Wait until you hear the rest of it." Ryan said.

"There's more?" Marissa asked.

"Oh yeah. The good bit is still to come. She basically tried to blackmail me into sleeping with her again."

"What? … So that's why you told me … to make sure that she couldn't blackmail you?" She said.

"Partly. She offered to write a letter as Emily's psychologist recommending that Emily stay with us. She assured me that with that letter, the custody application should fly through. She knew that without it, we are likely to have trouble." Ryan explained.

"And she would only do this if you slept with her?" Marissa asked.

Ryan nodded.

"What did you say?" she asked.

Ryan frowned. Why would she need to even ask him that? "I said no of course." He replied.

"So, she won't write us the letter and she was going to tell me. Is that it?" Marissa asked flatly, still having trouble proceesing what he had told her.

Ryan nodded. "Marissa. I love you. You know that. I'm sorry about the way that I behaved back then, but at the time I thought that I had lost you for good."

"If it was so easy to sleep around back then, why won't you do it for Emily?" Marissa asked wanting to hurt him as his words had hurt her.

Ryan just stared at her. He couldn't believe that she had asked him that. "I thought that was obvious." He stood up and made his way to the door. "Don't wait up." He said as he left the room and slammed the door behind him.

---

Marissa sat and stared as the door slammed closed behind him. She didn't know why she had asked that. She had just wanted to hurt him as he had hurt her. She knew she should go after him but she felt like she was frozen in the one spot. All she could think about was Ryan with an assortment of women and then Ryan and Charlotte doing God knows what. One of the things that she had always loved about him was the way he had always been able to get her body to respond to him in ways that no other man had. She had always thought it was because they had something special between them. But perhaps it was just that he'd had so much practice. Maybe anybody could do that if they'd been with enough different women. She shook her head. There was a part of her that knew that wasn't right but another part that wasn't so sure.

She sat there trying to get her body to move again. She was numb; although, maybe that was good. She thought that if she wasn't like this, then she would probably be crying uncontrollably. Images of Ryan the man slut filled her mind.

She had no knowledge of the passage of time as she sat and went over what he had said. Over and over it went through her mind. She was angry at him and saddened by the knowledge of how he had behaved. And the fact that it was her mother that had caused all this in the first place only seemed to make things worse. But Ryan had made his own choices. And she didn't know how they could move forward after his revelation. She didn't know what to do. In desperation she reached for the phone looking for help.

---

Ryan went down in the lift and when he got to the foyer he hesitated realising he had no idea where he was headed. On a whim he turned and headed for the nearest bar. Pulling up a stool he ordered a double and sat and nursed his drink while he thought back over his conversation with Marissa trying to think if there had been a better way for him to break the news to her. As he emptied his glass and ordered a second he wondered if this was it for them. If she truly wanted him to sleep with Charlotte for the sake of the custody hearing then he knew once and for all that she didn't feel about him as he did about her. He knew he would rather die than have her sleep with another man.

As he stared at the bottom of his glass yet again, a sultry blonde walked up to him and perched on the stool beside his. She leaned over towards him, making sure he got a good look at her ample cleavage, and said "Hey handsome. Want some company?"

Ryan looked up at her and for a minute tried to refocus his eyes. He laughed to himself at the ridiculousness of the situation. This was just the sort of girl that he would have taken up on her offer a few years ago. But things were different now. Or at least he hoped they were. He shook his head. "Not tonight." He said and turned away and ordered another drink.

---

Summer looked at the ringing phone and grabbed it on the second ring. "Hey Coop. How's things going up there? Will you be home tomorrow?" she asked brightly. She'd been out shopping that afternoon and had bought some clothes for Emily and she couldn't wait to see how they looked on the little girl. She was really looking forward to being a temporary 'aunt'.

Marissa didn't know what to say. She was holding the phone so tightly her knuckles were turning white. It was as if it was a lifeline that she was gripping on to. But she couldn't bring herself to speak.

"Coop? Are you there?" Summer asked again.

"Summ." Marissa croaked out in an obvious plea for help.

Summer realised that something was desperately wrong. "What is it? What's wrong? Has something happened to Ryan?" Summer asked a million thoughts rushing through her brain. She wondered what could have happened to make her friend sound like this.

"Ryan …" Marissa repeated thinking yeah something had certainly happened. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Sorry?" Summer asked. "Tell you about what?"

"Ryan."

"What about Ryan?" Summer asked again.

"And college." Marissa stated.

Summer went quiet. She wasn't sure where this was going but she knew it couldn't be good.

"What about Ryan and college?" she asked trying to feign innocence.

"How many people did he sleep with?" Marissa asked.

"Who have you been talking to?" Summer asked.

"Ryan." Marissa said flatly.

"Is he there?" Summer asked.

"No. He left." Marissa replied, trying hard to just respond to the questions and not really think about the implications of what was being said.

"Well where is he?" Summer asked.

"I don't know." Marissa replied. "And I'm not sure if I care." She added.

"Coop. What's going on? Tell me. No more twenty questions." Summer knew that something major had happened between her best friends and just how important this conversation might be.

"Ryan basically told me that … he … slept with anything that moved. Is that right?" Marissa asked feeling her heart constrict inside her chest as she waited for the answer.

It went through Summer's mind to say that from the talk about the place, that she was pretty sure, that Ryan didn't spend much time sleeping but she didn't think that Marissa would see the humour in that response. She searched her mind for what to say in reply. "Why would he say that?"

"Don't answer my question with a question. I just need to know?" Marissa stressed.

"Why? What difference does it make?" Summer asked.

"What do you mean what difference does it make? It makes all the difference in the world. How can I be with him if that's the case? He's not the person I thought he was." Marissa stated.

"Who did you think he was?" Summer asked trying to keep things simple.

"What do you mean?" Marissa asked.

"I mean exactly what I said. Think back to this afternoon. Who do you think he was this afternoon?" Summer asked again.

Marissa thought back to being at Emily's house with him when he blushed when it came out that he was going to pay the rent and all the up keep expenses for Cheryl's house. She thought back to him sitting playing a board game with Emily; taking things so softly, softly with her and the fact that Emily was starting to respond and reach out to him. Her heart filled with love. She didn't know what to say to Summer. She couldn't admit just how in love she was with him. It would be setting herself up for a fall. "He was just Ryan." Marissa said not wanting to explain herself. And then she thought about what he had told her. And it all came crashing down. "But that was before I knew." She added.

"Well. He's still JUST Ryan, you know?" Summer said trying to get her friend to realise how lucky she was. "Nothing has changed. Sure he's revealed a bit of his past to you that I'm guessing he would have rather not had to admit to. I think he regrets exactly how he handled things back then. But Marissa you have no idea what he was like. He was like a shell of his former self. We used to think that he didn't talk much before and that he brooded sometimes. But when he came back from New York, he was shattered. He barely spoke to anyone – even Seth. We all only guessed at what had happened because he never spoke about it."

Marissa considered what Summer was saying. She knew what a mess she was herself. But never for a minute did she consider sleeping around. She tried to numb the pain in other ways.

Summer waited for a response but when she got none she continued. "No one's perfect. We all make mistakes along the way. It's the way we respond to them that makes us the people we are. We learn from them and change … hopefully for the better." Summer said wondering if any of this was actually getting through. "Did you love Ryan before he told you?" she asked waiting for a response this time.

The silence between them grew until finally Marissa squeaked out a reply. "Yes."

"And what has he done since then to make you change your mind?" she asked and then added. "And don't you dare say that you've stopped loving him because he told you about something that he did years ago. As if you've never done anything in your life that you regret, I can think of a couple, like ODing in TJ and trusting Oliver. Are you telling me if you had your time over again that you wouldn't change a few things? … We don't make mistakes intentionally but we do make them. The important thing is whether we keep making them or do something to change. Well Ryan has changed. He stopped being like that years ago. To the best of my knowledge he hasn't been with anyone for a long time before you came back. Hell for all I know the guy's been celibate for the last few years, so if you average it all out maybe it's not that bad." Summer laughed trying to ease the tension. "It's not like this is something that he was doing just before you came back and you're concerned that he's some sort of sex addict that will always behave the same way and cheat on you. The guy realised that what he was doing was wrong and more importantly it wasn't helping him forget you at all. So he stopped. And now you're trying to punish him. I don't understand you. What makes you think you have the right to be so judgemental and self-righteous?" She asked starting to get angry with her best friend.

Marissa sat going over everything that Summer had said. She couldn't believe that Summer was getting angry with her. Surely Ryan was the one that deserved everyone's wrath. Was she really being that hard on him? She didn't know. All she could think about was him with other women. She knew she needed to think. "I've got to go." She said to Summer and hung up and sat there alone with her thoughts.

R/R Thanks