"Seth, Seth…" Summer's melodic voice was calling him, across a rich green pasture of fresh clover, dandelions twelve feet tall towering above his head. Their bristly stalks irritated the sensitive flesh of his fingertips as he passed by them, his arms outstretched. The sky above him was the most delicate shade of lavender—only it wasn't sky—it was more like the ocean, only upside down; and the cresting of the waves sounded like his name, Seth, Seth, Seth… And he wasn't Seth, or rather, he didn't have that familiar face that greeted him every morning in the bathroom mirror. Instead he was faceless, headless, amorphous. He could still hear Summer calling to him, but he couldn't see her, couldn't find her. His panic began to grow the longer she called out to him. The dandelions around him became a forest; the trees blocked his path no matter which way he turned. Branches grabbed for his arms and legs, vines twisted upwards from the Earth. All sound, the rushing of the purple ocean, the whistle of the wind through the trees; every whisper was silenced. Finally, in his ear, as clear as the ring of a silver bell:

"Seth!"

"Summer!" Seth shot straight up in bed, his heart pounding ruthlessly against his fragile ribs. The machine in the corner that purified every cubic inch of the air in his bedroom chugged along, unfailing. Next to it, the humidifier buzzed happily. His wild eyes discerned her shape in the dull darkness of the room; her chest was heaving also. Had she had a nightmare, a premonition? Or was it just her nerves that had her so rattled?

Across the three feet of distance between them, Seth inhaled the soft aroma of her perfume, and his dick hardened agonizingly. She smelled like roses, fresh summer roses. She had always smelled like roses, for as long as he could remember. He'd lost his virginity to Summer at the age of sixteen, and he recalled that as he had made love to her, her entire bed, her body, had smelled of roses. He'd lost his heart to Summer at the age of six, when he saw her for the first time in the library of their elementary school—they'd both been checking out the same book, Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are; and as he'd stood behind her in line, her hair had smelled just like roses then, too.

"Seth?" Concerned.

"Summer…are you hurt? Are you okay? What happened?" he asked, breathlessly.

"I'm fine," she answered shortly, suddenly all-business.

"You're not hurt, and you're not ill. It's 2 a.m.," he explained patiently. He carelessly mussed his already bedraggled curls with a sweep of his hand across his brow. The room around them seemed to grow darker. Seth shivered.

"I wanted to talk," she admitted in a whisper.

"Talking is good," he agreed. "But could it possibly wait until I've had some coffee…and um, some daylight?"

"It's about what you said earlier," Summer continued, ignoring his plea. "I've been thinking about it."

"And…" Seth prodded, folding his legs Indian-style in an effort to get comfortable, resigned to the fact that they were apparently going to have this powwow in their pajamas in the middle of the night after all.

"And," she bit her bottom lip between her teeth, a nervous habit she picked up in college. "And I don't think we should try to do this thing, to be friends."

Seth flopped backwards onto his pillow dramatically, and groaned. "Oh, don't do this again! 'I'll be a total ass to Seth…no wait, we can get along…no wait, I'm back to being a total bitch…no wait, Seth, let's be friends…no wait, now I'm back to thinking I hate Seth'," Seth mimicked her in falsetto.

"It's not that easy!" Summer retorted, exasperated. "And I don't hate you," she added, sounding wounded.

"Then explain it to me," Seth laughed mirthlessly, "because I sure as hell don't understand it." He continued to stare up at the ceiling, which had been meticulously covered with wallpaper. Normally he found the satiny pattern of the white fleur-de-lis to be comforting—but now he was battling the urge to put his fist through the wall. "Every time I think I'm getting somewhere with you…"

Summer reared back in that defensive posture that Seth knew so well, immediately defiant. He lifted his head slightly, just enough to see if she already had her hand on her hip. She didn't. "Getting somewhere with me?" she asked, sassy. "Where, exactly, are you trying to go?"

He bugged out his eyes the way he always did when he was at his wit's end. "Don't do that. Don't deconstruct everything I say. I just meant that every time I think I'm getting close again, you pull back and slam the door shut. We've been seesawing back and forth and it's making me nuts!"

"You were right, what you said tonight—about us not knowing each other anymore," Summer argued fiercely. "You not knowing that Kurt was teaching me German is just the tip of the iceberg. It's about you not knowing about me and Anna, moving in together; it's about you not knowing I didn't work anymore, that I'm confined to this…prison day and night. There's a lot you don't know about me anymore, Cohen. This whole huggy-feely let's-get-to-know-each-other-again bullshit is running me into the ground. It's too hard to fill you in on four years of my life that you've just…missed. Not that it's your fault," she jumped in quickly. "It's just…complicated," she sighed, weary, "…and I think that this whole idea that we can be friends—after all we've been through—is just…asking too much."

"We were friends before…I mean, before we got together. Why not now?"

"Cohen, we were never friends," Summer assured him matter-of-factly.

"Oh, yeah, well what about the time we sprung Marissa from the looney bin?"

"I came all the way to your house, to your room, for something that I totally could have handled on my own, and then we spent like, the entire afternoon flirting."

"Okay…then what about Tijuana?"

"Cohen, we slept in a bed together and I threatened you with bodily harm if you touched me so that you wouldn't know how much I wanted you to touch me. And considering that you had loved me since like, fifth grade…"

"First grade," Seth corrected quietly.

"Huh?"

"First grade. I've loved you since the first grade."

Summer's heart melted precipitously when she imaged his kicked-puppy face, the face he was probably wearing at that exact moment. It was the expression he'd worn the day they had looked through those old yearbooks in Marissa's bedroom; when Summer had realized for the first time how utterly alone Seth had been before Ryan came along. It was the same look he had when he saw her choose Zach over him for the first time, and the second time, and the third time. She suddenly had the absurd need to see his face, just once more, just one last time. If she could only have her sight back for a minute…for a single sixty seconds…all she wanted to see, all she'd ever wanted to see, was Seth's face, staring back at her.

"Seth," her tone was soft, plaintive. Don't make this harder for me. She closed her eyes, prayed for strength. Still selfish after all these years, aren't you, darling? "After this week is over, Anna will be back, and you'll go back to your life, and there just doesn't seem to be a need to fight about this. All it will do is drag up painful stuff for both of us that we really don't have to drag up at all."

"And what about after this week?" Seth asked, his breath catching in his throat.

"What about it?"

"Well, when we see each other after this week, eventually it's going to come up. We'll have to talk this out, sooner or later," Seth pointed out.

"I don't think that's such a good idea," Summer used both hands to tuck her hair behind her ears. She kept her face downcast so that Seth wouldn't see the tears welling up in her eyes. "You're busy with work, and Ryan…and your girlfriend and youdon'tneedmetoscrewthatup."

"My-my girlfriend?" Seth stammered, taken aback.

"Don't you?"

"Not right now…not for a while," he answered honestly, squirming.

"Well, don't you think if you got one, she would care that you're still friends with a girl you used to be engaged to?"

"Wait, wait, wait," Seth brought his hands up to stop her. "Now we're hypothesizing about what a purely theoretical girlfriend would think about us being friends?"

"So?"

"So, that's ridiculous."

Summer huffed. "Look, I know that when this week is over, you're going to leave, and I don't want to cry any more, okay?" she exclaimed, standing abruptly. She turned to leave, but Seth's hand snaked around her wrist and he pulled her back in, pulled her close enough to hear his whisper.

"And what about all the times I cried?"

"Exactly my point! We're just making each other miserable…still making each other miserable."

"Summer, you never made me miserable. A little crazy sometimes…but never miserable. Not ever."

Summer's heart broke all over again, and she felt the hard, sad knot in her chest pulling tighter. "Let's just get through the week, okay?" Her voice wavered, clearly on the edge of tears now. "I think we can both be civil for a week."

"Fine. If that's what you want, then fine," Seth said angrily, dropping her wrist immediately. He turned over onto his side in the bed, facing the wall. Summer remained standing where she was, at the end of the bed, a forlorn tableau of misery.

"Please leave now. I need to sleep, I have work tomorrow."

"Okay," she rasped, leaving the room, only the faint aroma of roses still lingering in the air behind her. Seth felt a single tear rolling down his cheek towards the pillow.

Seth woke up feeling exhilarated, feeling different. He had a plan. No longer was he going to be stymied by Summer's insistence that they ignore the problem between them. The chemistry—the power—felt by both of them, had always been undeniable. Uncompromising. Why should they start now?

He dressed in sweatpants and a thin t-shirt, trusting his body to compensate with heat and deflect the chilly morning air. He jogged down the stairs to the street, forgoing the interminable elevator ride and ran three miles, circling the blocks surrounding the apartment six times. After his run, he jumped in a cold shower and planned out what he was going to say to Summer as he shampooed his hair.

He whistled as he got dressed—God bless the daylight, the sugary smell of springtime. Remembering when you were mine, in a still suburban town—and carefully combed his messy hair.

He found Summer sitting at the kitchen table, sipping a steaming mug of coffee.

"Good morning, I see you're up early," he commented cheerfully.

"Yes, your efforts to wake the dead were wildly successful," she retorted dryly. She listened, feigned nonchalance, as Seth stuck Poptarts into the toaster and poured his own cup of coffee. "So what's so great about today that you felt the need to sing in the shower and whistle getting dressed?"

"Ahhh," Seth brought his breakfast over to the table and sat down across from her. "I have decided that I'm not going to let you off so easily. I'm not going to accept 'no' as an answer from you."

Summer raised one perfectly-waxed eyebrow. "Oh?" She took a sip of bitter black coffee: another punishment.

"You forget how well I know you," Seth abandoned the pretense of eating, and came around to where she was sitting, placing one hand on the kitchen table and the other on her chair-back, effectively boxing her in. "Do you remember all those times you dropped little hints about your birthday or Christmas? You'd say, 'boy, I sure want a fill-in-the-blank, oh, but Christmas is coming up and I can't afford it,' knowing full well you could afford it, and knowing I knew you could afford it. But you were trying to make it easy for me.

"That time in Saks, when you were stalking the Chanel counter, and I asked if you wanted me to get you that bottle of your favorite perfume, and you played coy and said we mustn't."

"Mustn't? Since when have I ever said 'mustn't'?"

Seth gave her a pointed look that she couldn't see, but that she imagined well enough. She inhaled deeply, basking in the warm, spicy scent of his aftershave, sandalwood. "Right. Not the point."

Seth leaned in to murmur, his voice rough with too-little sleep and just a hint of desire, "…just like when I wanted to have sex, and you would pretend you didn't. But then you would put on your green dress, because you knew how crazy it would make me, and then you'd beg me to fuck you up against the door. Remember that?"

Summer took a shaky breath, her vocal chords immobile. She nodded, almost against her will.

"Now I know that you wouldn't be having such a hard time with this if it wasn't something you wanted."

Summer ducked her head, concentrating on her napkin, which she was tearing to shreds and balling up between her fingers. She paused, carefully considering her answer. Nothing she said would placate Seth. She might as well not even try….and yet… "Sometimes…what we want is not what is right for us," she replied softly, refusing to meet his gaze.

Seth absorbed this, and sighed. "Why are you being so difficult?"

"Because it has to be that way," she said simply, a sliver of napkin catching under her fingernail uncomfortably.

"Since when do you get to be the boss of us?" Seth asked, straightening.

"There is no us," Summer countered. "I appreciate that you want to be friends," she continued, reaching her hand out to tug on the hem of his shirt. "But after…the accident…Seth, I gave you your freedom. I released you from the burden of caring for a blind wife. I don't want you to hate me," her breath hitched. "But I don't want to fall in love with you again, either." She swallowed back her tears. "Go. Enjoy your freedom. Sow your wild oats, or whatever… But don't waste your time chasing after something you don't want, but feel like you should want just because I'm blind. I never wanted you to feel that way…that's why I didn't tell you in the first place."

Seth slammed his palm down on the table hard in barely-contained frustration, relishing the sting of pain the action provided. The movement and sound made Summer jump, startled, and the coffee mug in front of her rattled, sloshing hot coffee out around and down the sides of the porcelain cup. He left without saying another word; she heard the crinkle of fabric as he snatched his track jacket from the coat rack and left the apartment, slamming the door behind him. Summer folded her arms on the tabletop, dropped her head down into the hollow there, and sobbed.

To be continued…