Chapter 6 - Wake Up Calls

Seth Cohen pushed open the door to the pool house and let the hot Newport sun shine into the room.

"Dude, come on, it's 11, wake up already." The curly haired boy said to his brother, who dug his face into his pillow and rolled over in an attempt to hide from the bright light that invaded his pool house.

"Come on, Ryan, get up, I'm serious. I have a problem and seeing as I'm obviously not going to confront my parents about it, I need you to pay attention and nod whenever you think it's appropriate. Your oppinion would be nice too, if you're talkative enough to give it to me this morning." Seth went on, pacing and making motions with his hands.

Ryan kept his eyes closed tightly and tried to ignore Seth, but it was hard, seeing as he just wouldn't shut up. He finally gave up and rolled onto his back, blinking a couple times to get used to the bright of the room. As soon as he was able to keep his eyes open, he shot Seth an annoyed look.

Seth smiled, glad that he'd accomplished his goal of waking Ryan up. He closed to the door and made his way further into the room, stopping at the foot of the bed.

"Dude, why are you sleeping on the couch?" Seth asked, clearly confused.

The question threw Ryan off, bringing back the events of the previous night. He quickly glanced over to look at the bed and he was relieved to see that it was empty. He'd hate to have to explain why Summer was sleeping in his room to Seth, who was more in love with her than anything else in the world. He swallowed nervously, thinking hard to come up with an excuse.

"I spilled." He said, almost too quickly. Seth raised his eyebrow and Ryan let out a long breath.

"Uh... water. Last night I went to get a drink and I tripped and spilled it on the bed so I just... slept on the couch." Ryan explained, hoping that Seth would buy into the lie.

"Ryan, dude, if you're having bladder problems you can tell me. It's nothing to be embaressed about, man." Seth replied, a high level of sarcasm was easily dectected in his voice.

Ryan gave Seth one of his trademark "shut-the-hell-up" looks, then he pulled the blanket off himself and sat up, running a hand through his already disheveled hair.

"Alright, I'd love to joke around with you all morning, but there are more serious matters at hand that need to be discussed here, bro. And by serious matters, I mean Summer." Seth said, taking a seat on the foot of the bed.

"What about her?" Ryan asked, sighing.

"Dude, She broke up with Zach. I need to find out what happened." Seth replied.

"He cheated on her, she told you that." Ryan reminded, standing up and heading towards the stack of fresh towels sitting on the counter.

"Yeah, but with who, man? And how'd Summer find out? And how long has he been cheating for? And how did they hook up?" Seth went on, making a list of questions.

"It's none of your business, Seth. You should just stay out of it." Ryan called behind him as he grabbed a shirt off of the rack.

"Are you sure though, dude? Maybe I should go over to Summer's or Zach's and ask about it." Seth suggested, trying to come up with a plan.

"No, bad idea. Just leave it alone, I'm sure everything'll be fine at school tomorrow. Could we maybe finish this later?" Ryan said, holding up his towel and motioning towards the washroom.

Seth sighed in defeat and dispointedly pushed himself off the bed and headed towards the door. "Fine, dude. But if things aren't back to normal tomorrow, I'm getting involved." He called behind himself as he exited the pool house and shut the door.

Ryan rolled his eyes and made his way to the washroom, turning on the shower. It was going to be a long week.

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Summer cringed at the ringing sound of her phone. Who the hell was calling her at this hour? Doesn't anyone sleep anymore? Letting out a frustrated groan, she looked at the alarm clock and was shocked to see that it was almost 12:30. She picked up her cell phone answered right away, not bothering to check who was calling.

"Hello?" She said in a tired voice, rolling over onto her back.

"Summer, I'm so glad you picked up." She recognized her ex-boyfriends voice right away and mentally kicked herself for answering.

"Zach, I don't want to talk." Suddenly, Summer was wide awake and more than ready to kick someones ass.

"Wait, please, just let me explain." Zach pleaded, desperately.

"What is there to explain? You cheated on me and I dumped you, it's over, deal with it." She said boldly and pulled the phone away from her ear, ignoring the faint protests comming from the ear peice and flipping it shut.

Summer got up and started getting ready to go to Marissa's house. She figured that an entire day of laying out in the sun by her best friend's pool would take her mind off of Zach. But as she dressed, Zach wasn't the only thing that was troubling her. Her mind drifted to everything that had happened last night with Ryan and how he'd been so nice about everything. She had left the Cohen house a few hours after their encounter at the washroom to avoid having to face anyone the next morning. She almost wished that she was still there though, and it disturbed her.

She occupied herself with other things. The unwritten laws of dating stated that a girl couldn't go for her best friends crush and there was no way that she was going to do that, not after all the times that Marissa had been there for her. Summer was still thrown off though, did she just consider dating Ryan Atwood? The fact that she even considered it deeply confused her and all she could do was shrug off the idea and forget about it. She finished getting ready and left the house for the Cooper residence.

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Ryan was laying on his bed with his hands tucked under his head, staring at the ceiling. He'd just gotten back from dinner with the Cohens and was struggling to clear his head.

He didn't know why, but Summer Roberts had been on his mind all day. He been trying hard to shake the image of the way that she had looked last night from his brain but was failing terribly. Seth had been making it hard for him to forget about things, having babbled on about the girl all day. But this just wasn't normal, the last girl that Ryan had thought about this much was Lindsey, and she had been his girlfriend at the time.

He glanced over at the phone and sighed. He stared at it for a couple of seconds before he gave into his newfound curiousity. Propping himself up on his elbows, he reached for the phone and dialed the number of the Roberts house.

Ryan held his breath as the ringing began. He suddenly regreted his decision and hoped that no one would answer. When no one picked up after the second ring he felt alittle dispointed though. He was getting ready to hang up when a female voice sounded through the phone.

"Okay, look Cohen, what happened with me and Zach is none of your business! Stop being such and ass and leave me the hell alone already! If you call one more time I swear I'll..." Summer's voice angrily rang out and it made Ryan smile.

"Um... Hi, Summer. This is Ryan." He said nervously, cutting her off and pausing between his sentenses.

"Oh." Summer said lightly, obviously surprised. "Sorry Chino, I thought you were Seth."

"Yeah, I kind of got that..." Ryan replied, reaching up to stratch the back of his head.

"So... whats up?" Summer asked, breaking a long pause of silence, making sure that things wouldn't get awkward even though the pair couldn't help but feel like it already was.

"Not a lot... I, uh, just wanted to see how you were doing, after last night and all..."

"Oh. Well... I'm fine, thanks."

"Thats good."

"Yeah."

Ryan shifted uncomfortably on his bed and looked around the room, hoping to find something that he could say written on the walls in front of him. It had proved to be pointless and he sucked in a deep breath, wanting for the first time in his life to have Seth's conversational skills.

"So..." Ryan began, suddenly losing whatever thoughts he'd attempted to form in his head moments before.

"So..." Summer echoed, having the same amount of difficulty thinking up a topic as he was.

"Did you talk to, uh... Zach at all today?" Ryan questioned, lowering his voice as he said the boys name, almost as if it was a curse.

"Yeah, he called." She replied, blankly. It almost seemed to Ryan like it didn't bother her at all.

"Oh." Ryan responded, his mind blank yet again. He waited for her to talk but it was obvious that it wasn't comming any time soon. "How did that go?"

Summer sighed and Ryan instantly felt like he'd screwed up. He was good at not talking, why didn't he just stick to not talking?

"I, um, hung up on him." She stated and he nodded in understanding even though she couldn't see it.

They both sat in their rooms and did nothing to stop the awkward silence filtering in through the ear peices of both ends of the phone.

"I have to go." Summer said after about a minute of the unbearable quiet. "But... thanks for calling. See you at school?"

"Uh, yeah, bye." Ryan answered awkwardly. He felt like he was a shy, middle school kid who was trying to talk to a girl he liked.

"Bye." Summer said and then the line went dead. Ryan listened to it for a few seconds before hanging the phone back up and laying back on his bed as he let out a long breath. He linked his hands together like and tucked them under his head and everything was the same as it was before he made the call. Closing his eyes, he wondered what was going on with him today.

It's not like he's ever had that much trouble talking to Summer before. Actually, that was the problem, he never really talked to Summer before. He never thought about her before last night and it was starting to worry him. Sighing, he convinced himself that it was nothing. He was just doing that thing again, the thing where all the problems in the world became his fault and he had to save everyone and make everything okay again so he tried to fix things. Summer had a break-up, it was normal for her to be upset about it, he was just blowing things out of proportion now and his spidey-senses were on overdrive.

Sitting up and grabbing the book bag he had set down on his bed earlier, he started browsing through it and took out some work that he could occupy himself with until he was tired enough to fall sleep. Ryan worked for hours, despite the fact that he was already ahead of the rest of the class anyways. He put down his things and stopped for what he had intended to be a break from all of this studying, but the second he lay back on the pillow, he closed his eyes and past out without changing.