Disclaimer: I have one exam left and work tomorrow. So I'm going to try to get this chapter out by tonight. You can have the exam and my hours at work. But not Captain Nicholls, my phone, or my bitching new fur beanie (WHICH COMES WITH EARS).

Nb. Seth and Summer are perfection. Anyone who compares them to the travesty that is Dan and Blair will get nothing from me.

.

S. AU S/S. Seth was in love with Summer his entire high school life, but nothing ever came from it. Seven years after graduation they meet again.

.

"Do you remember him though?" Summer said into the phone as she wonders around her small trailer. Normally, she would be sleeping in the main bus, but she found that on longer excursions like this New York one, it was easier to maintain a bit of distance (mostly to help with her rage blackout to be honest).

Marissa laughed into the phone. They'd been talking for the last forty five minutes about life and all its intricacies, and Summer was extremely glad that she got free calls to a list of five people on the same service provider. If Marissa wasn't on the very top of that list (just about her dad, her step-monster, Che and Mitchell) then Summer would be living on an entirely different amount of money every week. Her budget would be screwed to hell and she'd possibly be in a lot of debt. Especially since Marissa was still living in Hawaii, working with her dad and dating a lifeguard.

More the living in Hawaii thing though—less the working with her dad and dating a lifeguard named Donovan. (Still, a huge, awesome step up from the spoilt stepdaughter of a gazshmillionaire dating the pool boy in Junior year).

"Of course I know him, Sum." Marissa breezed airily. "We're related."

Summer did a full on double take, dropping the grouped pens in her hand with a thunk to the table a couple of inches below. She stumbled into the chair of the desk before she got control of herself, and grasped the back of the chair. Ignoring her now throbbing toe, she stared incredulously at her own disgusting camper curtains. "Wait, what?"

Marissa laughed again. "Not related, related. But, you know, my marriage. You do know he was Caleb's grandson right?"

Summer paused. "Caleb your evil stepdad?"

"Yeah, that Caleb. Come on, you don't remember? You used to help me get ready for family dinners." Marissa said, the laughter fading slightly.

"Yeah, for that Chino kid. You mean, this Seth guy was there too?"

Marissa sighed.

Summer left another pause. So Seth was actually close to Marissa to a point. He seemed like a smart guy, and he was certainly interesting to talk to. In their five minute discussion at the coffee place, Summer had seen more of this guy than she had in the last five months from anyone else. Seth's movie rights/novel thing was a refreshing change of pace from the fresh faced ass-hats she was being forced to train (even though it was pretty damn obvious they weren't even remotely interested in saving the planet, just fluffing up their damn resumes). He was also good looking in that dorky-untapped potential kind of way, that she hadn't ever found interesting before. And then her instincts pretty much had her checking out his ass as he walked away. But it wasn't his ass, or his subtle charm that interested her so much.

Summer had been a bitch in high school.

Like, a full on, should have been spoken to by the police for some of the things she said to people, rude, arrogant bitch. When she'd been accepted to Brown through a compulsory essay that had somehow made its way to the admissions people, she'd gone across the country and learnt that there was a lot more to life than shoes and magazines.

And that was fine, really. But the more she got into the causes and the actual learning, the more she realised how much she disliked the girls who acted like she had.

That one had been a brutal epiphany. Marissa, who had been on a holiday back from Hawaii at that point, bringing Johnny, her surfer boyfriend of the time with her, had listened to Summer rant about this girl in her dorm (Sapphire. Don't even get Summer started on Sapphire.) She'd shouted and screamed about the sheer arrogance of this chick, to be so rude to everyone around her and to have the audacity to have a stupid name like Sapphire.

And Marissa had just frowned. "Summer," she'd said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "She's you. She is you like, four months ago."

Of course, initially Summer had taken it as a joke. "You better not be dissing my name, Cooper." She'd joked, before she'd noticed the serious look on her best friend's face.

And then it had hit her like a punch in the gut. Because if she was really honest (and being honest was one of those new leafs she'd been turning over lately) she was Sapphire. Or at least, the prettier, better endowed Sapphire of The OC. It had been embarrassing and frustrating because how had she now known what a colossal bitch she'd been back then? How could she have actually treated people the way she did? How could she so blatantly ignore people?

How could she forget the face of someone she'd gone to school with since Kindergarten?

And honestly, Summer wasn't liking this day one bit. Because in the space of about three hours, she'd had two more punch in the stomach from the fucking Hulk moments.

The first had, of course, been when her word vomit got the best of her and she'd said that stuff to Seth.

Maybe I should have hung out with you in high school?

Seriously, Summer? Seriously?

The look on Seth's face told her everything she needed to know. It was like she'd been the one throwing punches, and his muscles had seized up and he'd gotten defensive, and he'd walked out before she could even hand his phone back. And then she'd felt the metaphoric punch in the boob and before she knew it, she was texting his number to her own phone, and running after him. She'd checked out his ass in those jeans (and wow), she'd given him back his phone, told him to expect her call, checked him out again, and then walked away.

And now? The second punch came in the form of that realisation.

That she really hadn't had a clue who Seth Cohen was, even if he had obviously been a largish part of her best friend's life. Summer could remember Ryan Atwood, the Newport Union kid who'd had a momentary thing with Marissa when he'd arrived until that had finished. Marissa had chosen Luke, gone to TJ with him, and slept with him when she found out her parents were getting divorced. It was only later on in the year that she found out about his slew of other girls and Summer had blacked out on his ass (the son of a bitch actually got a black eye from their encounter).

But if Summer could remember the kid from Chino, with the angsty thing pulled off to perfection—why the hell couldn't she remember the charming guy who'd seemed way too flustered by her appearance.

She'd obviously been absolutely horrible to him, she noted.

And she would have to make it up to him.

"I'm going to call him." Summer said decisively. "At least to apologise for being such a colossal bitch to him in high school."

Marissa didn't sound like she fully supported that plan of action. "Are you sure, Sum?" she asked nervously. "You don't even remember the guy."

Summer let out a frustrated noise. "That's the point! Don't you get it? He knew exactly who I was the second he saw my face. I had to call you to make sure he even actually existed. What the hell does that say about me? I've been trying and trying to be this better person, and it's not going to happen if there are more Seth Cohen's out there, hating me for being such a bad person."

Marissa sighed. "He doesn't hate you." She said sympathetically.

Summer smiled grimly. "I'm going to call him," she said again, making sure that she was convinced of this decision. "He deserves that much from me."

Summer could practically see the understanding look on Marissa's face. Then her tall friend sighed. "We're pushing out, Sum—so I'm going to have to go. We've got a new band on board and I need to show them the ropes."

Pushing out, in nautical terms, apparently meant leaving the dock/bay/beach that they had in Hawaii. Summer groaned, thinking of the place that Marissa was in right now, all while she froze her butt of in New York. "Find a time for me to come and visit," she ordered quickly.

Marissa laughed. "You're the one that's always busy." She protested. "But I'll look into it if you promise to make it this time," she joked.

"Promise. See you, Coop."

"See you, Sum."

Summer hung up the phone and stared down at the device for a moment. Now that she was quiet, she could hear her friends outside. They were parked in a caravan park, far outside the city itself and the island of Manhattan They'd taken multiple forms of transport to get in and out of the city that day, totalling in about four hours of travel if she added up the taxi and the subway and everything else.

Navigating the iPhone that Seth had dissed only hours earlier, Summer pulled up the message from Seth's phone. Surely, he wouldn't mind if she called, right? I mean, there was obviously no way that he was thinking about her as much as she was thinking about him, but he would at least be expecting the call? Would Summer just apologise for his adolescent torture over the phone, or would she insist that they go out to dinner? What if he said no?

Summer swallowed a knot that suddenly formed in her throat, and then took a deep breath.

She was Summer fucking Roberts. She suffered from rage blackouts. She could call Seth Cohen.

She moved her thumb and pressed the call button.

.

Seth slunk back into the room with a look on his face that Zach, who was sitting in one of the couches of Seth's living room, recognised instantly. Looking away from the many, many papers that the two of them had to read, read again, and again and again, and then—maybe—sign after much consideration, Zach frowned.

"I take it Sophie wasn't pleased..." He observed in his cautious Zach-esque style.

Seth dropped into the opposite couch and let his head drop out, letting out a groan of self pity. "She cried, man."

Zach inhaled. "Ooh—that's bad."

Seth used enough energy to roll his head a little forward, just to make sure that Zach could see the very sarcastic 'no shit' expression on his face. Then he fell back again. "If there's one thing about the Cohens', Zachary, it is that we know how to use our emotions as a weapon. To us, feelings are just tool with which we manipulate others. And Sophie has honed her skills well in her short years." He sighed again. "Are you sure we can't get Reed to move this thing?"

Zach shook his head regretfully. "Sorry man. She says it's the only night that the publishers are free and the director wants this meeting done before the end of the month."

A deadline that gave that three weeks left to sort this mess out, but still meant that Seth would be unable to attend his little sister's birthday dinner. When he'd spoken to his mum earlier, she too had refused to be the one to bear the news to her daughter. It was Seth's decision (even if it was only really that black and white to the seven year old he was letting down) and Seth was the one who had to deal with it. Seth didn't even consider asking Sandy to do it—there was no way to look at this that Sandy wouldn't automatically chalk up to character building. Even if, you know, creating characters was pretty much Seth's main source of income these days.

With another groan of effort, Seth pushed himself forward, leaning to the coffee table between the two men and grabbing his copy of the contract they were supposed to be looking over and fixing ('making notes on' Reed had told them, but really, who did she think she was kidding?).

"What page were we up to again?" Seth asked, flicking through the contract, trying to find something familiar in the block paragraphs of tiny black and white script.

Zach consulted his own highlighted-to-death edition. "Uhm, page fourteen—script input and production rights... we're looking at the clause that says that we are allowed to have a say in the script writing process, but changes are to be agreed upon at a middle ground, met by both us and other parties..." At Seth's continued bewildered expression, Zach looked down again. "Uhh... It's the fourth paragraph down, I think." He quickly counted before nodding his head again.

Seth had just found the passage when he mobile phone started vibrating again, making an odd noise on the table. "Jeez," Zach said, dropping his copy and leaning back with a smirk. "Social butterfly Seth Cohen, who'd have thought?"

Seth laughed sarcastically, hastily marking his spot on the page with a little line of yellow marker, before reaching for the phone. He didn't recognise the number on the screen, which was odd—since the only people who would have been calling him were Reed, or his parents (it was past nine o'clock which meant Ryan was out for the count—their time to talk had been severely cut down when they'd moved to different states)—but the monotony of the contract was getting to him, so he answered anyway.

"Hello?"

There was a pause on the other end of the line, and he almost hung up when he finally heard a response: a couple of muttered swear words.

"Uhm, hello?" he tried again. "Who is this?"

There was a clatter as the phone on the other end was readjusted, and then a louder voice in his ear.

"Oh god, sorry about that." A distinctly feminine—unfamiliar—voice said from the small receiver. "I just knocked a whole lot of stuff off my desk—" she paused for a moment. "Uhm, is this Seth Cohen?"

This time it was Seth who paused. "Uh, yeah—who is this?" he repeated.

"It's Summer Roberts. I ran into you at the coffee shop earlier?"

This next break in conversation was less of a pause and more of an actual break—mostly because Seth was marvelling at how he couldn't have recognised the voice, while simultaneously falling into a state of shock. He blinked spastically for a moment before Zach's amused cough jerked him from his silence.

"Right!" he said, a little too loudly. "From Harbor."

Of course she was from Harbor, a voice shouted at him in his head. But what else was he going to say to that? Holy shit, you actually called me—are you sure you're the real Summer Roberts?

Still, however unnecessary the response, it served in two capacities. One, it was enough to intrigue Zach into leaning forward, a curious look on his face (with good reason, right—because who from their high school would be calling Seth Cohen?), but more importantly, it was an actual, English response—which Seth hadn't been sure his brain could handle.

Summer didn't seem to notice. She sounded a little off—probably distracted by the things she'd dropped off her table or something—but no less cheery than she'd been when he'd seen her earlier.

"Right." Summer said brightly. "Look, I know you probably didn't expect me to call so soon—" Wow, try ever. "—but I thought it would be best if I didn't let you forget my face. I'd love to catch up."

Seth paused.

Okay, no. This was too weird. Even if they had grown up in the last seven years—and taken large steps towards being actual human beings and not acting like the idiots they'd been in high school—there was no way that she was saying stuff like this to him. It just wasn't like her—and it definitely didn't mesh with the idea he had of her in his head.

So Seth just came right out and said it.

"Is this some sort of practical joke?" he shot out accusingly. "Because, I mean, this is just a little too weird for me—and that's a good explanation. Well, not good—because, well, we're adults and have supposedly grasped that thing called maturity—but I mean, it's the only explanation I've got for why you would be calling me."

Another pause.

Then..,

"Jesus—I was that horrible to you in high school?" She asked incredulously.

Seth frowned, more confused than ever. "What?"

Summer didn't really pause anyway. "I mean, I was so horrible to you in high school that you'd assume me trying to catch up is some sort of high school prank?"

Another pause.

"Well, yeah." Seth said awkwardly.

Summer took a moment to take a deep, audible breath. "I have some stuff I'd like to say to you." She said slowly, after her deliberation. "But I am not doing it over the phone. Meet me at the coffee house tomorrow at three, alright?"

Seth was just a little too stunned to do more than say a hollow yes into the phone.

"Alright. See you then," Summer said. "Oh, and Seth?"

She caught him just as he was pulling away to hang up. Nervously, he lifted the phone back up to his ear. "Yeah?"

"It's not a prank, Cohen."

Then there was a dial tone.

.

.

.

A/N: Yep, I'm definitely having problems with these characters. Advice? Tips? Lay them on me.

I'll update soon. Please review. xx