Ryan paused at the bottom of the stairs, suddenly not so sure it was wise to proceed into the kitchen.
It wasn't the raised voices that he'd grown up with that stopped him in his track, but rather Sandy and Kirsten's still-unsettling brand of arguing-hushed intense whispers, both always so conscious that someone might be in earshot.
He didn't feel right eavesdropping, but he also hadn't yet kicked the impulse to know everything he could about everything, to plan his next move based on what was happening around him.
That he hadn't seen a darker side of the Cohens didn't mean that it didn't exist.
Newport people were better at blurring their edges for public consumption, but Ryan still noticed things. He noticed the way Kirsten fiercely guarded her coffee mug in the morning and the way Sandy eyed her as she did so, and he picked up on the subtle but loaded comments that Sandy had started to drop before leaving for the hospital, and Kirsten's equally subtle but snippy replies.
Something was brewing under the surface with them, and had been for awhile.
After Ryan had settled in a little bit with the Cohens, stopped feeling as much like he was one wrong move away from sleeping on a bus bench, the impulse to know everything about everything quieted down a little.
Still, there were a few times that he'd walked into the kitchen and sensed that he'd interrupted something-Kirsten turning on her heel to leave the room, Sandy opening and closing drawers with a little more vigor than usual-and though it ignited his paranoia that they'd finally woken up to what a colossally terrible move it had been to take him in, he rarely got a sense of what they'd actually been fighting about, and the tension never lasted long.
Sandy and Kirsten were like the kind of sitcom couple he and Trey used to make fun of, every conflict neatly wrapped up in a respectable-and completely unbelievable-amount of time, sealing it all with a kiss and a corny joke about marriage or gender dynamics.
"Don't lecture me on what our son needs, Sandy."
"I'm not trying to lecture you. Don't you think I know how-" Sandy's voice dipped, went inaudible. "But honey, I think he's really-" His voice dropped off again. "Do you know what he said to me-"
Whatever he'd been about to say was interrupted by the sound of ceramic shattering against countertop.
Ryan flinched, shoulders tensing.
"Kirsten, I-"
High heels clacked against the floor.
Kirsten stormed past Ryan, fists clenched by her sides, nostrils flaring, a deep scowl set into her normally reserved features.
Ryan wasn't sure she even noticed him until she gritted out a "Good morning, Ryan," before throwing open the front door and slamming it behind her as she left.
What was it Seth had said once?
"When Mom's not even trying to hide that she's pissed, that's when she's really pissed. I'd recommend giving her a wide berth."
Ryan chewed on his lip.
If he walked into the kitchen, Sandy's hands would be shaking and that vein above his eye would be twitching like crazy, but he'd also be ready with a quip or two about marriage and being the kind of husband who had a penchant for putting his foot in his mouth, playing the part of sitcom dad as well as sitcom husband, gamely trying to shield Ryan from their marital problems.
Ryan didn't think he could stomach it, the hapless husband routine, the smoothing over.
Turning around, he quietly headed back upstairs, figuring he'd give Sandy some time to clean up the mess, save him from having to explain a broken dish or a slammed door, save him from having to perform for him.
Ryan was getting good at it too, the evasion, the avoidance, the smoothing over.
He was getting more and more Newport every day.
ooo
"Hey kiddo." Sandy set his briefcase on a free chair and sat down on the edge of Seth's bed.
"Hey." Seth closed the book he'd been reading.
"I got you a new toothbrush," Sandy announced.
"What does it look like?" Seth eyed him suspiciously.
"Blue."
"Just...blue?" Seth arched an eyebrow.
"Just blue," Sandy affirmed. "Cross my heart."
Some of Seth's pre-existing symptoms had gotten much worse with the chemotherapy, the regular old tenderness in his gums now joined by a crop of new and painful sores inside his mouth.
Dr. Penner had recommended that Seth switch to a toddler toothbrush-a prospect that already seemed to horrify him-and Sandy had then gone and made the mistake of grabbing the first one he'd spotted at the pharmacy. Needless to say, Seth had been thoroughly aghast to be the recipient of a bright red toothbrush with a grinning Elmo emblazoned on the front.
Teenage boys and their fragile masculinity.
Sandy was just thankful he hadn't been careless enough to give the offensive toothbrush to Seth in front of Ryan or Luke or-Hashem forbid-Anna or Summer. He never would've heard the end of it.
"Like a navy blue, or like, a light blue?" Seth's eyes narrowed.
"It's a very dark, very masculine blue," Sandy assured him patiently, patting his knee. "How's your day been?"
"Fine," Seth answered. "Not making much progress with the required reading," he admitted, picking at the binding on the rather hefty book sitting on his lap.
"Try not to push yourself too hard." Sandy noted with apprehension that Seth's bookmark looked to be in about the same place it had been for the past four days or so. "School really shouldn't be a thing you're stressed about right now."
"Easy for you to say," Seth scoffed, sinking his head back into his pillow. "I'm not sure Summer's gonna wanna be seen with a guy who's bald and repeating the tenth grade."
Sandy's brow wrinkled in concern.
"Seth, you know that-"
"You guys have that meeting with the doctors, right?" Seth gave Sandy a sharp look, as if to say that he could at least try not to say the obligatory trite dad thing after every negative or self-deprecating comment he made.
Cancer had apparently done wonders for Seth's ability to convey everything with a look.
"Uh, yeah. Yes." Sandy ran a hand through his hair. "They just want to talk to us about how things have been going." He paused. "Do you want to be there?"
"Eh, you can just give me the highlight reel." Seth closed his eyes. "Maybe I'll take another crack at the reading." He snorted. "You know, it's really stupid to have so much time every day where there's nothing to do and I'm bored out of my mind and I can still barely even read a book or play a video game."
With Seth's eyes closed, Sandy took the opportunity to study his son for a long moment.
It was hard to know how or if to voice some of the questions that were perpetually brewing in his mind, how to ask how Seth was doing when the question itself felt like a bit of a sick joke.
He was miserable. He didn't put it in those words, and would probably roll his eyes and call Sandy dramatic if he put it like that-"I said I was bored, Dad, not depressed"-but it was obvious that he was miserable, that even the good days weren't very good, physically or emotionally.
"Is Ryan coming by after school?" Sandy asked brightly, because if he couldn't figure out how to inquire about his son's well-being, he could at least try to remind him that there were things he could-in theory-look forward to.
"Nah." Seth continued picking at the binding of his book. "I gave him the day off, with Grandpa coming and all."
"That's generous of you, protecting him from Grandpa Nichol."
"Yeah, well..." Seth shrugged. "It's gotta get old too, coming all this way just to sit here. Throw Grandpa into the mix and it's basically Guantanamo up in here."
Sandy frowned. "You know Ryan doesn't feel that way," he said. "I have to practically twist his arm to get him to leave every night." Maybe that was the obligatory trite dad thing to say, but it was also true. "And if the situations were reversed, I know you'd be here as much as you could." He tilted his head to the side, trying to catch Seth's eye, but Seth wouldn't meet his gaze.
"Yeah, well...I didn't exactly have a-"
Seth was interrupted by the door opening.
Sandy felt a little twinge in his chest, watching Seth's expression soften and brighten as Kirsten greeted him, placing a vase of fresh flowers on his nightstand before leaning over and kissing him on the cheek.
He stood up and went to the window, giving Kirsten and Seth their space, trying to ignore the petty part of him that figured that the three minutes before Seth's treatment meeting were probably exactly as much as Kirsten was willing or able to handle of actually interacting with their son.
She was certainly making the most of it.
And that same petty part of him noted that Seth was rising to the occasion too, joking about the food and the grumpy night nurses and the overly perky morning nurses, all thoughts of school and friends and toddler-sized toothbrushes nowhere to be found.
Sandy was being a jerk.
And he'd been a jerk that morning too, his sympathy and understanding for Kirsten competing with his anger and resentment, and he'd finally let the latter win a round.
Watching Kirsten and Seth together, part of him felt guilty and like he wanted to make amends with Kirsten, wanted to again feel like they were in it together, and another part of him wanted to unload on her again, wanted to let her in on what she'd been missing in between her brief visits and her discomfort so palpable that their sick child was doing everything he could to entertain her, to take care of her, to make her want to stay.
There was a brisk knock at the door and a nurse poked her head in, letting Sandy and Kirsten know that the doctor was ready for them across the hall.
Sandy followed Kirsten out of the room, neither acknowledging the other as they made their way to the conference room.
ooo
Staring blankly into his locker, Ryan exhaled a heavy breath.
He guessed he'd followed his coach's advice to leave it all out on the field, because he'd run himself ragged at practice.
And then he'd left little bits of himself elsewhere, standing under the locker room shower and letting it scald his skin until it was bright red and raw, until the water felt like tiny daggers stinging all over.
None of it cured the antsiness coursing through him, the nervous tension that he could often release in at least small doses with the repetition of running laps, or getting away with a plausibly deniable amount of physical aggression during scrimmage time.
"You coming tonight, Atwood?"
Ryan tore his eyes away from his locker to squint at Paul, a large and generally insufferable senior.
Before Ryan and his teammates had developed a kind of uneasy peace between them, Paul would often say things about Seth or, as he referred to him, "Atwood's butt buddy".
As in "Hey Atwood, saw your butt buddy getting destroyed in dodgeball today. He might need some of that Chino-brand sexual healing later. He'll still be walking with a limp, but for a much more fun reason, huh?"
He'd punctuated that little gem by throwing a condom frisbee-style at Ryan, which bounced off his shoulder and landed on the locker room floor.
Ryan might've decked the guy if he hadn't been trying-at least for Sandy and Kirsten's sake-to avoid getting into unnecessary fights.
He also didn't want to blow up Seth's spot entirely, didn't want Sandy or Kirsten digging into what started everything. He didn't think the Cohens really knew just how much Seth put up with at school.
Knowing how intense they could be as parents, they probably would've found some well-intentioned way of barging into Harbor and making everything much worse.
But Paul had stopped eventually, even dared to ask Ryan "How's the little guy doing?" a few days after Seth went into the hospital.
Like nothing had ever happened. Like he hadn't spent weeks trying to provoke Ryan into a fight, like he wasn't one of the kids who'd made Seth's life at school a living hell for years.
Newport was like that; everyone just pretending like they hadn't been who they'd been or said what they'd said and then silently demanding that you go along with it.
It wasn't like Ryan wanted any big heart-to-heart with Paul, but it also wasn't like the urge to punch him totally disappeared the moment that Paul realized he was a decent soccer player and decided to leave him alone, or found out that Seth had cancer and undoubtedly found some other, more able-bodied kid to target.
"Coming to what?" Ryan finally asked.
"Atwood never goes to these things," Kev chimed in from somewhere behind Ryan.
"Yeah, because it's boring watching you guys get wasted and playing sack tap with each other," Luke scoffed, suddenly appearing at Ryan's side. "Plus, I'm sure Atwood's busy."
Ryan looked at Luke quizzically.
"I just meant-" Luke faltered. "I figured you'd be...at the hospital." He mumbled the last part.
"Not tonight," Ryan said, looking away as Luke's face scrunched in confusion. Jutting his chin at Paul, he asked: "What's going on tonight?"
Paul grinned. "There's a party at Kev's place. His older brother's getting us a few kegs."
Ryan eyed Paul for a long moment.
"I'll be there," he said.
Paul grinned and punched Ryan's shoulder.
An image of his fist colliding with Paul's face flickered across Ryan's brain, but it fizzled itself out quickly.
He'd gotten good at that too, swallowing his impulses, smoothing them into nothing.
If he were a different kind of person, maybe he'd find a hapless freshman or a scrawny comic book aficionado to take it all out on.
"Dude..."
Ryan's eyes flicked back to Luke, and he lifted his eyebrows at the pained expression on his friend's face.
"You sure you want to go tonight?" Luke pitched his voice lower as Paul and Kev resumed their party planning at an obnoxious volume. "I mean, I know you're kind of okay with everyone now, but Kev and the other guys...they can be..."
Ryan stared Luke down.
Kev and the other guys had been Luke's friends once, his trusty cronies who stood at his side in the model home and at The Crab Shack and at the endless blur of beach parties, snickering and high-fiving Luke when he delivered his tough-guy lines.
"You're really gonna make me say it, man?" Luke groaned.
Ryan snorted. "Look, I'm just gonna be home alone if I don't do something, so why not a party?" He sniffed and slammed his locker closed. "Could be fun."
ooo
"Dr. Stein?" Sandy rapped lightly on the slightly ajar office door.
A woman with long curly red hair looked up from the file on her desk and smiled at Sandy.
"Haddie," she corrected him, motioning for him to enter her office. "I'm not actually a doctor," she explained. "Have a seat." She closed the file and moved it to the side of her desk as Sandy settled into one of the armchairs in front of her. "You're Seth's dad, right?" Seeing the look on Sandy's face, she added "I've seen you around."
"I'm Seth's dad," Sandy confirmed, forcing a tight-lipped smile. "Sandy Cohen."
Ever since Seth's diagnosis, it was strange, the things that created little pangs for him, moments he stumbled over.
He couldn't remember the first time he'd been referred to as "Seth's dad"-maybe it was a playgroup or maybe it was at preschool-but he remembered how it had felt, that realization, that adoption of an identity that came with something like a moment of panic and something like a swell of pride.
He was no longer just himself or just a husband or even just a father.
He was Seth's dad.
The older Seth got, the less frequently he'd been identified as "Seth's dad," and not in that same way where, as far as all the little kids at playgroup or at preschool were concerned, that was Sandy's one and only name and his one and only identity. And maybe after that there was a shift in his identity again. The more independent Seth became-
"Dr. Penner mentioned you might be wanting to check in." Haddie's voice interrupted Sandy's jumble of thoughts and nostalgia.
"Yes." Sandy tried to blink the young woman back into focus. "We had a treatment meeting this morning and his mom and I were hoping to talk about how he's been doing, well...emotionally, I guess."
The treatment meeting had been rough. Kirsten had continued to give him the cold shoulder, and he wasn't exactly thrilled with her either, and all of that felt like a fairly petty marital squabble that shouldn't have stolen the spotlight over Dr. Penner gently informing them that they weren't yet seeing the progress they were hoping for. At the same time, Sandy had been secretly grateful to have a petty marital squabble to consume some of his energy and some of his focus as he had to sit there and listen to his son's doctor tell them that, for all that they'd been watching Seth suffer over the past few weeks, he wasn't getting any better yet, that they would be making still more adjustments to his chemo meds.
And maybe-
"Of course," Haddie affirmed. "Seth's going through a lot right now, and it's a lot to wrap your head around." Her smile was warm and disarming without being overly cloying. She looked like a pretty decent therapist, or at least someone it wouldn't be too painful to talk to, inasmuch as you could tell a thing like that from a two minute conversation.
"I know Seth said no to therapy and the support group, but he did tell me that you come by to talk with him sometimes," Sandy said.
"I try to get some facetime with all the kids here, even if it's just for a few minutes a week, just so I'm a familiar face." Haddie paused. "Seth gives me about fifteen minutes a week and ten of those are usually book or movie recommendations."
"That sounds like him," Sandy acknowledged. "I'm just wondering if we're doing the right thing, not pushing therapy. Some days he seems like he's okay, dealing with things pretty well, and other days he seems so..." He paused, face screwing up, no word feeling quite right. "...down, I guess? Which, I mean..." he trailed off.
"...which obviously makes sense for a kid with cancer, but as a dad you're suspicious that there's more to it than that. Of course he'd be struggling with his mental health right now, but then, he's still, well, struggling with his mental health." Haddie gave Sandy a searching look, trying to check her work.
"Exactly." Sandy exhaled a heavy breath, relieved that Haddie could so readily fill in the blanks for him.
And that seemed to be Seth's perspective, that if he seemed depressed, it was a perfectly normal reaction to feeling horrendous all the time, to being stuck in a hospital, to missing his best friend and his girlfriend and the things they used to be able to go out and do together, to not knowing when or if he'd be healthy or okay again, to being too mentally and physically exhausted to even play a video game, let alone read a book, to-somehow, despite everything-still feeling stressed about schoolwork and passing sophomore year.
Of course, Seth had never said that much outright, had only responded to gentle inquiries into his mental health with an eyeroll and a pithy joke or two, but Sandy could read between the lines.
"You know, I always say that it's okay to be the bad guy parent in situations like this. Seth's got a lot of strengths that can help him through this. He's clearly very smart, and he's got a great sense of humor." Haddie smiled fondly. "He's got some really top-notch cancer jokes, and I've heard some good ones in my day." She paused. "And though he tends to keep to himself a little bit, he's good with the younger kids. He's taught them a lot about video games and superheroes anyway, so he's got some fans around here."
Sandy smiled at that.
"You're raising a really good kid," Haddie added gently.
"Thank you." Sandy looked away.
It felt strange sometimes, fielding compliments for Seth or Ryan, felt strange to say thank you, as if he could take credit for any or all of their good or admirable qualities, or as if he had any idea where they came from sometimes.
"However, even if we're talking about the best case scenario with cancer treatment, he's still going to come away with a fair amount of trauma," Haddie continued. "Nobody's time in the cancer ward is a storybook, and the trauma of months and sometimes years of grueling medical treatment doesn't end with remission."
Sandy twisted his wedding ring around on his finger. "And we're uh, we're already not in the best case scenario, treatment-wise." He felt a pang in his gut, saying that aloud, but there was a little bit of relief in there too, to hand that knowledge over to someone else.
"Dr. Penner mentioned they're looking at some adjustments to Seth's meds." Haddie gave him a sympathetic look. "It's very common to need to tweak some things to find what'll work, but it's understandably very nerve-wracking too."
Sandy nodded, forcing a weak smile, feeling obliged to acknowledge Haddie's attempt at reassurance.
It was just that nobody's reassurances ever felt very reassuring.
After all, weren't doctors reassuring until they couldn't be anymore, until they adopted a grave expression and proclaimed that they were sorry, but they'd exhausted all of their options?
"A lot of our kids describe similar experiences. With all of the treatments and tests running on the doctors' schedules, you have to get used to a real lack of control over your body, which can lead to feeling detached from yourself, like your body doesn't really belong to you anymore. That's not easy to recover from, feeling powerless and out of control for so long." Haddie paused. "And there can be a really deep distrust of your physical health. There can be a lot of lingering anxiety that the cancer will come back, or that something else will go wrong."
Sandy swallowed a lump in his throat.
"I know this is a lot to take in…" Haddie pushed a box of tissues across her desk towards him.
Sandy started to wave it away, then reconsidered, leaning forward to grab a few.
"No, no." He dabbed at his eyes with a tissue. "It's good. I-I want to know what we're in for, you know?"
"It's a trauma too, you know, for the parents. And the siblings. I've seen Seth's brother around a lot too."
Sandy felt a bloom of warmth in his chest at that. He didn't yet dare use the word with Ryan, but it felt good to hear it from someone else that Ryan was a part of their family, that he was Seth's brother.
"Cancer treatment can take place over so much time that it all starts to feel kind of normal," Haddie continued. "It's not the same as your old family routine, but it becomes its own routine. It can be hard to take a step back from that and realize how much everyone's been impacted." She leaned forward, expression earnest. "I hope you and your family are accessing support too. And if not, I'm happy to provide some referrals for you."
"Thank you; I appreciate that."
"But with Seth, I think it's okay to push, knowing what you know. The decision is still yours and your wife's, but I think he'll be glad to have someone he's talked to about things," Haddie said. "One hope is that we can help him identify some of these challenges now and not five years down the road after a number of confusing experiences or mood swings or bouts of depression and anxiety or post-traumatic symptoms. Does that make sense?"
"It does. I just…" Sandy paused, balling up a tissue in his fist. "It'll be a battle with him. I already know what he'll say."
"What's that?"
"Basically what we talked about-that it's obvious that all of this is horrible; what's the point of stating the obvious once a week, other than killing time?"
"Which, again, makes a certain amount of sense," Haddie said. "But almost every kid says that there's so much they can't really share with their family and friends, because they don't want to worry everybody but also, that it feels like nobody really gets it unless it's happened to them." She toyed with her pen. "So maybe it's stating the obvious, but it can also be really liberating to talk to someone who knows what it's like, to feel like you don't have to hold back because of all the things that other people can't really understand." She paused. "Or it helps me get my foot in the door with them anyway."
"Oh...you...?" Sandy hesitated, unsure of the etiquette.
"Hodgkin's Disease." Haddie's tone was matter-of-fact. "Diagnosed at 11, in full remission around 13. It's not like, a prerequisite for the job, but it helps."
"Buys you some street cred anyway?" Sandy suggested.
Haddie laughed. "Something like that."
"That part is hard, him feeling like he can't talk to me about all this." Sandy squeezed the tissue in his fist. "People say we're a lot alike and I see that, but we grew up in really different places. Still, it always felt like I could understand some of the things he was going through-feeling different, being too much or too Jewish for other people, especially around here."
Haddie's lips quirked into a soft smile at that.
Sandy wondered if she could relate, with a name like Hadassah Stein printed on her door.
"Even when I know he didn't think I could possibly get it, it still felt like I could understand how to help him or could at least see where things were going, you know, understand that adolescence might be rough but he would be okay. But this..." Sandy shook his head. "I have no idea what he needs, or where this is going." He felt his eyes well up again. "And he'll complain about the food or that I bought him the wrong toothbrush, but he doesn't talk to me about how he's doing, not really." He swallowed. "I don't know how to help him."
"That must be so hard as a parent, feeling so outside of what he's going through."
"Feeling so useless," Sandy amended softly. "He just...he must be so scared," he added, voice raspy, feeling the corner of his mouth twitch.
Seth had let him in a little bit at first, like that morning in the kitchen when he'd admitted that he was freaking out, when he'd welcomed Sandy's comfort. Since then though, the emotional walls had come up around him.
Even that afternoon, when Sandy had summoned the courage to talk with Seth about the treatment meeting, Seth had looked impassive and almost bored at the news that he wasn't getting any better, mumbling "Yeah, I didn't really figure it was working yet."
Sandy didn't know if that meant that Seth had some kind of weird gut feeling or if he felt doomed to never get better, and there was another question he didn't know how to ask, a question whose answer he wasn't sure he could handle.
"You seem really good at your job." Sandy looked up at Haddie with a sheepish smile. He gestured to his face, sure it was a splotchy mess. "You've gotten this outta me and it's been what-five minutes?"
Haddie chuckled a little, maybe just out of politeness.
"Thank you though; it's been helpful." Sandy cleared his throat. "I, uh, I think I'm about to make my son very mad at me, but I also think it's the right thing to do."
"Kind of sums up parenthood sometimes, huh?"
Sandy chuckled at that, definitely out of politeness, his mind already elsewhere, bracing himself for what was sure to be a difficult and tense conversation with a family member.
He'd had a few too many of those recently.
ooo
Summer opened the front door and immediately took a step back, cringing.
When Luke had said over the phone that it was bad, she hadn't quite envisioned the epic shiner that had taken up residence on half of Ryan's face, nor that Luke would be the only thing keeping him in a semi-upright position.
"Hey." She opened the door further to allow Luke and Ryan to shuffle inside.
"Hey S'ummer," Ryan slurred, eyes half-closed.
"Where do we want him?" Luke's voice was strained as he maneuvered Ryan into the house.
"There's a guest bedroom down the hall." Summer started to lead the way.
"Dude, awesome. We do not need stairs right now," Luke huffed. "Wait, do we need to be quiet?" he asked in a whisper.
"The step-monster's dead to the world." Summer rolled her eyes. "We could bring a marching band through here and we'd be fine." She led Luke to the guest bedroom, hovering over his shoulder as he carefully deposited a groaning and muttering Ryan onto one of the twin beds.
"I've gotta go man, but I'll see you later, okay?" Luke asked.
Ryan grunted and lifted a hand in response before letting it flop back down.
"And I'm just gonna walk Luke to the door," Summer announced. "I'll come back with an ice pack and a cup of coffee." She paused. "A really, really big cup of coffee."
Summer stepped out into the hall, leaving the door open a crack.
"Sorry to dump him on you like this," Luke said, pausing by the front door. "I would've taken him to my place but my mom's been on the warpath lately, and he didn't want to go home."
"What happened?" Summer asked.
Luke rubbed the back of his neck. "I uh, missed the start of it, but it sounds like Atwood kinda picked a fight with Paul and Kev and a few other guys."
"A few other guys?" Summer arched an eyebrow. "Like those two aren't enough?"
Luke shrugged. "I couldn't stop him from hitting the keg pretty hard too; that probably didn't help."
Summer's lips pressed into a frown.
Ryan wasn't a big partier, and it had been awhile since he'd gotten into a fight.
"Do you know what it was about?"
"I'm uh, not sure he really needed a reason." Luke looked down at the ground.
By Nordlund's telling, Ryan had somehow goaded a few of his equally inebriated teammates into talking about Seth, gradually wearing down their hesitancy and decorum around their cancer-stricken peer until Paul, previously hemming and hawing, had ultimately started a sentence with "I mean c'mon, man, you've gotta admit..."
Only Ryan didn't let him finish that sentence, nor did he seem to mind that it was four-on-one, only becoming four-on-two once Luke got back from the bathroom and jumped into the fray.
That didn't feel like a coincidence either, Ryan getting in a brawl in the two minutes or so that Luke had taken his eyes off him.
"I should've stopped it," Luke muttered.
Summer reached out and touched his arm. "Hey, there was probably nothing you could do." She shrugged. "Sometimes Chino has to Chino out, I guess."
"Yeah, I guess." Luke bit his lip, hesitating. "Not to like, violate the guy code or anything, but he's uh, he's kinda been saying stuff about Cohen. I figure that might be the beer talking."
"What kind of stuff?"
"I couldn't make sense of a lot of it, but he sounded like he was crying a little bit." Luke shoved his hands into the pouch of his soccer sweatshirt. "Like I said, he didn't want me to take him home. I don't think he wants to say the wrong thing about Cohen in front of his parents."
"I'm glad you brought him here." Summer smiled warmly at Luke. "You're a good friend, Luke."
Luke nodded, still looking downcast, not quite able to take in the compliment. "Hey, uh, how's Cohen doing?"
Summer hugged her arms around her waist. She never knew what to say to that question.
Part of her wished people wouldn't ask.
Part of her wished more people would ask.
She had a brief flash in her mind of her last visit, the amused little spark that was perpetually in Seth's eyes dulled over, his speech a little muddled and hard to follow.
Some days were better, but he hadn't been having a good day that day.
"He's okay," she said quietly, crossing her arms across her chest.
"Tell him I'll be by this week?" Luke asked.
"I'll do that." Summer smiled. "Thanks, Luke. For that and for..." Summer gestured with her head towards the guest room.
"Anytime. Call me if you need anything." Luke stepped onto the porch. "See ya, Summer."
ooo
Summer kept something of a vigil for Ryan, laying claim to the other twin bed in the guest room with a stack of old Vogues by her side.
She could've gone to her own room to sleep, but something in her didn't want to leave him alone and really didn't want him to wake up alone.
Maybe it was the nagging worry that Ryan had gone and gotten himself some kind of head injury, or maybe it was the thought of him crying in Luke's car and talking about Cohen. She felt a little like crying thinking about that.
"Mmm." Ryan started to stir. "Summer?" He squinted over at her.
"Chino; you're alive." Summer flipped her magazine closed. "Hang on." She scrambled up from the bed and out of the room, returning a minute later with a bag of frozen peas and a glass of water. She handed Ryan the peas, which he dutifully applied to his face, and set the glass of water down on the nightstand next to him.
"Thanks," Ryan mumbled, starting to push himself up to a sitting position before thinking better of it and flopping back down.
"I also made coffee, but it's probably cold by now," Summer explained. "And I have Advil or Tylenol. My dad's an Advil guy; the step-monster is strictly Tylenol or way stronger, so you've got some choices. I wouldn't recommend the way stronger stuff though; it'll have you smelling colors." She paused. "Or so I'm told."
Ryan smiled a little at that.
"Sorry," he said, wincing at the light from the bedside lamp. "I didn't mean to crash your house."
"No need to apologize, Chino. You get to crash my house anytime. We're family now; deal with it." Summer paused. "Plus, you were there for me when I was freaking out in Dr. Kim's office."
"You should've been freaking out," Ryan countered. "That kid took Seth's seat. I should've kicked his ass."
"You really should've," Summer agreed with a little laugh.
Ryan grabbed the Advil from the nightstand and propped himself up on his elbow to pop two into his mouth, dry swallowing them. He could feel Summer's eyes on him.
"You okay, Chino?" She asked softly.
"Chino again?" Ryan raised an eyebrow and lay back down on the pillow.
"Well we did decide it's your hood nickname, and it's pretty hood behavior, picking a fight with four massive soccer players," Summer explained.
"Luke told you what happened?"
"Yup." Summer bit her lip. "But do you want to tell me what happened?"
"Not really anything to tell," Ryan said. "Those guys are dicks."
"And they're always dicks," Summer pointed out. "So as Cohen would say, why is this night different from all other nights?"
Ryan didn't say anything.
"C'mon, Atwood. I know you're holding out on me. What's going on?"
Ryan closed his eyes, considering what he could even say to that.
"I'm sorry," was what he went with. "I shouldn't have let Luke bring me here."
"It didn't seem like you were in much of a position to argue," Summer responded. "And I'm probably due for this anyway."
"What do you mean?" One of Ryan's eyes popped open, and he studied Summer curiously.
Summer bit her lip. "Awhile ago, before I started dating Cohen, there was this one night when Coop got really wasted and I just kinda dumped her on her lawn and drove off." She hugged her arms around her midsection. "I was in the car and everyone was laughing and they wanted to go back to the party and it was like my brain just shut off. I went along with it and I went back and smoked a joint on the beach like I hadn't just ditched my best friend who might've had, like, alcohol poisoning." Summer picked at a loose thread on the comforter. "I really don't like who I was then," she added.
There was a long beat of quiet.
"I haven't always liked who I've been either," Ryan confided. "And I didn't really know you then, but I like who you are now," he added. "For, you know, whatever that's worth."
"Thanks, Atwood," Summer said softly. "It means a lot. You're good people." She sniffed. "Cohen, he...at his grandfather's party, he told me all the reasons he liked me, even though I treated him like dirt for years. He had all these stories about how he saw me like, being nice to a squirrel one time and how I was nervous reading a sappy poem out loud in the third grade. And even though I was horrible then, it was like he somehow got it in his head that I had, like, ...I dunno..." Summer trailed off.
"Potential?" Ryan offered. He propped his pillow up against the headboard and maneuvered onto his side so he could see Summer better.
"Yeah," Summer agreed. "Potential, like he knew I was different or something, even though I was acting just as shallow and awful and as mean to him as everyone else." Summer swallowed, her eyes getting watery. "I figured he liked me for the reasons the other boys did, you know? And when he said all that, it really freaked me out. I didn't really think I was worth all that."
"He makes you feel that way though," Ryan guessed. "Worth all that?"
He knew something of what that was like.
"Yeah." Summer smiled, blinking away tears.
"To be fair, he probably also likes you for all the reasons the other boys do too." Ryan's mouth twitched into a mischievous half-smile.
Summer laughed, grabbing one of the pillows off the bed and chucking it at Ryan, who smacked it away.
"God, Cohen's right; it's so weird when you try to be funny." Summer's shoulders shook, still laughing. "All that stone-faced brooding, and then you come out with stuff like that." She paused. "But look at me. You're coming here with your freak out, and I'm unloading more on you."
"I wasn't freaking out," Ryan argued. "I was just drunk. Maybe still a little drunk, to be honest." He shrugged. "And anyway, I prefer it this way, listening."
"I know," Summer said firmly, "but that doesn't mean it's a good thing, you doing all the listening and never the talking." She gave him a gently chastising look. "Plus, it's starting to feel unfair, me telling you everything and you giving me nothing in return."
Ryan chewed the inside of his cheek, feeling the spotlight on him yet again, the pressure to talk yet again, but it felt a little like it did with Seth sometimes, not this pushing for him to turn himself inside out for someone else's gratification, but Summer wanting to know him, Summer wanting him to be okay and being smart enough to recognize that he wasn't.
He missed Theresa all of the sudden, the way she knew how to read him, the way she called him on his shit.
"Sandy and Kirsten..." Ryan swallowed. "They're uh, they're kinda fighting, I think." He looked down at his free hand, the one not clutching a bag of frozen peas. He ran his eyes over his torn-up bloody knuckles.
Whatever anyone else said, however they tried to argue with him, talking never led to the kind of catharsis that punching and getting punched did.
"I don't know if they're even really talking right now, like when I'm not around," he continued. "In the beginning, when Seth first..." he winced, adjusting the bag of peas on his eye. "It felt like they were solid, like they were holding each other up and then...I dunno. Now it's like they're falling apart."
Summer nodded, taking that in.
"It's gotta be hard, being so solid all the time," she said.
Ryan's brow furrowed. "How do you mean?"
"I know they're like, Newport's only model of a healthy marriage, but that's gotta be a lot to maintain, ya know? They probably need to fight every now and then," Summer said. "I'm sure they want to hold each other up and all, but they're probably also so stressed that they've gotta take it out on each other sometimes too."
Ryan mulled that over.
"I mean, my parents never fought, and then my mom just up and left one day," Summer added.
Ryan was quiet. He didn't know much about Summer's mother, other than that she wasn't in the picture and that Seth had described it as a sensitive subject, the kind of thing he wouldn't bring up unless Summer brought it up first.
He knew about parental open wounds.
He'd long since given up on Frank, but there were still moments that he missed his mom, and though he tried to keep his physical and emotional distance-tried to think of her as Dawn and not Mom-he couldn't quite get himself there. He wasn't sure he could ever fully write her off, no matter how many times she'd hurt him.
Even that night, as Luke was trying to think of where to bring him to sleep it off, there was a moment when Ryan imagined himself in his living room in Chino, curled up on the couch, breathing in the stale smoke smell lingering on the cushions and poking his little finger into the tiny cigarette burn holes in the fabric, absently watching whatever was on tv as his mom carded her fingers through her hair and gently chasisted him for drinking too much, though she'd do it in a way that let him know that she wasn't really mad, that she liked having the opportunity to baby him for the night.
"I-I'm sorry that happened, with your mom," Ryan said softly.
"It's been awhile," Summer said with a shrug.. "I just, I couldn't believe they'd split up when I'd never even seen them be mad at each other." She absently grabbed the other pillow from the bed, hugging it to her chest. "My guidance counselor made me come talk to her about it and like, the one useful thing she said is that sometimes couples don't have much conflict because they don't care enough about each other to try to fix anything."
Ryan's brow wrinkled as he turned that over in his mind.
Maybe it had been a little kid fantasy, the idea that the Cohens were above all of what he'd grown up with, above turning on each other when things were stressful or hard. Maybe they couldn't always hold hands while they mopped up Seth's vomit.
"They've got a lot going on right now, and they probably just need some time to work things out," Summer added.
"That...makes sense," Ryan said slowly.
"Okay, so now that we've worked out what's going on with the Cohens, tell me what's up with you," Summer ordered, giving him a gently pointed look.
"I'm okay," Ryan said with a shrug. "I mean, as long as they're okay, I'm okay."
Summer gave him a look. "C'mon Atwood. Quit holding out on me."
Ryan bit back a scowl. "I'm not holding out on you," he muttered. "I really don't know what everybody wants me to say."
He never knew what anyone wanted him to say.
It was obviously horrible that Seth was sick and that Sandy and Kirsten were scared and exhausted and fighting. It was obviously terrifying that Seth could die.
He was obviously terrified that Seth could die.
There was no point and no relief in saying any of that.
The only relief he'd gotten that night was ramming his fist into Paul's face.
"I just know it has to be hard, everything with Cohen." Summer's voice trembled slightly.
Ryan felt his knee-jerk irritation soften a little.
"You two don't have, like, a normal boy friendship," Summer went on. "You're more like girls."
Ryan snorted, his eyebrows shooting up.
Summer rolled her eyes.
"You know what I mean," she said.
"I really don't," Ryan replied.
"Okay, whatever. It's just..." Summer tucked a lock of dark hair behind her hair. "When I've hung out with other guys, they just like, dump on each other to impress girls. Or like how all of Luke's friends ditched him when his dad turned out to be gay. You and Cohen aren't like that. You guys, like, talk about your feelings and your relationships and you clearly care about each other or whatever."
Summer was quiet for a few minutes, clearly hoping that Ryan would say something. Instead, he adjusted the bag of slowly thawing peas on his one eye and stared off into space with the other.
"I hear you saying you're okay," Summer said, "but if you ever find yourself not okay, you know where to find me, right Atwood?"
"Right," Ryan agreed, his eyes darting over to meet Summer's for just a second before he looked away again.