Summer's Last Kiss (The O.C./Last Kiss, Summer POV, PG-13)
Title: Summer's Last Kiss
Fandom: The O.C./Last Kiss Crossover of sorts. Part one (or rather, the first one posted) of a series of O.C. crossovers.
Characters/Pairing: Summer as Kim!! Summer/Michael, past Summer/Seth, and some Summer/Ryan... in Summer's mind.
Rating: PG-13, probably. A few sex references and some swearing.
Spoilers: Some vague for Last Kiss. The O.C. through "The End's Not Near, It's Here."
Word Count: 3,898
Summary: Summer has always had a lot of problems. This is the first time that running away like a little bitch has been one of them.
a/n: I was not exactly a fan of The Last Kiss (ZACH BRAFF IS A DOUCHE,) but Kim reminded me of Summer, and so the idea for this fic was born.
It's a possible au for the very end of the O.C., depending on what you decide happens at the end.
Disclaimer: Characters are not mine, for which I am sad, because hello, they are awesome. Except uh, everyone from the Last Kiss.
Summer doesn’t know why she does it. Well, okay, she does. Sort of. It’s not like the thing you plan out, or whatever, but when she goes away to school finally, finally, finally after three years on the road with G.E.O.R.G.E., and Seth and her have broken up for like, the twenty seventh time since she left, and her Dad calls to tell her that yes, he’s back with the step-monster, and Ryan, Ryan, not Seth calls her to tell her in a quiet voice that Pancakes is dead, something in her snaps and on her way to Wisconsin or Minnesota or wherever she finally decided on going (whatever. She picked somewhere cold where Cohen would never even think about looking for her on their twenty-third breakup, and promptly forgot about her acceptance there until their twenty-sixth breakup, and never mentioned it to him in the meantime. They‘ve both got secrets.) she writes her roommate and says “well, my name is Summer, but everyone calls me Kim.”
Funny she picks her mom’s name when she’s running away like a little bitch.
She kind of gets it during the first year. It’s weird, being Kim, but it’s also freeing. She doesn’t have to worry about saving the environment anymore, because no one knows that Kim cares. No one knows about Marissa, or Ryan, or Seth. They all know about Taylor, but it’s kind of hard to keep her a secret, especially when she’s crashed out on Summer’s dorm bed every three months after having her heart broken by another Frenchman. At least she’s not dating Ryan anymore, because Taylor is horrible at keeping secrets. Then, Summer thinks, she would have to be calling Ryan constantly to make sure he did not spill her whereabouts to Seth. Plus, Summer hated calling Ryan to ask a favor. He always got this tone in his voice, like he was teasing her, but at the same time was cataloging everything she’d ever asked for and was going to demand repayment in a mutually satisfying manner that would probably be really inappropriate considering she was dating his foster-brother and he’d dated her two best friends, but she still kind of wished they could.
At least he’d never slept with Holly. Small favors.
But that still doesn’t change the fact that Coop would totally come back from the dead and kick her ass if she so much as even blinked at Ryan. She’s just glad that ghosts aren’t mind readers.
She dreams of him, of them, with alarming frequency that year. She hasn’t really thought of Ryan in a sexual nature since before he was Atwood, back when he was simply, “ew, Chino?” She used to think about him, late at night, one hand in her panties and one on her breasts. But then Coop, stupid Coop, went and stole him out from under her despite all her “What? No. I don’t like him. And anyway, I have Luke.”s.
Summer totally gets that they were like, star-crossed or whatever, and some things are just meant to be, but that just wasn’t Ryan and Marissa. Ryan was a very nice boy, who fell in love with girls who needed help solving their problems.
Summer has always had a lot of problems.
The primary of which, during the summer marking the twenty-eighth breakup of Seth and Summer, is the alarming frequency of Atwood appearing in her thoughts.
Coop was just always more vocal about her problems.
So Summer gets it, she totally does. It’s freeing, being Kim, who doesn’t have to deal with this stuff on a day to day basis. For all anyone here knows, Kim has had a perfectly normal childhood, with no boyfriend-stealing train wreck best friends and whiny emo comic-book loving boyfriends who only want what they can’t have and run away like little bitches and crushes on totally, wholly, way off limits hot hot hot brooding bad boys who are really not all that bad, and in fact are training to be architects. None of that.
And she gets to play the flute here, which no one makes fun of her for. She had to give that shit up when she was ten back home, or risk being like Cohen. And sure, it was really cute how he remembered that she fed that squirrel at lunch everyday, but like, he had no friends. Not until Ryan. Of course, now that she thinks about it, it probably has more to do with him being a ginormous tool than the fact that he didn’t conform to society’s standards, but whatever. Summer did what she had to do to survive in Orange County.
Kim didn’t have to do any of that. Kim didn’t have to lie when she said her first kiss was at 16 to the boy she lost her virginity to five months later. Who also happened to be the sort of brother of the dude who she just could not stop thinking about.
She smothers her face with a pillow and hopes to god her brain will just shut up.
When Annabelle suggests they all go crash her cousin’s wedding, Summer is so in. So in. They all know the barebones of Kim’s torrid story- on again, off again with her high school boyfriend, with right now being very off again- and they all think that this is an excellent time for Kim to get back on the horse. Find some one new, who is not a whiny emo boy who spends all his time with his other high school girlfriend. Someone more like this Ryan dude Kim keeps talking about. Someone, who, despite Summer’s protests, they insist sounds perfect for her.
So when they tell her to go talk to the random dude at the table over there, she says fine. Whatever. Talking to some Jewish boy who is like, 30, is not the thing that will get her over Cohen, but at least they will all shut up about Ryan.
Summer always afraid that Coop will come back from the dead if this vein of conversation continues. She was always kind of a selfish bitch, and the last thing Summer needs right now is her dead best friend haunting her. Being haunted by the living Seth and his nightly messages on her voice mail is bad enough, but throw a dead girl in the mix? Ew. Gross. Summer does not like to like to think about dead stuff. Even her serious environmentalist phase couldn’t fix that one.
She’s thinking in this vein as she walks over. She doesn’t even like, know, or care. She just wants to get a drink, and talk to him long enough to make her friends forget that she ever even said a word about Ryan Atwood. Because if Seth finds out, he will freak. If Taylor finds out, she will freak.
And if Ryan finds out? Well, Summer is pretty sure that he would freak too. But quietly. And broodingly.
And it’s just that Summer doesn’t want to make Ryan unhappy, again. Because he is happy at Berkeley. And giving him the choice, giving him the option all the complications getting involved with her would bring, she’s not entirely sure he would do the smart thing and just back the hell away from the crazy lady.
That scares her. Like, a lot.
So she smiles at this guy, and flirts, and is generally more 15 year old Summer than she’s been in years.
And then Seth calls. Like, in the middle of it. And something in her snaps again, and she knows its awkward, but she doesn’t care anymore when she says, “Could you wait? I’ll be right back.”
Hearing his voice, having him say “I’m sorry, I can’t” yet again, just makes her mad. He’s always running off like a whiny little bitch, only this time, he’s not even sailing off into the sunset. He’s just being Cohen. Again. So she stumbles up into the tree house where Michael has stashed himself and after confirming he has a girlfriend (They all do) she starts like, rambling about crises. It’s actually a really good theory she comes up with on the fly. Too bad people never see past the cute face and actually listen to what she’s saying.
Although Michael could just be distracted by the fact that she just totally grabbed his hand and put it right above her boob. Boys. It gets them every time.
When he says “it’s like a permanent crisis, it’s like there’s no more surprises,” she covers up her emotions with a laugh and “that is so boring.” Because how dare this dude, this Cohen replacement be exactly like Cohen?
And then he says he’s an architect and it’s game over, Summer Roberts. She can’t escape them even when she tries.
She lies through her teeth about wanting to be a flautist after she graduates. Truth is, she doesn’t know what she wants. She just knows that right now, she wants more than Seth, more than Ryan. She wants them both, but not all the drama that comes along with them. Michael is looking more and more like the perfect solution with every word that comes out of his mouth. And then he helps her up. So she asks him to call her. Ryan would call her. And when there’s no pen, she tells him where she’ll be. Ryan would find her. And when she kisses him on the cheek as she leaves, he makes this goofy smile, exactly like Seth.
Perfect. Or something.
She dreams about Ryan again that night.
When it takes Michael two weeks to come and find her, her adoration has cooled. Obviously he is not the perfect hybrid of the two. Right now he is decidedly leaning towards dangerous Seth during Zach levels of asshattery. But that doesn’t mean she should be rude. It’s not like she can really do anything about Ryan, and Cohen?
Is still totally pissing her off.
So when he offers her a ride, she says yes, even though it is literally right down the street. Whatever. Obsessing about someone new has got to be better than obsessing about the same two boys that she has spent all her time thinking about since before Sophomore year. And it feels so good just to be able to laugh with someone and joke around like she used to. It hasn’t always been fun, dating Seth. When he left her, that first time, and ran off like a little bitch, she started dating Zach.
There was nothing wrong with dating Zach, it’s just, that’s when things started to change. Instead of joking about margaritas with Coop and maybe having a couple at parties, Coop was slinging drinks back 24/7. And Zach was so serious all the time. She couldn’t make jokes about wearing hot dresses to his funeral with him. It just- it got depressing with him, to tell the truth. That’s pretty much why she ended it. Not because she really cared one way or the other about Cohen, it’s just, being with Cohen was way less depressing. The Cohens always had bagels. She was pretty sure that Zach’s family didn’t eat carbs. Like, ever. No wonder they were always cranky.
He calls her to set up their plans for that weekend while Taylor is there. She’s packing, getting ready to go back to France for yet another semester. She’s testing out curly hair. Summer doesn’t think it suits her, but maybe it’s what all the French women are doing. Who knows. Summer has kind of always thought that French women weren’t really to be trusted with style, because ew. Who doesn’t shave their armpits? At least Taylor hasn’t picked up that bad habit yet.
She can’t stop laughing after she gets off the phone. “Taylor, you’re so bad.”
“I just don’t even know what you see in this guy, Summer. He does not really sound like the guy you want to be getting over Seth with for good.”
Summer knows that. She just can’t exactly admit that to Taylor without mentioning that the guy she really wants to be getting over Seth with for good happens to be Taylor’s ex-boyfriend. Who, for all she knows, could still be mooning over Taylor and dead Marissa in California right now.
But then it rains. She can’t help but laugh at the rain. Maybe she was wrong about Michael. Maybe he is the right one to be getting over Cohen with. Making another romantic memory with the rain can’t hurt, right?
She flirts a little more.
She broke up with Seth once in the rain. It hardly ever rained in Southern California, obviously, so Summer thinks that the rain makes people go a little crazy. They’d started arguing about Ryan and Taylor’s latest fight, which somehow devolved into a sweeping criticism of everything in their past, from dating Zach to Marissa’s death. She stood, hands on her hips, and went, “God. Coop was right about you, thinking you’re too good for everyone.” and then went inside her house and locked the door.
She dried herself off with a faded purple towel, and didn’t leave her room for two days. Julie and Kaitlin brought supplies of food to her room, but it was Ryan who convinced her to come out. She’d been watching reruns of the Valley and eying Marissa’s old flask for the past 48 hours, with the occasional sip of whatever liquor Coop had secreted in there. Her clothes still felt kind of damp, but that had to be her imagination, right?
Summer misses her mother, she misses her best friend, she wants her dad here, and she still hates Cohen. When Ryan says, “Seth doesn’t always know how to let the past go,” she agrees, and then realizes that she’d better start letting the past go.
So she gets back together with Cohen for the 16th time.
When she dances with Michael at the party, it’s like she’s at one of Holly’s ragers, fifteen again. She’s got a few more moves now though, and doesn’t require a plastic cup full of liquor to be dancing like a ho. She just thinks about herself at barely sixteen, and dances the way she wishes she could’ve danced with Ryan back then- back when he was just some random new hot guy, before he was Chino, and long before he was Ryan. And then she lets the music take her over, one with the beat, and no more thinking, just dancing.
And then he’s tugging her hand, leading her outside and stumbling backwards until he’s pressed up against his Toyota and his hands are on her hips, pulling her tight against him. She likes this time, when kissing against car doors and groping under street lights is a frequent occurrence, expected almost. It’s the time before the relationship is really underway, before complacency sets in, but when the chemistry boils up and nothing, not even being in a public place can stop the magnetic pull.
Of course he has to go and say she makes him feel ten years younger. How old does he think she is, anyway? Summer’s 24. It’s not like a five year age gap is some insurmountable thing at this point. Just look at Mr. and Mrs. Cohen. They’re still together, even though Mr. Cohen was way older. And ew? Going out with a younger dude? One that can’t legally drink? That’s pretty gross, if you ask Summer. Well, that, and she has no desire to follow in Julie Cooper’s footsteps with the making out with jailbait business. Ew. She tries to laugh it off, but god, this guy is more Cohen like by the minute. She laughs it off, but the damage is done.
Summer totally isn’t kidding when she says she’s already lost her mind. And then he kisses her, like he means it.
Only it turns out he doesn’t mean it. And god. She doesn’t get it. Why does she have this inability to pick the dudes that will be nice to her? She always thinks she has a nice dude picked out, one that will treat her right, and then all of a sudden, asshattery.
So why is she trying so hard with this one? She even gives him the best pep talk ever. The one she really wishes she believed, because if she did believe that relationships either worked or they didn’t, she wouldn’t be on her twenty seventh or twenty ninth or god knows what number breakup with Cohen. She wouldn’t still be thinking about her dead best friend’s and then her new best friend’s ex-boyfriend. But this one, she wants to work. She wants it to happen so bad. She wants to forget him, forget both of them, forget California even exists. Summer is taking her turn running away like a little bitch, and goddamn, if she has decided her rebound will happen, it will happen. She just wishes she’d chosen her rebound a little better.
Then again, she’s never thought it was worth having if she could just snap her fingers and have it like that. Unlike most spoiled rich girls, Summer thinks that things worth having are worth working for. It just figures that the only thing that would make her forget Cohen and Atwood is some hybrid of the two who won’t sleep with her even though she is totally throwing herself at him. Whatever. She can make a graceful exit.
Well. Sort of.
It’s when she keeps thinking about it and replaying it in her mind, and analyzing it from every possible angle that she realizes- yeah. Atwood. She is pretty much completely in love with her dead best friend’s ex-boyfriend and it isn’t going away no matter how many times she gets back together with Seth, or how many other guys she sleeps with. Somewhere along the line, she fell in love with Chino, and now the only thing stopping her from calling him and telling him everything is well- everything. She doesn’t want to be that girl, the one that causes him problems. Yes, he’s really good at putting up with problems, but hasn’t his life sucked enough? His real parents totally sucked. Not that hers are like, awesome or anything, but like, abusive and alcoholic? Convicts? At least when her mom ran off and her stepmother was addicted to anything her doctor would prescribe, Summer still had a roof over her head, and her maid’s nephew was the only one in prison.
And no one was trying to kick her out of her own house. God.
Summer really, really likes Ryan, so she doesn’t want to fuck up his life anymore than it already has been. But she can’t go back to Cohen, yet again. Not yet.
So she does the next best thing, and calls Michael, mentally steeling herself for pouring out the whole thing. Every last word of the Cohen/Atwood/Roberts sordid affair. It’s when she thinks about it really hard, it makes her head hurt, and she wishes that Seth had never started liking her in the first place. If only he’d fixated on Coop, none of this would have ever happened. Summer could’ve had a normal life, with normal relationships, and she wouldn’t have to call up a guy with a girlfriend who he may or may not have dumped for her in order to tell him, “yeah, I know I was throwing myself at you earlier, but it’s only because I really, really want to sleep with my ex-boyfriend’s surrogate brother who also happens to be the ex-boyfriend of my dead best friend and my new best friend who replaced the dead one.” She’s not lying when she says she really needs to talk to him. Someone has to give her some perspective, someone who isn’t involved in the whole thing, and she thinks Michael is the one to do it. He like, has to be.
Summer doesn’t have anyone else.
And then he shows up at her door, and she freezes. What is she thinking? She can’t like Atwood. It’s just impossible. So she does the thing she always does when someone gets too close to finding out the truth about her- makes them want her.
A little breathy “I promised I wouldn’t touch you,” some soulful gazing into her eyes, and she’s good. He’s kissing her like he’s starving. And maybe, maybe this will work. Maybe she doesn’t need to remember California. Maybe she can just forget about everything and be Kim with him for the rest of her life. Maybe if she wants it bad enough, she can forget the truth about herself. She thinks she means it when she says “I don’t care about tomorrow or anything else.” She’ll say anything to stop obsessing about the past. She’ll do anything to move on.
He says he’ll call.
She knows he won’t.
She calls him anyway as she’s making a mix for him. She knows it’s pathetic, and not Summer at all, but whatever. Kim’s allowed to be pathetic. She’s had like, no experience. And Summer? Kind of stopped caring about being pathetic around the second breakup with Cohen.
Summer waits a couple of days and then goes to see him at his work. She’s still got a little Newport in her, if the adorable top that coordinates with the wrapping paper on her mix cd is any indication. She knows she’s being a little freaky, but whatever. Cohen’s not the only one who can make gestures. At least she’s not pulling this dude on to a coffee cart. She learns from her mistakes. Although somewhere along the way, she’s picked up Cohen’s horrible babbling habit and taste in music. Ew. Summer is going to have to fix that.
And… Ew. Having a baby? What? Yeah, no shit you’re an asshole, fake Seth. She really can’t believe what she’s hearing. This crap again. She left Newport, she left Seth because of this bullshit, and here it is again. Another bitch on a boat, running away.
It wasn’t about her. It’s never about her. That’s what they all say.
If this can happen to Kim as well as Summer, then what’s the point? Kim was supposed to be someone that this didn’t happen to, and here it is, all over again, just with a less cute Seth. Another Anna, another Ryan, another reason why she isn’t good enough, why her vagina sends men running.
Summer’s going to need more therapy after this.
Might as well call up Atwood and make it a two for one deal, right? Summer’s totally a thifty girl. Money and energy conscious, for sure. She takes a steady breath. Leaves Michael’s work and walks over to the park. It’s getting colder, and Summer misses California.
She takes another breath and dials.
“Atwood?”
“Summer. What’s up?”
“I’m coming home. I’ve got something to tell you. Wait for me, okay?”
“Mail me your info. I’ll pick you up.”
“Thanks Ryan.”
And with that, Summer Roberts is ready. Time to stop running away like a little bitch. She books the next flight into San Francisco and packs her bags. What’s the point in denying it anymore? Everyone who isn’t Ryan just turns out to be Cohen, and Summer is done with bitches on boats.
For good this time.
Fandom: The O.C./Last Kiss Crossover of sorts. Part one (or rather, the first one posted) of a series of O.C. crossovers.
Characters/Pairing: Summer as Kim!! Summer/Michael, past Summer/Seth, and some Summer/Ryan... in Summer's mind.
Rating: PG-13, probably. A few sex references and some swearing.
Spoilers: Some vague for Last Kiss. The O.C. through "The End's Not Near, It's Here."
Word Count: 3,898
Summary: Summer has always had a lot of problems. This is the first time that running away like a little bitch has been one of them.
a/n: I was not exactly a fan of The Last Kiss (ZACH BRAFF IS A DOUCHE,) but Kim reminded me of Summer, and so the idea for this fic was born.
It's a possible au for the very end of the O.C., depending on what you decide happens at the end.
Disclaimer: Characters are not mine, for which I am sad, because hello, they are awesome. Except uh, everyone from the Last Kiss.
Summer doesn’t know why she does it. Well, okay, she does. Sort of. It’s not like the thing you plan out, or whatever, but when she goes away to school finally, finally, finally after three years on the road with G.E.O.R.G.E., and Seth and her have broken up for like, the twenty seventh time since she left, and her Dad calls to tell her that yes, he’s back with the step-monster, and Ryan, Ryan, not Seth calls her to tell her in a quiet voice that Pancakes is dead, something in her snaps and on her way to Wisconsin or Minnesota or wherever she finally decided on going (whatever. She picked somewhere cold where Cohen would never even think about looking for her on their twenty-third breakup, and promptly forgot about her acceptance there until their twenty-sixth breakup, and never mentioned it to him in the meantime. They‘ve both got secrets.) she writes her roommate and says “well, my name is Summer, but everyone calls me Kim.”
Funny she picks her mom’s name when she’s running away like a little bitch.
She kind of gets it during the first year. It’s weird, being Kim, but it’s also freeing. She doesn’t have to worry about saving the environment anymore, because no one knows that Kim cares. No one knows about Marissa, or Ryan, or Seth. They all know about Taylor, but it’s kind of hard to keep her a secret, especially when she’s crashed out on Summer’s dorm bed every three months after having her heart broken by another Frenchman. At least she’s not dating Ryan anymore, because Taylor is horrible at keeping secrets. Then, Summer thinks, she would have to be calling Ryan constantly to make sure he did not spill her whereabouts to Seth. Plus, Summer hated calling Ryan to ask a favor. He always got this tone in his voice, like he was teasing her, but at the same time was cataloging everything she’d ever asked for and was going to demand repayment in a mutually satisfying manner that would probably be really inappropriate considering she was dating his foster-brother and he’d dated her two best friends, but she still kind of wished they could.
At least he’d never slept with Holly. Small favors.
But that still doesn’t change the fact that Coop would totally come back from the dead and kick her ass if she so much as even blinked at Ryan. She’s just glad that ghosts aren’t mind readers.
She dreams of him, of them, with alarming frequency that year. She hasn’t really thought of Ryan in a sexual nature since before he was Atwood, back when he was simply, “ew, Chino?” She used to think about him, late at night, one hand in her panties and one on her breasts. But then Coop, stupid Coop, went and stole him out from under her despite all her “What? No. I don’t like him. And anyway, I have Luke.”s.
Summer totally gets that they were like, star-crossed or whatever, and some things are just meant to be, but that just wasn’t Ryan and Marissa. Ryan was a very nice boy, who fell in love with girls who needed help solving their problems.
Summer has always had a lot of problems.
The primary of which, during the summer marking the twenty-eighth breakup of Seth and Summer, is the alarming frequency of Atwood appearing in her thoughts.
Coop was just always more vocal about her problems.
So Summer gets it, she totally does. It’s freeing, being Kim, who doesn’t have to deal with this stuff on a day to day basis. For all anyone here knows, Kim has had a perfectly normal childhood, with no boyfriend-stealing train wreck best friends and whiny emo comic-book loving boyfriends who only want what they can’t have and run away like little bitches and crushes on totally, wholly, way off limits hot hot hot brooding bad boys who are really not all that bad, and in fact are training to be architects. None of that.
And she gets to play the flute here, which no one makes fun of her for. She had to give that shit up when she was ten back home, or risk being like Cohen. And sure, it was really cute how he remembered that she fed that squirrel at lunch everyday, but like, he had no friends. Not until Ryan. Of course, now that she thinks about it, it probably has more to do with him being a ginormous tool than the fact that he didn’t conform to society’s standards, but whatever. Summer did what she had to do to survive in Orange County.
Kim didn’t have to do any of that. Kim didn’t have to lie when she said her first kiss was at 16 to the boy she lost her virginity to five months later. Who also happened to be the sort of brother of the dude who she just could not stop thinking about.
She smothers her face with a pillow and hopes to god her brain will just shut up.
When Annabelle suggests they all go crash her cousin’s wedding, Summer is so in. So in. They all know the barebones of Kim’s torrid story- on again, off again with her high school boyfriend, with right now being very off again- and they all think that this is an excellent time for Kim to get back on the horse. Find some one new, who is not a whiny emo boy who spends all his time with his other high school girlfriend. Someone more like this Ryan dude Kim keeps talking about. Someone, who, despite Summer’s protests, they insist sounds perfect for her.
So when they tell her to go talk to the random dude at the table over there, she says fine. Whatever. Talking to some Jewish boy who is like, 30, is not the thing that will get her over Cohen, but at least they will all shut up about Ryan.
Summer always afraid that Coop will come back from the dead if this vein of conversation continues. She was always kind of a selfish bitch, and the last thing Summer needs right now is her dead best friend haunting her. Being haunted by the living Seth and his nightly messages on her voice mail is bad enough, but throw a dead girl in the mix? Ew. Gross. Summer does not like to like to think about dead stuff. Even her serious environmentalist phase couldn’t fix that one.
She’s thinking in this vein as she walks over. She doesn’t even like, know, or care. She just wants to get a drink, and talk to him long enough to make her friends forget that she ever even said a word about Ryan Atwood. Because if Seth finds out, he will freak. If Taylor finds out, she will freak.
And if Ryan finds out? Well, Summer is pretty sure that he would freak too. But quietly. And broodingly.
And it’s just that Summer doesn’t want to make Ryan unhappy, again. Because he is happy at Berkeley. And giving him the choice, giving him the option all the complications getting involved with her would bring, she’s not entirely sure he would do the smart thing and just back the hell away from the crazy lady.
That scares her. Like, a lot.
So she smiles at this guy, and flirts, and is generally more 15 year old Summer than she’s been in years.
And then Seth calls. Like, in the middle of it. And something in her snaps again, and she knows its awkward, but she doesn’t care anymore when she says, “Could you wait? I’ll be right back.”
Hearing his voice, having him say “I’m sorry, I can’t” yet again, just makes her mad. He’s always running off like a whiny little bitch, only this time, he’s not even sailing off into the sunset. He’s just being Cohen. Again. So she stumbles up into the tree house where Michael has stashed himself and after confirming he has a girlfriend (They all do) she starts like, rambling about crises. It’s actually a really good theory she comes up with on the fly. Too bad people never see past the cute face and actually listen to what she’s saying.
Although Michael could just be distracted by the fact that she just totally grabbed his hand and put it right above her boob. Boys. It gets them every time.
When he says “it’s like a permanent crisis, it’s like there’s no more surprises,” she covers up her emotions with a laugh and “that is so boring.” Because how dare this dude, this Cohen replacement be exactly like Cohen?
And then he says he’s an architect and it’s game over, Summer Roberts. She can’t escape them even when she tries.
She lies through her teeth about wanting to be a flautist after she graduates. Truth is, she doesn’t know what she wants. She just knows that right now, she wants more than Seth, more than Ryan. She wants them both, but not all the drama that comes along with them. Michael is looking more and more like the perfect solution with every word that comes out of his mouth. And then he helps her up. So she asks him to call her. Ryan would call her. And when there’s no pen, she tells him where she’ll be. Ryan would find her. And when she kisses him on the cheek as she leaves, he makes this goofy smile, exactly like Seth.
Perfect. Or something.
She dreams about Ryan again that night.
When it takes Michael two weeks to come and find her, her adoration has cooled. Obviously he is not the perfect hybrid of the two. Right now he is decidedly leaning towards dangerous Seth during Zach levels of asshattery. But that doesn’t mean she should be rude. It’s not like she can really do anything about Ryan, and Cohen?
Is still totally pissing her off.
So when he offers her a ride, she says yes, even though it is literally right down the street. Whatever. Obsessing about someone new has got to be better than obsessing about the same two boys that she has spent all her time thinking about since before Sophomore year. And it feels so good just to be able to laugh with someone and joke around like she used to. It hasn’t always been fun, dating Seth. When he left her, that first time, and ran off like a little bitch, she started dating Zach.
There was nothing wrong with dating Zach, it’s just, that’s when things started to change. Instead of joking about margaritas with Coop and maybe having a couple at parties, Coop was slinging drinks back 24/7. And Zach was so serious all the time. She couldn’t make jokes about wearing hot dresses to his funeral with him. It just- it got depressing with him, to tell the truth. That’s pretty much why she ended it. Not because she really cared one way or the other about Cohen, it’s just, being with Cohen was way less depressing. The Cohens always had bagels. She was pretty sure that Zach’s family didn’t eat carbs. Like, ever. No wonder they were always cranky.
He calls her to set up their plans for that weekend while Taylor is there. She’s packing, getting ready to go back to France for yet another semester. She’s testing out curly hair. Summer doesn’t think it suits her, but maybe it’s what all the French women are doing. Who knows. Summer has kind of always thought that French women weren’t really to be trusted with style, because ew. Who doesn’t shave their armpits? At least Taylor hasn’t picked up that bad habit yet.
She can’t stop laughing after she gets off the phone. “Taylor, you’re so bad.”
“I just don’t even know what you see in this guy, Summer. He does not really sound like the guy you want to be getting over Seth with for good.”
Summer knows that. She just can’t exactly admit that to Taylor without mentioning that the guy she really wants to be getting over Seth with for good happens to be Taylor’s ex-boyfriend. Who, for all she knows, could still be mooning over Taylor and dead Marissa in California right now.
But then it rains. She can’t help but laugh at the rain. Maybe she was wrong about Michael. Maybe he is the right one to be getting over Cohen with. Making another romantic memory with the rain can’t hurt, right?
She flirts a little more.
She broke up with Seth once in the rain. It hardly ever rained in Southern California, obviously, so Summer thinks that the rain makes people go a little crazy. They’d started arguing about Ryan and Taylor’s latest fight, which somehow devolved into a sweeping criticism of everything in their past, from dating Zach to Marissa’s death. She stood, hands on her hips, and went, “God. Coop was right about you, thinking you’re too good for everyone.” and then went inside her house and locked the door.
She dried herself off with a faded purple towel, and didn’t leave her room for two days. Julie and Kaitlin brought supplies of food to her room, but it was Ryan who convinced her to come out. She’d been watching reruns of the Valley and eying Marissa’s old flask for the past 48 hours, with the occasional sip of whatever liquor Coop had secreted in there. Her clothes still felt kind of damp, but that had to be her imagination, right?
Summer misses her mother, she misses her best friend, she wants her dad here, and she still hates Cohen. When Ryan says, “Seth doesn’t always know how to let the past go,” she agrees, and then realizes that she’d better start letting the past go.
So she gets back together with Cohen for the 16th time.
When she dances with Michael at the party, it’s like she’s at one of Holly’s ragers, fifteen again. She’s got a few more moves now though, and doesn’t require a plastic cup full of liquor to be dancing like a ho. She just thinks about herself at barely sixteen, and dances the way she wishes she could’ve danced with Ryan back then- back when he was just some random new hot guy, before he was Chino, and long before he was Ryan. And then she lets the music take her over, one with the beat, and no more thinking, just dancing.
And then he’s tugging her hand, leading her outside and stumbling backwards until he’s pressed up against his Toyota and his hands are on her hips, pulling her tight against him. She likes this time, when kissing against car doors and groping under street lights is a frequent occurrence, expected almost. It’s the time before the relationship is really underway, before complacency sets in, but when the chemistry boils up and nothing, not even being in a public place can stop the magnetic pull.
Of course he has to go and say she makes him feel ten years younger. How old does he think she is, anyway? Summer’s 24. It’s not like a five year age gap is some insurmountable thing at this point. Just look at Mr. and Mrs. Cohen. They’re still together, even though Mr. Cohen was way older. And ew? Going out with a younger dude? One that can’t legally drink? That’s pretty gross, if you ask Summer. Well, that, and she has no desire to follow in Julie Cooper’s footsteps with the making out with jailbait business. Ew. She tries to laugh it off, but god, this guy is more Cohen like by the minute. She laughs it off, but the damage is done.
Summer totally isn’t kidding when she says she’s already lost her mind. And then he kisses her, like he means it.
Only it turns out he doesn’t mean it. And god. She doesn’t get it. Why does she have this inability to pick the dudes that will be nice to her? She always thinks she has a nice dude picked out, one that will treat her right, and then all of a sudden, asshattery.
So why is she trying so hard with this one? She even gives him the best pep talk ever. The one she really wishes she believed, because if she did believe that relationships either worked or they didn’t, she wouldn’t be on her twenty seventh or twenty ninth or god knows what number breakup with Cohen. She wouldn’t still be thinking about her dead best friend’s and then her new best friend’s ex-boyfriend. But this one, she wants to work. She wants it to happen so bad. She wants to forget him, forget both of them, forget California even exists. Summer is taking her turn running away like a little bitch, and goddamn, if she has decided her rebound will happen, it will happen. She just wishes she’d chosen her rebound a little better.
Then again, she’s never thought it was worth having if she could just snap her fingers and have it like that. Unlike most spoiled rich girls, Summer thinks that things worth having are worth working for. It just figures that the only thing that would make her forget Cohen and Atwood is some hybrid of the two who won’t sleep with her even though she is totally throwing herself at him. Whatever. She can make a graceful exit.
Well. Sort of.
It’s when she keeps thinking about it and replaying it in her mind, and analyzing it from every possible angle that she realizes- yeah. Atwood. She is pretty much completely in love with her dead best friend’s ex-boyfriend and it isn’t going away no matter how many times she gets back together with Seth, or how many other guys she sleeps with. Somewhere along the line, she fell in love with Chino, and now the only thing stopping her from calling him and telling him everything is well- everything. She doesn’t want to be that girl, the one that causes him problems. Yes, he’s really good at putting up with problems, but hasn’t his life sucked enough? His real parents totally sucked. Not that hers are like, awesome or anything, but like, abusive and alcoholic? Convicts? At least when her mom ran off and her stepmother was addicted to anything her doctor would prescribe, Summer still had a roof over her head, and her maid’s nephew was the only one in prison.
And no one was trying to kick her out of her own house. God.
Summer really, really likes Ryan, so she doesn’t want to fuck up his life anymore than it already has been. But she can’t go back to Cohen, yet again. Not yet.
So she does the next best thing, and calls Michael, mentally steeling herself for pouring out the whole thing. Every last word of the Cohen/Atwood/Roberts sordid affair. It’s when she thinks about it really hard, it makes her head hurt, and she wishes that Seth had never started liking her in the first place. If only he’d fixated on Coop, none of this would have ever happened. Summer could’ve had a normal life, with normal relationships, and she wouldn’t have to call up a guy with a girlfriend who he may or may not have dumped for her in order to tell him, “yeah, I know I was throwing myself at you earlier, but it’s only because I really, really want to sleep with my ex-boyfriend’s surrogate brother who also happens to be the ex-boyfriend of my dead best friend and my new best friend who replaced the dead one.” She’s not lying when she says she really needs to talk to him. Someone has to give her some perspective, someone who isn’t involved in the whole thing, and she thinks Michael is the one to do it. He like, has to be.
Summer doesn’t have anyone else.
And then he shows up at her door, and she freezes. What is she thinking? She can’t like Atwood. It’s just impossible. So she does the thing she always does when someone gets too close to finding out the truth about her- makes them want her.
A little breathy “I promised I wouldn’t touch you,” some soulful gazing into her eyes, and she’s good. He’s kissing her like he’s starving. And maybe, maybe this will work. Maybe she doesn’t need to remember California. Maybe she can just forget about everything and be Kim with him for the rest of her life. Maybe if she wants it bad enough, she can forget the truth about herself. She thinks she means it when she says “I don’t care about tomorrow or anything else.” She’ll say anything to stop obsessing about the past. She’ll do anything to move on.
He says he’ll call.
She knows he won’t.
She calls him anyway as she’s making a mix for him. She knows it’s pathetic, and not Summer at all, but whatever. Kim’s allowed to be pathetic. She’s had like, no experience. And Summer? Kind of stopped caring about being pathetic around the second breakup with Cohen.
Summer waits a couple of days and then goes to see him at his work. She’s still got a little Newport in her, if the adorable top that coordinates with the wrapping paper on her mix cd is any indication. She knows she’s being a little freaky, but whatever. Cohen’s not the only one who can make gestures. At least she’s not pulling this dude on to a coffee cart. She learns from her mistakes. Although somewhere along the way, she’s picked up Cohen’s horrible babbling habit and taste in music. Ew. Summer is going to have to fix that.
And… Ew. Having a baby? What? Yeah, no shit you’re an asshole, fake Seth. She really can’t believe what she’s hearing. This crap again. She left Newport, she left Seth because of this bullshit, and here it is again. Another bitch on a boat, running away.
It wasn’t about her. It’s never about her. That’s what they all say.
If this can happen to Kim as well as Summer, then what’s the point? Kim was supposed to be someone that this didn’t happen to, and here it is, all over again, just with a less cute Seth. Another Anna, another Ryan, another reason why she isn’t good enough, why her vagina sends men running.
Summer’s going to need more therapy after this.
Might as well call up Atwood and make it a two for one deal, right? Summer’s totally a thifty girl. Money and energy conscious, for sure. She takes a steady breath. Leaves Michael’s work and walks over to the park. It’s getting colder, and Summer misses California.
She takes another breath and dials.
“Atwood?”
“Summer. What’s up?”
“I’m coming home. I’ve got something to tell you. Wait for me, okay?”
“Mail me your info. I’ll pick you up.”
“Thanks Ryan.”
And with that, Summer Roberts is ready. Time to stop running away like a little bitch. She books the next flight into San Francisco and packs her bags. What’s the point in denying it anymore? Everyone who isn’t Ryan just turns out to be Cohen, and Summer is done with bitches on boats.
For good this time.