(no subject)
Hell, while I'm at it:
DEAD FIC BIT DUMP!
Ranging from a few paragraphs to a few pages. The O.C., mostly post-season one.
Summer believes that shotgun weddings are for poor people and stupid people. That’s what Summer’s stepmonster told her after one too many mimosa and Klonopin cocktails, and Summer was too young to ignore it, so it stuck.
Summer doesn’t know what the beast was talking about, because she and her dad had totally gotten married after knowing each other for all of about thirteen seconds, but her stepmonster says that it didn’t count that way, because she still got to wear Vera Wang.
Neither Theresa or Ryan strikes Summer much as the stupid type, and even if Theresa is still poor, Summer really can’t think of Ryan that way any more.
They’re not in a good neighborhood. Even though the church has a real lawn and the houses down the street have shutters that are on straight and don’t have any appliances in the yards. But the church doesn’t have air conditioning and it’s something like the hottest day of the year, which makes sense, because, August. The light coming in through the red-orange-gold stained glass makes the whole place look a little like a campfire, and that’s not helping things either. She can’t sit down on the pews because it makes her cotton skirt stick to the backs of her sweaty thighs, so she’s standing in the back, kind of in a corner, because it’s in the shade.
Maybe she looks a little out of place, but then again, they all do.
Ryan’s suit is too tight around the neck, like maybe he’s put on even more muscle since he left Newport. Theresa’s wearing white, but the dress has little red flowers scattered around the hem, and it only goes to her knees. Summer squints through the whole ceremony and imagines she can see a bump when the amber light hits the dress just right.
Kirsten’s in a sundress that’s fancier than Theresa’s and Sandy’s shirt isn’t buttoned all the way to the top. They both fan themselves with the thick brown hymnals. Marissa’s slumped in the back and she leaves and comes back twice before the ceremony even starts - Summer isn’t sure if she’s drinking or just peeing out what she drank on the drive to Chino. Probably both.
She’d have dressed better if she’d known Seth had booked tickets last minute and was coming in from Portland. Maybe not. Because if she hadn’t thought he was going to show up for the wedding, she probably wouldn’t have come at all.
**
There were things that Theresa had never told anyone about the baby. Like how she had already picked out the names - Ray for a boy, Ophelia for a girl. Her abuela would have furrowed her brow and made the sign of the cross to protect the baby. Ryan would have laughed, told her she was being romantic. He would have told her she was getting ahead of herself.
Her doctor’s office was small, with none of the kind touches that Theresa associated with doctors offices when she was young. No toys, just a table with broken crayons, and the upholstery on the waiting room chairs was so worn that she could see the off-white foam peeking through on the edges. The walls were thin enough that she could hear the infants squalling in the waiting room, even as the nurse placed the monitor on the curve of Theresa’s abdomen, then moved it from side to side, a quizzical expression crossing her face.
Hold on, just a moment, the nurse said, and stepped quickly, efficiently, out of the room. While she waited, Theresa inspected her nails: too short. She read a glossy poster on the wall that recommended a certain brand of vitamins for nursing mothers. She whispered the Hail Mary under her breath, wished her mom wasn’t in the waiting room, wished Ryan were there instead.
When the nurse walked at the heel of the doctor, Theresa whispered, can you get my mom? and was surprised at how shaky her voice sounded.
Her mom entered the room at the same time the doctor told her that he couldn’t find a heartbeat.
Theresa’s heartbeat (yes it was still there, how could it not be there, she could hear it) thudded and filled her ears, a wet, beachy sound, and she couldn’t hear the doctor talk, but she felt her mother take her hand, rub the back of it with the pads of her fingers.
Stop. Would she see the baby? She needed to know. Would it come out of her, kidney-bean shaped and smallish, like the pictures she had pored over, amazed, at the age of eight in an old Life Magazine?
Probably not, the doctor replied. She could go home, begin to bleed on her own - that might have happened in a day or two anyway, if she hadn’t had an appointment that day. But he advised that she get a D & C, there was less risk of infection that way. But the fetus - she remembered he used the word fetus, and it sounded harsh, cold - could have already begun to be re-absorbed by the body, it happened that way sometimes. Absorbed. Like a baby - HER baby - was a spilled glass of orange juice, some dog piddle, that could be sponged up with a paper towel.
She snatched up her purse, clutched her soiled Kleenex tighter in her fist. Her mother grabbed her arm before she even got halfway to the door, and then Theresa fell to the tiled floor.
//
Kirsten sent a bouquet of flowers and a fruit basket to Theresa before Ryan had even had time to unpack his things. During the first week he was home, he picked up the phone at least three times a day, never quite getting to the point where he could press the buttons. He called the following Tuesday, and Theresa’s mom told him that she was at work, couldn’t come to the phone. The second time he called Theresa was sleeping. The fifth time he tried to get a hold of her, there was a long pause. “Just give her time, Ryan. Give her time,” whispered Theresa’s mother before the phone clicked in his ear.
After that, things in Newport got busy: the Seth thing, the Zach thing, another Seth thing, the Marissa thing, the Lawn Guy thing, the Lindsey thing, one more Seth thing - and Ryan stopped having to make the excuse to himself that she wouldn’t have talked to him anyway.
//
It’s cold. Too fucking cold to be southern California, even in December. In the morning, a car somewhere on the street outside makes chugging noises before revving off into the distance. A pot of water, boiling on the stove, makes the kitchen windows steam up.
Theresa burns her fingertips on a match trying to light the ancient gas heater in her bathroom, and her whole body jerks back. She raises her fingers to her mouth, touches them to her tongue.
Her mother had told her that just before Theresa was born that she was hot all the time. Theresa was born in California, they both were, she and Arturo. Even her mama was born in the states, but when her mother talks she sounds eerily like Theresa’s grandmother, passing stories from her childhood in Mexico.
“It was July, I was a week late, and, ay, I thought you were stuck in there for good! My mama told me, eat hot peppers, it makes the babies come, but I was hot enough already, you know? All day, no air conditioning. Just me on the side porch with a hand fan and a glass of ice cubes to suck on, your knees poking at me every which way. You have it lucky, mija. You will have your baby in the winter.”
//
“I guess I’m lucky. Considering Caleb is my dad and all. I mean, he probably didn’t even want my mom to have me,” Lindsey’s voice was devoid of emotion, like she had considered it for so long that it had lost all meaning.
“I almost took a - a friend to get an abortion once,” Ryan offered.
“Oh?” Lindsey murmured.
“She decided to have the baby.”
“Oh,” Lindsey said.
“But then she lost it,” Ryan looked down at his hands, which were once more smooth and free of dirt, even under the nails.
Lindsey didn't speak
**
Summer had to fly coach to Pittsburgh, which annoyed her more than the time over the summer when Coop had gotten drunk and spilled a Mai Tai on her new tiered skirt. First of all, it was enough that she was going to Pittsburgh. She couldn’t even muster up an “ew” for Pittsburgh, which was so stuck in the middle of flyover that it was probably still, like, 1996 there or whatever. It was something else entirely to be wedged in a seat (synthetic fabric. ew.) less than three feet away from a snotty little kid in a Cohen-y red reindeer sweater who, when he wasn’t annoyingly focused on his Game Boy, emitted a series of throat-clearing behaviors that went from generally unpleasant to downright repulsive as the flight progressed.
Summer really hadn’t intended to visit Pittsburgh for New Years. After all, the Newport social scene awaited. But after the messiness that was Chrismukkah, and after she had found out that Zach and his family were extending their yearly holiday visit to ____, the surprising invitation from a certain blonde pixie that she’d ALMOST forgotten about seemed appealing.
More appealing than hauling Coop’s hair out of the toilet bowl as the clock struck midnight, anyway.
Besides, going to butt-cold Pittsburgh meant that she had a good excuse to borrow her daddy’s credit card and get the pale grey rabbit fur jacket that she’d been ogling in the window of Fred Segal, but which had previously been deemed “impractical” for a Newport Beach winter.
So, rabbit fur coat and hot pink Diane Von Furstenberg luggage in tow, she had gotten on a plane, transferred to another plane, tried to bat her eyes for an upgrade and was totally DENIED, and was now on her way to ring in 0-5 with a person she once would have never considered being FRIENDS with, let alone visiting.
.
The was one thing she was adamant about: 05 was totally going to be a Cohen-free year
*
They didn’t hug when Summer spotted Anna at the baggage claim. Anna smiled a half smile and sort of rocked back on her heels, and Summer had asked her for a dollar for the baggage carts, since the stupid machine couldn’t break twenties, and by the time she got back with the squeaky metal contraption, it seemed a little too late, and they just sort of smiled at each other again.
Anna had grown her hair out a little since Summer had last seen her (when was that? April? Well, of course hair grows. Duh.) and it flipped neatly up around her shoulders. Among the usual blonde were deep brown highlights, scattered randomly about Anna’s head.
Summer opened her mouth to tell Anna that zebra stripes had been out since 90210 went off the air. Then she decided to wait until after she had made Anna schlep all her luggage out to the car.
*
“Ew. You don’t have, like, a driver?” Summer peered inside the car, which smelled like vanilla air freshener and green tea, and wrinkled her nose at the grey plush interior.
“For your information, this is a hybrid,” Anna said as she fished around in her purse with an unmanicured hand. Summer would have to do something about that. And the hair.
“So, you have to, like, plug it in?”
Anna shot Summer a dirty look. What? Summer had just been trying to make conversation.
*
“It’s awfully grey.” Summer pressed her nose against the passenger side window, then pulled away and frowned at the oily smudge.
“It’s called winter,” Anna intoned dryly. “One of the things Newport doesn’t have.”
“I know.” Summer shot a simpering gaze at her companion. “I’ve been to Aspen.” She paused. “And Park City,” she added helpfully.
“Yes, but that was just because you were hoping to spot Jake Gyllenhaal.” Anna sounded faintly amused.
“And I did,” she wiped at the window with her fingertips but only managed to make the smudge bigger. She frowned. “He’s really sort of short.”
Anna sighed and made a left turn. Summer watched the trees flit by through her window. They were so brown and ugly without leaves.
Summer bit her lower lip, hugged her rabbit fur coat tighter around her shoulders, and wondered if this had already become a bad idea.
**
Part time security guard, the ad says, and when Ryan calls the number they tell him to just come on in. Fourteen dollars an hour, graveyard shift. Not much, but Ryan’s done worse.
The building is cinderblock and graffiti, linoleum and wire interior. If someone airlifted it out, put it in Chino, it wouldn’t look out of place.
I’m here about the job he says to the woman at the desk. She walks like a nurse, silent on plastic soles, through a white door. She doesn’t gesture for Ryan to follow, so he puts his hands in his pockets, tries to look like he’s interested in the pamphlets on the faded plastic holders bracketed to the walls.
Out of the office comes a guy, untucked shirt, his hair giving him away as two days removed from his last shower. His fingernails are the rusty yellow of a longtime smoker, he greets Ryan with a nod and doesn’t ask his name.
Ten minutes later, he’s hired, and when Guy asks when he can start, Ryan surprises himself and says now.
Guy leads Ryan down into the bowels of the building, using a thick ring laden with keys to unlock steel doors with rusting hinges that wouldn’t stand up to a swift kick. He points to a desk, pulls out an orange desk chair on that’s vomiting stuffing from its back, tells Ryan to sit. He does, his eyes finally adjusting to the strange light of the basement.
The fluorescent glow is like radiation; it sinks Guy’s eyes, hollows out his cheeks.
Is there anything you want me to do? Ryan asks.
No, he says, no. He taps his pen against his teeth, and Ryan does a good job of not cringing at the noise. Just try not to fall asleep.
*
The nights run like clockwork and Ryan dreams during the day. Bright colors, hot pink beaches under turquoise skies, trees with emerald trunks. Sometimes Seth is there, his skin burnished orange like a mango. More often he is not.
Ryan wonders if he is breathing chemicals in every night, the kind that make his dreams lucid, that make him walk through fire and trace Seth’s lips with his tongue.
Sometimes he wakes up dripping, and has to change his sheets. More often, he does not.
He dreams until morning, which is night, and he goes into work again.
*
Dennis and his keys are there to greet him every day. Dennis is the name of Guy, but Ryan still thinks of him as Guy, would call him that if Dennis asked Ryan to call him anything.
Dennis doesn’t know Ryan’s name.
Maureen sidles and whispers he likes it that way, and Ryan wonders how many have come before him.
Maureen is the not-nurse, and she wears all white. Sometimes she wears off-white, and Ryan finds it unsettling. Her hair is a colorless sort of brown, curling up under her chin like a helmet, and she has a large birthmark on her left cheek that she tries to cover with her hair. He wonders if she does any more than he does, or if she just sits at her desk all night and fights with her eyelids, like Ryan.
Maureen is never there when he trudges up in the morning and blinks at the light coming through the wire-reinforced windows. Guy always is, and if his cigarette isn’t lit, it’s about to be.
Guy smells the way Ryan remembers his father.
His job is always the same as it was the first night. He sits. Ryan has counted the tiles that run up and down the hallway fourteen times (eighteen broad, forty-seven deep, before it hits a door). Ryan has become an expert at crossword puzzles. He makes circuitous routes up and down his section of the hall. He cleans under his fingernails with a wayward paperclip. He does not think about California.
Ryan hasn’t figured out what he’s supposed to be doing.
He asks once, the third night. Is there something I can do? Run a mop? His instincts tell him that work has to be hard to get you somewhere, even if he doesn’t know where he’s supposed to be going, other than to cash his check every Friday.
You’re a security guard, kid, you sit. You keep things secure.
Ryan doesn’t know what he’s keeping secure. Other than the times Guy passes by, he sees no signs of human beings on his watch. Even the mice don’t venture into the basement where he passes eight hours every night. He saw the signs of one once, the stuffing pulled even looser from his chair, a few dark spots on the floor. He checks his chair every night after this, thinking he might find a friend curled up inside. Even when he doesn’t see anything, he still sits gingerly, as if there is something inside the cushion in danger of being crushed.
Even the little brown mice find somewhere else to sleep.
*
Ryan can’t get used to the daytime. Four days on, three days off. He goes to dark clubs and stands in the corner, clutching a bottle of beer in his hand until it warms the edges of his vision.
He follows a boy home one night, a boy with curly hair and rings of kohl around his eyes. The boy looks behind him like he’s afraid, calls out. I see you back there.
Ryan steps out from the shadows, pushes the boy back in.
You want me he says and its not a question, and the boy nods, his eyes black and looking wider than they are in reality. Ryan remembers that some animals, like moths, have false eyes to scare predators away.
He backs away slowly, one step, then two. Boy doesn’t run, and Ryan presses back into his body, crowds against him. He’s tall, like Seth, and they fit together like a key and a lock. The boy rolls his hips back against Ryan’s, Ryan’s hands are tight on Boy’s arms and he whispers as he comes. For once Ryan is glad he doesn’t have a name to call, because it would be the wrong one.
When he sleeps that day, he doesn’t dream.
**
Summer might have spent her whole life living in the Newport Beach bubble, but she knew some universal truths. Like, if you painted your toenails less than two hours before bed, you’d wake up in the morning with waffle patterns on your toes that even the thickest topcoat couldn’t save. Or how the day before you planned to lose your virginity to the co-captain of the JV water polo team, you’d come down with mono, and then he wouldn’t call you, even after you got better. And when people ran away, they were supposed to go somewhere glamorous, like Paris or New York City or even Lake Tahoe or something. Not Tahiti, unless it was on a forty-foot yacht with a giant satellite dish and a fully stocked bar. Not Chino.
But that’s where Summer was running. Marissa had done it, and Ryan had done it, so if it was ever an in thing to do, then it was played out by now. Plus it was Chino. Coop had told her that it wasn’t that bad, except for the guys who had tried to beat Ryan up, and how the grout around the tile in Theresa’s kitchen was a little grimy, and how once when she went to pee, she saw a giant ant on the toilet bowl and then held it for two more hours.
Okay, maybe Chino *was* that bad. But she’d survived Tijuana. And Marissa had survived Chino. So this was something Summer could totally do.
Probably.
**
Summer Roberts had gone about the whole DVing thing all wrong. *This* was how sex was supposed to be. Her back against the cinder block wall of a storage closet in the back halls of Harbor, strong arms pinning her there, hiking her legs up around his waist, agile fingers sweeping aside her thong like the thin piece of fabric it was.
Funny thing, though. She was right about one thing.
That day, what she had told Marissa on the beach-she *had* picked the wrong boy. She just hadn't known yet that the right boy was Ryan Atwood.
Ryan sank to his knees in front of her, cupping her calf as he lifted her leg and steadied it on his shoulder. Her hands moved from the wall to Ryan’s arm to the shelves that lined the closet as her fingers scrabbled for a decent place to rest. His eyes traveled slowly up her body to her face. He looked very young as he mouthed, 'is this okay?' She wasn't aware that she had nodded until she felt the warm press of his tongue against her inner thigh.
**
“Cohen. Are you coming out or are you going to keep hiding forever?”
“Uh… what?”
“Get. Out. Of. My. Bathroom and show me your costume.”
“Summer, I don’t really think this is your greatest idea. As the artist and creator of ‘Rich Power Kids’ or whatever the latest title Zach’s PR guy has given us is, I don’t see why *I* have to be the one wearing the costume.”
Summer tapped her foot, which was clad in a patent leather heel with a three inch platform. The straps cut into her ankles when she walked, but they made her look really tall and made her thighs look narrow.
What was it her stepmother said the first time she took Summer to get waxed? No beauty without pain?
Yeah, like the stepmonster could even FEEL pain anymore.
Summer sighed heavily before deciding to answer Seth’s question. “One, because spandex is out. I know that because you made me watch both of the X-Men movies. Twice. Two, because how are you going to get an accurate reflection of how to draw yourself without photographic guidance? We all know how you like to emphasize. So. We agreed. I get to dress you. And take pictures. Then you get to draw me in a leather bustier. Got it?”
Seth’s voice was muffled from behind the door. “I think maybe I got your costume. And there might be a piece missing. Or - ah - ten pieces missing. Also, were you getting fashion tips from Ryan?”
“What?” Summer’s voice was sharp. “OUT!” Her hands snapped away from their spot on her hips and one of them grasped the doorknob. “Cohen?”
“Yeah?”
“Door’s locked.”
There was no reply.
“Seth your-mother-told-me-your-middle-name-and-I-forgot Cohen!” Summer gritted her teeth, gripped the brass doorknob with both hands, and pulled. Hard.
Summer’s feet came out from under her. Oof. That’s what she got for putting on her platforms BEFORE Cohen had shown himself. She cocked her head and peered through the open bathroom door.
Seth peeked tentatively around the doorframe, then ducked back when he caught Summer shooting a glare of doom at him from her spot on the floor. She was already standing up and ready to BODILY remove him from his hiding spot when he timidly walked out into the room, a green and lilac striped towel wrapped around his narrow shoulders.
Summer eyed him up and down. “Cohen!” she barked. “Where is your collar?”
“I thought that was for my super dog. And I’m not really a super dog guy. I have the horse, and you have the horse, and horses are really more of a Newport thing, remember what happened to the Cooper’s dog…”
“What dog?” Summer furrowed her brow.
“Exactly.” Seth paused, then rubbed at his bare throat with an open palm. “Plus, I don’t like to draw attention to my neck.”
Summer’s eyes narrowed. “Is this because of vampires, Cohen?”
Seth’s eyes quickly dropped and he started mumbling something that Summer didn’t catch as she pushed her way past him into her bathroom. Her eyes scanned the lilac bath mat, the matching embroidered shower curtain. A corner of a plain brown bag peeked at her from behind the toilet tank. She rummaged through it quickly, then pulled out a thin leather strip with her manicured fingers.
Seth had moved and was sitting on her bed when she reentered her room. The towel was still draped protectively over his shoulders.
“Towel?”
“It’s. My cape.” Seth nodded so hard that his curls bobbed up and down independently, as if he could convince Summer solely by convincing himself.
“You are so five.” Summer’s glossy lip curled upwards in disgust. “If you keep fighting this, you’re not going to get to draw me in leather.” She walked towards the bed, lowered her head, and looked at him from under her eyelashes. “And we all know how much you’d like to draw me in leather.”
She heard a faint squeak - of protest or maybe something else - as she leaned over Cohen, making sure he got an impressive eyeful of the way her white lace-up bustier pushed up her cleavage as she pried the towel from between his clenched fingers.
“There. That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
Seth’s arms had crossed themselves protectively over his chest. “I think…” he croaked, “maybe things are on backwards?”
Summer scooted backwards on the bed, no small feat in heels and short skirt (pale blue suede, pleated), and took her first good look at Seth.
So, okay, it wasn’t quite the look she was going for. She had told the woman at the costume shop that it was sort of a Hugh Jackman Wolverine meets BDSM, and then Summer had to explain who Wolverine was, which was probably the beginning of a bad sign.
It wasn’t that Cohen looked BAD in lace up leather pants, it was just that he looked so AWKWARD in them. It was like that episode of Friends where Ross got stuck in his leather pants on his date and had to call Joey and he didn’t help either.
Summer may have had The Valley now, but she still missed Friends.
Plus, there was the whole VEST thing, and the way it exposed his three tiny curly jewish chest hairs. But she really did think he would LIKE the wristcuffs…
But this was her idea, and no matter how dumb and emphatically Not-Cohen Cohen looked, it was still kind of hot. And Zach had already turned her down, surprisingly, because he really never said no to anything, so this was her last shot.
She squinted, then put her finger to the corner of her mouth thoughtfully.
“Nope. Doesn’t work without the collar.”
Summer toyed with the black leather between her fingers before moving across the bed. She twisted so she was sitting right next to Seth, her back resting against the collection of pillows propped against her headboard. Her hand reached out and touched the hair at the base of Seth’s neck, moving it away so it wouldn’t get caught in the clasp. His skin was pocked with tiny raised hairs, and she could see a reddish spot too - a shaving nick, maybe, or the end of a zit. Ew.
Boys were dumb because they didn’t realize that Mario Badescu drying lotion worked just as well on them. Well, boys were dumb for a lot of reasons, Summer thought, but that was an important one.
**
DEAD FIC BIT DUMP!
Ranging from a few paragraphs to a few pages. The O.C., mostly post-season one.
Summer believes that shotgun weddings are for poor people and stupid people. That’s what Summer’s stepmonster told her after one too many mimosa and Klonopin cocktails, and Summer was too young to ignore it, so it stuck.
Summer doesn’t know what the beast was talking about, because she and her dad had totally gotten married after knowing each other for all of about thirteen seconds, but her stepmonster says that it didn’t count that way, because she still got to wear Vera Wang.
Neither Theresa or Ryan strikes Summer much as the stupid type, and even if Theresa is still poor, Summer really can’t think of Ryan that way any more.
They’re not in a good neighborhood. Even though the church has a real lawn and the houses down the street have shutters that are on straight and don’t have any appliances in the yards. But the church doesn’t have air conditioning and it’s something like the hottest day of the year, which makes sense, because, August. The light coming in through the red-orange-gold stained glass makes the whole place look a little like a campfire, and that’s not helping things either. She can’t sit down on the pews because it makes her cotton skirt stick to the backs of her sweaty thighs, so she’s standing in the back, kind of in a corner, because it’s in the shade.
Maybe she looks a little out of place, but then again, they all do.
Ryan’s suit is too tight around the neck, like maybe he’s put on even more muscle since he left Newport. Theresa’s wearing white, but the dress has little red flowers scattered around the hem, and it only goes to her knees. Summer squints through the whole ceremony and imagines she can see a bump when the amber light hits the dress just right.
Kirsten’s in a sundress that’s fancier than Theresa’s and Sandy’s shirt isn’t buttoned all the way to the top. They both fan themselves with the thick brown hymnals. Marissa’s slumped in the back and she leaves and comes back twice before the ceremony even starts - Summer isn’t sure if she’s drinking or just peeing out what she drank on the drive to Chino. Probably both.
She’d have dressed better if she’d known Seth had booked tickets last minute and was coming in from Portland. Maybe not. Because if she hadn’t thought he was going to show up for the wedding, she probably wouldn’t have come at all.
**
There were things that Theresa had never told anyone about the baby. Like how she had already picked out the names - Ray for a boy, Ophelia for a girl. Her abuela would have furrowed her brow and made the sign of the cross to protect the baby. Ryan would have laughed, told her she was being romantic. He would have told her she was getting ahead of herself.
Her doctor’s office was small, with none of the kind touches that Theresa associated with doctors offices when she was young. No toys, just a table with broken crayons, and the upholstery on the waiting room chairs was so worn that she could see the off-white foam peeking through on the edges. The walls were thin enough that she could hear the infants squalling in the waiting room, even as the nurse placed the monitor on the curve of Theresa’s abdomen, then moved it from side to side, a quizzical expression crossing her face.
Hold on, just a moment, the nurse said, and stepped quickly, efficiently, out of the room. While she waited, Theresa inspected her nails: too short. She read a glossy poster on the wall that recommended a certain brand of vitamins for nursing mothers. She whispered the Hail Mary under her breath, wished her mom wasn’t in the waiting room, wished Ryan were there instead.
When the nurse walked at the heel of the doctor, Theresa whispered, can you get my mom? and was surprised at how shaky her voice sounded.
Her mom entered the room at the same time the doctor told her that he couldn’t find a heartbeat.
Theresa’s heartbeat (yes it was still there, how could it not be there, she could hear it) thudded and filled her ears, a wet, beachy sound, and she couldn’t hear the doctor talk, but she felt her mother take her hand, rub the back of it with the pads of her fingers.
Stop. Would she see the baby? She needed to know. Would it come out of her, kidney-bean shaped and smallish, like the pictures she had pored over, amazed, at the age of eight in an old Life Magazine?
Probably not, the doctor replied. She could go home, begin to bleed on her own - that might have happened in a day or two anyway, if she hadn’t had an appointment that day. But he advised that she get a D & C, there was less risk of infection that way. But the fetus - she remembered he used the word fetus, and it sounded harsh, cold - could have already begun to be re-absorbed by the body, it happened that way sometimes. Absorbed. Like a baby - HER baby - was a spilled glass of orange juice, some dog piddle, that could be sponged up with a paper towel.
She snatched up her purse, clutched her soiled Kleenex tighter in her fist. Her mother grabbed her arm before she even got halfway to the door, and then Theresa fell to the tiled floor.
//
Kirsten sent a bouquet of flowers and a fruit basket to Theresa before Ryan had even had time to unpack his things. During the first week he was home, he picked up the phone at least three times a day, never quite getting to the point where he could press the buttons. He called the following Tuesday, and Theresa’s mom told him that she was at work, couldn’t come to the phone. The second time he called Theresa was sleeping. The fifth time he tried to get a hold of her, there was a long pause. “Just give her time, Ryan. Give her time,” whispered Theresa’s mother before the phone clicked in his ear.
After that, things in Newport got busy: the Seth thing, the Zach thing, another Seth thing, the Marissa thing, the Lawn Guy thing, the Lindsey thing, one more Seth thing - and Ryan stopped having to make the excuse to himself that she wouldn’t have talked to him anyway.
//
It’s cold. Too fucking cold to be southern California, even in December. In the morning, a car somewhere on the street outside makes chugging noises before revving off into the distance. A pot of water, boiling on the stove, makes the kitchen windows steam up.
Theresa burns her fingertips on a match trying to light the ancient gas heater in her bathroom, and her whole body jerks back. She raises her fingers to her mouth, touches them to her tongue.
Her mother had told her that just before Theresa was born that she was hot all the time. Theresa was born in California, they both were, she and Arturo. Even her mama was born in the states, but when her mother talks she sounds eerily like Theresa’s grandmother, passing stories from her childhood in Mexico.
“It was July, I was a week late, and, ay, I thought you were stuck in there for good! My mama told me, eat hot peppers, it makes the babies come, but I was hot enough already, you know? All day, no air conditioning. Just me on the side porch with a hand fan and a glass of ice cubes to suck on, your knees poking at me every which way. You have it lucky, mija. You will have your baby in the winter.”
//
“I guess I’m lucky. Considering Caleb is my dad and all. I mean, he probably didn’t even want my mom to have me,” Lindsey’s voice was devoid of emotion, like she had considered it for so long that it had lost all meaning.
“I almost took a - a friend to get an abortion once,” Ryan offered.
“Oh?” Lindsey murmured.
“She decided to have the baby.”
“Oh,” Lindsey said.
“But then she lost it,” Ryan looked down at his hands, which were once more smooth and free of dirt, even under the nails.
Lindsey didn't speak
**
Summer had to fly coach to Pittsburgh, which annoyed her more than the time over the summer when Coop had gotten drunk and spilled a Mai Tai on her new tiered skirt. First of all, it was enough that she was going to Pittsburgh. She couldn’t even muster up an “ew” for Pittsburgh, which was so stuck in the middle of flyover that it was probably still, like, 1996 there or whatever. It was something else entirely to be wedged in a seat (synthetic fabric. ew.) less than three feet away from a snotty little kid in a Cohen-y red reindeer sweater who, when he wasn’t annoyingly focused on his Game Boy, emitted a series of throat-clearing behaviors that went from generally unpleasant to downright repulsive as the flight progressed.
Summer really hadn’t intended to visit Pittsburgh for New Years. After all, the Newport social scene awaited. But after the messiness that was Chrismukkah, and after she had found out that Zach and his family were extending their yearly holiday visit to ____, the surprising invitation from a certain blonde pixie that she’d ALMOST forgotten about seemed appealing.
More appealing than hauling Coop’s hair out of the toilet bowl as the clock struck midnight, anyway.
Besides, going to butt-cold Pittsburgh meant that she had a good excuse to borrow her daddy’s credit card and get the pale grey rabbit fur jacket that she’d been ogling in the window of Fred Segal, but which had previously been deemed “impractical” for a Newport Beach winter.
So, rabbit fur coat and hot pink Diane Von Furstenberg luggage in tow, she had gotten on a plane, transferred to another plane, tried to bat her eyes for an upgrade and was totally DENIED, and was now on her way to ring in 0-5 with a person she once would have never considered being FRIENDS with, let alone visiting.
.
The was one thing she was adamant about: 05 was totally going to be a Cohen-free year
*
They didn’t hug when Summer spotted Anna at the baggage claim. Anna smiled a half smile and sort of rocked back on her heels, and Summer had asked her for a dollar for the baggage carts, since the stupid machine couldn’t break twenties, and by the time she got back with the squeaky metal contraption, it seemed a little too late, and they just sort of smiled at each other again.
Anna had grown her hair out a little since Summer had last seen her (when was that? April? Well, of course hair grows. Duh.) and it flipped neatly up around her shoulders. Among the usual blonde were deep brown highlights, scattered randomly about Anna’s head.
Summer opened her mouth to tell Anna that zebra stripes had been out since 90210 went off the air. Then she decided to wait until after she had made Anna schlep all her luggage out to the car.
*
“Ew. You don’t have, like, a driver?” Summer peered inside the car, which smelled like vanilla air freshener and green tea, and wrinkled her nose at the grey plush interior.
“For your information, this is a hybrid,” Anna said as she fished around in her purse with an unmanicured hand. Summer would have to do something about that. And the hair.
“So, you have to, like, plug it in?”
Anna shot Summer a dirty look. What? Summer had just been trying to make conversation.
*
“It’s awfully grey.” Summer pressed her nose against the passenger side window, then pulled away and frowned at the oily smudge.
“It’s called winter,” Anna intoned dryly. “One of the things Newport doesn’t have.”
“I know.” Summer shot a simpering gaze at her companion. “I’ve been to Aspen.” She paused. “And Park City,” she added helpfully.
“Yes, but that was just because you were hoping to spot Jake Gyllenhaal.” Anna sounded faintly amused.
“And I did,” she wiped at the window with her fingertips but only managed to make the smudge bigger. She frowned. “He’s really sort of short.”
Anna sighed and made a left turn. Summer watched the trees flit by through her window. They were so brown and ugly without leaves.
Summer bit her lower lip, hugged her rabbit fur coat tighter around her shoulders, and wondered if this had already become a bad idea.
**
Part time security guard, the ad says, and when Ryan calls the number they tell him to just come on in. Fourteen dollars an hour, graveyard shift. Not much, but Ryan’s done worse.
The building is cinderblock and graffiti, linoleum and wire interior. If someone airlifted it out, put it in Chino, it wouldn’t look out of place.
I’m here about the job he says to the woman at the desk. She walks like a nurse, silent on plastic soles, through a white door. She doesn’t gesture for Ryan to follow, so he puts his hands in his pockets, tries to look like he’s interested in the pamphlets on the faded plastic holders bracketed to the walls.
Out of the office comes a guy, untucked shirt, his hair giving him away as two days removed from his last shower. His fingernails are the rusty yellow of a longtime smoker, he greets Ryan with a nod and doesn’t ask his name.
Ten minutes later, he’s hired, and when Guy asks when he can start, Ryan surprises himself and says now.
Guy leads Ryan down into the bowels of the building, using a thick ring laden with keys to unlock steel doors with rusting hinges that wouldn’t stand up to a swift kick. He points to a desk, pulls out an orange desk chair on that’s vomiting stuffing from its back, tells Ryan to sit. He does, his eyes finally adjusting to the strange light of the basement.
The fluorescent glow is like radiation; it sinks Guy’s eyes, hollows out his cheeks.
Is there anything you want me to do? Ryan asks.
No, he says, no. He taps his pen against his teeth, and Ryan does a good job of not cringing at the noise. Just try not to fall asleep.
*
The nights run like clockwork and Ryan dreams during the day. Bright colors, hot pink beaches under turquoise skies, trees with emerald trunks. Sometimes Seth is there, his skin burnished orange like a mango. More often he is not.
Ryan wonders if he is breathing chemicals in every night, the kind that make his dreams lucid, that make him walk through fire and trace Seth’s lips with his tongue.
Sometimes he wakes up dripping, and has to change his sheets. More often, he does not.
He dreams until morning, which is night, and he goes into work again.
*
Dennis and his keys are there to greet him every day. Dennis is the name of Guy, but Ryan still thinks of him as Guy, would call him that if Dennis asked Ryan to call him anything.
Dennis doesn’t know Ryan’s name.
Maureen sidles and whispers he likes it that way, and Ryan wonders how many have come before him.
Maureen is the not-nurse, and she wears all white. Sometimes she wears off-white, and Ryan finds it unsettling. Her hair is a colorless sort of brown, curling up under her chin like a helmet, and she has a large birthmark on her left cheek that she tries to cover with her hair. He wonders if she does any more than he does, or if she just sits at her desk all night and fights with her eyelids, like Ryan.
Maureen is never there when he trudges up in the morning and blinks at the light coming through the wire-reinforced windows. Guy always is, and if his cigarette isn’t lit, it’s about to be.
Guy smells the way Ryan remembers his father.
His job is always the same as it was the first night. He sits. Ryan has counted the tiles that run up and down the hallway fourteen times (eighteen broad, forty-seven deep, before it hits a door). Ryan has become an expert at crossword puzzles. He makes circuitous routes up and down his section of the hall. He cleans under his fingernails with a wayward paperclip. He does not think about California.
Ryan hasn’t figured out what he’s supposed to be doing.
He asks once, the third night. Is there something I can do? Run a mop? His instincts tell him that work has to be hard to get you somewhere, even if he doesn’t know where he’s supposed to be going, other than to cash his check every Friday.
You’re a security guard, kid, you sit. You keep things secure.
Ryan doesn’t know what he’s keeping secure. Other than the times Guy passes by, he sees no signs of human beings on his watch. Even the mice don’t venture into the basement where he passes eight hours every night. He saw the signs of one once, the stuffing pulled even looser from his chair, a few dark spots on the floor. He checks his chair every night after this, thinking he might find a friend curled up inside. Even when he doesn’t see anything, he still sits gingerly, as if there is something inside the cushion in danger of being crushed.
Even the little brown mice find somewhere else to sleep.
*
Ryan can’t get used to the daytime. Four days on, three days off. He goes to dark clubs and stands in the corner, clutching a bottle of beer in his hand until it warms the edges of his vision.
He follows a boy home one night, a boy with curly hair and rings of kohl around his eyes. The boy looks behind him like he’s afraid, calls out. I see you back there.
Ryan steps out from the shadows, pushes the boy back in.
You want me he says and its not a question, and the boy nods, his eyes black and looking wider than they are in reality. Ryan remembers that some animals, like moths, have false eyes to scare predators away.
He backs away slowly, one step, then two. Boy doesn’t run, and Ryan presses back into his body, crowds against him. He’s tall, like Seth, and they fit together like a key and a lock. The boy rolls his hips back against Ryan’s, Ryan’s hands are tight on Boy’s arms and he whispers as he comes. For once Ryan is glad he doesn’t have a name to call, because it would be the wrong one.
When he sleeps that day, he doesn’t dream.
**
Summer might have spent her whole life living in the Newport Beach bubble, but she knew some universal truths. Like, if you painted your toenails less than two hours before bed, you’d wake up in the morning with waffle patterns on your toes that even the thickest topcoat couldn’t save. Or how the day before you planned to lose your virginity to the co-captain of the JV water polo team, you’d come down with mono, and then he wouldn’t call you, even after you got better. And when people ran away, they were supposed to go somewhere glamorous, like Paris or New York City or even Lake Tahoe or something. Not Tahiti, unless it was on a forty-foot yacht with a giant satellite dish and a fully stocked bar. Not Chino.
But that’s where Summer was running. Marissa had done it, and Ryan had done it, so if it was ever an in thing to do, then it was played out by now. Plus it was Chino. Coop had told her that it wasn’t that bad, except for the guys who had tried to beat Ryan up, and how the grout around the tile in Theresa’s kitchen was a little grimy, and how once when she went to pee, she saw a giant ant on the toilet bowl and then held it for two more hours.
Okay, maybe Chino *was* that bad. But she’d survived Tijuana. And Marissa had survived Chino. So this was something Summer could totally do.
Probably.
**
Summer Roberts had gone about the whole DVing thing all wrong. *This* was how sex was supposed to be. Her back against the cinder block wall of a storage closet in the back halls of Harbor, strong arms pinning her there, hiking her legs up around his waist, agile fingers sweeping aside her thong like the thin piece of fabric it was.
Funny thing, though. She was right about one thing.
That day, what she had told Marissa on the beach-she *had* picked the wrong boy. She just hadn't known yet that the right boy was Ryan Atwood.
Ryan sank to his knees in front of her, cupping her calf as he lifted her leg and steadied it on his shoulder. Her hands moved from the wall to Ryan’s arm to the shelves that lined the closet as her fingers scrabbled for a decent place to rest. His eyes traveled slowly up her body to her face. He looked very young as he mouthed, 'is this okay?' She wasn't aware that she had nodded until she felt the warm press of his tongue against her inner thigh.
**
“Cohen. Are you coming out or are you going to keep hiding forever?”
“Uh… what?”
“Get. Out. Of. My. Bathroom and show me your costume.”
“Summer, I don’t really think this is your greatest idea. As the artist and creator of ‘Rich Power Kids’ or whatever the latest title Zach’s PR guy has given us is, I don’t see why *I* have to be the one wearing the costume.”
Summer tapped her foot, which was clad in a patent leather heel with a three inch platform. The straps cut into her ankles when she walked, but they made her look really tall and made her thighs look narrow.
What was it her stepmother said the first time she took Summer to get waxed? No beauty without pain?
Yeah, like the stepmonster could even FEEL pain anymore.
Summer sighed heavily before deciding to answer Seth’s question. “One, because spandex is out. I know that because you made me watch both of the X-Men movies. Twice. Two, because how are you going to get an accurate reflection of how to draw yourself without photographic guidance? We all know how you like to emphasize. So. We agreed. I get to dress you. And take pictures. Then you get to draw me in a leather bustier. Got it?”
Seth’s voice was muffled from behind the door. “I think maybe I got your costume. And there might be a piece missing. Or - ah - ten pieces missing. Also, were you getting fashion tips from Ryan?”
“What?” Summer’s voice was sharp. “OUT!” Her hands snapped away from their spot on her hips and one of them grasped the doorknob. “Cohen?”
“Yeah?”
“Door’s locked.”
There was no reply.
“Seth your-mother-told-me-your-middle-name-and-I-forgot Cohen!” Summer gritted her teeth, gripped the brass doorknob with both hands, and pulled. Hard.
Summer’s feet came out from under her. Oof. That’s what she got for putting on her platforms BEFORE Cohen had shown himself. She cocked her head and peered through the open bathroom door.
Seth peeked tentatively around the doorframe, then ducked back when he caught Summer shooting a glare of doom at him from her spot on the floor. She was already standing up and ready to BODILY remove him from his hiding spot when he timidly walked out into the room, a green and lilac striped towel wrapped around his narrow shoulders.
Summer eyed him up and down. “Cohen!” she barked. “Where is your collar?”
“I thought that was for my super dog. And I’m not really a super dog guy. I have the horse, and you have the horse, and horses are really more of a Newport thing, remember what happened to the Cooper’s dog…”
“What dog?” Summer furrowed her brow.
“Exactly.” Seth paused, then rubbed at his bare throat with an open palm. “Plus, I don’t like to draw attention to my neck.”
Summer’s eyes narrowed. “Is this because of vampires, Cohen?”
Seth’s eyes quickly dropped and he started mumbling something that Summer didn’t catch as she pushed her way past him into her bathroom. Her eyes scanned the lilac bath mat, the matching embroidered shower curtain. A corner of a plain brown bag peeked at her from behind the toilet tank. She rummaged through it quickly, then pulled out a thin leather strip with her manicured fingers.
Seth had moved and was sitting on her bed when she reentered her room. The towel was still draped protectively over his shoulders.
“Towel?”
“It’s. My cape.” Seth nodded so hard that his curls bobbed up and down independently, as if he could convince Summer solely by convincing himself.
“You are so five.” Summer’s glossy lip curled upwards in disgust. “If you keep fighting this, you’re not going to get to draw me in leather.” She walked towards the bed, lowered her head, and looked at him from under her eyelashes. “And we all know how much you’d like to draw me in leather.”
She heard a faint squeak - of protest or maybe something else - as she leaned over Cohen, making sure he got an impressive eyeful of the way her white lace-up bustier pushed up her cleavage as she pried the towel from between his clenched fingers.
“There. That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
Seth’s arms had crossed themselves protectively over his chest. “I think…” he croaked, “maybe things are on backwards?”
Summer scooted backwards on the bed, no small feat in heels and short skirt (pale blue suede, pleated), and took her first good look at Seth.
So, okay, it wasn’t quite the look she was going for. She had told the woman at the costume shop that it was sort of a Hugh Jackman Wolverine meets BDSM, and then Summer had to explain who Wolverine was, which was probably the beginning of a bad sign.
It wasn’t that Cohen looked BAD in lace up leather pants, it was just that he looked so AWKWARD in them. It was like that episode of Friends where Ross got stuck in his leather pants on his date and had to call Joey and he didn’t help either.
Summer may have had The Valley now, but she still missed Friends.
Plus, there was the whole VEST thing, and the way it exposed his three tiny curly jewish chest hairs. But she really did think he would LIKE the wristcuffs…
But this was her idea, and no matter how dumb and emphatically Not-Cohen Cohen looked, it was still kind of hot. And Zach had already turned her down, surprisingly, because he really never said no to anything, so this was her last shot.
She squinted, then put her finger to the corner of her mouth thoughtfully.
“Nope. Doesn’t work without the collar.”
Summer toyed with the black leather between her fingers before moving across the bed. She twisted so she was sitting right next to Seth, her back resting against the collection of pillows propped against her headboard. Her hand reached out and touched the hair at the base of Seth’s neck, moving it away so it wouldn’t get caught in the clasp. His skin was pocked with tiny raised hairs, and she could see a reddish spot too - a shaving nick, maybe, or the end of a zit. Ew.
Boys were dumb because they didn’t realize that Mario Badescu drying lotion worked just as well on them. Well, boys were dumb for a lot of reasons, Summer thought, but that was an important one.
**