OC Fic : Twelve Things That Never Happened to Ryan Atwood, 11
Title : Twelve Things That Never Happened to Ryan Atwood
Author : Helen C.
Rating : PG-13
Summary : Twelve things that never happened to Ryan. D'uh.
Disclaimer : The characters and the universe were created and are owned by Josh Schwartz. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
AN. Eternal gratitude to the awesome joey51 for beta'ing this.
the long goodbye
Helen C.
The first time Ryan sees Marissa, ten days after her funeral, he's drunk.
He has been sitting at the bar for well over three hours, nursing his vodka and ignoring the cell phone that vibrates almost constantly in his front pocket. It doesn't happen often, but sometimes, he wishes the Cohens weren't so damn obstinate, wishes they understood that he doesn't want to see them-doesn't want them to see him in such a state.
He's considering whether or not there's any chance of them finding him in this dive when someone enters, the raised voices of two men arguing just outside causing Ryan to lift his head for a second. It's long enough to see her standing at the door, arms hanging loosely at her sides, watching him with a worried frown.
Surprised, he stares at her, barely daring to blink for fear that she'll disappear. Then the man who opened the door walks through her and Ryan flinches as she vanishes-there one moment, gone the next.
"Marissa?" he calls, knowing it's stupid-she's dead, her corpse locked in a coffin and buried under the proverbial six feet of dirt, and she's not coming back. He was holding her in his arms when she took her last breath, when the light left her eyes, when she went limp and died, like someone had flipped a switch. He knows that, doesn't need to go visit her grave to remind himself that she's dead.
The door of the bar closes as the man walks farther into the room, and the barman sighs, "Should teach me to serve alcohol to kids."
Ryan eyes his glass, then the door.
The barman puts his hands on both sides of Ryan's glass, ready to snatch it away. "Go back home, kid."
Another customer pushes the door open and Ryan's head snaps in that direction.
Marissa isn't there anymore, though.
"I think I need another one," Ryan says to no one in particular.
"What you need is to get out," the barman replies.
Ryan shifts his head back in his direction and stares at him without a word. The barman sighs and takes Ryan's glass to fill it again. "Why the hell not, after all?" He sets the glass in front of Ryan. "Give me your keys."
Ryan complies, then takes a swallow of alcohol, allowing the burning sensation to wash any other feeling for a few too short moments.
***
The second time Ryan sees Marissa is right after his first fight in the cage.
He's trying to convince his boss that he doesn't want the money from the fight and as he turns to leave, giving up on the discussion completely, there she is, two feet from him, tall and thin and still beautiful.
He freezes, resists the urge to reach out to her, afraid it would make her disappear again.
They look at each other, neither of them talking. They were never that good with words anyway.
His boss' voice jerks him back to reality. "Kid?"
"What?" he replies, sounding distant and hoarse. He doesn't take his eyes off Marissa, who's shaking her head at him softly, disapprovingly.
His boss steps in front of him, blocking his view. Ryan doesn't know whether he should thank him or punch him.
"Hit your head?" the man asks.
Ryan sidesteps him and looks at the spot where Marissa was standing, but she's gone.
His boss takes a hold of his arm and shakes slightly. "Hey!" He waits until Ryan is focussing on him again before asking, each word punctuated with a small shake of his arm. "Did you hit your head?"
"No."
The man doesn't look convinced but releases him. "Get some sleep then," he orders.
Ryan would laugh if his split lip hurt a little less.
He doubts he's going to be able to sleep any time soon.
***
Ryan sees Marissa every time he enters the cage after that. She's standing there, watching these guys pummel him into the ground and he feels her worry, her fear, sees the unshed tears making her eyes brighter.
He wishes he could pretend he's doing this as a penance, his small way of expiating the fact that he lived and she didn't.
It wouldn't be the whole truth, though.
Mostly, he just wants the pain to remind him that, once upon a time, he used to feel-back when she was still alive, back when Volchok hadn't yet made Ryan a killer by proxy.
Back when she hadn't died in his arms, begging him to stay, not to leave, back when he hadn't lied to her by pretending that she was going to be fine when he knew she wouldn't be.
***
He doesn't tell anyone about these… apparitions? Hallucinations?
He hasn't seen the Cohens in ages anyway.
Seth drops by from time to time to ask him to come back home and to give him care packages that Kirsten took the time to prepare and that Ryan throws away a few seconds after Seth leaves.
There was a time when he would have felt guilty about that.
These days, he's just relieved he doesn't have to face her, or Sandy. Seth is hard enough.
He's pretty sure that aside from them, no one would care about the fact that it's entirely possible he's losing his mind.
***
The first time Marissa touches him, after her death, is also the first time Ryan gets knocked out in the cage.
He's smiling as he hits the mat-he always smiles when he hits the mat, because if he doesn't smile, he'll scream or cry, and he doesn't want that-and suddenly, she's hovering over him, one hand against his forehead and the other closing over his fist, and he shivers at her touch as he closes his eyes.
It feels so real.
It's so damn tempting to believe that it is, so damn tempting to give in to the illusion, to pretend that she's still there, that she didn't die in his arms-that her death didn't break him.
He hears the crowd roaring outside the cage, hears someone calling, "He's down," and everything fades to black.
***
By the time Julie calls Ryan to tell him that she knows where Volchok is, Ryan has been knocked out another three times, and each time, Marissa was there, looking over him, holding his bruised hand in hers.
Ryan keeps picking bigger and stronger opponents just to feel her close by, but they don't always beat him into unconsciousness, and his boss sometimes objects Ryan's choice. Maybe he thinks Ryan has a death wish and he doesn't want things to go too far under his watch.
It doesn't matter.
Ryan doesn't want to die.
He doesn't want anything anymore, but to feel Marissa's hands on him.
***
Ryan is leaving the graveyard where Julie is still crying over Marissa's grave. He almost tells her that Marissa is watching them both from a few feet away, but he doesn't.
It wouldn't help Julie and he wants to keep this little piece of knowledge to himself.
His phone starts to ring as he reaches his car and Ryan picks up absently, throwing the file on the backseat, "Yeah."
Out of habit, he looks around, but Marissa isn't following him. She's standing close to Julie so they're shoulder to shoulder, and looking down at the headstone, her fists clenched, tears streaming down her face.
It's the first time Ryan sees her cry since her death. Back when she was still alive, he often wished she wouldn't cry so often-wouldn't have so many reasons to cry in the first place. Now, he's almost glad to see it.
"Dude." Seth's giggle makes for a brutal transition from his thoughts. "I’m soooooooooo wasted."
"What the hell?" Ryan can't help asking. How and when did Seth find the time to get drunk? They were all at the comic shop less than four hours ago.
"I know, I know." Seth's voice is slurred and there's a long silence before he adds, "I didn't have that much to drink, honestly. But the guy won't let me leave and I can't call the 'rents, and…" He stops and Ryan hears him swallowing hard, as if trying not to get sick.
Great.
"Where are you?" he asks.
"Bait Shop." There's some yelling in the background and Seth apologizes profusely.
"I'll be there soon," Ryan promises.
Then, Seth says in a strangled voice, "Oh God," and Ryan hurriedly snaps his phone shut.
***
Ryan never makes it to the Bait Shop.
Instead, he gets into his second car accident in under six months.
At least, this time, no one dies, but it's cold comfort to him as he's loaded onto a stretcher and lifted into the ambulance, dizzy and nauseous and fighting back the urge to call out for Marissa.
***
"We need to stop meeting like this," Sandy says once Ryan has assured him that he's fine and the hospital is just keeping him for the night as a precaution.
"I'm sorry."
He has barely seen Sandy in weeks and now that the man's here, looking tired and old, he feels ashamed for cutting the Cohens out of his life.
Worse than that, he's not far from wishing Sandy would leave him to deal with this new mess on his own.
Sandy takes a seat next to the bed. "Kirsten is picking Seth up. They'll be here soon."
Ryan nods and doesn't point out that there's no need for the whole family to be here. While he's sore all over, the accident isn't the cause of most of his bruises-a fact the Cohens don't need to know-and he just wants to shrug the whole thing off and go back to his life.
"What happened?" Sandy asks.
Too tired to elaborate, Ryan sums up in a terse voice, "Drunk driver. Red light."
He doesn't say that he probably could have avoided it if he hadn't been distracted by Marissa, who had appeared in the seat next to him and was looking at him the way she used to when she was getting ready for a fight, or at least a serious discussion.
He doesn't want Sandy, or anyone else, to know about Marissa. They'd find rational ways to explain it and he doesn't want it explained, doesn't want them to tell him that seeing her is a sign that he took too many blows to the head, or that grief is driving him nuts.
Explaining it would mean losing this precious gift.
If he told Sandy, how long would it be until the man dragged him to a therapist? How long until they pumped him full of pills? Would he be able to convince them all that seeing Marissa doesn't bother him?
Would he be able to convince them that seeing his dead girlfriend lurking around is actually the one thing that kept him alive all these months?
"Ryan?"
He looks at Sandy. "What?"
"Don't shut me out now, kid," he says softly.
Shut you out? What have I been doing for the last five months, Sandy? Why do you think I did it? You don't want to know. I don't want you to know.
I'll lose her if you know.
"There was a file on the backseat of your car," Sandy says.
Ryan freezes, keeping his gaze fixed on the foot of his bed.
Sandy goes on, in the same voice he'd use to ask what Ryan wants for diner. "The cops gave it to me. Ryan, it's…"
"I know what it is."
Not too long ago, he wouldn't have considered talking to Sandy in that tone.
"What were you going to do with it?" Sandy asks.
Ryan stares at him, trying to look hard and resolved, trying to look like he knows what the hell he's getting himself into, trying to look like he's in control when in truth, he has never felt so much like he's drifting away from his own life. "I hadn't decided." He takes a sharp breath, smothers a grimace as the bruises make their presence known. "I haven't decided yet," he amends.
Sandy rubs his eyes, shoulders slumped, elbows resting on his knees. Ryan can't even begin to guess what his former guardian is thinking right now.
Eventually, Sandy meets his eyes. "Fine. I won't force you to talk if you don't want to." He puts a hand on Ryan's arm and Ryan has to resist the urge to jerk away from the touch. "But remember that we're here, and we're not going anywhere. When you're ready, we'll be here."
***
Marissa comes to see Ryan again that night.
As soon as he spots her hovering near the window, he knows she won't be back after this. She's crying and smiling and looking so worried that Ryan wants to tell her that he'll be fine; she doesn't have to worry, that it's all okay.
She knows him too well for that though. She won't believe him. After all, there's still Volchok waiting to be dealt with. There's still the fact that he misses her, that he can't forget their last moments together.
Nothing else stuck with him-the good times, the slightly-less-good times, the moments when they were there for each other and the moments when they tore each other apart, none of that matters anymore. She died and that pain overwrote everything else.
He reaches out to her and she meets him halfway, takes his hand, squeezes it, and it feels as real as the real thing. Don't leave, he wants to say. Please, stay.
What comes out of his mouth is a strangled, "I'm sorry."
She smiles sadly, squeezes a little harder, comes closer to the bed.
"I'm so sorry," he adds. "So damn sorry."
She speaks to him for the first time since her death, her voice soft and firm at once. "I forgive you."
He feels like all the air has left his lungs, like he has been punched in the gut, and he spends a moment gasping in his bed. He didn't even know he wanted to hear this until she said it, but now he holds onto the words, committing them to memory.
"Why?" he asks.
"Why what?" She's leaning over him, her mouth inches from his.
"Why forgive me?" It comes out barely above a whisper, but she hears him.
"Because." She smiles. "I love you."
She leans even closer, kisses his forehead softly and he closes his eyes.
"Marissa," he says.
When he opens his eyes again, she's gone. He blinks back tears, the pain of that new loss bringing him right back to the moment when she stopped breathing.
He wants to call out to her, to call her back to him, to ask her to stay, but he can tell it won't work, can tell she's gone again.
A noise from the doorway startles him and he spots Sandy standing there, one foot in the dark room and one still in the dimly-lit hallway. "What's going on, Ryan?" the man asks, entering the room and shutting the door behind him.
Now, Ryan wants to tell him everything, but he can't find the words, can't find the right way to explain it all. "She's gone," he simply says, then closes his eyes, rubbing his eyes.
He feels a rush of air as Sandy comes closer, embraces him, holds him close.
Ryan hasn't cried over Marissa-not the night of the accident, not the day of the funeral and not since then. But here, with Sandy's arms around him, he loses the fight and lets out a sob, tears seeping through his closed eyelids. "Let me go," he articulates, unsure Sandy understands.
Sandy doesn't reply, holding on to him and Ryan lets out another painful sob that seems to come from deep down and tear its way out of him, hurting so much that Ryan thinks he'll never recover from it.
"Oh, kid," Sandy says, and this time, the warmth in his voice doesn't soothe the hurt.
***
Ryan tries not to expect Marissa to come back but in the next few months, he can't help looking around from time to time, in the hope he'll catch a glimpse of her, a sign that wherever she is, she's happy and well.
He never sees her again though, and as he starts dating Taylor, moves to Berkeley, makes a life for himself, he stops looking for her.
The pain dulls with time but never totally disappears-not even when Ryan gets married, not even when he and Taylor adopt Mike, not even when Taylor gives him a kid, then another.
Sometimes, Ryan almost wishes he could see Marissa again-she was there for the bad times, and he wants her to witness the good ones too.
He wants her to see that he did start living again, wants to thank her for offering him a last chance to say goodbye to her.
He has to settle for the hope that wherever she is, she sees him and she knows how grateful he is for that.
end
Author : Helen C.
Rating : PG-13
Summary : Twelve things that never happened to Ryan. D'uh.
Disclaimer : The characters and the universe were created and are owned by Josh Schwartz. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
AN. Eternal gratitude to the awesome joey51 for beta'ing this.
the long goodbye
Helen C.
The first time Ryan sees Marissa, ten days after her funeral, he's drunk.
He has been sitting at the bar for well over three hours, nursing his vodka and ignoring the cell phone that vibrates almost constantly in his front pocket. It doesn't happen often, but sometimes, he wishes the Cohens weren't so damn obstinate, wishes they understood that he doesn't want to see them-doesn't want them to see him in such a state.
He's considering whether or not there's any chance of them finding him in this dive when someone enters, the raised voices of two men arguing just outside causing Ryan to lift his head for a second. It's long enough to see her standing at the door, arms hanging loosely at her sides, watching him with a worried frown.
Surprised, he stares at her, barely daring to blink for fear that she'll disappear. Then the man who opened the door walks through her and Ryan flinches as she vanishes-there one moment, gone the next.
"Marissa?" he calls, knowing it's stupid-she's dead, her corpse locked in a coffin and buried under the proverbial six feet of dirt, and she's not coming back. He was holding her in his arms when she took her last breath, when the light left her eyes, when she went limp and died, like someone had flipped a switch. He knows that, doesn't need to go visit her grave to remind himself that she's dead.
The door of the bar closes as the man walks farther into the room, and the barman sighs, "Should teach me to serve alcohol to kids."
Ryan eyes his glass, then the door.
The barman puts his hands on both sides of Ryan's glass, ready to snatch it away. "Go back home, kid."
Another customer pushes the door open and Ryan's head snaps in that direction.
Marissa isn't there anymore, though.
"I think I need another one," Ryan says to no one in particular.
"What you need is to get out," the barman replies.
Ryan shifts his head back in his direction and stares at him without a word. The barman sighs and takes Ryan's glass to fill it again. "Why the hell not, after all?" He sets the glass in front of Ryan. "Give me your keys."
Ryan complies, then takes a swallow of alcohol, allowing the burning sensation to wash any other feeling for a few too short moments.
***
The second time Ryan sees Marissa is right after his first fight in the cage.
He's trying to convince his boss that he doesn't want the money from the fight and as he turns to leave, giving up on the discussion completely, there she is, two feet from him, tall and thin and still beautiful.
He freezes, resists the urge to reach out to her, afraid it would make her disappear again.
They look at each other, neither of them talking. They were never that good with words anyway.
His boss' voice jerks him back to reality. "Kid?"
"What?" he replies, sounding distant and hoarse. He doesn't take his eyes off Marissa, who's shaking her head at him softly, disapprovingly.
His boss steps in front of him, blocking his view. Ryan doesn't know whether he should thank him or punch him.
"Hit your head?" the man asks.
Ryan sidesteps him and looks at the spot where Marissa was standing, but she's gone.
His boss takes a hold of his arm and shakes slightly. "Hey!" He waits until Ryan is focussing on him again before asking, each word punctuated with a small shake of his arm. "Did you hit your head?"
"No."
The man doesn't look convinced but releases him. "Get some sleep then," he orders.
Ryan would laugh if his split lip hurt a little less.
He doubts he's going to be able to sleep any time soon.
***
Ryan sees Marissa every time he enters the cage after that. She's standing there, watching these guys pummel him into the ground and he feels her worry, her fear, sees the unshed tears making her eyes brighter.
He wishes he could pretend he's doing this as a penance, his small way of expiating the fact that he lived and she didn't.
It wouldn't be the whole truth, though.
Mostly, he just wants the pain to remind him that, once upon a time, he used to feel-back when she was still alive, back when Volchok hadn't yet made Ryan a killer by proxy.
Back when she hadn't died in his arms, begging him to stay, not to leave, back when he hadn't lied to her by pretending that she was going to be fine when he knew she wouldn't be.
***
He doesn't tell anyone about these… apparitions? Hallucinations?
He hasn't seen the Cohens in ages anyway.
Seth drops by from time to time to ask him to come back home and to give him care packages that Kirsten took the time to prepare and that Ryan throws away a few seconds after Seth leaves.
There was a time when he would have felt guilty about that.
These days, he's just relieved he doesn't have to face her, or Sandy. Seth is hard enough.
He's pretty sure that aside from them, no one would care about the fact that it's entirely possible he's losing his mind.
***
The first time Marissa touches him, after her death, is also the first time Ryan gets knocked out in the cage.
He's smiling as he hits the mat-he always smiles when he hits the mat, because if he doesn't smile, he'll scream or cry, and he doesn't want that-and suddenly, she's hovering over him, one hand against his forehead and the other closing over his fist, and he shivers at her touch as he closes his eyes.
It feels so real.
It's so damn tempting to believe that it is, so damn tempting to give in to the illusion, to pretend that she's still there, that she didn't die in his arms-that her death didn't break him.
He hears the crowd roaring outside the cage, hears someone calling, "He's down," and everything fades to black.
***
By the time Julie calls Ryan to tell him that she knows where Volchok is, Ryan has been knocked out another three times, and each time, Marissa was there, looking over him, holding his bruised hand in hers.
Ryan keeps picking bigger and stronger opponents just to feel her close by, but they don't always beat him into unconsciousness, and his boss sometimes objects Ryan's choice. Maybe he thinks Ryan has a death wish and he doesn't want things to go too far under his watch.
It doesn't matter.
Ryan doesn't want to die.
He doesn't want anything anymore, but to feel Marissa's hands on him.
***
Ryan is leaving the graveyard where Julie is still crying over Marissa's grave. He almost tells her that Marissa is watching them both from a few feet away, but he doesn't.
It wouldn't help Julie and he wants to keep this little piece of knowledge to himself.
His phone starts to ring as he reaches his car and Ryan picks up absently, throwing the file on the backseat, "Yeah."
Out of habit, he looks around, but Marissa isn't following him. She's standing close to Julie so they're shoulder to shoulder, and looking down at the headstone, her fists clenched, tears streaming down her face.
It's the first time Ryan sees her cry since her death. Back when she was still alive, he often wished she wouldn't cry so often-wouldn't have so many reasons to cry in the first place. Now, he's almost glad to see it.
"Dude." Seth's giggle makes for a brutal transition from his thoughts. "I’m soooooooooo wasted."
"What the hell?" Ryan can't help asking. How and when did Seth find the time to get drunk? They were all at the comic shop less than four hours ago.
"I know, I know." Seth's voice is slurred and there's a long silence before he adds, "I didn't have that much to drink, honestly. But the guy won't let me leave and I can't call the 'rents, and…" He stops and Ryan hears him swallowing hard, as if trying not to get sick.
Great.
"Where are you?" he asks.
"Bait Shop." There's some yelling in the background and Seth apologizes profusely.
"I'll be there soon," Ryan promises.
Then, Seth says in a strangled voice, "Oh God," and Ryan hurriedly snaps his phone shut.
***
Ryan never makes it to the Bait Shop.
Instead, he gets into his second car accident in under six months.
At least, this time, no one dies, but it's cold comfort to him as he's loaded onto a stretcher and lifted into the ambulance, dizzy and nauseous and fighting back the urge to call out for Marissa.
***
"We need to stop meeting like this," Sandy says once Ryan has assured him that he's fine and the hospital is just keeping him for the night as a precaution.
"I'm sorry."
He has barely seen Sandy in weeks and now that the man's here, looking tired and old, he feels ashamed for cutting the Cohens out of his life.
Worse than that, he's not far from wishing Sandy would leave him to deal with this new mess on his own.
Sandy takes a seat next to the bed. "Kirsten is picking Seth up. They'll be here soon."
Ryan nods and doesn't point out that there's no need for the whole family to be here. While he's sore all over, the accident isn't the cause of most of his bruises-a fact the Cohens don't need to know-and he just wants to shrug the whole thing off and go back to his life.
"What happened?" Sandy asks.
Too tired to elaborate, Ryan sums up in a terse voice, "Drunk driver. Red light."
He doesn't say that he probably could have avoided it if he hadn't been distracted by Marissa, who had appeared in the seat next to him and was looking at him the way she used to when she was getting ready for a fight, or at least a serious discussion.
He doesn't want Sandy, or anyone else, to know about Marissa. They'd find rational ways to explain it and he doesn't want it explained, doesn't want them to tell him that seeing her is a sign that he took too many blows to the head, or that grief is driving him nuts.
Explaining it would mean losing this precious gift.
If he told Sandy, how long would it be until the man dragged him to a therapist? How long until they pumped him full of pills? Would he be able to convince them all that seeing Marissa doesn't bother him?
Would he be able to convince them that seeing his dead girlfriend lurking around is actually the one thing that kept him alive all these months?
"Ryan?"
He looks at Sandy. "What?"
"Don't shut me out now, kid," he says softly.
Shut you out? What have I been doing for the last five months, Sandy? Why do you think I did it? You don't want to know. I don't want you to know.
I'll lose her if you know.
"There was a file on the backseat of your car," Sandy says.
Ryan freezes, keeping his gaze fixed on the foot of his bed.
Sandy goes on, in the same voice he'd use to ask what Ryan wants for diner. "The cops gave it to me. Ryan, it's…"
"I know what it is."
Not too long ago, he wouldn't have considered talking to Sandy in that tone.
"What were you going to do with it?" Sandy asks.
Ryan stares at him, trying to look hard and resolved, trying to look like he knows what the hell he's getting himself into, trying to look like he's in control when in truth, he has never felt so much like he's drifting away from his own life. "I hadn't decided." He takes a sharp breath, smothers a grimace as the bruises make their presence known. "I haven't decided yet," he amends.
Sandy rubs his eyes, shoulders slumped, elbows resting on his knees. Ryan can't even begin to guess what his former guardian is thinking right now.
Eventually, Sandy meets his eyes. "Fine. I won't force you to talk if you don't want to." He puts a hand on Ryan's arm and Ryan has to resist the urge to jerk away from the touch. "But remember that we're here, and we're not going anywhere. When you're ready, we'll be here."
***
Marissa comes to see Ryan again that night.
As soon as he spots her hovering near the window, he knows she won't be back after this. She's crying and smiling and looking so worried that Ryan wants to tell her that he'll be fine; she doesn't have to worry, that it's all okay.
She knows him too well for that though. She won't believe him. After all, there's still Volchok waiting to be dealt with. There's still the fact that he misses her, that he can't forget their last moments together.
Nothing else stuck with him-the good times, the slightly-less-good times, the moments when they were there for each other and the moments when they tore each other apart, none of that matters anymore. She died and that pain overwrote everything else.
He reaches out to her and she meets him halfway, takes his hand, squeezes it, and it feels as real as the real thing. Don't leave, he wants to say. Please, stay.
What comes out of his mouth is a strangled, "I'm sorry."
She smiles sadly, squeezes a little harder, comes closer to the bed.
"I'm so sorry," he adds. "So damn sorry."
She speaks to him for the first time since her death, her voice soft and firm at once. "I forgive you."
He feels like all the air has left his lungs, like he has been punched in the gut, and he spends a moment gasping in his bed. He didn't even know he wanted to hear this until she said it, but now he holds onto the words, committing them to memory.
"Why?" he asks.
"Why what?" She's leaning over him, her mouth inches from his.
"Why forgive me?" It comes out barely above a whisper, but she hears him.
"Because." She smiles. "I love you."
She leans even closer, kisses his forehead softly and he closes his eyes.
"Marissa," he says.
When he opens his eyes again, she's gone. He blinks back tears, the pain of that new loss bringing him right back to the moment when she stopped breathing.
He wants to call out to her, to call her back to him, to ask her to stay, but he can tell it won't work, can tell she's gone again.
A noise from the doorway startles him and he spots Sandy standing there, one foot in the dark room and one still in the dimly-lit hallway. "What's going on, Ryan?" the man asks, entering the room and shutting the door behind him.
Now, Ryan wants to tell him everything, but he can't find the words, can't find the right way to explain it all. "She's gone," he simply says, then closes his eyes, rubbing his eyes.
He feels a rush of air as Sandy comes closer, embraces him, holds him close.
Ryan hasn't cried over Marissa-not the night of the accident, not the day of the funeral and not since then. But here, with Sandy's arms around him, he loses the fight and lets out a sob, tears seeping through his closed eyelids. "Let me go," he articulates, unsure Sandy understands.
Sandy doesn't reply, holding on to him and Ryan lets out another painful sob that seems to come from deep down and tear its way out of him, hurting so much that Ryan thinks he'll never recover from it.
"Oh, kid," Sandy says, and this time, the warmth in his voice doesn't soothe the hurt.
***
Ryan tries not to expect Marissa to come back but in the next few months, he can't help looking around from time to time, in the hope he'll catch a glimpse of her, a sign that wherever she is, she's happy and well.
He never sees her again though, and as he starts dating Taylor, moves to Berkeley, makes a life for himself, he stops looking for her.
The pain dulls with time but never totally disappears-not even when Ryan gets married, not even when he and Taylor adopt Mike, not even when Taylor gives him a kid, then another.
Sometimes, Ryan almost wishes he could see Marissa again-she was there for the bad times, and he wants her to witness the good ones too.
He wants her to see that he did start living again, wants to thank her for offering him a last chance to say goodbye to her.
He has to settle for the hope that wherever she is, she sees him and she knows how grateful he is for that.
end