7Carina, Marissa's future wife, has dark red hair and thick, pronounced eyebrows. There are freckles on her face and shoulders, and wrists that jingle when she moves, covered in beaded bracelets. She laughs easily, and carries the conversation every single time it lags, when the air gets heavy or somebody says something a little too sharply. She and Marissa can barely keep their hands off each other - touching each other's wrists, playing with locks of hair, rubbing shoulders at the table. Marissa usually looks weighted down with that old resentment, whenever she comes to visit, but tonight, with Carina by her side - she's a totally different person.
"So yeah, rehearsal, ceremony - on the beach, we're hoping - and reception. Nothing fancy, nothing too elaborate. Other than bachelorette parties, maybe, but - who needs all the extra stuff? And who gets the wedding shower when there's two brides, anyway?" Carina grins invitingly. She's been doing that all night - bluntly and obviously bringing up the fact that she and Marissa are both women, as if giving them all permission to joke about it. Rather unnecessary, since this is hardly the first time Marissa's brought home a girl she's marrying, but it's a sweet gesture. Sort of.
"Oh, a beach wedding," Julie says wistfully. On her best behavior tonight, she's even dressed down for once - no flashy makeup or jewelry. She's wearing pants, for God's sake. "That will be lovely - at sunset?"
"We were thinking sunrise, actually," Marissa says. She's cut her hair short since the last time he saw her, a shocking hard bob that ends right at her chin, and Ryan keeps doing double takes. He hopes it's not too obvious. "The reception would be like, a breakfast themed thing. Pancakes and waffles and coffee." She smiles a little, to herself, before her grin sharpens, landing directly on Jimmy. "Dad thinks it's silly."
"You gotta have cake," Jimmy exclaims. Apart from the grey in his hair, he looks pretty much the same. Ocean air, and all that. "You can't eat cake with breakfast, and a wedding reception needs cake."
"IHOP makes birthday cake pancakes," Kaitlin offers.
"The ones with sprinkles!" Jamie chimes in. He swings his legs at his chair, blissfully unaware of the literal iceberg of emotional baggage beneath the dinner table. "You could make a whole cake out of sprinkle pancakes. Or you could make those big fluffy ones - I saw a video on YouTube where they put candles in it."
Carina grins at the little boy, obviously charmed to death, just like everyone else who meets him. Marissa and Jimmy, on the other hand, do their usual 'pretend that awkward existence of a child isn't there' routine. "I love it. We could frost it like it's an actual cake, and not tell anybody until we served it. What do you think, Coop?"
Ryan visibly starts at the nickname. Marissa flashes him a quick glance, and just as quickly, looks away. "Why not?" she says, smiling. Julie smiles along with her, anxiously trying to be as polite and nice as possible. And Ryan and Frank finish their food as quietly as possible, trying not to draw anybody's gaze.
The rest of the dinner goes like that. Bloodshed: minimum. Awkwardness: manageable. Ryan catches Julie desperately chugging a glass of wine in the kitchen, and Frank noticeably does not say a single word to Jimmy the entire night, but at least nobody gets pushed in the pool.
Kaitlin, on the other hand, gets up and leaves without a single word the second she's finished eating. She's been plastic-wrapped pleasant all night, her smiles stretched wide and brittle across her face. Jimmy visibly deflates the second she leaves, looking helplessly over at Julie, who is too busy keeping her own smile up to notice.
"Tired, probably," Frankie says, probably only the third or fourth sentence he's uttered all night. He looks over at Jamie, who's drooping a little as well. "Somebody stayed up until two o'clock last night playing Mario Kart, and I don't think it was me or Julie."
"It was me," Ryan chimes in, just to get a few easy laughs. Carina doesn't disappoint, and neither does Julie. "Sorry, Dad. I was really close to winning the - the thing, the coin. The coin chest."
"You're hopeless," Jamie pronounces, in his haughtiest voice. Even Marissa laughs at that one.
"You live here?" Carina asks, not quite completely in on the joke.
"No, no," Julie says, chuckling. "Ryan owns Oryx & Crake, down by the pier, and he has an apartment next door. It's a bar," she adds needlessly, smiling at Marissa, "Marissa knows it well. It was called The Bait Shop, when the kids were in high school."
"Still can't believe you bought that place," Marissa says quietly. She never quite makes eye contact with Ryan, but at least she hides it well. "How's business, anyway?"
"Good," Ryan says honestly. He can't really talk; he's not making eye contact either. "We're doing well. Expanding the kitchen menu's helped a lot."
"That name sounds so familiar," Carina says, tapping her chin. "Oryx & Crake - where's that come from?"
"Margaret Atwood, right?" Jimmy asks. He snaps his fingers. "I read that book. I think."
"Summer picked it," Ryan says with a shrug.
Marissa snorts, a startling sound. "Summer reads Margaret Atwood?"
Julie's smile slips, ever so slightly. Marissa quickly picks up her wine glass and hides her face in it.
"She went through a phase," Ryan says delicately. He picks up his own drink, carefully not looking at anybody. "She travels a lot for work. Reads all the time - much more than I do." Why is he still talking about this, he thinks.
"Who's Summer again?" Carina asks. She touches Marissa's wrist softly and pulls her hand beneath the table - clearly sensing the tension.
"She's Ryan's girlfriend," Marissa says.
"What?" Ryan says, startled into sharpness. He flinches when the whole table looks at him. "No she's not."
"I mean, we were all friends, when we were kids, and Summer and I used to be really close," Marissa continues, as if Ryan hadn't even spoken. "Honestly, Ryan, it's okay. It's not like everybody doesn't already know."
"Uh," Ryan says, feeling like he's been very suddenly thrown into an alternate universe. "We're not dating."
Julie's frowning a little, beneath her smile, but Frank's just grinning into his wine glass, clearly smothering a laugh. But Jamie looks almost crushed. "Did you break up?"
"What?" Ryan says again. The laughter's spread to the rest of the table - even Jimmy is chuckling to himself. "No, kiddo, it's - we're not - "
"Why did you break up with Summer? I liked Summer," Jamie asks plaintively.
"I didn't," Ryan says helplessly, and Julie cuts in.
"Nobody broke up with Summer, baby," she says. She shoots Ryan a warning look, as if daring him to contradict. "Did you clean your plate? Awesome. You can go, if you want."
"Really?" Jamie looks torn between staying at the table to look sad at Ryan some more, and running off to his computer room. Ryan rubs his forehead with one hand. Marissa is hiding a smile against one hand, and Carina is grinning at him openly.
"Take your plate to the kitchen and go play your game while you can," Frank says sternly, "bed time's at eight tonight. You've got school in the morning."
Jamie doesn't waste any time, practically bolting from the table. Julie winces as the clatter of the plate being thrown into the sink echoes out into the patio from the kitchen. "He won't even make it to seven-thirty," she predicts, shaking her head. "They stayed up way later than two."
"Has Kait been staying here?" Jimmy asks, his face still drawn with concern. "I thought she was living in Laguna Hills?"
"She ah," Julie says, "got evicted."
Marissa snorts again. Carina leans in slightly, pressing their shoulders together.
"So she's staying with us for a while, yes," Julie says neutrally. "Her job is going well, though. She got promoted to production assistant, Jimmy - did she tell you?"
Jimmy just nods, eyes on the wall behind them. There are pictures crammed into the edges of a framed mirror - snapshots that Kaitlin takes with her fancy, hipster Polaroid. Ryan follows his gaze and sees the pictures anew, through a different perspective - most of them are of Jamie, but there are quite a few of the rest of them, scattered along the frame. Kait and Summer, making fish faces with their cheeks pressed together. A shot of Ryan, scowling at the camera from a lawn chair. Jamie in his tux for the Charity Auction. Frank dipping Julie for a kiss in the backyard, the end of her ponytail dangling dangerously close to the barbecue grill.
It's one thing to go on living your life without somebody in it all the time, but you forget until you're reminded. Ryan's sure he would feel the same way if he were sitting in their house, surrounded by pictures of all the time they went on living without him.
"Wow - on something I'd know?" Carina asks. It's starting to become more glaring, how little she knows about them.
"Probably not, it's a fairly small company," Julie says. "They do local commercials, internal corporate videos, that sort of thing. But it's a foot in the door to be sure."
"Oh, definitely," Carina says.
The awkwardness that's been hovering over them all night finally descends, vulnerable as they are now without Kaitlin and Jamie. Ryan makes eye contact with his father, who rolls his eyes quickly and then buries his face back in his wine glass.
Marissa extracts herself from Carina. "Bathroom," she mutters, smiling tensely at Julie before slipping back into the depths of the house. Ryan glances at Julie, still tightly smiling down at the table, and quietly rises to his feet as well.
"I'll get the plates," he says, picking up Marissa's abandoned soup bowl. Carina startles, and starts to help. "It's okay - don't worry about it - "
"Please. I'm the guest, of course I'm helping," Carina says, gathering up an armful, clearly intent on following him into the kitchen. Ryan can't think of a way to convince her otherwise, so he lets her. They leave the parents to their stilted conversation, and if Ryan's not mistaken, Carina breathes a sigh of relief too, the moment the door swings shut behind them.
She doesn't mention it. "So," she says, carefully piling her load of plates into the sink, "did I pass?"
"Pass what?" Ryan asks, stupidly.
"You know," Carina says, smiling ruefully. "Pass. Marissa told me the last fiance didn't even make it to the family dinner."
Ryan snorts, unloading his own armful. "Jury's out on that one. But I'm not so sure our test should mean anything to you," he says ruefully.
"It does, though," Carina says, her eyes wide and earnest. She blinks, and the moment passes, the air turning awkward again. "You can go talk to her, you know. I won't get jealous."
The thought honestly hadn't occurred to Ryan. "Did she go out for a cigarette?"
"Probably," Carina says. Her smiles, for what it's worth, do seem genuine. Much more than any of theirs must seem to her, probably. "Seriously, it's okay. I can cover for you with your mom, if you want."
Every muscle in Ryan's body flinches, at Julie being referred to as his mother, but she's...technically correct. Plus, he's trying to be nice. "You know Marissa and I aren't really…"
"Siblings? Yes," Carina says, tilting her head curiously. "She told me most of the dirty details. Must be weird - your dad marrying your ex's mom."
"It was at first. But you get used to it." Ryan finds himself liking her, the way he likes the people he meets at work - fleeting glimpses of people's personalities, revealed unintentionally in vulnerable moments. "I don't know that we have anything to talk about, though."
Carina scoffs. "Now I know you know that's bullshit," she says, cocking her head. "Go on, just get it over with."
"Everyone seems to be telling me that lately," Ryan complains.
"Sounds like you've got smart friends," Carina says with another disarming smile. "Everyone needs those."
She does, Ryan thinks, have a point.
He finds Marissa in the driveway, blowing smoke rings at Julie's mailbox. He joins her at the edge of the concrete, silently pulling his own crumpled pack of Marlboros out of his back pocket. He's been trying to quit again, so it's been a month or so since he had one. The first drag is like a punch to the throat.
"This feels...familiar," Marissa says finally. She still hasn't looked over at him. "Ask me who I am - go on. It's my turn to give the line."
Ryan shoots her a dry look. "Never been into roleplay, thanks."
"Yeah, I remember," Marissa says, with a short laugh. For a second, Ryan almost laughs with her. He forgets what she's like when she's not around - how sharp she is, noticing everything, her eyes always open. Her razor-edged sense of humor that's only gotten more deadly in the years since they first met. "So - what's the verdict? Is Julie about to write her a blank check, tell her all my dirty secrets so she'll dump me right here and now?"
"I kind of thought she already knew your dirty secrets," Ryan says neutrally. "You don't usually hang onto them for very long."
Marissa flinches, just a barely visible twitch. She inhales to cover it, but Ryan's already noticed. "Right."
Ryan lets the silence sit, for just a moment. "Summer and I aren't seeing each other," he says. Marissa shrugs, the look on her face turning momentarily bitter. "Is that why you - all this time? You thought we were…"
"Well if you aren't officially, then one of you is lying to yourself," Marissa says sharply. She inhales again and blows the smoke out through her nose, a practiced, anxious motion. "And no offense, but Summer's usually a little smarter about these kinds of things."
"So you really thought," Ryan marvels, "that I just ran off and shacked up with your best friend. After everything that went down."
"You were angry enough," Marissa says. She finally turns to meet his eyes, and immediately her expression falters, her face melting into exasperation. "Oh, Christ, Ryan. I don't wanna fight. I made a promise to myself I wouldn't start a fight tonight. Can we not do this?"
"You can't have thought - for six years?" Ryan pushes, still stuck on the idea. The fact that Julie and Frank probably thought something similar - maybe not all this time, but recently - is less surprising. But he'd thought Marissa, at least, wouldn't have assumed so much for so long. "Why didn't I bring her to anything - move in with her, buy her a ring - I mean, almost a decade - "
"It's none of my business, and it still isn't," Marissa says firmly, stamping out her cigarette.
Ryan just feels a little sick. Another shift - every time he sees these people, he gets another one. "Is that why you're not close anymore? Because of me?"
Marissa closes her eyes briefly, and when she opens them, she looks older. Not at all like the girl Ryan once chased, over and over and over until they both lost their balance. "No. We're not close anymore because I couldn't stand to stay friends with anyone who knew me back then." Her chin trembles, but her voice doesn't. "I did it on purpose, for myself, Ryan. It's not your fault."
An invisible weight lifts, and Ryan remembers that he's smoking a cigarette. The second drag is just as bad.
"I invited Seth to the wedding," Marissa says. She shakes her head. "You probably already knew that."
"I had an inkling," Ryan says.
"I just thought - it's time to grow up, that's all. Move on, be healthy, rattle our chakras and shake out our baggage - whatever. Stupid, probably." Marissa turns, pausing briefly at his shoulder. Reaching out slowly, telegraphing her movement so he knows she's coming, she takes his hand. Squeezes it once, like she used to when they'd be standing in a crowd, and she'd feel him start to tense up. Letting him know she's there, that she knows how he feels, and that she's got his back. "I'll tell him not to come if you want. But I don't think you're going to ask me to do that."
Ryan swallows thickly, and squeezes her hand back. Then he slides it out of her grip, and takes a very large step backwards. "I'm really not dating Summer," he insists, needing very badly to get this point across, for some reason. "We're friends, close friends, but that's it."
Marissa rolls her eyes at him, plucking the cigarette right out of his hand. "Let me have that, if you're just gonna hold it," she says. "Like I said, it's none of my business."
"She wouldn't give the time of day to a guy like me," Ryan blurts. Then he stops short, surprised by himself. He has no idea where the fuck a thought like that came from.
Marissa's answering smile is kind, and a little condescending. "I thought the same thing about Carina," she says. "But whataya know? Miracles happen."
Trey is buried in San Bernardino. It was Dawn's decision - her hometown. Not that she lives there now, or has stepped foot in it more than twice in the past twenty years. But she insisted, and so they did it, and it ended up feeling like they were just...putting him away somewhere, out of sight and out of the way. They might as well have cremated him, and left him in a cupboard.
Frank shows up at the bar early, with coffee. "I forgot how you like it," he says, handing Ryan two cups: one with an Americano, and the other full of packets of brown sugar and half and half.
Ryan's already sucked down half a pot this morning, but he decides not to mention it. "Thanks, Dad."
"Is this new?" Frank wanders over to the row of photographs, framed on the wall above the benches Ryan's installed for customers waiting on a table. "Wow, is this...Chino?"
"Yeah. Kait took them a while back, but she just now finished them for me." Kaitlin doesn't make a habit of dating seriously, but when she does she usually picks shitty people who cheat on her, which is a habit Ryan would really like her to break. At any rate, the last time it happened, he and Summer spent a lot of time dragging her out of her apartment and distracting her with whatever random activities they could come up with. A trip to Ryan's old haunts worked pretty well, and Kait took a bunch of photos, which she then developed into artsy, black and white prints for the bar. "They're pretty good, huh?"
"Yeah." Frank's standing in front of the photograph of Ryan's old elementary school, which Kait has managed to photograph in a way that it seems interesting and mysterious, instead of a run-down government building with mismatched paint. Kaitlin has a way of making mundane things look beautiful. Ryan wishes she'd give up on her TV dreams and just go with the photography thing, since she's so talented, but - well, it's not what she wants. "I don't think you ever told me why you changed your mind - about the bar's name."
Ryan shrugs. "I guess I didn't want to rub it in my own face."
"Rub what in your own face?" Frank asks, sounding almost offended. "You're ashamed of where you come from?"
"No," Ryan says, rolling his eyes. "Naming a bar after the nickname people had for me would be rubbing it on my own face. Nobody was exactly using it as a compliment, Dad." Summer hasn't called him 'Chino' in years. Once, she even apologized for being the main reason the nickname caught on, when she was drunk. Ryan forgave her easily, since he wasn't exactly innocent on the shittalking front.
Frank deflates a little, turning back around to the pictures. Next to the elementary school is a photograph of the park where he and Trey used to play basketball. Kait and Ryan had been there on a Monday morning, when it was completely empty, and the small cement court looks much bigger than it ever did in real life. A vast, empty plain of concrete, with a basketball hoop standing guard at its entrance. "So you just...put pictures up on the walls instead?"
"They're okay with it when it's just aesthetic," Ryan says. "You know - local color."
Frank shakes his head. "Sometimes," he says, "I have no idea what the fuck we're doing here."
Ryan clasps his shoulder. "Tell me about it," he says. He tugs on Frank's shoulder, antsy to change the subject. Like he hadn't been antsy enough already, this morning. "Come on - we should get on the road."
"You wanna drive?" Frank offers. He tears his eyes away from the photographs.
"Do you mind?"
"Nah." Frank grins. "You're the boss."
"That's what they tell me," Ryan says wryly.
The drive is surprisingly pleasant - it doesn't feel like they're going to a cemetery. Frank has a way of making you feel like whatever you're doing just isn't that big of a deal - even when it is. Or maybe especially when it is. That's probably why he and Julie work so well - they balance each other out like that.
"So let me ask you something," Ryan says, about twenty minutes out.
Frank rolls his head lazily on the headrest to look at him. "No, we didn't really think you were dating Summer."
Ryan blanches. "Then why didn't you say anything at dinner?"
"Oh, would that have made it better? Your old man jumping in to talk about how single you are?" Frank snorts. "Trust me. You didn't want me to do that."
Ryan concedes the point. "But you think something's going on."
"Do you think something's going on?"
"No!" Ryan tightens his grip on the steering wheel. He hasn't talked to Summer since the dinner, despite her numerous texts asking how it went. He hasn't even asked her how her interview went, which has been pulling at him for days now - guilty wondering, an instinctive urge to talk to her, to know what's going on in her life. "We're friends."
Frank is quiet for a long, long moment. "Is now a good time for me to give you my speech? Because I have a speech."
"Christ in heaven," Ryan says, "I hate your speeches."
"I know, but I can't help it," Frank says, unapologetic. He takes his sunglasses off - for dramatic effect, Ryan assumes. "Ryan. Son. If you keep fucking around, you're going to end up like your Uncle Harry."
"Jesus," Ryan says, blowing out an angry breath. "That's pretty fucking harsh, Dad."
"It's true." Frank shrugs. "You're wasting your time. Dating bank robbers, married women, college girls looking for a thrill - I don't know what it is you think you're doing, but - "
"She committed tax fraud, not - and only one of them was married!" Ryan winces, at his own defensiveness. "It's none of your business, anyway."
"That's exactly what Harry used to say," Frank says, merciless. He pins Ryan in place with a weedy stare. "Life doesn't go on forever, son. Happiness doesn't just fall in your lap - you have to chase it. And if you wait too long, she's going to find it somewhere else, and you're gonna end up chatting up teenagers when you're sixty. Cheating people in poker for beer money, wearing Hawaiian shirts in public." Frank grimaces. "Golfing."
"You shut your mouth," Ryan says. "I swear to you right now, I will kill myself before I go golfing ever again. And that's a promise."
Frank smirks. "I'll hold you to that."
Ryan settles into a disgruntled silence, thinking of the last time he'd seen Uncle Harry. He'd flirted all night with Kaitlin, blithely ignoring Frank's increasingly pissed off commands to cut it out. Julie finally kicked him out when he invited Kait to come over and try out the hot tub at his apartment complex, right there at the dinner table in front of everybody.
He tries to picture himself at sixty, having grown into the type of old man that wears Hawaiian shirts - having dinner at Frank and Julie's and hitting on Jamie's girlfriends. Ryan shudders again. He really would off himself first.
"You're assuming a lot of things about me and Summer," he says, unable to help himself. "She probably doesn't want anything to do with me."
Frank just laughs, tipping his head back against the seat.
"Oh, shut up," Ryan says irritably, raising his voice to be heard over Frank's guffawing. "You're such an asshole."
"The way she was staring at you a couple weeks ago," Frank says, "when we went to the beach, and you took off your shirt? Yeah. Totally disgusted by you."
Ryan clears his throat, feeling his own face flush, embarrassingly. "It's really weird that you noticed that, just saying."
"I notice a lot of things," Frank says, unbothered, and slides his sunglasses back on.
They stop at a gas station and pick up a six pack of clamato beer, on Ryan's insistence. Trey loved that shit, but he'd never admit it - he always blamed it on his girlfriends, when someone would make fun of him for having it in the fridge.
"Disgusting," Frank says, shaking his head as he arranges it in a spot of honor next to the headstone. The area around it is tidy, but a bit neglected - not as bad as some of the older graves to be sure, but not nearly as well taken care of as some others. "Kid had piss poor taste in everything. Even your mom thought so."
"Better than flowers," Ryan says, with a shrug. He can't stop staring at the inscription. He doesn't remember who was making all these kinds of decisions, and at the time, he wasn't exactly paying close attention. It's miracle he managed to make it through the funeral at all.
Trey Malcolm Atwood
1984 - 2007
How many years have we waited for a ship that never set sail?
"Fuck," Ryan says, under his breath. Frank stands back up and carefully slides his hand around Ryan's shoulders, pulling him in close. "That's from that fucking song."
"Your mom picked it," Frank says. They stand there in silence for a few moments, staring together at the headstone. There's another family in the graveyard, talking quietly at another headstone a few hundred feet away. One of the women in the group is crying, the sound drifting to them gently on the crests of the wind.
It's both easier and harder than he'd expected it to be, all at the same time. Ryan stares at his brother's name until the letters blur, and then he turns away, pulling out from Frank's grip with a jerk of his shoulders. Frank lets him go, clearly lost in his own heavy moment as well.
The thing that still gets to him now is that he doesn't know how much of it was real. Trey bought him a car for his graduation - did he really mean it? Or was it just guilt? Did he steal the money for it, or earn it honestly like he claimed? If Ryan had known what had happened with Marissa - would Trey have admitted it, or denied everything?
And who would Ryan have believed? His brother, who fucked up constantly but loved him fiercely, in his own way - or Marissa and Seth, who loved him just as much, but smothered him with their own problems until Ryan lost all sense of himself? Two families, two worlds. To this day, he's still not sure which one he would have picked. Maybe that's part of why he feels so guilty.
"I always feel like I should talk to him, but - there's nothing I can say, is there?" Frank turns and joins Ryan a few feet away, leaving Trey's headstone at their backs. "You alright?"
"Yeah. No." Ryan shrugs, rubbing his eyes. "You know."
"Yeah." Frank puts his hand back on Ryan's shoulder, heavy and comforting. "Let's sit down, yeah? We can talk if you want. Or not."
Ryan lets himself be led over to the row of benches, helpfully installed along the driveway. It's a nice cemetery - nothing like the rundown, sad little graveyards Ryan remembers drinking in as a kid - lots of shade, places to sit. A little pond, near the northwest corner. The kind of place anyone would want their child to spend eternity in - that's probably why Dawn chose it.
Maybe the fact that it's so far away was the point, Ryan realizes.
"Marissa came with us last time, you know," Frank says, keeping his hand on Ryan's shoulder as they sit. "You didn't want to come. Remember, she was in town for Kait's birthday? We came up here that Sunday."
Ryan leans his elbows on his knees, angling his gaze at the ground. "She told me she forgave him a long time ago. She's always been…" graceful, Ryan finishes the sentence in his head. Too nice for her own good, capable of way too much kindness to just keep it to herself. Despite all the back and forth - that's why he always fell back in love with her, over and over again.
"Yeah. Julie comes with me from time to time. She's been real good about it - she even came by herself a few times, when I was sick or whatever. She wanted to make sure the grass was being cut properly." He laughs a little to himself. "A weird thing to care about, in my opinion, but she thinks it's important."
Ryan thinks there could be no better example of the strength of their marriage - that Julie Cooper will drive an hour on the freeway to cut the grass for Ryan's dead, ex-con brother. Like Marissa had said - miracles happen. "That's nice."
"Sandy and Kirsten visited once too," Frank says carefully. "They called, asked if it'd be okay with me. They were in the area for some reason."
Ryan breathes in and out slowly, focusing on the bark of a nearby tree. The anger always has a taste - a sour note in the back of his throat. He's learned how to manage it now, but it never goes away completely.
"Sandy emailed me too, the other day," Frank continues, watching him carefully. "They'd like to come to the wedding, but only if you want them there. They don't want to make you uncomfortable."
"They can come," Ryan says quickly. "I'm not - this isn't like, a breakup, where you have to ask me for permission. It's Marissa's wedding, she can invite whoever she wants."
"Oh, get real, Ryan," Frank says, not unkindly. "Of course they need your permission."
Ryan rolls over a few different responses in his head, before settling on the one he really wants to say. "How did you feel, when you found out that I was living with them? I mean, getting out of jail, seeing me play happy family with some other kid's parents - it couldn't have been easy."
"It wasn't," Frank says hoarsely. "But I - Ryan, I was so grateful, too. That you'd spent all that time being taken care of, with people who loved you. You have no idea how grateful I was."
His gaze drifts back over to Trey's headstone. The second part of that sentence goes unsaid. Ryan feels sick, looking at his face.
"It wasn't their fault," Ryan says. There are years of words, building up in his throat, choking his voice so that it comes out thinly, strangled with all that he's tried so hard to hold back. "None of it - not Trey, not me. It's me - I'm the reason we don't talk. I couldn't do it. All they did was try to help me."
Frank's face is creased in sympathy and pain, head hanging low. He leans in, pressing his shoulder against Ryan's arm silently.
"It was so hard, Dad," Ryan confesses, for the first time. He's not sure he's ever said those words out loud - to anyone. Not even Summer. "Trying to fit in, be the kind of person who deserved to be a part of their family. I knew the only reason they let me stay was because Seth liked me - at first, anyway. I mean, of course they loved me, but that came later. But at first - it was because of Seth." Ryan's breath feels sharp, the memories hard-edged and painful. "He was so lonely when I first met him. All he wanted was someone to talk to, to be his friend. And it felt like that's why they took me in - for him."
Frank makes a choked-off noise, and he covers his mouth with one hand, like he'd started to say something and then changed his mind. Ryan ignores it.
"So I did all these things, to try and be...that person," Ryan says helplessly. Each word feels like a weight sliding off his chest, a pile of stones being lifted away, one by one. "I pretended to like things that I didn't, I dated girls that I thought would...fit somehow, I changed my habits, the way I talked, what I ate - everything. And I didn't even realize it at the time, that that's what I was doing. But when Trey died - " Ryan pauses to swallow. "I just sort of...saw it for the first time. I stepped outside my own head, for just a second, and really looked, and it was just fucking absurd. You know? Everytime Seth called me his brother, I wanted to…" Ryan cringes in shame. "I had a brother, and he was dead, and there I was sitting in that big house, eating their food, wearing their clothes like they'd always been mine. It made me so fucking angry."
"You were grieving," Frank says. "It's complicated, Ryan. It makes you feel things, think things that you wouldn't, normally."
"But I meant them," Ryan insists. "And it wasn't their fault, which is why it was so fucking unbearable. Because I was so mad at them, but I couldn't actually - they didn't deserve it. They never asked me to do any of that, to change anything about who I was - I did it to myself."
Frank clasps Ryan's shoulder again, visibly struggling for words. "You were a kid," he finally settles on. "You were just trying to...cope. That's all, Ryan."
"And that makes it okay?" Ryan demands. "All that pain I caused them?"
"If they love you," Frank says firmly, shaking his head, "really love you - and I think they do - they don't care. They don't. All they want is for you to be happy and healthy - and I bet they even understand why, at least on some level. They're not stupid people, Ryan. They've stayed away because they know it's what you needed."
"I love them too," Ryan confesses quietly. "I think about them a lot. But I don't - " he rubs both palms over his face, pressing his knuckles into his eyelids until he sees stars. "I don't know that I can handle being their son. And it makes me feel like an ungrateful piece of shit, because all they ever wanted was to take care of me."
"Sometimes," Frank says quietly, "taking care of someone means leaving them alone."
Ryan falls back into silence, thinking inevitably about Dawn. He's more than positive that Frank's thinking about her, too.
"Tell Sandy to come," Ryan says, after a long moment. The other family has started to leave, meandering across the graveyard towards their car, parked a few feet behind Ryan's. One of the teenagers trails a few feet behind his family, kicking at weeds with his shoe, his hands shoved deeply into his pockets. He looks sort of like Seth - tall and lanky, curly dark hair. Ryan's heart aches. "Tell them it's okay with me. It's been years, for fuck's sake - if I don't get over myself now, when will I?"
"Okay," Frank says, squeezing Ryan's shoulder one last time before pulling his hand away. Ryan finds himself missing the weight, once it's gone. "Marissa will be happy."
"She should've been a therapist," Ryan says, only halfway joking. It's not the first time the thought's occurred to him, though he has no doubt that she'd laugh in his face if he ever suggested it to her. "How come she never invited them to her other weddings?"
"I don't think she got this far, with the other ones," Frank says thoughtfully. "That's a good sign, I think."
"Yeah." Ryan looks back over at Trey's headstone. Plain-colored granite, in a sea of white marble. His dumb, sad, heavy metal lyric, in a graveyard full of Bible verses. Maybe Dawn did know what she was doing after all. "Should we open one of the beers? Toast him, or something?"
"Nah," Frank says, smiling to himself. "Let him have it."
