A/N: It's been awhile. I'm sorry 'bout the wait (if anyone is waiting, that is) but I hope it was worth it. Still no concrete idea but I've got some tricks up my sleeve. Kind of.

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"Taylor?! What are you doing here?" Ryan cringed, hearing his words come out. He sounded like a complete jackass. He saw Taylor stop in her tracks, her face falling.

She paused, obviously taken aback by his outburst. Ryan thought he could also detect a little hurt in her voice. She proceeded with a little caution. "Hi Ryan. It's nice to see you."

Seeing her hesitation and knowing it was his fault, Ryan mentally slapped himself. I'm such a prick. He hastily rearranged his features into a genuine, if not slightly forced, smile. "Taylor, hi. Sorry about that. I was just surprised to see you. I thought you were in France… or was it Belgium? Switzerland, maybe?

Taylor laughed and Ryan, laughing back, could tell the tension had broken. "Yeah, I've been all over the place for the past couple years. After I finished at the Sorbonne, I did some translation work for a Belgian diplomatic organization. That work took me to Switzerland and then…

As she chatted--some things never change, he thought--he had the opportunity to study her closely. She looked just as she had the last time he saw her, approximately three Chrismukkahs ago with Summer, and to be honest, the way she had always looked − pristine, polished, and in general, flawless.

But there was something different about her, something not entirely physical. In high school and university, Taylor had always seemed rather severe to Ryan, all sharp lines and acute angles. Now it was as if the artist had gone back… blurred the edges a bit, softened her, erasing the severity but adding light.

She was absolutely stunning.

Shaking his head slightly, Ryan refocused on the girl talking in front of him.

She was gesturing wildly with her hands, "…when the German publisher asked for the manuscript in four days that was when I knew that I was done. I was sick of working as a crappy assistant all over Europe when I knew I could be working as an editor back home. So I came back." She smiled at him and Ryan felt himself, rather oddly, smiling back at her. This 'new' Taylor was affecting him, making him feel out of his element. He shook his head as if to clear it.

"So what are you doing now Ryan? Anything new?" Taylor grinned at him expectantly.

Well, I just ended one of the longest relationships I've ever had and now I feel lost. Instead Ryan, deciding that the uncharacteristically revealing response might not be what Taylor had in mind, went with something safer. "Well, I just finished doing my Masters at Berkeley, and I've just started work with a new architectural firm which is pretty interesting. Other than that, everything's pretty much normal." Ryan looked up from where he had been staring at the crashing waves to find Taylor with a quizzical expression on her face.

Ryan, feeling self-conscious by her look, asked, "What?"

Taylor shrugged. "It's nothing, really. I'm just surprised at Ryan Atwood describing his life as 'normal'. Tales of cage-fights, obsessed stalkers, and seedy relatives wouldn't have surprised me at all but this…this genuinely shocks me." Taylor grinned again and Ryan ducked his head, slightly embarrassed about his adolescent reputation.

"But…" Ryan looked up to see her gazing at him intently, "…I think a drama-free life really suits you. You seem well-adjusted, very stable. And that's more than I can say about most people." She continued to look at him for a piercing moment before dropping her gaze once more. The two of them went back to watching the waves in silence for a few minutes.

Feeling it was time he said something, Ryan blurted out, "So how are you adjusting to the weather?" He wanted to slap himself again. He couldn't even string together a decent sentence to make polite conversation with her. He really was terrible with words.

Nevertheless, even if Taylor did think the question futile, she didn't show it. She grinned sheepishly, "Actually, I got in from the airport this evening. I decided to get some air before I went to meet my mother. I hadn't realized it was so late…"

Ryan chuckled at the expression on her face, an amusing mix of fear, courage, and resignation. "I don't blame you. I can definitely see why avoiding Veronica Townsend can quite easily become a prolonged effort. She's, uh... really something else." She looked down, snorting softly. There was a pause and when she finally looked up, she smiled at him again.

His throat felt dry and Ryan couldn't help but swallow nervously. There was that feeling again. It felt foreign but familiar at the same time

Once again silence descended on the two of them. As Taylor turned to look out at the ocean, Ryan slowly began to identify how exactly he was feeling. It the way he used to feel a long time ago: when he first came to Newport, when he first bonded with Seth, when he first met Marissa, when he first went to Berkeley. All of them firsts, all incredibly exciting.

It was the thrill of potential in the air that was filling his lungs. Infinite possibility, chance, and opportunity pervaded his very senses. They were his for the taking.

The feeling began to fill him up, a long-awaited breath of fresh air. It had been a long time since he had felt hopeful for something--anything at all, in fact. Taylor had awakened something in him, something that had been dormant for too long. But now he could feel it again and he knew that the foundation was being laid down for something new, something exciting.

And as Taylor closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, Ryan couldn't help but follow… one possibly-life-altering breath at a time.

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Oh and I will try to be better about updating. Promise.