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Seth Cohen, who plays videogames so intensely he seems to forget that the pictures he sees in front of him aren't really real or tangible, isn't exactly Ryan's idea of a girlfriend, but there you go. He has had enough trouble with girlfriends as it is and Seth is there, being everything that Theresa wasn't.
When Ryan was thirteen and someone switched him on, he started seeing girls around him. He started thinking about how they would feel if he touched them, and he always thought of pleasure. He didn't care about warmth or softness or deep sense of friendship, because he already had friends for that. Girls gave pleasure. He wanted a girl.
Then, when he got the girl, he wanted away from her. He wasn't sure if it was because he didn't want the girl or because he didn't want Theresa and her problems. Or maybe it was because Theresa was too much trouble, too difficult to figure out, and he wanted someone he didn't have to start decoding from the moment they opened their mouth. He never quite figured it out.
Now Seth is there and he wants to be around Ryan, and Ryan has no objections to that. Seth isn't Theresa -- he's not a girl, he's not Ryan's ex, and he's not someone who knows too many shady things about Ryan's past. He's just Seth, one of those geeks Ryan usually looked at from afar, never quite able to figure out if they were a joke. He had nothing against them because he rarely had anything to do with them, but he couldn't see why anyone would willingly want to be stepped on. Seth wasn't willing, Ryan found out later. It had nothing to do with willingness.
What Ryan likes most about Seth is that Seth isn't Trey. He's more than Trey. He's like a real brother, one that doesn't steal or do drugs or serve time in prison. He's like the brother who asks Ryan to read comic books with him and who laughs at stupid comedians and talks about girls and boats and Summer in the middle of the night when neither one of them can fall asleep.
And then there are those moments when Seth shows that he's not Ryan's brother. Moments when Seth doesn't talk about girls or boats or Summer. Moments when he doesn't talk at all, but instead looks lazily at Ryan with his head propped against his hand, and there's a smile, kind of, and an amused air about him. Sometimes there are questions, careful ones disguised as jokes. Personal ones that are uttered only a moment before Seth falls on his back on the bed and covers his face with his arm as if he were embarrassed.
At first, Ryan had thought of them as jokes, but it had soon changed. He had noticed the tone, had gotten a hold of it, and the more Seth asked the firmer Ryan's hold was, and after a while he just knew. Simple as that.
So when Seth says, "I'd probably go insane if you went back to Chino and never returned," Ryan knows what he really means and he shows Seth the answer. The pillow he throws is returned in two seconds, followed by Seth's laughter and promise for revenge. Soon the laughter's closer, close enough that Ryan can feel it, and then it stops.
Seth's lips are nothing like Theresa's or any other girl's, but they still give him pleasure. He feels that right now, at least for the time being, Seth is more than enough.
Girlfriends can wait.