Choices

"Choices" is a The Secret Life of the American Teenager episode from season two.

Synopsis
An MIA Ricky is at some old-style hotel in Hollywood, looking for his mom, Nora. The desk clerk recognizes him and claims he doesn't know where she is. But as soon as Ricky leaves, he dials her room and tells her Ricky was looking for her.

Everyone else, meanwhile, is out looking for Ricky. Though he finally picks up a phone call from Ashley, even she can't convince him to come back.

As for Adrian ... Ruben and Cindy try to get her to admit she made a mistake with Ben, but she's past remorseful and has moved on to vindictive; she's not apologetic at all about what happened with Ben.

Amy, OTOH, seems perfectly happy with Ricky gone. As a matter of fact, she tells George she wouldn't mind being a single mother for a while, and she could care less if Ricky was around. But Anne and Ashley don't exactly believe her. Could it be that she's just sick of getting hurt?

At school, Lauren and Madison get back together with Jesse and Jack, after they all clear up that little "baby" misunderstanding: You know, the girls took pictures of each other holding John and sent them to the boys but then backtracked by saying they don't even want babies. But the guys took it the wrong way and thought they were being rejected. OK, all fixed now.

Things are a little less rosy for Grace, Adrian, and Amy. Grace, who's upset because her mom's marrying Jeff and because she lost all her friends in this whole Ben/Adrian/Amy/Ricky scuffle, tries to win Jack back. But nope -- he's into Madison now. Adrian, who's still trying to convince herself she's not into Ricky, tries to get Ben interested in a second go-round, but he tells her he couldn't betray Ricky again. He also tells her Ricky loves her, but she just says, "Call me."

And before Adrian's words have stopped ringing in Ben's ears, Amy's right there. He's ready to fight, but when he tells her she should have invited him in and talked that night, she says what he really means is that she shouldn't have gotten pregnant and had that baby. "If only," she says, and walks away, leaving him slack-jawed. He was expecting a fight. Later, he has a heartfelt convo with Betty, who tells him how she met his dad and then urges him to go ahead and be a hopeless romantic. But Ben says he's not sure he wants to be a nice guy anymore.

Over at the Bowmans' place, Grace is testing her new strategy of "reverse psychology" on Kathleen. She thinks that if she and Tom act really supportive of Kathleen and Jeff's marriage, Kathleen won't want to get married anymore. You know, scientific method, all that. But instead, Kathleen gets so excited about all this newfound support that she and Jeff decide to get married THAT NIGHT. So much for reverse psychology. Or as Tom calls it, "reversed reverse psychology." Oops.

But while Kathleen and Jeff are jumping into marriage, Cindy might just be jumping out. She phones home from a hotel room to say she needs a few extra days to herself before the wedding. Adrian calls her on it and says it's her dream too. Can't any of her dreams come true?

Speaking of marriages, looks like Anne and George might actually be on the road to being OK again; Anne even lets him sleep in the bedroom instead of on the couch. Finally. They've got this funny self-improvement thing going on: She's working out, so he goes out and gets new jeans and ... hair plugs?!

As for Ashley and Amy? Yeah, they're back to being sisters who talk to each other, and Amy might be getting past the fact that Ashley told George about her kiss with Ricky. But then Ashley lets Amy in on something else: She knows where Ricky is.

So where IS Ricky? He's in the lobby again at that hotel, waiting for his birth mother, Nora. And when mother and son come face to face, he confronts her about his scarred past. He says he wants to move on, but he needs to know: Why did she stand by and let him be abused? How could she? She tells him she couldn't help, because she was just as abused by his dad. She tells him she's "broken." But she also says she's proud of him. And that when he got his dad sent back to jail, she started a thank-you fund. With that, she slaps down a big fat envelope of cash. Will Ricky take it?