Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Here is how it starts: on the way to Cousins Beach, Belly stops at the gas station. It is a warm day, sticky and humid, and her hair is heavy at the base of her neck. In the freezer section, she opens the door and sticks her face in, shifting this way and that to get cold air on the most surface area. She is turned to the left when she sees a guy looking at her through the glass. He is leaning into his hip and watching her, a vaguely amused expression on his face.

“I think there’s a walk-in in the back if you’re feeling really desperate,” he says. “Or there’s an ice machine out front.”

“Thanks,” she says, cooly. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

It’s a full smile now, though still kind of half-smirk in a way that causes feeling to coalesce in Belly’s stomach. Trouble, Belly thinks. Big trouble.

She nods her head to him, pays for her drink, and gets back in her car. Through her windshield she watches him come out, too, pausing at the door and scanning the parking lot. 

Belly turns on the ignition, and reverses out onto the road.

.

She calls Taylor when she’s pulling up to the house. “So how is it?” Taylor asks. “Is it like a mansion? I bet it’s like a total mansion, right?”

“It’s not a mansion,” Belly says, though it is large, and the driveway goes in a circle, which perhaps is close enough. It’s nicer than the house she grew up in anyway, and it’s a second house. She’s never known anyone with a second house before.

She goes and hunts under the mat for the key, which is where Adam told her it would be, and then opens the door to the house.

“What about the sons? Are they there?”

“No cars,” Belly says. “So I’m guessing not yet.”

Despite her reservations, Belly likes the house immediately. It’s definitely a rich person’s house—big rooms, nice furniture, designer style curtains with little turtles on them—but it’s warmer and more relaxed than Adam’s place in Boston. Easier to see herself in. She walks down the hallway and into the kitchen. There’s fruit sitting in the fruit bowl, and beyond, she can see a very blue pool, and then even further out, the beach.

“Shit, Taylor,” she says.

“It’s nice, isn’t it?”

Belly leans against the veranda doors. “It’s nice,” she agrees.

“I can’t believe Adam let you drive down by yourself. Do you feel like you’re breaking and entering?”

Yes, Belly thinks. “He has a meeting in New York. He’ll be here for dinner.” 

“Yeah, the big dinner. You’ll have to tell me everything. Like take notes. I’m dying to know what his children think of him.”

“My life isn’t a soap opera,” Belly says, sternly.

“Sure.”

“Is that my sister?” she hears in the background, and then scuffling.

“Get off me,” Taylor huffs. “Sorry, your idiot brother is here, and he’s like totally hounding me.”

“Hey! Come on, we were meant to be in the car ten minutes ago. Sean is waiting.”

“Oh right. Call me back tonight, B. I’ll like keep my ringer on that’s how invested I am. Or well maybe not tonight, yes, Steven, I heard you, but tomorrow morning, yeah?”

“Tomorrow morning,” Belly agrees, and then hangs up.

.

Belly pulls her bag up the staircase and looks down the long corridor of rooms, wondering which one she’s meant to choose. On the left hand side are the hall bath and two rooms that are definitely the boys’ rooms—one in yellow plaid and one in navy blue—and then on the right, there are three very generic guest rooms. The master suite is at the far end, facing the ocean.

The suite has obviously been crafted by a feminine hand. The walls are a soft white, and there are little tasseled pillows embroidered with shells on the window sill. A sweet print of a pelican in flight is framed in the far corner, and on the dresser, along with a long row of books, there is a blue porcelain vase, just waiting for fresh flowers. Belly puts her finger to it. What woman picked you out? she thinks.

Belly hesitates for a moment, then drops her bags by the foot of the bed, gets her sunhat out, and goes for a walk. 

.

The path to the beach is shaded with trees, and there is a breeze coming from the water. Belly closes her eyes, enjoying it. She’s always loved the beach. The smell of salt and sand, the weight of the air, it isn’t like anywhere else.

Out on the shore, Belly walks almost all the way into the village, stopping just short of the last curve, where she lets the surf wash over her feet and the wind tangle through her hair as she watches the waves crest and fall. 

She feels…peaceful. It’s a rare feeling.

Coming back though, she misses the Fisher’s beach exit, and wanders lost for a bit, before making her way back through the neighborhood. It’s almost seven when she finally sights the house again, and Belly curses under her breath. She’s going to be late to dinner.

Great, she thinks. Adam is going to love that.

.

The restaurant is nicer than she was expecting from Adam’s description. He’d called it a “fish place”. Belly sits in her car for a minute after she parks, resting her head against the steering wheel. “Fuck,” she whispers. She is wearing jean shorts and a sheer summer blouse. After her walk, she’d only had time to wipe the mascara from under her eyes and spritz on perfume. 

She hadn’t thought there were fancy restaurants at the beach. Goes to show what she knows.

Her phone buzzes, and she picks up. “Hey,” she says. “I’m just walking in.”

“They already seated us,” Adam says. “Jeremiah is stuck in the city tonight, so it’ll just be me and Connie.”

“All right,” Belly says, as brightly as she can manage. She thinks about bringing up her outfit, and then decides against it. He’ll see soon enough, and it isn’t like there’s anything she can do to fix it now. “Just give me one second.”

“I’ll be waiting,” Adam says in a cheery way that makes it hard for her to tell if he’s annoyed with her or not.

Belly takes down her hair, fluffs it, and hopes for the best.

.

Outside the restaurant, the same guy from the gas station is smoking a cigarette. He looks up at her when she’s partway across the parking lot, and smiles. “You again,” he says.

He’s wearing a pair of high waisted grey trousers and a linen shirt. He looks even more appealing than he did two hours ago, which is saying something.

“Those things will kill you,” Belly tells him.

“Is that so? I had no idea.” He inhales deeply, and then stubs it out. This done, he puts his hands in his pockets, regarding her. His gaze is intent and a little bit challenging. “There,” he says. “Happy?”

Under different circumstances, like, say, she wasn’t going inside to meet her boyfriend’s adult child, Belly knows that this is where she would say something a little combative and a little flirty and see where that led the two of them. Maybe out to his car. The feeling of that, of wanting that, disconcerts her.

“I don’t care what you do,” she says, and then adjusts her purse strap on her shoulder and walks past him into the restaurant.

.

The hostess gives her outfit a snide look, but directs her over to Adam, who is at the far end of the restaurant, on his phone. Conrad, it seems, is still absent. “Hey!” Belly says, leaning down to kiss him on the cheek. “How was your drive?”

Adam looks up, startled. “Fine,” he says. “What are you wearing?”

Belly stills. “Uh, I was walking, and didn’t have time to change. Is it not all right? I could, um, go back to the house and come back.”

“No, no,” Adam says. “Just sit. We’ll make do. We’re paying enough here.” He gestures to the chair next to him in the corner. 

Belly sits, placing the napkin over her jean shorts, and then releases a shaky breath. “Conrad not here yet?”

“Hmm. No, he’s just in the bathroom. Avoiding me.”

Belly places her hand over his. “I’m sure that’s not true.”

“You don’t know Connie,” he says, wryly.

Right, Belly thinks, and then looks up.

She feels a sudden burst of feeling right at the back of her neck.

“Ah there you are,” Adam says. “Thought you might not come back.”

The man from outside is four paces away, staring straight at her. His expression is part-bewildered, part-betrayed. The look cuts through her. Whoever he had been expecting, it certainly hadn’t been her.

Fuck though, to be fair, she hadn’t been expecting him either.

“Hi,” Belly says, jerkily, rising to her feet. Her knees bang against the table edge and she winces. “You must be Conrad. I’ve heard like so much about you.” She sticks out her hand.

Conrad looks towards Adam and then back at her, before dropping his head to his chest and laughing, low and dry and long.

Belly makes an effort to keep a smile on her face, though she feels a bit like melting onto the floor.

“Con,” Adam says. “Don’t make a scene.”

Conrad raises his head at that, and fixes an eerie smile on his face. “Hi,” he says, a touch sarcastic, and then clasps her hand. “Nice to finally meet you, Isabel.”

Belly releases it as quickly as possible. Her napkin has fallen to the ground and she bends down to retrieve it, smoothing it back over her legs. 

It’s fine, she tells herself. It’s fine. 

.

The dinner does not go fine. Adam orders a seafood tower, Belly orders a salad, Conrad mainly stares out the window. Throughout the meal, Adam talks exclusively about his latest client, an AI start up, and Belly pretends to listen. This could all be survivable. The most memorable moment, however, comes at the halfway point when Adam gets a bottle of red for the table. 

After the tasting, the waiter moves to pour for Belly, and Conrad says, voice intensely casual, “Sorry, dad, is she old enough to drink? It’s hard to tell like where the line ends for you.”

The waiter pauses, bottle tilted, looking mortified; though it couldn’t be, Belly thinks, as mortified as she feels. 

“I’m twenty-five,” she says, and she hates how flustered she sounds. To the waiter, she says, “It’s fine, I promise.”

Conrad and Adam are engaged in a battle of wills, looking just at each other. They look, Belly thinks, very similar; though Conrad is, of course, twenty-two years younger. She doesn’t like that thought. It makes her feel dirty. 

It’s Conrad who breaks the eye-contact at last, looking over at Belly, and smiling a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “You’re right. I’m an asshole,” he says. “Sorry, Isabel.”

He stands then and goes outside. He comes back fifteen minutes later, smelling like smoke. The entire time he is gone, Adam doesn’t speak a word.

.

Belly is the last back to the house. She’d driven slow. All the lights are on, and the house looks wonderfully inviting against the night sky. 

She dreads the thought of going inside.

Adam and Conrad are talking in the kitchen, loudly enough that she’s pretty sure they haven’t heard her come in, and Belly pauses in the entryway, too scared to move forward.

“This is her place, dad, her fucking special place. You know that.”

“What are you expecting of me, Conrad? It’s been eight years. And though I loved your mother—”

“Oh fuck you. I don’t even know why I’m surprised.”

“You knew I was bringing someone, Connie. I told you that weeks ago when we started this whole thing.”

“Your girlfriend. Yeah, right . And here I was thinking fucking your secretary was tacky.”

Belly flinches at that, and then, before she can hear any more, starts up the steps. She shuts the door to the master suite, leaning back against it. Her breath is coming fast, and her eyes are burning. 

Laughing a little so she doesn’t cry, she tries to think how she would tell Taylor tonight had gone.

Bad, she thinks, bad would be a start.

.

Adam comes in when Belly is in her pajamas in bed. She’d taken a book from the dresser, and he does a little double take when he sees her lying there reading it. “Sorry,” she says, softly. “Is this okay?”

He goes into the bathroom without saying anything, and splashes water on his face. She hears the sound of his toothbrush whirring, and then the flush of the toilet, the sink running. 

He comes out in pajamas and sits down on the end of the bed, facing away from her. Belly thinks about putting her hand to his shoulder, but she doesn’t know if she should. He is something of a mystery to her. She’s never sure if he’s trying to pull her closer or push her away.

“Let’s just go to bed,” he says, finally.

He lies down, still facing away from her. Belly stares at the back of his head.

For a stupid moment, she thinks she’s going to cry again, and then she pushes the feeling down. “Okay,” she says, and turns out the light.

.

Hours later, Belly still can’t sleep. Adam has a tendency to go out like a light, but she’s never had that ability. Sighing, Belly gets up, hunting around in her bag in the dark for her swimsuit, and then exits the room.

Outside, the air is crisp and the water feels delicious against her skin, like it's washing the horrible day from her. She swims two laps before she surfaces and sees that Conrad is sitting on the pool chair across from her. 

She gives a little shriek. “How long have you been there?” 

“I was here when you came out,” he says, voice dry, his eyes still skyward. “You just didn’t see me.”

Belly raises a hand to her hair. “Sorry,” she says. “I never sleep well in a new place.” She doesn’t know why she says that, like it’s a vulnerability she’s offering up to him.

His gaze drifts to her. He’s still in his outfit from dinner, but there’s a haziness to him now that makes her wonder if he’s been drinking. 

They are, she knows, almost the same age, him just a little bit older. He’s just started his residency up in Maine. Probably that’s weird, to be dating a guy with a son who's older than you. Two sons, a voice suspiciously like Taylor’s says. Two sons older than her.

Belly sighs. After overhearing their conversation, she sort of feels like apologizing to him, which is stupid, because he’s been an asshole. 

Her place, he’d said though. Her special place. There’s only one her he could mean.

“I didn’t know it was you,” she says. “When I saw you earlier. Just so you know.”

“Adam doesn’t keep a framed picture of me by his bedside?”

Belly’s hackles raise. “You don’t have to be such a dick. I was just saying.”

He flinches, and looks down at the ground. “Sorry. We don’t get on. He’s probably said.”

Adam hadn’t said that, but that’s in a long list of things he hadn’t said it would seem. “He’s really proud of you, you know. He talks about you all the time.”

Conrad laughs. “Sure. I’m a model son.” He releases a long sigh, and then leans forward. “Isabel—”

“It’s Belly.”

“What?”

Belly feels self-consciousness wash over her. Belly is a name from her childhood, and while it is still the one she most identifies with, many of the people in her adult life have never even heard it. Her work friends, even some of her college friends, all call her Isabel. So does Adam.

“Um,” she says. “Nevermind. It’s stupid.”

She pushes herself out of the pool, and water sloughs off her onto the ground, washing all the way up to his feet. 

He looks at her, eyes sort of dark. She’s shivering a bit from the cold, and it feels too vulnerable to be talking to him like this, in the wet night. “What are you doing here?” he asks, his voice rough.

“I,” Belly swallows. It suddenly feels as if no answer would be good enough. “Adam invited me.”

Something shutters in Conrad’s expression. “Right.” He stands and crosses the deck, stepping off the other side, and then, in an instant, he has disappeared into the trees towards the beach.

Belly stares after him, wondering why it is that with him gone she feels more alone now than ever.

Conrad wakes to a raging headache, and the smell of coffee wafting from downstairs. The duality of these sensations war in his stomach and for a moment, he stays bent over the side of his bed, fighting the urge to hurl. He’d had too much last night. And said too much. Fuck.

Well, the only thing for it was coffee, he supposes. Maybe he’d go for a run and try to sweat it off. But on the path to the kitchen, he pauses, partway round the corner.

“It was really bad, Taylor,” a voice is saying from the kitchen. He can hear footsteps, the clink of dishware. “Like really bad.”

“Okay,” a second voice says, tinny through the phone. “I’m hearing you, babe.”

“I don’t know if I should just leave, you know? Like no one wants me here.”

“Did Adam ask you to leave?”

“No. But…I don’t know. He hasn’t said much of anything. And his son fucking hates me.”

“Did he say that? Because I can fight a ho, Belly, you know I can.”

“He asked Adam if I was old enough to drink. Like at the dinner table.”

A choked laugh. “And what did Adam say? Tell me he like leapt across the dinner table at him. I told you this dinner was going to be big.”

A beat of silence. “I mean,” her voice is low.

“Oh, Belly. Do not tell me he just let his son talk about you like that.”

“No! No, I mean I wouldn’t say that.”

Conrad closes his eyes. He should not be here right now. He should get coffee out, stay away from her, nevermind his head. But as he turns to go, he whacks his arm hard against the bannister, and he lets out a muffled curse.

Silence from the kitchen. Then, “I gotta go, Taylor.”

“Belly, no! We’re not done, Belly!”

Footsteps, and then her voice saying, “Are you all right?”

He looks up, and then almost wishes he hadn’t.

Belly is barefoot, wearing a thin strapped tank top and a pair of short plaid pajama shorts, her hair pulled up off her neck, her expression a touch combative. Conrad doesn’t know where to rest his eyes. Nowhere feels safe.

It figures, he thinks, that he and his dad would have the exact same type.

.

In the kitchen, Conrad slinks over to the coffee machine. Belly returns to the stove. She is making, he can see, blueberry pancakes, and she has put flowers in a vase on the counter. His mother’s hydrangeas. The sight does something odd to his chest.

She looks hesitantly over at him.

He had hurt her, Conrad realizes. It hadn’t been her that he’d been aiming at. Not that that mattered.

“Belly,” he says. 

She flinches, just a bit, like he‘d hit a soft spot. “Uh, yes?” she says.

“I’m sorry about last night. I feel like you got caught in the crossfire.”

She blinks at him, and then opens her mouth. “You don’t have to—”

The door to the veranda bangs open. “You’re up. Good. I wanted to see you before I went.” As if nothing about last night had happened. “I’m headed off to the Club, should be back around 5.”

Belly’s shoulders rise, incrementally, but with a short breath she forces them back down. The sight of that small movement…hurts. It’s a useless sort of pain, Conrad thinks. And it makes him wish he hadn’t witnessed it: her little act of bravery.

“You should eat before you go,” she says. “I made pancakes, and there’s coffee.”

“I’ll eat with the client at the Club.” Adam looks down at the pancakes, his lip quirking. “You need anything, sweetheart, just ask Connie. Give Isabel your number, Con, so she has it.”

“Uh, sure, dad,” Conrad says.

Adam leans down and presses a kiss to the side of Belly’s head, and her whole body melts towards him. Conrad’s hand twitches, and then Adam releases her, and starts towards the door. “And stop messing around with the coffee machine!”

And then he is gone. 

Belly’s hands press to the counter. The pancake she is cooking is sizzling in the pan. “Oh fuck,” she says, and scoops it out. It’s burnt to a crisp, and she dumps it into the trash, and then pushes her hair back from her face, looking up at him, a little flushed and a lot…vulnerable.

This is a complication Conrad hadn’t planned for.

What the fuck was his dad doing with a girl like her?

“If there are any like non-crisped ones, I’ll take them,” Conrad says.

The effect this has on Belly is immediate. A smile spreads wide across her face. It is a bit, Conrad thinks, like watching the sun come out. 

“Yeah?” she says.

Conrad nods. “And uh coffee sounds great. If there still is some.”

The coffee she hands him is terrible, but Conrad still drinks two cups. Which is how he should’ve known, he supposes, right then and there, that he was completely and utterly fucked.

Chapter Text

Here’s another way that it starts: In December, Taylor gets a cold, and Belly is sitting on the floor of her and Steven’s apartment in Boston, watching the latest season of Love Is Blind and keeping her company. Belly has just gone through another break up. It’s her fourth since the summer. She has terrible luck with men.

Steven comes out of the adjourning room in a tuxedo, and gives a little spin. “Eh?” he says. “Nice, right? Invest in my company chic?”

Taylor hacks a truly revolting cough, and Belly and Steven make the same face.

“Babe,” Steven says. “You’re going to be able to make it tomorrow night, right?

“No way,” Taylor says. “No way, I love you, but I am not putting on like a full ass ballgown in twenty-four hours. No.”

Steven turns and looks at Belly. “No,” Belly says, firmly. “I’m not doing that either. I’ve been dumped.”

“Belly, come on. He spent more time with his pinball machine than with you, it’s not like it was a real loss.”

“Pinball is fun,” Belly says, turtling further into her sweatshirt. But when Steven turns his pleading eyes upon her, she exhales, heavy. “I can’t go, Steven. I don’t have anything to wear.”

.

Besides the red carpet and the mostly empty dance floor, Steven’s gala is really just nonstop corporate schmoozing. The fact that everyone is in formal dress doesn’t make it more appealing. And besides, Taylor had taped Belly into her revenge dress, which was at least a size too small, and her skin feels like it's crawling.

“Steve,” she says. “Please. Thirty minute warning, okay?”

“Okay, okay,” he says, then lowers his head. “Okay, look though. That guy there?” He gestures. “He’s one of the senior partners at Breaker. I’ve gotta talk to him.”

“That means literally nothing to me, you know?”

“They’ve got a lot of money, okay? An investment from them could like make or break the app.”

He has said this about a very large number of people throughout the night and it’s started to sound meaningless, but Belly obliges him by moving closer to the guy, who looks, she thinks, just like every other guy they’ve talked to, except that he has nice hair. Many people here are bald.

Once they’ve caught his attention, Steven delivers the same spiel that Belly has heard him deliver thirty times over. 

The guy, however, isn’t looking at Steven. He is looking at Belly. “And what are you shilling?” he asks her. There is a sort of sardonic light to his eyes that causes feeling to trip across Belly’s skin.

“Me?” Belly says, shaking her head. “No, no, I’m just like moral support. I’m not selling anything.”

“My sister,” Steven adds.

“Isabel.”

His grin widens. “A family business then. Well, Steven, you wouldn’t mind if I asked Isabel to dance, would you?”

The dance floor is still empty. The music is just background noise.

Steven looks towards Belly. “No,” he says, half-question. “No, of course not.”

Adam Fisher offers his elbow out to Belly, like the lead in an old time-y romance, and it doesn’t even feel like a decision to her. 

She takes it. 

And then when he calls her three days later, she says yes.

Once the worst of the hangover fades, Conrad takes his board out onto the water. He always feels better out here, like the ocean were singing him a lullaby. The steady rhythm of it, the salt spray, the way the world seemed to become a problem that could be solved if only he angled his board right.

There isn’t anywhere on earth he likes more than this stretch of beach. That’s been true since the time he was a very small boy. 

When he looks towards the shoreline, he can see a lone figure walking, buffeted by the wind, growing smaller and smaller as they head towards the point.

Conrad turns his back on her, so he is facing out to sea.

.

But when he exits the water an hour later, he finds Belly is still there, sitting on the sand and watching him approach. She is wearing a large floppy hat—her hand resting atop it to anchor it to her head—and a sheer white button down over a very red bikini and she is squinting to look at him. No sunglasses. “The waves good?” she asks.

Conrad leans into his board. “They were all right.”

“I can never find the right exit,” she says. “I’ve already gotten lost like three times.”

“I’ll show you.” He nods his head towards the break in the dunes, and they start towards it.

She falls easily into step beside him. “You’ve always come here?” she asks. At his look, she adds, “You just seem very familiar with the place.”

“Since we were kids, yeah. My mom inherited the house.”

She makes a soft sound under her breath that he can’t interpret. “It’s lovely,” she says, after a bit.

When he looks over at her again, she’s already watching him. She flushes a bit under his gaze, but she doesn’t look away. 

Christ, Conrad thinks.

“Do you uh, need sunscreen?” she says.

He raises his eyebrows. 

She gestures to the bridge of his nose. “You’re a bit like pink here. Sun cancer is serious, you know. It could like take your nose off.”

“I’m wearing sunscreen, Belly. And I’m studying to be a doctor, I think my nose is safe.”

“What SPF?”

“Are you serious?” he says, laughing. 

“I’m trying to like save your life, Conrad.”

“I mean, if that’s all it takes,” he says. “Then fork it over.”

“Connie!” Jeremiah is in the shallow end of the pool, floating, and Nate is sitting at the bar with a book out. They’ve put music on, cheerful pop.

Jeremiah scrambles out of the pool and comes and claps Conrad on the back, and then turns and looks at Belly, a question in his gaze. “Belly, Jeremiah,” Conrad says. “Jeremiah, Belly.”

“Hi!” she says, giving a soul-crushingly cute little wave.

Jeremiah eyes her. Conrad wonders what he sees. She’s all warm from the sun, and her hair is wild around her face, and she’s…

Goddamnit.

“I didn’t know you were seeing someone, Con. You should have said.” He leans towards Belly, conspiratorial. “He like never brings people home. I think actually you’re like the first since, when did you bring Aubrey? Junior year of high school?”

Belly jolts, like she’s been prodded by a cattle prod. “Oh,” she says. “No, no, I mean, uh. I’m Adam’s girlfriend. Isabel. Or uh, Belly, if you want.”

Jeremiah’s eyebrows skyrocket. “Right, sorry, my bad.” 

Conrad looks away from them towards Nate, whose expression, lips pulled down, eyes wide, is pretty priceless. 

Fuck my life, he thinks. 

.

Belly goes upstairs to shower. Conrad shepherds Jeremiah into the car on the pretense of going to bring back barbecue for lunch. 

“Fuck, man,” Jeremiah says, leaning back in the seat. 

“Did you know?” Conrad demands. He’s not sure what the follow up to that is meant to be, like he just wants to say to him: did you know it was her?

Jeremiah doesn’t need the clarification though. “I mean it’s not like he showed me a picture of her or anything, but I got the impression that she was…”

“Young?”

“Extremely hot.”

Conrad recoils.

“Oh come on, Con, it’s not like you’ve ever seen dad with an unattractive woman. And I mean it isn’t like she’s an undergrad or whatever. She’s what? Twenty-six?”

“Twenty-five,” Conrad says, tightly. 

Jeremiah laughs. “I mean it can’t be worse than Rachelle, right? Remember when she showed up to your football game and the coach had to tell her—” 

“He brought her to the summer house, Jere.”

Jeremiah pauses. “I know,” he says. “How was dinner last night?”

Conrad exhales. 

“That bad?” Jeremiah laughs, and then, abruptly changing the subject, says, “I think I’m going to ask Nate to marry me. We’ve been talking about it. A summer wedding.”

“Jere—”

“I want to tell dad this week. Get his blessing. I want your help.”

Conrad’s grip tightens on the wheel.

“I think he’s coming around, Con.”

“Did you even tell him you were bringing Nate to the Fourth?”

Silence. 

“Christ, Jere.” 

Conrad pulls the car into the barbecue place, keying off the engine, and then turns towards his brother. Jeremiah is looking at him, eyebrows tucked in. There’s an earnestness to him that Conrad has always envied. He wears his heart proudly, like it was easy to offer it up. And every fucking time he got the chance, Adam crushed it beneath his heel.

Why would this time be any different? 

Conrad sighs. “Okay,” he says. “Yeah, sure. I’ll help you.”

.

When they return, they find Nate and Belly in the kitchen with a large stack of boardgames spread in a circle around the main table. “We made lemonade,” Belly says, smiling up at them. “It’s in a jug in the fridge, if you want some.”

“And we went exploring in the downstairs closet,” Nate says. “Because we discovered that we are both nosy as hell. Hope that’s cool.”

“Oh, fuck,” Jere says. “We should play Cataan. Connie is like a mastermind at it.”

“Or what about Clue?” Belly asks. “I always loved Clue.”

But Conrad feels frozen in the doorway. They’d used to play boardgames here all the time, in the summers growing up; but they hadn’t done it at all since his mom died. It wasn’t fun with just him and Jere. 

Belly looks over and meets his gaze, tilting her head at him as if to say: you all right?

Conrad takes the bags of food and places them on the table. “We’ve got pulled pork,” he says. “So we can feast while we play.”

“ And we’ve got vodka,” Jeremiah says. “So we can get drunk.”

That sounds all right to Conrad, too.

.

Hours later, they have taken the party back outside again. Belly and Jeremiah are in the pool, batting the ball around, and Nate and Conrad are sitting in the chairs, discussing Joe Abercrombie. The alcohol has added a pleasant haze to the afternoon, as if time has stretched itself out as lazily as a cat.

Belly jumps upwards to hit the ball, and makes a loud whoop of delight when it lands in the far corner.

“That was out of bounds,” Jeremiah calls.

“It was in!” she cries. “You’ve just got to like accept your defeat.”

“Yeah? I wouldn’t have offered to play with you if I’d known you were like freakishly good.”

“Volleyball champ, seven years running.” She gives him a cheshire grin, and then takes the ball back, batting it again hard into the opposite corner.

“You’re down bad, huh?”

Conrad looks over at Nate, who is watching him with a sympathetic expression.

Conrad shakes his head. “I just told my dad I’d like watch out for her this week.”

“Uh-huh.”

Conrad shades his eyes, and changes the topic. “Jere told me by the way. About what you’re trying to do.”

Nate looks at him. Of all the many people Jeremiah has dated over the years, Nate is Conrad’s favorite by a long shot. He was steady and wry and straight to the point, someone Conrad had always thought that his mother would have liked, if she’d lived long enough to meet him. “And what do you think?”

“That Adam will flip his lid?”

Nate snorts. “Jere thinks he’s going to go for it this time.”

“Yeah, well, Jere’s an optimist.”

“It matters to him. Your dad’s approval.”

“I know.”

“You should probably help him work on that.” Nate lowers his sunglasses back over his face. “Otherwise it’s going to be a rough road.”

.

At half past five, there is the sound of a car in the drive. Looking over, Belly gets out of the pool, wraps herself in a towel, and pads barefoot out through the side gate. 

She is gone for a long time. Conrad strategically doesn’t think about anything that could be going on inside the house. Instead, he has another drink. 

When she does come back, she is alone. She takes the chaise next to him, still wrapped in the same towel, her expression subdued. 

“My dad coming down?” he asks. Because he’s a fucking masochist.

She shakes her head. “He’s going to take a nap.”

It’s almost dinner time. No Adam at dinner, it would seem. The thought is a relief. “You hungry?” he asks her.

She looks at him. Her face is very appealing—he’d thought that from the first second he’d seen her, halfway inside a gas station freezer—large eyes, bowed mouth, elegantly curved jaw; but it’s more than that. There’s something open and warm and soft about her, fragile, like it’d be easy to tip her into happiness or despair. 

“I’m starving,” she admits.

.

In the kitchen, it’s decided that Nate is the taskmaster, as he is the best at cooking.

“And it’s not by a small margin,” Jeremiah says. “Because I’ve had Connie’s cooking.”

“Hey, I’m not bad.” Conrad brandishes the dishtowel at him. “Just like…basic.”

“Basic as hell.”

“And I could be excellent,” Belly protests. “You don’t even know what I’m capable of.”

“ Are you excellent?” Nate asks.

She giggles. “Okay, listen—”

“Yeah, what I thought. You’re doing the potatoes, just like get peeling.”

“What am I doing, babe?”

“You, my love, are driving to the store for shrimp.”

Conrad watches Belly hunt in the drawers for a peeler. “Top right,” he says. “On the far end.”

“Thanks,” she says, tucking her falling hair behind her ear.

“Fishers, Jesus, this spice rack is criminal. I should be glad you have paprika, I guess.”

“I’ll be back,” Jeremiah says, brandishing his keys.

“Darling, if the fish store has a rub, or like seasoning of any kind—”

“I am on it.” Jeremiah salutes and is gone.

Belly takes a place at the bar, two bowls in front of her. She’s put on a dress, and Conrad can see the faint lines across her shoulders where the sun hasn’t touched her. The dress is pale blue and skims the top of her thighs. Not that he’s looking at her legs. Because that would be a pathway to madness.

Right.

Conrad looks away from her and meets Nate’s gaze. His expression is knowing. 

“What do you need from me, dude?” Conrad asks.

Nate smiles. “I’m sure there’s like a pickle jar somewhere.”

Belly laughs, loud and surprised, and fuck, Conrad thinks, if it’s not the best sound he’s ever heard.

So maybe he is down bad.

.

Adam finds them at sunfall. Belly jumps up when she sees him in the doorway, shadowed by the house behind him. “I saved you a plate, babe,” she says. “Hold on one second, I can reheat it for you.”

“Hi, dad,” Jeremiah says, waving.

“Looks like you’re having a party.” Adam’s eyes skate over Nate, and then back to Belly, who takes him by the hand and pulls him into the kitchen. 

Conrad sees them talking through the window, heads bent together, before he forces his gaze away.

“At least he didn’t say: get the fuck out of my house,” Nate says, dryly. “So that’s progress.”

Jeremiah’s jaw is clenching.

“Don’t,” Conrad says to him. “I’ll talk to him in the morning.”

For whatever good that would do.

.

After dinner, Nate and Jeremiah go for a walk on the beach. Conrad carefully gathers up all the plates, and then looks again towards the kitchen. The soft sounds of jazz are playing from the interior speakers, audible even out on the deck.

You can do it, he tells himself. 

But when he takes another step forward and the kitchen comes into full view, he realizes that he can’t. Belly and Adam are in the middle of the kitchen, and they are dancing. One of Adam’s hands is wrapped all the way around Belly’s waist and the other is cradling her hand close between them. Her neck is tilted back to look at him, her gaze gone all soft, and she is smiling.

Conrad feels a bit like he’s been bludgeoned. 

His father had used to dance with his mother like that, in the kitchen late at night, after he and Jeremiah had gone to bed. He’d thought once, looking at them, that he knew what love was, because it was what they had. 

How stupid he’d been.

Conrad sets the plates back down on the table, and with one last glance backwards and one last vicious twinge to his chest, he heads out again towards the beach. 

At least there, he thinks, the waves will drown out the sound of everything else.

Belly comes downstairs at midnight and finds Conrad doing the dishes. For a moment, he doesn’t see her and she can observe him without him knowing. His hair is falling into his face and his sleeves are rolled to save them from the wet, his watch sitting by the side of the sink. He is frowning a little, as he looks down at the water, and the sun has brushed color across his cheekbones. Despite what she’d said earlier, it’s…charming.

She sort of thinks everything about him is charming.

It’s not a very helpful feeling.

She steps forward, and he looks up, startled.

“Hey,” she says. “Water.” She gestures with her glass.

He makes a sort of indistinguishable sound, maybe agreement.

She gets water from the fridge, and then leans her hip against the counter, watching his profile. “You could have left those till the morning, I was going to do them when I got up.”

He doesn’t respond to that, just finishes with the last pot, and sets it carefully on the drying rack, wiping his hands slowly on the kitchen towel.

Belly musters her courage. She wants to get this right. “Conrad,” she says, hesitantly. “I just, uh, wanted to say thank you. For today. It was…it meant a lot to me. That you all were so welcoming. Like you don’t even know how much.”

He doesn’t say anything to this, and the silence sits heavy between them.

“I’ve been really nervous, you know,” Belly continues, “about meeting Adam’s family, and just. Yeah. Today was nice. And I feel like I have you to thank for that. So thank you. That’s all I wanted to say.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

He isn’t looking at her, and it feels a bit as if a switch has been flipped, and Belly has suddenly been thrust out into the cold. As if she’d imagined the rest of the day, which had felt so completely and unexpectedly warm.

“Are you…all right?” she asks, softly. “You seem off.”

But Belly doesn’t know if this is true. He seems rather a lot like the guy he’d been the previous night. The one who’d said that Adam dating her was tackier than fucking his secretary. The one she’d been so sure despised her. The fact that he had been so…kind today had been the real surprise. 

It figured that the kindness had only been temporary. Adam was like that, too. Kind only when it suited him.

Belly releases a breath. That wasn’t fair. Adam was busy, and he was… trying. He had been sweet after dinner, as if to make up for the fact that he had stranded her here at the house amongst strangers for the entire day.

That was what nobody seemed to get: that there was this secret side to Adam that nobody else saw besides her. That would kiss her palm and call her sweetheart. That would dance with her alone in the kitchen. Every time she saw that side of him, Belly would forgive him the rest of it. 

He always came back around.

Conrad looks up at her, at last. “I’m good,” he says, and then offers her a small smile, like a peace offering. “Just tired.”

Belly steps backwards, towards the stairs. “Okay,” she says. “Well, sleep well.”

“Sleep well,” he repeats. “Belly.”

Just her name. Belly doesn’t know why then the sound of it haunts her all the way back up the stairs and into her room, as if it were something much more intimate.

She doesn’t know why she’d told him to call her that in the first place. 

Chapter Text

How about another beginning?

Conrad is sitting at the end of the dock, watching the fading of the light. He hears footsteps behind him, but does not turn. Every other summer, he’s wanted to hasten the season’s end, to leave Cousins and return back to Boston, to school, to his friends, to football. Cousins grew old, quickly. He would have thought this summer, right before he went to college, this longing would only have intensified, but now, he finds that when it matters most he wants to stay. More than that, he wants to stretch time like taffy, pulling and pulling and pulling so it never runs out.

His mother takes the seat beside him. “We missed you at dinner.”

“I wasn’t hungry.”

She puts her hand to the back of his head. The feeling of it shoots through his entire body, an acute, unexpected pain.

He turns to look at her. This, too, hurts. 

Susannah is watching him, something considering in her gaze. “All packed up?”

He shrugs.

“Listen, Connie,” she says. “When we return to Boston, we’re going to have a talk. As a family.” Her lips press to a thin line. “And your father…”

“Will be gone?” Conrad says.

Something shifts in Susannah, and he wonders if she’ll ask him at last if he knows about his dad’s affair. If she’ll acknowledge that this is why he’s avoided his father’s phone calls all summer, and quit football camp. Why when Adam came for the Fourth, Conrad spent most of the day out on his boat, only coming back when he was sure Adam was gone. But Susannah has spent all summer not asking him. And what answer would he give her anyway?

There’s too many things Conrad knows now. 

She pulls his head to her shoulder. He still fits there, he thinks. He closes his eyes to savor it.

“Yes,” she says, softly. Like a promise. “He’ll be gone.”

When Belly wakes, she is alone. She and Adam have never been any good at synching schedules. She’s something of a night owl, and he prefers to rise at an ungodly hour, normally to run before work.

She reaches for her phone on the bedside table, and then, somehow compelled, pulls the drawer open. A notepad and pen, an expensive french hand lotion, a pair of wired headphones. 

Belly shuts the drawer, closing her eyes.

She is going insane. 

She goes into the bathroom, washes her face and teeth, and comes out fully dressed, down to the mascara. She feels as if she needs the armor on.

At the curve of the stairs, she stops. There at last is a photo of the family, all standing out by the deck, arms around each other. Conrad and Jeremiah must have been in high school—Jeremiah’s hair is aggressively parted and Conrad is wearing glasses, and they both look charmingly young. In the center of the photo, Adam looks much the same, leaning his head against a smiling blonde woman.

Belly looks at the woman for a moment longer, as if trying to memorize her. Her hair is cut to her shoulders and she is wearing a sundress. Her smile is wide and genuine, and her hand is curled into Conrad’s hair.

Adam didn’t keep family photos at his place in Boston. Maybe this was why.

Belly shakes her head, and leaves the photo behind.

.

Nate is in the living room, sipping a mug of coffee. “It’s like ground zero out here,” he warns her. 

“It looks pretty calm.”

“Looks are deceiving.”

Belly’s eyebrows raise.

“Conrad and Adam had it out,” Nate clarifies. “I’m surprised it didn’t wake you to be honest.”

“Um,” Belly says. “What were they fighting about?” 

His mouth twists, but his voice is casual. “Just the usual. Conrad attempting Prince Charming. Adam being Adam.”

Belly exhales. “Where is he?”

“Conrad? He’s down by the dock.”

“Adam.”

Nate’s nose wrinkles. “I think I saw his devil’s horns up on the top deck.” He pauses. “Sorry, girl. I know that’s your man.”

.

Adam is on the top deck. There’s an Erik Larson book on the table beside him, but he’s not reading it. Belly slides the door open, and then shut behind her.

“Hey, you.” She takes the chair across from him. “I feel like I’ve hardly seen you since I got here.”

He doesn’t acknowledge this. Belly follows his gaze. A lone figure is sitting at the end of the long dock, his feet dangling over the edge. Conrad, Belly thinks.

“Nate told me you guys got in a fight.”

“My son,” Adam says, “does not like me very much, Isabel.” 

Belly furrows her brow. “Did something happen?”

Belly always had the impression that Adam adored his sons. It was one of the things that she’d liked about him. How proud of them he’d seemed. Seeing him struggling with it makes Adam feel like a stranger to her, and she…doesn’t like that feeling.

Adam turns towards her. “Nothing to worry you about,” he says. “Are you ready for tomorrow?”

Belly straightens. “Yes,” she says. “Of course. What’s the final guest count?”

“Should just be Jerry and his partner Gillian. And then Terrence and Stuart, too, probably. And oh, the Centurion crew, which should be six or seven.” He narrows his eyes at her, catching a touch of the panic in her gaze. “We can just get it catered, if need be. Though it’s probably too late for that now. These things book out for the Fourth.”

“No, no,” Belly says. “I’m just going to the head to the store. Get supplies. It’ll all be good.” She smiles. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of everything.”

He pats her hand, and she stands, heading for the door. At the last though, she looks back out towards the dock, at Conrad, head bent towards the water, the sky rising all around him.

.

On the way to the grocery store, Belly calls Taylor back. Cousins is quaint. Everything is beachy in that cozy rich person way, like it’s been sheltered from the rest of the industrialized world. Watching it trip by in the car is like having entered a different form of reality. 

Taylor answers on the second ring. “You’ve been like dodging my calls, dude. Uncool.” 

“I’ve been busy,” Belly says, a touch sniffily.

“Busy doing what is the question that I’ve been trying to get answered.”

“I don’t know,” Belly says. “I mean yesterday I spent some time with Adam’s kids and—”

“His adult children, you mean. And I thought you said the son hated you.”

Well, Belly doesn’t know what Conrad thinks about her. Or what she thinks about Conrad. But she doesn’t think it’s hate. Precisely. 

“I was wrong about that,” she says. “It just seems…complicated. Like I think they have a complicated relationship.”

Silence from the other end. “I’m waiting for elaboration,” Taylor says.

Belly feels a thrum of annoyance go through her. “I don’t know, Taylor. It’s like they have a complex family dynamic. And a dead mom. Or wife, or I don’t know! And like this is her house! And I’m like sleeping in her bed!”

“Woah.”

The light turns green. Belly goes forward in the car. She sort of feels like pressing her forehead to the steering wheel and screaming. “Do I sound like I’m crashing out? Because I feel like I’m crashing out.”

“Babe.” Another long, strategic pause. “You know that I—”

“Don’t like Adam.”

“Okay, you don’t have to say it in like that immediately dismissive tone. I’m just saying that as an observer and a member of Team Belly, he has not always done you right.”

“He’s busy, Taylor.”

“And right now he’s on vacation. Is he like waiting on you hand and foot?”

No.

“Or is he like fucking off and leaving you with his complicated children who probably, I’m sorry to say it, hate his guts?”

“They don’t hate his guts.”

“Mmmm.”

Belly’s not sure why she made this phone call. She’d known precisely what Taylor had to say. And hearing it said out loud only succeeds in irritating her.

“It means a lot, right though? That he’d bring me here? Like don’t you think it’s a sign? That he’s serious about us? I thought you agreed. Meeting the kids, bringing me to his beach house, hosting together.”

“I said it was a good test. To see how you felt about taking further steps with him. And to be honest, babe, you don’t sound good.”

“No, I—” Belly tries to think how she’d describe it. How walking on the beach that first night, it had felt as if she were returning home to herself. And in the kitchen, cooking dinner, following the patter of conversation and movement and noise, she’d felt at last like a part of something bigger . That feeling had been hard to find since her parents had divorced, and even before that…

She loved her family, she did, but neither of her parents were people she could really talk to, and Steven, it often felt like, didn’t really need anyone. And if he did, well, he had Taylor. What did Belly have? Or worse, somehow, what did she want ? 

“I want it to work out,” she says, finally. “I want it to stick .”

A very long silence. “I know you do, honey. I just—”

“No, just. Can we leave it at that?”

Belly pulls into a parking spot. The heat is like a blanket over her, comforting and sticky in equal measures. 

“We can,” Taylor says, finally. “Will you just like tell me about the sons? At least?”

Jeremiah finds Conrad still out on the dock. “So, the talking it over with dad didn’t go very well, huh?”

Conrad scoffs. 

“I heard you yelling all the way from the beach. Jesus, Con.”

“He’s not going to toss Nate out.”

“But he’s not happy about him being here, I’m guessing.”

That, Conrad thinks, was putting it lightly. “Jere,” he starts. 

“No, Conrad, listen. I know what you’re going to say. But I want Nate to be my family. It’s got to work, right? And maybe if we’re all here at the summer house, it will help dad see that Nate fits here. Like we do. Don’t you think that he does?”

Conrad thinks that that’s a plan doomed for failure. Maybe if their mom had been here, to smooth the cracks. But Adam wasn’t like their mom. And nothing about their family had fit since his mom died. Since before that, when they'd come back to the Boston house and found all evidence of their dad erased. As if he hadn’t existed. Or perhaps before that even, when Conrad had stood outside his parents’ room, listening to his mom weep, and thought that he had no idea at all who his father was, though he’d always, always thought he’d known.

Conrad didn’t disagree that Nate fit. It was all the rest of it that was out of whack. Life had lost its rails eight years ago, and here they were, still picking up the pieces.

.

When Conrad makes it back to the house around noon, he finds Belly at the kitchen counter, a very wide array of ingredients spread across the marble top. She looks a touch frazzled. There is flour smeared charmingly across her cheek. 

“What’s happening here?” he asks her.

She looks up at him, and then flushes. “Nothing.”

“Well, that doesn’t seem true.”

She snorts. “I’m just prepping. For tomorrow. This is lemon cake.”

Conrad nods. “Where’s uh my dad?”

“He went to the gym.” Belly stirs the batter briskly, and then stops, as if she’s suddenly made a decision. “Do you really have to antagonize him so much?”

There isn’t anything she could have said that would have surprised him more. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“He won’t say it, but I know he’s upset about you guys fighting this morning. Like, I mean, could you just go twenty-four hours without yelling at him? Is that really too much to ask?”

Conrad drops his head, fighting the urge to laugh. “You know what? I really fucking hate hearing you defend him. I hate it.”

A stubborn expression descends across Belly’s face. “Why is that?”

Because, Conrad thinks. Because it’s you.

“It just seems rich coming from someone so obviously fighting to get his attention.”

Belly recoils, as if he’s punched her. Maybe he has. There is something rotten inside him, something terrible that Adam always brought raging right to the surface. And it’s worse somehow, because he actually likes Belly, like there is some instinct ingrained deep within him to protect her. Why would he care if she loved his dad if he didn’t?

“You don’t know anything about our relationship,” she says.

“No? Then tell me.”

“I’m—” Belly’s mouth opens, and then closes. “I don’t have to defend myself to you.”

“Of course not. Whatever you need to tell yourself.”

Belly throws the dish towel at him. It lands, hard, against his shoulder. “You are such an asshole.”

“ I’m the asshole? Why do you think I was fighting with him, huh?”

Her expression is bewildered. 

And Conrad wants to tell her. More than anything or anyone he wants her to see. It wouldn’t be like this if my mom had lived, he wants to tell her. We would have spent the summer planning Jeremiah’s wedding together and watching bad movies at the drive-in. That first night, we would have eaten in the formal dining room, and my mom would have raised a toast, cheesy, about how she’d always wanted her sons to find true love, and tried to pawn her ring off on Nate. 

But Conrad can hardly place himself there in this imagining it feels so far away from where he is now. Who he is now. 

You would have fit there, too, he thinks. 

Christ, the thought is like a wound. As if he’d accidentally left a corner of his heart unguarded. 

Like life hadn’t fucked him enough.

“Your boyfriend,” Conrad says, slowly. “Is a fucking irredeemable dick, who thinks he can decree who can and can’t be here. But it’s not his fucking house. It’s mine. Mine and Jere’s. And we get to decide.”

Belly is breathing very heavily. “Right,” she says. Then she drops the whisk, and walks out the door, leaving her batter behind.

“Belly,” he calls after her. 

He can hear her footsteps on the stairs, and he’s not sure if he’s meant to follow her, what he’s meant to say. He’s not meant to be fighting with her at all.

Belly goes for a long walk on the beach by herself. When she returns, she’s not sure she feels any better. But she still needs to finish the cake and the egg salad, and then soon, it’ll be dinner time.

And there will be Conrad again. 

When she makes it back into the kitchen, expecting the mayhem she’d left behind, she finds instead that it is entirely clean. Two cakes are cooling on a cake rack, a towel resting beneath them to catch crumbs. 

Nate is sitting at the table. “I’ve made margaritas,” he says. “It has just seemed like a day for them.”

“Did you… bake my cakes?”

“No. That’d be Prince Charming. Again.”

Belly gives him a look. “ Conrad did?”

“Boy can’t resist a problem that needs solving.”

Belly tries to absorb this. So apparently Conrad Fisher was the sort of asshole who would tell her he didn’t want her in his house, and then spend an hour cleaning up her mess. He could have just dumped it all in the trash, not…whatever it was he’d done instead.

“I could…use that margarita,” Belly says. 

Nate brightens at this. “Thank god, I feel pathetic drinking alone.”

.

Two margaritas in, sitting out by the pool at sunset, Belly is feeling marginally better. Jeremiah had returned from surfing, and is sitting in the curve of Nate’s legs as Nate tells Belly the story of how they’d met, and they are all laughing. It makes the fight with Conrad seem far away.

“I was convinced he was straight,” Nate says. “Like, I mean, I was pretty sure we were flirting. But he was in a frat, you know? And the girls like followed him around.”

“Oh, they did not.”

“They did. They had like a fan instagram page for your abs. I was not asking that guy out.”

“Okay, well the instagram thing is true.”

Belly laughs. “How many followers?”

“Isabel.” Belly looks up and sees that Adam is standing in the doorway to the kitchen.

Jeremiah and Nate go quiet. 

“Come out,” Belly says, brightly. “We’re drinking margaritas.”

But Adam just nods his head to the kitchen, and closes the door. Belly pulls herself upright, and follows him in. The cool, inside air trickles across her skin, and she shivers.

“Everything okay?” she asks. 

“I don’t want you encouraging this.”

Belly frowns, not sure what he means. “Encouraging what?”

“Jeremiah is twenty-six. He needs to grow up. Not be gallivanting around with some boy.”

“I don’t think they’re gallivanting,” Belly says, frowning. “I think they love each other.”

“Oh, Isabel,” Adam says. “Don’t be so naive.”

Footsteps on the stairs, and then Conrad emerges around the corner. His eyes linger on her face for a moment, before flitting away. 

Adam turns fully to look at him, and Belly doesn’t think she’s imagining the longing that comes across his face. 

I was right, she thinks. He was upset.

Without saying anything, Conrad goes and starts pulling things from the fridge: corn, ground beef, peppers. After an excruciating minute, he looks up at them. “You guys eating with us?”

Adam blinks. “No,” he says. “Isabel and I were going into town for dinner.”

“Okay,” Conrad says. He looks up at Belly. She has no idea what his expression means. He is a complete and utter mystery to her.  “Have fun.”

.

When they return from dinner, the house has gone quiet. Nobody is downstairs and most of the lights are out. “I’m gonna finish up in the kitchen,” she says.

Adam presses a kiss to her forehead, and disappears. Belly isn’t mad at his absence. She needs the time alone to think.

The cakes are cool, and she begins the process of decorating them: whipping the icing, carefully arranged the fruit. She has moved to the second layer when she hears something from outside, and she looks up and sees Conrad at the door, clearly debating whether to enter or not.

He pauses, caught, and Belly rolls her eyes.

Sheepish, he comes in. “Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t want to disturb you.”

“You could have tried to climb the siding.”

He laughs. “Yeah.” He looks off towards the stairway, and then back at her. “Belly, I’m sorry about earlier. It’s my dad I’m angry at. Not you. I didn’t mean to take it out on you.”

Belly lets this wash over her. “You baked the cakes. Why?”

He flinches, just a little. “I just…wanted to help.”

“Why?”

Her hand is trembling a bit, and she wants to still it. She’s not sure why she’s trying to fight with him again. It’s like an itch beneath her skin. Like with him, she just can’t help herself. She’s not sure she’s ever felt that before. Not with any of the other guys she has dated, not even with Adam.

“I don’t know, Belly,” he says. “Why do you think?”

Because I’m your dad’s girlfriend, she thinks. 

But she knows that’s not why.

“Nate says you can’t see a problem without wanting to fix it.”

He laughs at that. “Yeah,” he says. “Well, I don’t normally do a very good job with it.”

“I’ve noticed.”

He smiles, and then almost hesitantly, takes the seat at the bar stool across from her. “Here,” Belly says, pushing the bowl of eggs towards him. “Peel, please.”

He does, and for a moment, the two of them just work in tandem.

“My parents,” he says into the silence. “Didn’t have a very good relationship. When she died, they weren’t even speaking. My dad wasn’t there for any of it, that last year. Jere and I… it was just the two of us.”

Belly doesn’t know what to say to that. 

“Jere has forgiven him, because he’s our only family left. But I…I want to, I think. But every time I see him, I just…can’t.”

There is no way, Belly thinks, even with twenty-five years of preparation, she could have planned for Conrad Fisher.

“Conrad,” she says. Just his name. 

“Yeah?”

She still doesn’t know what to say, exactly, but she wants, suddenly, to offer him a piece of her in return. To tell him about the summer before her junior year when her mom left, how Laurel had gone to walk the Appalachian trail on her own and come back with a girlfriend and the divorce papers all ready to go. How it had seemed to Belly in that moment like her whole life up till then had been a fabrication, and ever since she’d been searching for her sense of certainty back. The need for it had felt like it would literally consume her, like she was burning all the time.

She thinks he might understand.

Out across the bay, a firework explodes, a flare of red and blue against the dark sky. Belly breaks their eye contact. “They’ve started early,” she says.

She can hear the soft sound of Conrad exhaling, and then he turns, too, to look. The beautiful line of his neck.

The thought emerges, unbidden: I should have waited. Even if I thought it'd kill me, I should have waited.

But how could she have known she was meant to? 

Chapter Text

In Belly’s dream, she is on a boat. The waves are lulling her, soft as a bassinet. Her eyes are closed, but she can feel everywhere the sun touches her. The drip of water—onto her forehead, across the line of her neck—and her eyes blink open.

“Hey,” she says. “You’re blocking the light.”

Conrad kneels down beside her. His hair is all wet and hanging messy over his face. “Better?” 

“Hmm,” she says. “Maybe to the left a bit. Or…”

His face is closer now. Belly reaches out and touches his cheek, as if he might dissipate in front of her. He doesn’t.

“Like this?” he says.

That same smirk, growing more pronounced. Belly feels her stomach flutter. That tremulous moment right before touch, like a string lying dormant, aching for it. A buzz goes through her whole body. Trouble, Belly thinks. Big—

.

Belly leaves Adam sleeping, and goes to the beach still dressed in her pajamas. The sky is blue-dark, and she is following the path mostly by feel, like she is still dreaming. When she emerges on the beach, and sees a figure sitting there amongst the sand, that doesn’t feel real either.

It’s Conrad. Of course, it is.

She thinks about kicking wet sand at his back. Instead, she goes and sits next to him.

He looks up at her, surprised. He is smoking, cigarette dangling softly from his fingers. It doesn’t fit him.

“It’s so idyllic,” she says, dryly. “Why are you ruining it?”

He rolls his eyes, but obediently stubs the cigarette out on the sand, before pocketing it. “We all have to have our vices.”

“Doesn’t it like offend your sensibilities? As a medical practitioner? Aren’t you supposed to like worship the body?”

His eyebrows raise, and Belly flushes. “Okay,” she says. “Poor choice of words.”

“No,” he says, grinning. “I definitely do.” A beat. “I started when I found out my mom was sick. I only smoke now when I’m stressed. Just a… habit.”

The sky is lightening in increments, like the color of it is still up for debate, and the line of the sea stretches wide across her entire sightline. It feels, a little bit, like they are the only people in the universe.

That doesn’t seem so bad to her at the moment.

“I date terrible men,” Belly says.

She feels the way he stills.

“As my vice.”

“Belly.”

Her name. Her name. Her name. She has never cared so much about how her name sounded when somebody said it. 

She doesn’t know why she’s said this to him, her vice; though it’s true. She’d thought for a bit that Adam wasn’t one of those terrible men, that she’d found someone that had everything going for them. Handsome, funny, rich. He would hold the door for her when they went out, and after their first date, he sent her an entire bundle of roses, so large it had barely fit through her apartment door. 

And if sometimes, he didn’t call her back for a week, Belly had thought, well, he worked hard. And he had dental insurance, which was more than she could have said for the last five men she’d dated. 

“I’m trying,” she says, and then pauses, not sure what she wants to say next. “I’m trying to do better. In picking.”

“That’s…good,” Conrad says, eventually.

She turns her head, a little bit, to look at him, and finds his gaze on the horizon. The sun has started to peek through. 

She doesn’t get to pick him though, she knows. Not when she’d picked his father first. 

After Belly goes back to the house, Conrad walks all the way into the village. He drinks his coffee out on the boardwalk, watching the town wake up, slowly, and then, dragging his feet, makes the two mile walk back down the beach again.

When he gets back, it's midmorning and he finds Nate and Jeremiah on the deck, stringing red, white, and blue streamers. “Sergeant Belly put us to work,” Nate tells Conrad. “Watch out or she’ll have you like scrubbing toilets. Girl is a witch.”

“She looks innocent,” Jeremiah agrees. “But she’s terrifying.”

“Adam is hiding from her,” Nate snickers. “Never seen a grown man cower like that. Honestly, I should thank her.”

Well, Conrad wouldn’t have minded seeing that.

But when he enters the house, he finds a hail storm. Food is spread on every surface, in various states of preparation. Belly is sitting on the ground, the toaster in her lap, angled severely, while she jabs at it with a knife.

“What are you doing?” 

“It’s not,” she jams the knife in harder, “toasting, and the slider buns need toasting. And I can’t stuff them until they’re toasted.”

“Okay,” Conrad says, slowly. “Put the knife down.”

She looks up at him. There is a very stubborn set to her jaw, and beneath it, a barely concealed panic. 

“Why don’t we just do the buns in the oven? We can broil them on low, do them all at once, yeah?”

Belly closes her eyes. “Oh,” she says. “Okay. Yes.”

“Toaster down.”

She sets the toaster down, and rises. Conrad goes over to the oven, and sets it to preheat, before pulling out the baking sheet, and hunting around for the buns. When he looks back over, hand still on the tie, Belly is watching him. 

Her gaze ignites something in him. It’s as if more of him exists with her there to see it. He’s never felt that way before. He’s never wanted to take care of someone the way he wants to take care of her. It’s a useless feeling.

“What else?” he says.

She blinks at him. “What else what?”

“What else do you need?”

.

Conrad doesn’t know the last time they used the grill. The tarp has gone all wonky, and the ignitor won’t ignite. He goes hunting in the garage for the manual, and some fluid. His dad finds him there. 

“Hey,” Conrad says, neck deep in old boxes, trying to reach the back shelves. “Do we have fluid?”

“It’s probably with the grill.”

“It’s not.”

Adam gives an expansive shrug. It makes Conrad feel a bit like punching him. He pushes through the boxes instead, and comes out the other side.

“Listen, Con,” Adam says. “I want you to talk to Jeremiah for me. He’ll take it better coming from you.”

Conrad’s shoulders raise. “And say what?”

“Tell him I’ll buy him and his friend a really nice lunch at Il Pescone. Or wherever they want.”

Conrad blinks. “Out of the goodness of your heart?”

“If they go now, and come back at five.”

“Are you kidding me, dad?”

“These are very high profile clients, Conrad. It’s important that they think—”

“That you’re ashamed of your son.”

“That I have a lovely family. Jeremiah should have understood that when I told him that this was a client centric event, and made his plans accordingly.”

Conrad sees red for a moment. Punching him wouldn’t help, he reminds himself. It would feel good, but it wouldn’t help. “Uh huh,” he says.

He pulls his keys out of his pocket, stalks out of the garage, heading for his car. 

“Connie!” Adam calls after him.

Conrad turns back around, raising one finger at him. “I’m going to the store. To buy lighter fluid. And then I’m coming back to help set up this stupid fucking party, because your girlfriend is working herself to the bone in there to make it go well. But I’m not going to be your little messenger pigeon to spread homophobic bullshit. If you can’t handle your son and his fucking life partner being at your client barbecue, then you’re going to have to man up and tell him that yourself.” He pauses at the car door, and then says, “And by the way, Nate is fucking lovely.” before slamming the door shut behind him.

Belly puts her hair up, and then down again. She’d brought four dresses and she tries them all on with her heels, which she rarely wears, and then she spends too long on her makeup and gets stressed for time. 

Adam comes into change when she’s trying on earrings. “You look lovely,” he says.

She smiles. She doesn’t feel lovely, she feels stretched thin and antsy. It will all be better when the party is over, she knows. She imagines the lull of a boat, the feeling of sunshine on her skin, like a promise.

God, she’s sick.

It will be better, too, when the week is over. When Conrad disappears out of her life and she stops feeling so…confused.

Adam hesitates in the door to the closet. “Everything looks great down there, Isabel. I know you know how important this is to me, and I very much want you to know that I appreciate how hard you’ve been working.”

“Yeah?” Belly says. “Is that why you’ve been hiding from me all day?”

He smiles. “Well, you are a touch frightening, sweetheart.”

Belly shakes her head. “I’m going to finish moving the stuff outside, and then maybe have a drink before people get here.”

Maybe that will calm her nerves.

“All right,” Adam says. “I’ll be down in ten.”

The downstairs is empty. She doesn’t see Jeremiah or Nate out in the party space. Or…Conrad. 

Belly exhales, propping the door open with her hip, and then goes to get the cake. “You are a thing of beauty,” she tells it, gently. “And I love you very much.”

She moves gingerly across the threshold, and then waddles out to the table. There is a breeze blowing, and the streamers look as if they are dancing. The spread is lovely, just as the house is lovely. For a moment, Belly feels a sort of swelling of pride. I did this, she thinks. 

And then her heel catches on the deck plank, and Belly goes tumbling. 

She hits the deck hard, her elbow smashed against her side, her leg twisted up beneath her. The cake platter shatters on impact and glass and cake spread in a terrible semi-circle around her. It is all over her pretty floral dress. 

For a moment, Belly is not sure she is capable of moving. I can just lay here, she thinks, curled in a ball. The doorbell will ring, but nobody will answer, and they will be forced to leave. There is no other future she can conceive of.

“Belly!” 

“No,” she moans. 

“Belly, are you all right?!”

A hand touches her arm, trying to pull her partway to sitting, and Belly flinches, hard. 

“No,” she gasps. “No, I—”

Breath abandons her. 

“I,” she tries again. Her chest aches at a frightful throb, and panic has started to enter her bloodstream. Conrad’s face is swimming in front of her. 

“Okay. You’re okay. Listen to me.” 

He is kneeling down beside her, amongst the cake. The glass. All of it. Belly’s eyes screw shut. 

“Breathe, honey. Just count with me. Inhale, and hold it. One, two, three. And then out. Yeah, that’s good. Do it again.” His hand is on her shoulder, soft, unthreatening.

It’s the first time he’s touched her.

“That’s right. Again. Good. Is anything else hurt?”

Belly nods, slowly, her eyes still squeezed shut. “My ankle.”

“Okay.” He puts one of his hands underneath her knee, and the other scoops around her back, and then he’s shifting and pulling her up into his arms. 

Belly makes a surprised gasping sound. “No,” she says. “No, I can—”

“You’re covered in cake,” he says. “And you’ve hurt your ankle. Just let me, honey.”

And now so are you, she thinks. But she doesn’t want to think about the cake.

He takes them into the kitchen and then up the stairs to the bathroom, depositing her on the side of the tub. He kneels down in front of her, running a hand down her calf.

Belly, shivers, full-bodied. 

“Hurts?” 

“No,” she says, before realizing how that might sound.

His gaze flicks back to hers. His eyes, she thinks, are really very green. What a terrible time to notice such a thing. 

“Okay.” He puts his hand very gently to her ankle.

She hisses. 

“Yeah, all right. Shoe off, okay?”

She nods. 

He unclasps the shoe and then slides it off her foot, rotating her ankle slightly. 

“Bad,” she says. 

“Yeah, how bad?”

“Bad.”

“Okay.” He releases her foot. “Let me see your elbow. No broken skin. Though it’s going to be a pretty bruise.” He runs his hand through his hair. “I can wrap the ankle. It’ll be a no on the heels, and you should probably take it easy for the next couple of days, but I don’t think we need to go to the ER to get a boot. If it’s worse tomorrow, well, we can go get an xray. Do you have another dress?”

Belly looks at him, teary-eyed. She feels so thoroughly overwhelmed with emotion she’s not sure she could put a word to any of it. “I can’t go back down there,” she whispers. “I can’t, no, I—” Without another word, she bursts into tears. 

She can hear Conrad exhale, and then, “Come here,” he says, lowly. His hand goes to her shoulder, and then she is curling into him and burying her head in his chest. “It’s only cake.” 

Belly cries harder. He is warm against her, and so kind. She is not sure anyone has ever been so perfectly kind. She doesn’t know what to do in the face of it, like part of her has been tensed her whole life and it’s now unfolding itself, wanting to be offered up to him.

His hand is in her hair, running gently through it, soothing motions. She is still perched above him as he kneels on the ground. She wants to be closer. She clutches at him, and he makes a soft sound. 

She pushes into it, like this is a chess match, and she has found an opening. She doesn’t care about the pain or the mess or her ankle or Adam. She moves forward just enough so that she can come down to the floor with him.

“Belly,” he says, voice choked. 

“Please,” she says, and climbs into his lap, burying her face in his neck.

It is humiliating, god, it’s so humiliating. But his hand runs up her back, almost hesitantly, and that makes it worth it.

The scent of him, the soft rasp of cheek against her forehead, the rhythm of his breathing, a touch uneven, the way his body slots right into hers. Belly’s mouth opens, and she presses the wet of it against his skin, a brief kiss, right at his pulse point.

His whole body goes rigid beneath her, and then he puts his hands to her shoulders, pushing her back.

Oh my god, Belly thinks. 

What the hell was she thinking?

“Wait,” he says. His face is still right up against hers. Those green eyes, dark and serious. It should be terrible to look at him like this, and it is, it is , it’s just also quite possibly the most glorious thing she’s ever experienced. 

“Break up with him.”

“What?” She feels a bit as if the axis of her world has shifted, and she is left blinking at the new plane.

“Break up with him,” he repeats, firmly. “And then I’ll do whatever you want.”

This said, he sets her gently back on the tile, and then scrambles to his feet. There is icing smeared all over the front of him. She watches his chest rise and fall, with no words inside her at all. The entire thing, from the moment she fell, feels like a fever dream.

“Rinse off,” he says. “I’ll go get you something to wear and then I’ll come back and wrap your foot, okay?”

Belly drops her head to her chest. She sort of hates herself for saying this, but she can’t just let him go without asking either. “Conrad?” 

“Yeah?”

“What are we going to do about the cake?”

Conrad descends the stairs and finds Adam out on the deck, staring at the disaster of cake. “What the fuck happened here?” He looks over at Conrad, covered in icing. “Ah,” he says. “Seems we’ve found a culprit.”

There is the sound of the doorbell, and Adam looks between it and the floor, and then laughs. “Jesus,” he says. “Well, I’ll try to stall. Clean this up, would you?”

“No,” Conrad says. 

“No?”

“I’m doing something. Figure it out, dad.” 

Conrad returns to the house, heading up the stairs and down the hallway to his mom’s room. He pushes the door open, and fights back the immediate wash of feeling being in here produces. Belly’s suitcase is at the base of the bed. There are three dresses piled messily atop it. He picks the dark pink one, and then goes into the bathroom and grabs the wraps from beneath the sink.

“Hey,” he hears in the doorway. “Everything okay?”

Conrad snorts.

“Woah,” Nate says when he comes back out. “Get in a food fight?”

“Belly dropped the cake.”

“Oh my god. She’s probably freaking out. She made me take four pictures of her with it. Like it was her son.”

A little twinge goes through Conrad. He closes his eyes. “Can you help my dad clean it up? She won’t want it causing a big deal.”

“Am I like allowed down there? Adam made it seem like we were kind of forbadden, like Dursley dinner party style. Jere is sulking it off by watching TikTok dance videos, and it’s driving me batty.”

Fuck his dad, Conrad thinks. “Nate,” he says. “You can go anywhere in this house you want, okay? As far as I’m concerned.” He exhales. “But fuck, I don’t want you to have to deal with him. Just uh, bring Belly her dress, okay? And tell her I’m coming. She’s in the bath in the guest suite off the kitchen.”

“Okay,” Nate says, and then pushes past him into the bathroom. “She probably needs some of this, too,” and he scoops up a handful of products and ducks out of the room.

Conrad doesn’t want to go down and face his dad either, but he will. Because there’s a crying girl up in a bathroom who…wants him. He hadn’t been certain until just now that she did, and now that he knows, well…

He moves to go, but then he stops, looking over at the dresser. 

She’d put flowers in his mother’s vase. Blue hydrangeas.

Yeah, he thinks. He’s going to marry that girl.

Chapter Text

On the first Thanksgiving after the divorce, the Conklin-Parks have a full house. Laurel brings Amira. John brings Candace. Steven brings Taylor. Belly brings…no one. Andrew, her boyfriend, told her he didn’t believe in holidays, which is why he’d gone to his buddy Brian’s house instead to get stoned and play Halo.

The dinner is relentlessly cordial, and afterwards, the kids go out into the slush to the little area by the fence you can’t see from the back door. Taylor and Steven smoke a joint while Belly sips from a can of foraged beer.

“Would it be weird if I asked her where she gets her hair done? Because I’ve been wanting bangs. And hers are like freakishly perfect.”

“Taylor,” Belly says.

“What? I mean go John, right? She’s hot.”

Steven takes a hit, and then looks off through the fence at the neighbors yard. Belly wonders what he’s thinking, if he’s wondering like she is what their parents are doing, dating people now so exactly the opposite of each other. Amira was loud and warm and effusive, and she wore silk scarves dyed in jewel tones with large earrings in strange shapes. And Candace was crushingly sweet, her blonde hair perfectly coiffed down to the bangs. She’d kept excusing herself throughout the meal to go fix her lipstick. 

Before dessert, Belly had heard her mother in the kitchen, saying to Amira, “What is she? Twenty-two? Do you think her parents will come collect her afterwards?”

“Laurel,” Amira said, admonishing. But Belly could tell she agreed. 

“I wish they’d stop pretending,” Steven says, at last. He is so rarely serious, it’s odd to see it on him. Like, he, too, was a stranger. “It’s fucking pathetic.”

Belly doesn’t disagree. It’s a microcosm of the entire divorce. They’d never once fought about it.

Even so, that year is the last Thanksgiving they all spend together. 

Conrad knocks on the door. “Belly? It’s me.”

“You can come in.”

When he pushes the door open, he finds Nate sitting on the sink beside Belly, one hand holding her knee so she doesn’t have to put weight on her rolled ankle. She’s put on the pink dress, and pulled her hair back into a low bun, and she’s just now finishing something with her eye makeup.

She pulls back from the sink, and looks at him. 

“Let’s get you fixed up,” he says, voice purposefully light, though he feels a bit as if he has returned to the scene of the crime.

She nods, slowly. 

“Just, uh, Nate, help her up, yeah?”

Conrad gets the little stool by the tub and sits beneath her, carefully arranging her leg so that he can wrap it at the right angle. This isn’t the first ankle he’s wrapped, or even the hundredth, but it’s never felt sensual before.

Like this, though, he can see the curve where her knee meets her thigh. He wants to put his hand there. The want for it is like an ache.

“It’s kinda fucked up that people our age are doctors now.”

Conrad looks over at Nate. “I’m not a doctor yet.”

“But you’re like perilously close. It’s causing me to question my mortality. I didn’t really believe it till I saw you on the little stool." 

Conrad snorts. “Not too tight?”

Belly shakes her head. 

“Okay,” he says. “Don’t put weight on it, but let’s see if you can stand.”

Nate takes one hand, and Conrad takes her other. Her fingers curl into his, and a warm feeling blossoms in his chest. 

“Yeah?” 

She nods. “Hmm.”

“You…don’t have to go down there if you don’t want to. I’ll—I’ll speak to my dad. Tell him you’re not well.”

Over Belly’s head, Nate gives him a look, as if to say: will you now?

Nate’s not wrong. There is in fact a small and possessive demon living in Conrad’s chest that would love to do it, to squirrel Belly away from Adam’s sight. To watch her play host with his dad is sure to make him miserable. He’d known that, known that before all the other realizations. 

“No,” Belly says. “It’s important, and I don’t want to… ruin it. Just like get me to a bar stool, yeah?”

Nate opens his mouth, but Conrad shoots him a quieting look, and his lips thin. “You got her, Con?”

Conrad nods. 

Belly turns and looks at Nate, her brow furrowing. “Are you not coming out?”

“I don’t think Adam wants me there, lovely.”

“But I want you there,” she says, frowning. She turns to Conrad, and then back to Nate. “You’re part of the family, right?”

Nate’s smile is sad. “You should talk to Adam about it. Not today, just. You should. Maybe you can change his mind.” 

“About what?”

Nate looks again at Conrad, as if to say: you going to tell her?

But Conrad doesn’t know how to. He doesn’t know what she sees in Adam, if love is part of the equation that binds them together. What was love though if you didn’t understand each other? And more than anything it’s become clear to him that Belly doesn’t understand Adam at all. The thought is a relief. 

“Come on,” Conrad says. “Let’s get you to your party.”

Adam had lied to her. It was more than just a few clients. There were almost forty people in total spread across the backyard. Belly had thought she’d over prepared, but she’s pretty sure all the food will be gone soon.

Conrad had deposited her in a low chaise by the pool, and brought her a pillow to elevate her ankle and ice to go on and off at twenty minute increments. It’s generated a certain degree of sympathy from the people who have stopped by to talk to her, which hasn’t been many of the party’s guests. That’s been okay.

Mainly Belly has just been observing. Almost everyone here is older than her, and rich in the same disconcerting kind of way. The women sport the same shade of tan, the men the same watches.

Across the pool, she sees Conrad. He is talking to a woman leaned strategically forward so that he could look down her shirt if he so wanted. But he doesn’t. 

Instead, he raises his bottle to his lips, and then looks over at Belly.

A buzz starts at the base of Belly’s spine.

She shades her eyes, and looks around to find Adam. He’s over by the bar, speaking intently to the man beside him, his hand on his shoulder. 

Belly has been picturing the barbecue for weeks: how she’d flit brightly amongst people with Adam at her side. But now, being here just makes her miss Steven. It’s the kind of schmoozy event he would thrive at.

There’s a clatter by the doorway, and Belly looks up and sees Jeremiah. He’s wearing a nearly sheer pink button down and his hair is extraordinarily messy as if he’s just risen from bed. The look on his face is a touch bleary, a touch crazed. 

Belly raises her hand. “Jere!”

He stumbles, as if lost and in need of a siren. She waves again to direct him over.

She can smell him even before he takes his seat, sprawled on the chaise almost on top of her. His arm jostles her leg, and she flinches. 

“Sorry, sorry,” he says.

“How much have you had?” 

“Just a little.” He holds up his hand to indicate. “For bravery.”

Belly herself has had a little for bravery. This looks like a lot.

“Jeremiah.” Adam has arrived over them. His expression is stern. “Go back inside.”

Automatically, Belly looks back to where she’d last seen Conrad, and finds him gone. “He’s fine,” she says. “He can stay with me, keep me company.”

Adam looks at her. He’s barely spoken with her since the event started. He hadn’t said anything about the cake or her leg, though Belly had gotten the sense that it had annoyed him. As if she’d done it on purpose. 

Break up with him, Conrad had said. As if it was that easy. 

Maybe it was. 

Belly wasn’t used though to being the one who left.

“Dad,” Jeremiah says. “I really think that if you just gave us a chance, got to know Nate—”

“This is not the time or space for this conversation,” Adam hisses.

There is the loud blare of a trumpet in the distance. “Oh my god,” Jeremiah says. He turns to look at Belly, panic in his gaze.

A drum joins the trumpet, a fast cheery beat. Hands clapping, the coo of harmonizing male voices. Over the crest of the hill from the beach comes a group of men, all dressed in white, all holding instruments, all…dancing.

“I forgot to tell them it was off,” Jeremiah whispers, horrified. 

Belly looks up and sees Conrad in the doorway. He’s stopped, frozen. Behind him, Nate is still in the kitchen, just through the glass. Conrad must have gone to go get him.

“It’s a beautiful night!” the guys start to croon in five part harmony.

They are still coming forwards, moving in a synchronized pattern. The trumpet is blaring. The maracas are shaking. Jeremiah looks like he wants to die. The guests all look baffled. Behind Belly, she can feel Adam vibrating like a white hot pit of rage.

“We’re looking for something dumb to dooooo.”

The music amps. The boys are watching Jeremiah, expectantly, instruments all waving in the air. This must be his cue.

Hey, baby. I think I want to marry you.

For a moment, Belly thinks he won’t do it. But then, rising like a jack-in-a box all in a clutter, Jeremiah leaps to his feet, pointing across the crowd to where Nate is standing. “Hey baby!” he yells. It could really only barely be considered singing. But the boys are still clapping wildly, almost upon the party now, and the wind is rising like it's come to join as well, and it feels, Belly thinks, all sort of perfectly apt. “I think I want to marry you.”

The music crescendos. Jeremiah executes a moderately wild spin into a kneel.

Belly looks towards Nate, whose expression holds ten thousand emotions at once. Tentatively, he steps out onto the deck. “You are such a fucking idiot,” he says, and then he reaches down to Jeremiah and pulls him up into a kiss. 

Belly breaks out into a cheer. The boys are descending now, and they circle the happy couple all in a rush of motion, so suddenly they are shielded from view, and it hardly matters that barely anyone is applauding with them.

Belly looks over and meets Conrad’s gaze. He is looking at her already, and he is smiling. The smile transforms him, brightens his eyes and softens some of his harder edges. On the inside, she can see, he is laughing. 

So is Belly. She can feel the moment transforming her as well, like the joy of it was infectious. Like there was love enough in the world for all of them. 

More than enough.

.

By five Breaker’s guests have all left, and it’s just Jeremiah and Nate’s friends remaining, so it feels like the start of a true party. Conrad comes and finds Belly with a fresh ice pack. 

“How is the ankle?” he asks her.

It hurts. 

“It’s fine,” she says. “Interesting party, hmm?”

Conrad smiles. “My mom would have loved it.”

“Yeah?” 

He nods. “She had a romantic streak.”

“She passed it on.”

He tenses a little, at the shoulders, and then relaxes. “Yeah,” he says, softly. 

There is the sound of yelling from inside, and both of them startle. 

Belly reaches her hand out to Conrad without even thinking about it. He grasps her around the forearm to help her up, and then his arm slides around her waist. The feeling of it is so acute that for a moment Belly’s eyes flicker closed.

“Hurts?”

A repetition. “No. It doesn’t hurt.”

She does not dare look at him, but she feels the way her words thrum through him. She can feel all of it.

“Come on,” he says. “Let’s go see.”

He helps her make her way up the steps and into the house. Jeremiah and Adam are in the family room, Adam by the fireplace, his face something fearsome. “I warned you,” he says. “I told you that I didn’t want anything about—”

“About what, dad?” Jeremiah sounds like a little boy again, plaintive.

“You humiliated me. You did the very thing I explicitly asked you not to do.”

“I’m not going to keep Nate locked in a closet because it makes you uncomfortable. He’s going to be my husband.”

Adam closes his eyes. 

“You can’t even hear that, dad. He’s going to be my husband, all right? I love him.”

“Jeremiah.”

“I wanted to change your mind, but you’re not going to, are you?”

“What is it that you fucking want from me?” Adam asks. “I’ve given you a job at my company. I haven’t cut you off. I—”

“You won’t even look at me!”

Adam stills. “I am looking at you. And what I see,” he shakes his head, like there aren’t words for it. Like the disappointment is too much.

Belly watches it spear through Jeremiah.

“I want you to go.” The words come from right by Belly’s ear. “Pack your shit, and get out.”

Adam turns and sees Belly and Conrad in the doorway. Nothing about his expression changes. “Excuse me?”

“The house was left to me and Jere. And we’re celebrating an engagement. We don’t fucking want anyone here who isn’t happy for them. Capishe?”

Adam looks at Conrad for a long minute. “Fine,” he says, shaking his head. “Fine.” He starts towards the stairs, and then stops. “Isabel. Come on. Get your stuff.”

Belly looks at him, stuck for a moment in limbo. “I,” she says. The word sounds almost choked. She tries again, stronger. “I’m going to stay.”

Adam just looks at her. “What?”

“I’m going to stay. I’m not going back with you.”

She feels Conrad’s hand tighten on her hip, firm, reassuring pressure. 

Adam laughs, one short bark. “Yeah, why the fuck not?” he says, and then starts up the stairs again.

Belly slumps a bit when he’s gone, and then looks up at Conrad. His eyes. Christ, but his eyes. 

“Is it okay?” she asks him.

Here’s the thing though. Belly knows it is.

Conrad doesn’t answer her. Instead, he looks up at Jeremiah. “Come on, man. We’ve got a fucking celebration to put on.”

Nate finds Conrad in the kitchen, fussing about with the keg. He’s wearing a sash that says Bride-To-Be, and somebody has put war paint beneath his eyes. Probably Redbird. 

He leans his hip against the counter. “So you kicked Adam out, huh?”

Outside, they’ve started to play music, and with the fireworks spread out across the water, it has the feeling of a real celebration.

“I did.”

“And Belly stayed.”

“She did.”

Nate releases his breath. “I’m honestly impressed.” It’s not clear if he means with Belly or with Conrad. Maybe both. 

Conrad looks out towards the pool. The boys have lifted Belly onto a float. She’s still fully clothed, just damp, and she looks happy amongst them.

“I like her,” Nate says.

“Me, too.”

Nate reaches over and chuffs Conrad on the side of his head. “I know you do. Idiot.”

Conrad laughs. “Yeah, yeah. Fuck off.”

Nate goes silent, chewing on his lip. “I didn’t want it to go down like that, you know. With Adam. I thought we could do it more gently.”

“He could still change his mind.”

“Maybe,” Nate says. “But I’d almost rather he didn’t. I want life to…feel like this.”

Conrad thinks about making a joke, but then decides against it. He knows what Nate means. He’s spent almost a decade trying with his dad, and he’s tired of it. Maybe it’s not for forever, but for today, he’s glad to see him gone. He wants life to feel like this, too.

He reaches over and slaps Nate’s arm. “Now, you’re stuck with us.”

Nate smiles. “Nate Fisher. I could dig it.”

“Sorry,” Conrad says. “I thought we were all taking your name.”

.

The party moves downtown sometime around ten. After the boys are gone, Conrad finds Belly in the center of the pool. She’s still fully clothed, her hair floating in a wild stream around her. 

It suits her. 

He sits down on the side of the pool, taking off his shoes so he can put his feet in the water.

Overhead, the moon has come out and the night is crisp, almost cool. 

“It’s funny,” she says. “That this morning we were watching the sunrise. It feels like a long time ago.”

It was only three nights ago that they were standing outside a restaurant, Conrad smoking a cigarette and amping himself up to face his father, Belly looking at him with a little furrow between her brows, as if he’d confused her by existing.

You again. Like fate.

It could have been a lifetime.

Back then, he couldn’t have predicted this. Not any of it.

“I took the week off,” Conrad says. “I have to drive back up on Wednesday, but till then, I’m going to stay here.”

Belly stills, and then she adjusts herself in the water so that she’s more upright and they are facing each other. Conrad looks at her across the sea of blue. Her lovely face. Her smile, broadening slowly. You could fall in love with a smile like that.

“We never did play Clue,” she says. 

Chapter Text

Here’s an ending:

In the early morning, Belly limps her way out onto the upper deck to make a phone call. Down below lies the detritus of the celebration from the night before. The sky is still purple-morning, and the wind whispers to her, calling her out to sea.

She’s never learned how to surf, but she thinks she might like to. 

There’s a lot of things she might like to, she’s realizing. It’s a fragile kind of feeling, like a much younger version of herself, tamped down for a long, long time, has burst forth from her skin. Be brave, she whispers to her. 

Adam answers on the fifth ring. The conversation isn’t long. Belly doesn’t curse, and she doesn’t cry. Neither does he. When it’s over, she sets the phone face down on the side table.

The door opens behind her, and Belly turns, already knowing who it is.

Jeremiah is out by the pool. He’s still in his clothes from the night before, and Conrad wonders if he slept out here. 

He takes the chaise next to him. “I can make you one of your smoothies. Fight off the hangover.”

Jeremiah groans. 

Conrad slants his eyes over at him. Did I do right by you? he wonders. Did I do enough?

The question has hounded him relentlessly since his mother died, and Conrad had come to the realization that it was only him that stood between Adam and Jeremiah. He didn’t care anymore what Adam thought of him. It was as if his father had died as well that last terrible year. Conrad had felt every last ounce of regard drain out of him the longer his mother’s illness dragged on. But he knew that Jeremiah had always harbored hope that his father could be redeemed.

I know you’ll take care of him , his mother had told him just before she died. My brave son.

Conrad has been trying. 

The weight of that trying had been crushing. He hadn’t realized it before. Not till Adam was gone.

Out past the dock, a boat trips by, sails raised. It’s been forever since Conrad has been out on the water. Sailing was something he never even thinks to miss. That surety he’d once felt with his hand on the rudder, like he could bend the entire ocean to his will.

So many things lost.

“Hey,” he says, suddenly. “Do you want to get married at the summer house?”

Jeremiah lifts his head and looks at him. “We were actually thinking of doing it in Oaxaca. Nate likes the thought of getting away. And the boys thought we could turn it into a whole thing. Make a week of it.” 

Conrad laughs. “Yeah,” he says. “Sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

.

Belly is on the front porch, on the swinging chair. She’s talking on the phone, her ankle propped up on her knee as she fusses with the wrapping, her phone sitting on the table next to her.

“Do I need to get the playlist ready?” The voice on the phone says. “Because we can go sad girl emo or rageful revenge arc. I’ve added to both since last time. They’re both good.”

“I don’t feel sad,” Belly says. “Or rageful. Not this time.”

“Who are you and what have you done with Isabel Conklin?” That’s a male voice, one Conrad hasn’t heard before.

“Shut up, Steven,” Belly snaps.

“No, this is big, babe,” the first voice continues. “I’m proud of you.”

Belly’s shoulders rise a little in a shrug, as if to say: well, it is a little bit . And Conrad can’t help it, he feels a little swell of pride emerge in his chest as well.

He thinks he’d like to watch her do anything.

“And I’m not saying I told you so—”

Belly’s face scrunches. “It sounds a little like you are.”

“No, I’m not, I’m not. Or I wouldn’t be if you were all broken hearted about it. I just… I want a nice guy for you, you know? You deserve it.”

Belly looks up towards the driveway, and sees Conrad standing there, partway around the corner. She freezes a little bit, like she’s been caught in the act. And then her shoulders untense, and a small smile crosses her face. “Were you eavesdropping?” 

Conrad shrugs. “Your phone is on speaker phone. It’s a little hard not to hear.”

“You’re like in the bushes,” she accuses. “Like a cartoon burglar or something.”

“These are my bushes. How can I be burglaring?”

“Belly, oh my god, is that him?” the voice on the phone asks.

Belly presses the button to pull the phone off speaker and raises it to her ear. “I’ve gotta go, Taylor. I’ll call you when I’m driving back.” She laughs. “You can wait a couple of days, you lunatic. I love you, bye.” She hangs up. Her cheeks are a little red. “My best friend.”

“She seems fun.”

“Oh, she is. She’s married to my brother, so we’re family. Forever and always, that sort of thing.” 

He doesn’t mention anything else about the call. He doesn’t think he needs to. Instead, he comes and sits down beside her. The brush of her hair against his arm, the smell of her, like sunscreen and something floral.

 “Yeah?” he says. “Tell me about her.”

Conrad, Belly has discovered, is a sore loser. “That’s a completely illegal move!” he whines. “You can’t swap them twice in one turn. Once through, and then onto the next player. No doubling up on cards.”

“Check your sources on that, mate,” Nate says.

Conrad hunts down the manual from the box while they all watch, and then buries his face in it. 

“Remember when Con threw Priya’s copy of Candy Land off the roof? Because he was sooo convinced she had sabotaged his game.”

“She was cheating,” Conrad says, mulishly. “I just couldn’t prove it.”

“When was this?” Belly asks. 

She is propped against the couch, and Conrad’s sitting slumped beside her, his forearm brushing her calf, his hair almost hanging over her leg.

“Three years ago,” Jeremiah says, delighted. “At Carter’s stag.”

Conrad flips to the last page of the manual.  “Oh fuck you,” he says, throwing it back down. “But only after you’ve drawn a five. Don’t extend it out.”

Nate gives a little chirp, and sends Conrad’s piece back to home. 

Conrad looks at it morosely, and then rests his forehead against Belly’s knee, and makes a small annoyed sound against the skin.

Belly raises her hand and touches the back of his head. “Poor, baby.”

His hair is soft. His mouth is still touching her. They’re sitting in the living room and it’s five o’clock on a Sunday.

They could go upstairs. She’d like it if he put his mouth other places, and she thinks he’d do it, if she asked him to. She hasn’t forgotten what he’d said. Anything you want. But she’s enjoying playing the game and she knows that it’s still too soon. She’s going to sleep with him, she sort of feels like it would be the tragedy of her life if she didn’t, but she doesn’t need it to be right now. 

She’d like it to unspool slowly. They’ve got the time.

.

On Tuesday, they all go out to the beach to celebrate their last night for the summer. Belly can’t walk on the sand, so Conrad carries her on his back and then deposits her safely on a beach chair. 

They sip wine and eat shrimp lightly sandy from the wind. Jeremiah and Nate play 2000s party rock, which Conrad pretends hurts his ears, but Belly sees him nodding along secretly, and suppresses a little grin.

At sunset, the couple starts a walk to the village, their arms linked. Conrad and Belly watch them go, till they’re only silhouettes. 

Sand is swirling across the beach, forming patterns. It should be uncomfortable, but it’s not.

“I love it here,” she says, softly. “Maybe that’s funny, but I…just do.”

“I know.”

He’s quiet for a beat, and she doesn’t speak either.

“I’m coming down to Boston in two weeks.”

Belly turns slowly to look at him. His gaze feels very steady, like you could set time by it.

“Yeah?”

“What do you think of coffee?”

“I like it.”

“With me.”

She smiles. “I like that, too.”

Last beginning, I promise.

It’s September and Belly gets off the plane in Oaxaca. A man is waiting for her at arrivals, leaning against the side of a pillar, playing the crossword on his phone.

Belly rolls her suitcase over to him, till their toes are almost touching.

He looks up at her, slowly: sandals, knees, pale yellow dress.

“It’s hot,” she tells him.

“It’s Mexico.” He smiles. “But I’m sure like we could find a freezer for you somewhere.”

Belly laughs. 

He steps forward and pulls her into him.  “Thank god you’re here,” he says into her hair. “You have no idea what I’ve been through in the last twenty four hours.”

She pulls back to look at his face. It’s speckled with glitter, and she can see the remnants of eyeshadow around his eyes. Blue and green. She puts her hands to both cheeks. “I hope they took pictures,” she says.

He shakes his head. “It’s weird. You’d think they would have. But somehow there’s literally zero photographic evidence.”

She tilts into her hip, smirking. “Nate already sent me a video of the dance.”

“That fucking snitch.”

“You’ll have to do it for me,” she says. “I especially liked the part where your moved your hips around in a little—”

He kisses her to silence her, quick and dirty, his hands flat against her back, throwing her off balance. She laughs, and clutches his shoulders. “Conrad,” she says. “Conrad, please, just one, like just one step ball change. For me.”

He blinks at her, eyes perilously close. “I have no idea what that is.”

“Obviously,” Belly says.

“God, you’re such a dick.” But he’s smiling. 

She’s smiling, too. When she’s with him, Belly hardly knows how to stop.

.

They drop her stuff back at his hotel room. It has two rooms, a little sitting room where Dune is sitting waiting for him by the green armchair, and the bedroom. Belly opens the door to the balcony, and lets in the humid air, the clamor of the city.

“Everyone else is sleeping it off still,” he tells her. “I don’t think they’ll be around till the dinner tonight. I’m not sure there’s any alcohol left.”

“In the whole city?” 

He shrugs. “It’s impressive.”

“Not you though,” she says. The only thing about him that speaks to a night of gay debauchery is the eyemakeup. That’s impressive in its own right.

“Someone had to move the herd around. And besides, my beautiful girlfriend was flying in on the nine a.m. I couldn’t miss that.”

A flush settles across the back of her neck. “Who is that?” she says, cooly.

Two steps and he crosses the room to her, hands already reaching for her hips, pulling her into him. “She must be here somewhere,” he says against her neck.

“Hmmm.” Belly arches to give him better access. 

“What do you want to do?” he asks her. “With all of our freedom?”

Belly eyes the bedroom, the waiting bed. The covers aren’t hotel perfect, but they’re pretty close. Since this morning, he’d done it back up. Even so, they could pull them down again, spend the day there. The prospect sounds enticing. Even more so when his left hand moves to her stomach, pulling her into him in a slow, intentional grind. God, but the feel of him.

But it is Belly’s first time out of the country, and she wants to see the city, not just this bedroom. “Come on,” she says. “Show me your list.”

“What list?”

“The list of potential activities for us to do in Oaxaca. Sorted by like cost benefit analysis or whatever.”

His grip tightens on her, a brief, promising grab, and then he laughs and releases her. “Okay one sec,” he says. “It’s on my phone.”

It’s sorted by neighborhood. Belly was close enough.

.

They go first to the Mercado Benito Jauarez, a covered market packed to the gills with stalls, baskets of food and shelving stretched up all the way to the ceiling. They eat fried fish fresh from the sea and dried peppers so spicy they both cry. Belly buys Steven a thing of extra strength hot sauce, and her mom and Amira a thing of Mezcal.

Outside, they walk through a street strung with brightly colored paper flags, like the rainbow captured in the sky, and then they go to a shop that makes old fashioned hot chocolate in a fire pit. The taste is deep and almost bitter. They both hate it.

There’s an old church that Conrad wants to see, and in the quiet hush of it, they stare up at the light through the windows, breathing in the smell of incense and dust.

Then at the crest of the day, they go back to the hotel and spend several hours in the bedroom there.

Afterwards, Conrad sits on the bed and watches Belly apply her makeup. There’s a relaxed look to him that she finds unfairly seductive, like she could touch him and he would collapse instantly under the weight of it.

“Stop watching me,” she tells him. “It’s distracting.”

He closes his eyes, but doesn’t move. And in only a moment, she watches them blink open again.

He smiles at her expression. “I like looking at you.” 

This level of adoration is still new to Belly, and it makes her feel as if her entire body is buzzing. It’s not entirely comfortable, and she’s not sure she would be able to handle it if she didn’t feel the exact same way. “I like looking at you, too,” she tells him.

.

It’s just family at the rehearsal dinner, and they hold it in a little mom and pop shop directly by the water. Nate had been raised predominantly by his older sister, Nadine. This is Belly’s first time meeting her, but she likes her instantly. 

“To my baby brother,” she says, raising her glass high. “I always hoped I’d get to see you stupidly in love one day. And now I have. Though I hadn’t ever pictured it would be with a finance bro, I can own to that.”

Jeremiah nods agreeably to this. 

“May you laugh every day,” Nadine says. “And never cry alone.”

They all cheers to that.

Nate says something softly to Jeremiah, and he smiles and calls for the waiter. Belly looks over at Conrad. His eyes have gone all shimmery.

He is, she thinks, fondly, a complete and total sap.

She places her hand on top of his on the table. He squeezes it back. 

The waiter brings out little containers of Mezcal next, and they cheers again: to the happy couple, to Oaxaca and the moon and the stars and the sea. To each other.

For now, they don’t discuss those that aren’t amongst them. It’s a beautiful night, and they spend it laughing. Belly is pretty sure she’ll remember it for the rest of her life.

The wedding ceremony is on the beach, right at sunset. It’s short and too windy and Jeremiah’s vows sound predominately like word salad. It doesn’t matter. Afterwards, the ceremony accomplished, the couple descends into the crowd. As he passes, Conrad grabs hold of Jeremiah, and Jeremiah clutches him back, tight and desperate, before the momentum carries him away from him.

At the reception, Conrad finds Nate, leaning against one of the high tops, happy, hair akimbo.

“I think I blacked out for the ceremony,” Nate confesses to him. “The whole thing is a blur. I hope someone got it on video.”

“It was beautiful,” Conrad tells him. “I promise.”

Nate touches him on the wrist. “Thanks, Connie. For all of it. You’ve been doing what? Triple duty?”

Conrad feels a twinge in his chest. “My mom used to call me Connie,” he admits.  “It always makes me think of her.”

Nate absorbs this. “Can I have it? A little piece of Susannah Fisher?”

Conrad laughs at that: at Nate’s wry expression, at the concept. “Sure, man. Take it.”

“Nate!” There’s a loud cry from the dance floor. “It’s our song. Come dance!”

“If I must,” Nate says with a long suffering sigh, and then goes shuffling rhythmically out onto the dance floor.  

He is replaced by Belly. 

She is wearing a long midnight blue dress and her eyes are all smoky with eyeliner. It’s been two months, and Conrad still can’t believe his luck.

“You’re going to try to convince me to dance, aren’t you?” Conrad asks her.

She smiles. “Actually, I was wondering if I could convince you to come with me.” She holds up a bottle with her left hand.

“Did you steal a whole thing of champagne?” he whispers.

“Is it stealing?” she asks him. “We’re wedding guests.”

It’s definitely stealing.

The tent abuts the water, and they stumble out onto the beach, Belly holding her heels in one hand, the bottle in the other. Back behind them, the wedding tent is warm with light and noise, but here, just past the curve of the coast, for a moment, it’s quiet.

Belly seems to have the same idea, because she stops walking. She takes a swig of the champagne and then passes it to him so he can do the same.

They both look out at the water. It’s a different beach. None of the contours are familiar. Behind  them, too, is an unfamiliar city. Right now, that doesn’t seem so bad.

He turns and looks at Belly. “Hey,” he says. “What are you doing after this?”

She gives it some real thought. “There’s a guy at the wedding I’m at,” she says. “I was thinking of going back to his hotel room with him.”

Conrad laughs. “And after that?”

“Hmm,” she says. “Well, after that we’ll see.”