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He doesn’t know what he wants. Closure, maybe. To see her, probably. To reconnect, if he’s being overly optimistic.
Jeremiah Fisher stopped loving Belly years ago. He doesn’t remember exactly when. Just a before and an after.
Before: working for his dad in the beginnings of a fugue state for his last semester of college, sleeping on his dad’s couch, making several expensive mistakes at work that have his dad telling him to take some time off.
Before: packing up the essentials into the first 40L bag he saw on r/onebag and booking the first flight to another continent.
Before: Bangkok. Da Nang. Kuala Lumpur. Siem Reap. Places he doesn’t know the name of. Places he forgot. Food poisoning, food revelations. Ill-planned tattoos, tattoos he’s been thinking about for years. Ruining half of his clothes, having to buy a new wardrobe. Shaving his head for the hell of it. Bali. Singapore. Jakarta. Australia, just to surf.
Before: roughly ten different connecting flights back to his home continent. Swinging down to Brazil for a month because it was too soon. Swinging back up.
Before: living out of a van. Seeing the rest of his country. Taking up tie-dyeing. Taking up guitar. Putting it down because it reminds him of someone. Picking up the ukulele. He bleaches his hair that’s still growing out. He dyes it blue. It fades to green in a week.
Before: coming home. Seeing his dad. Visiting his mom. It hurts to be in Cousins, but not like it did. Not like it used to. His dad asks if he wants his job back. He tells his dad he’s got a great opportunity lined up with some new friends down in Florida. His dad makes it clear he’s welcome back whenever. That’s when he knows he’s the only son that still talks to his father.
Before: he’s given December off. All the iguanas at the rescue have been rehomed or released back into the wild after rehabilitation. He pulled something in his leg so he’s not surfing right now. He’s got money saved up.
So, Jeremiah still isn’t sure why he’s here. He got the address off of Steven, hoping to… he doesn’t know. Send a postcard. A Christmas present. He’s not one for letters, but he could definitely get a postcard from the lizard rescue he works at, one with Trike the three-legged green anole on the front, but what he’d write on it, he doesn’t know. So he gets a plane ticket, instead.
Before: Jeremiah stands in front of an apartment door in Paris, his backpack back at the hostel, feeling self-conscious in his black and white baja hoodie and work pants, the ones with all the pockets for lizards and lizard snacks, the only bottoms he owns that aren’t shorts, and has no idea why he’s here.
After: Jeremiah knocks anyway.
Behind the peeling white door, the yellowed eye into the hall, the small plaque saying 31, he can hear a muffled exchange. After several long moments, during which he considers running down the stairs and away into some other part of the continent, the door unlocks. Then it opens.
There, standing in a pale blue shirt, a white and red striped tea towel thrown over his shoulder, with flour on his chin, is his brother.
They stare at each other in silence. In the apartment, someone’s cutting vegetables, faint French music is playing while the person in the kitchen hums along. Jeremiah imagines what the scene was before he disturbed it. The two of them in the kitchen, cooking and singing, or holding one another and swaying to the music.
“Baby?” the voice calls from the kitchen. The cutting has stopped. “Who’s at the door?”
After: Belly and Conrad are living together.
After: anger, hurt, sadness, whatever else, doesn’t stir in him. Anxiety, maybe. Hope, perhaps.
“Hey, Con,” Jeremiah says, his voice quavering.
Belly comes around the corner, reaching up to Conrad’s shoulder to dry off her hands on his towel, and Jeremiah watches her breath catch in her throat when she sees him.
“Jere,” she breathes. She’s surprised. That makes sense.
Jeremiah isn’t sure what he expects. To be yelled at. To be kicked out. To be politely turned away. To be hit.
Instead, Belly turns to Conrad and murmurs something in French. Conrad speaks French now, likely due to his proximity to Belly. That makes sense. Jeremiah took Spanish in high school after a quarter of a semester of Latin proved far too difficult for his liking. He’d taken it for Belly. He remembers that. He’s glad he changed that, in retrospect.
Conrad responds in kind, and wanders back towards what Jeremiah assumes is the kitchen, leaving him alone with Belly.
“Jere, it’s great to see you,” Belly says, looking him over. She smiles. “Love the hair.”
Right. It’s still that sickly green-yellow remnant of a fading blue. Jeremiah loved that colour yesterday, back in Florida. He loves it now. He’s just not used to before seeping into after.
“Thanks,” Jeremiah says. “You… you look good.”
She’s glowing. There’s a soft red tint to her lips, a thick cable knit sweater in navy blue threatening to hang off of one shoulder. Her hair’s shorter, up to her shoulders.
“Do you want to come in?” Belly asks.
“No, no, I don’t want to… I just came to…” he glances behind her shoulder at the apartment. It glows a faint orange, like the sunset. She always loved warm light. The music changes, and a voice croons out from the kitchen. Jeremiah knows this one. La vie en rose. “I should go. Merry Christmas, Belly.”
Jeremiah gets about a foot away from the door before he’s stopped.
“Jere,” Belly says. “We don’t mind you being here. It’s Christmas.”
“I don’t want to intrude…”
It sounds false, even to him. Who flies across an ocean without the intent to intrude?
“We both want you here. Come in, we’re cooking something other than chicken for once.”
Belly pulls the door open a little wider for Jeremiah to follow her inside, and once he’s across the threshold, Conrad’s there, pressing a glass into his hand. He smells it. Sparkling apple juice. The memory tickles the back of his brain: a party once, a long, long time ago.
“Merry Christmas, Jere,” Conrad murmurs. “It’s great to see you.”
After: the door closes behind him. Conrad sets him a place at the table. Jeremiah watches his brother and his ex-fiancée hold hands and smile at one another, and nothing stirs in his chest.
After: that’s a lie. There is something. He’s… content.
Jeremiah eats dinner with them. Chats about life. Belly’s doing her master’s. Conrad’s on some sort of student exchange this year to build up connections between doctors internationally. Jeremiah spares a few details. Mentions travelling, vaguely. Shows them pictures of lizards. They smile for him, they nod along to his stories. Conrad’s arm rests easily around Belly, she leans into his chest like she belongs there.
After: Jeremiah turns down the invite to stay the night. Accepts the offer to not be a stranger.
After: Jeremiah leaves Paris three days after he arrived, on the 27th.
After: Jeremiah is a stranger.