Chapter Text
If anyone had asked him, he would have denied it, but in those fraught years he often dwelled on Belly’s steadfast belief in fate. As a man of science he officially did not believe in astrology or destiny.
But how else could he explain the pull he felt towards her when they were looking at the same moon and stars while miles apart, when her eyes met his across a noisy room, and he knew they were sharing the moment, always together even when they weren’t.
He plumbed the depths of these contradictions continually, especially when it came to her. He really believed in infinity, even as he watched the finite days of his mother’s life slip away.
His waking nightmares were steeped in death, and the inevitability of mortality. And yet his living dreams were full of her; her laugh, her bright eyes, her hopes and dreams whispered to him through the night; the miracle of it all, and the inevitability of her.
Okay so maybe he did believe in destiny. It wasn’t lost on him that her theology of fate was founded in the gospel of Susannah, and for him it was rooted in her.
He couldn’t easily trace the invisible string of their lore back to the beginning. Not when he had known her his whole life. As constant a part of his family as anyone else, as integral and essential.
He knew how it seemed on paper — it seemed like a lazy childhood summer crush, or weird family friends that were too intense about each other.
But he knew that whatever story anyone might tell about them couldn’t possibly capture the lightning in his veins when she whispered his name, the peace in his heart when he held her in his arms. He reveled in their silly love, their sacred union.
He remembered the year his faith shook. He knew his father wasn’t perfect, logically, but the news of his infidelity struck him like a physical blow, like a cannon ball blowing through his world. He drove around for hours after, blind with rage and stunned he was still standing.
His fallen idol thrown into the fire, he tore down anything that connected him to Adam. No trophies on his walls, no family photos in his room; and he quit the football team out of spite and disgust. He broke up with his girlfriend. He didn’t tell anyone why.
And this came with the double blow, the dreadful knowledge that his mother’s cancer was back. As she sickened, he kept her secret too, and he felt part of himself dying.
His first heartbreak, and he could see it coming like a tsunami miles off the shore. He braced himself, and knew it would destroy him anyway.
He tried, for her, to indulge in the fantasy of summer. But the feelings he bottled up felt corrosive as acid, and he reached for anything to dull the horror. The beer, the pot, the girls. None of it helped. And so the silence ate at him, and as each person wrote him off one by one as a moody teenager, he fought the urge to tear their happiness apart. He watched them dance in the sun; he hated them for their naïveté, and he envied them so much it hurt.
He would have told her if he could have. He was trying too hard to hold back the tidal wave of destiny. But Belly was the only one who could see right through the bitterness and despair that consumed him. She could still see the heart of him, and through her eyes alone could he believe that any of that old self remained. She saw him, so he believed he still existed.
She was his sun and his curse. He drew closer to her, then shut her out. He couldn’t tell her why. He could barely understand it himself.
It was only once the truth of Susannah’s illness spilled out into the open, once she had promised her boys that she would fight for them, that he saw clearly that he had been grieving for the living, a horrible grief bigger than the ocean, and all consuming powerlessness.
The relief that flowed in the aftermath of Susannah’s honesty and new promises made him feel lighter than he had in ages.
Wrung out from weeping and giddy with too little sleep, he snuck out to the beach at sunrise with Belly’s hand in his. He had missed talking to her so openly, he tripped over his apologies, frustrated at himself but grateful for her patience and presence.
He felt the doors of his heart swinging open wide, and he knew it must be written all over his face. He believed, on that glowing morning, in infinite hope, infinite love. Felt the sweetness of hope like a breeze off the ocean, of love breaking over them like a wave.
He remembered when the first shoe dropped: Belly told him that Jere loved her too. He felt the thrill of her choosing him, the high of getting to tease her and kiss her and hold her - then the crush of the other shoe. Jeremiah’s broken heart was too high a price to pay for his own happiness.
They called it off. Retreated. Infinity stretched and warped.
He packed his bags and left his silent house and started fresh at school. He wasn’t really lonely at Brown, not technically. New friends appeared around every corner, people liked him here because they had no reasons to hate him yet. Girls smiled at him, and he smiled back, but he didn’t follow any of them home.
His heart was still at sea, too far from shore.
He waited as long as he could, he tried to keep his promise. But when he called and heard her voice, he wasn’t sorry.