Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It's a simple fact that in life, you can't have everything you wish for. Conrad Fisher knows that better than most. At his core, he is not a pessimistic man. Just a realist. And for a while now, life has been teaching him, time and again, that what he wishes for just doesn't come true.

—

“Spring breaks loose, the time is near"

He can pinpoint the exact moment it all went upside down, like the world tipped on its axis and the life he had always envisioned for himself became infinitely out of reach. The exact second in which everything changed, setting him on a collision course with the inevitable destruction of everything he once thought possible. 

On a warm spring afternoon, his last couple of classes cancelled for the day - he doesn’t even remember why anymore - he opens the front door of his house, determined to sneak into his room and spend some quiet time reading The Lord of The Rings. School has been kicking his ass with preparations for finals, and all he wants at this moment is to nerd out in peace for an hour or so. Instead, the moment the front door opens, he hears the unmistakable sounds of his mother crying, his father saying something about how it had meant nothing, how it was just sex and it meant nothing, how it would be different this time. 

And then, much more terrifyingly, they are talking about tests, and hospital appointments, and her prognosis about time left, and how they will get a second and a third opinion, and Conrad thinks he’s entered into an alternate reality where his dad is a cheater, and his mom's cancer is back and incurable. He thinks this must be some fever dream that he needs to wake up from immediately. But he's not asleep, and there is no such thing as infinite worlds and different versions of the same people. Conrad stands there, body half in through the front door, one hand clutching his keys, the other his school bag, stuck in between the urge to walk in and demand an explanation, and the desperate need to turn back the clock to a time when none of this is happening. 

Fight or flight. Unable to move, unable to do anything but listen as his parents argue over love affairs from days gone by, and as he slowly begins to comprehend what the stern resignation in his mother’s voice means, Conrad feels like the air has been sucked right out of his lungs. Whispers like “I can’t do it all again,” and “I am tired,” and “I want to go on my own terms,” and “I AM doing it for the boys,” and “We’ll tell them in the fall, I want us all to have one last happy summer” slowly register into his brain. No, lungs is not quite right. He is actually certain all the air has left the room, the house, the whole damn universe, and anyway, who cares if he can’t breathe in a world where his mother will soon be gone. 

Conrad’s out the door, into his car and halfway to Cousins before he even knows what he’s doing. It isn’t until he feels wetness dripping from his cheeks, down his chin and onto his pants that he realizes the edges of his vision are blurring and he has been hyperventilating ever since he left the house. He feels like an outside observer in his own body as he tries to recognize his surroundings, takes the next exit off the main road and pulls the car into a parking lot near Rocky Nook. He gets out of, kicks off his shoes as if they have personally offended him, and then the second his feet touch the sand on Grays Beach, he is running into the water as fast as his legs can carry him. Conrad walks waist-deep into the ocean, and it’s the cold water that shocks him enough to make him feel like he can finally breathe again. In, pulling the air into his lungs as the momentum of the water tries to drag him into its depths. Out, forcing his fear and despair past his lips and away from his body as the waves crash around him on their race to the shore. 

In. A wild thought comes unbidden into his mind. His phone is in his bag in the car, dry and safe from the ocean, in perfect working condition. He could call Belly right now. Belly would know what to do. 

Out. He can’t tell anyone. His mom doesn’t want them to know. He can’t tell his brother, he can’t talk to Laurel, or Steven, or his dad… Not that he even actually wants to talk to his dad, but he doesn’t have the bandwidth to unpack the reality of his father’s infidelity at this moment. He can’t pick up the phone and share this with Belly, lean on her. 

In. Even if he could, would he? Belly, who has been the definition of everything good and beautiful for as long as he can remember. Belly, who brings light and sunshine the moment she walks into a room. Belly, who represents love and joy and happiness, and looks at him as if he can make everything right in the world. Belly, who loves Susannah as if she’s her own second mom. 

Out. He knows, in his heart, that he cannot be the one to take that away from her. He can’t look her in the eye and tell her her favourite person is sick and dying. And he certainly can't do it over the phone.

His clothes are soaking wet and sticking to his body, and somewhere in the back of his shell-shocked mind self-preservation kicks in, and he walks backwards until the waves are lapping around his knees. Then, he stands there. He stands, a tiny insignificant particle in the limitless expanse of water and the endless loss cementing itself in his soul, and builds walls around his heart, brick by brick. He stands and builds, until he can picture himself walking into his house and pretending life is the same as it had been that morning when he left for school. He pictures himself sitting at the dinner table with his dying mom, and his cheating dad, and his poor clueless brother, and acting like the same Conrad he's always been. He pictures himself talking to Jeremiah, playing video games with him, having a drink, or breakfast, or any other mundane thing brothers might do, and not blurting out that their mom won't be there this time next year. He pictures himself not showing that he’s drowning in resentment towards his dad. He immediately chastises himself when resentment creeps in towards his mom too, for making a liar out of him without even knowing it. For making him grieve her when she's right there with him and will be for months to come. He can't blame her for this, because what kind of man would that make him. 

The ironic thing is, he thinks as the ocean continues its endless dance around him, he had been excited for summer to come. In his dreams, Belly is the answer to every question his heart might ask. Those hopes he’s only allowed himself to acknowledge in the quiet of the night had begun to form into maybes and half-built plans. Things with Aubrey had been going downhill for weeks now, and Conrad knows it’s because every time he closes his eyes, it’s Belly he sees in his mind. He knows she can sense it too, that he’s been withdrawn and distracted. He’d been planning to break it off with her this weekend. He’d been planning to maybe see if he can overcome his fears of change, and screwing things up, and maybe, just maybe, asking Belly out for some ice cream, or a walk along the beach, or a rematch of Shoot Your Shot. Now, there’s no world in which he can do that. He can’t possibly look her in the eye and ask her out, not with the secret of what is coming between them. He will still break up with Aubrey though, it’s the right thing to do. 

He weaves a book in his mind, and in it he puts his dreams of tentative hands holding on the boardwalk, of shy but sure kisses in the moonlight, of soft skin and whispered moans and cries of pleasure in the dead of night, of reaching for her and holding her close and never letting her go. Conrad gives the book a title, “What can never be,” binds it with a single solid thread of gold and then buries it deep behind the walls he’s built. This life belongs to the Conrad of this morning, whose mom is happy and healthy and will be there to cheer him on the loudest as he graduates from college, and will help him pick out furniture for his first apartment, and smile at him with tears in her eyes as he marries the sunshine girl of his dreams. This life belongs to someone else now, and it will never be his, so he puts it in a book, closes it, and vows to lose it in his mind.

Conrad stands in the water, and allows himself to live a whole lifetime that will never be in the space of mere minutes. Eventually, he starts to feel his body shivering and his logical brain provides useful explanations like cold shock, exposure, and scarier terms like incapacitation and hypothermia. He forces himself to make his way out of the water and slowly makes his way back across the sand bank and over to his car. Like a mental checklist, he goes through the simple steps of finding his socks and shoes, putting them back on, opening his trunk and retrieving a pair of dry jogging shorts, changing out of his soaked pants, climbing back into the driver’s seat, starting the engine, turning the heat on. 

He drives home, prepares himself to act as if nothing is amiss, to say nothing and hold everything, and give his mom the perfect summer she dreams of. With every mile he puts between himself and that shore, the deeper he buries the book in his mind. And he knows, with a certainty he’s never wished to have, with every fiber of his being, that the life he’d only just allowed himself to dream about will never come to pass.

—

Life goes on, somehow. The walls hold strong, the book stays buried. Conrad goes through the motions, finds ways to cope. Makes it through, day by day. So what if he drinks more than he ever has before, and has started smoking weed at random times throughout the week. He’s a teenager who’s been dumped by his girlfriend, and no one thinks to question that excuse. In the end, it’s Aubrey who breaks it off between them, after he fails to show up to a date or reply to her texts three days in a row. In a sick way, it works out well for him, because the adults use his broken heart to justify his rapid withdrawal from everyone and everything. He doesn’t mind. It means he can spend his days in his room, avoid family time unless absolutely forced to be present. It means he doesn’t have to constantly lie to everyone’s face and pretend life’s just peachy, and his mom is not dying and actively doing nothing to try and prevent it. 

Hiding the truth from Jeremiah is the hardest, it eats at him day and night, because his brother has the right to know, damn it. But it’s not his secret to tell. So he smokes, and drinks, and loses himself further into the recesses of his mind where every terrible scenario has already happened, so he might as well embrace it. 

—

"And I snuck in through the garden gate every night that Summer just to seal my fate"

When they go to Cousins that summer, his father does not. Work in London, his mom says, and honestly, Conrad is glad. One less thing to hide, one less pretense to maintain. He’s been terrible at even being in the same room as his dad, so that at least works to his benefit. 

He runs into Nicole at a party at somebody’s house, and even though he barely says five words strung together, they hang out most of the night. She kisses him, and he doesn’t push her away. Does it again the next day. The sad truth is, it’s easier going to Nicole’s and spending time with her, than it is being at his own house with his dying mother and the brother he can barely look in the eyes. 

“Hey, this thing is only casual, right?” He asks, in what he hopes is a nonchalant tone, and she bursts out laughing next to him by the pool. He takes that as a yes. Breathes easier for a moment, knowing that at least in this one thing he is not a fuck up and a failure. 

Things get harder (read: impossible) when Belly arrives. The moment he lays eyes on her, it’s like the sun is peeking through the clouds for the first time in months, fighting to light up the world even through a storm. The book in his mind starts rattling against its shelf, threatening to fall and spill open and send all those dreams he buried back into the world. He drinks more, kisses Nicole harder. Knows all of it is wrong, but he still doesn’t know what else to do. 

Tries to spend as little time as possible around Belly, because he feels like the words might just spill out of his mouth without any sort of permission the second she walks into a room. Thinks that every moment he spends with her, he’s in real danger of breaking down at her feet, telling her everything, begging her to help him, to hold him, to make it all better. He’s pathetic like that. 

“He’s had a hard time adjusting after the break up,” he overhears his mom telling Laurel one day, when the summer kids are out on the beach and he’s supposed to be heading out to meet with friends. In reality, he is planning on sneaking a bottle of something up into his bedroom and pretending he’s not there. The absurdity of him acting this way because of a schoolboy fling registers in his brain though, and he might have laughed if his body could remember what laughter feels like. 

Suddenly overwhelmed with the need to prove them wrong, that he can be normal and have fun, he goes to the beach and joins Jere, Steven and Belly for a game of beach volleyball. 

Tries not to flirt with her. Fails miserably anyway. Pathetic. At least he's trying.

But he knows that he’s a ticking bomb, that all that pent up grief and confusion and frustration at how useless he feels is bubbling just beneath the surface, waiting to overflow and send his entire life into even further disarray than it already is. So Conrad sets about pushing her away instead, because what else is he supposed to do. 

He can’t be her friend without the book trying to rip through the golden thread and become a reality. And he certainly can’t allow himself to try to be more than her friend, because everything is fucked, and nothing is right anymore. She’s getting attention from boys, and there’s a jealous rage burning through his chest every time he sees Cameron (or Cam Cameron, as Jere calls him, which is just fucking ridiculous) making mooney eyes at her. But then again, it’s not like he can even blame the dude, because that’s exactly how he looks at her. 

Tries to stay away. Fails. Pathetic. 

It’s really a very frustrating cycle, but he finds that being near her and bickering is better than not spending time with her at all. He’s failing on all fronts these days.

He does stop smoking though, because she asks him. Well, tells him really. And when Belly needs something, his immediate reaction is always to do whatever is required of him to give her what she wants. Which is vastly inconvenient at present, because his mom is slowly deteriorating right before his eyes, and he can’t even use weed to pretend it’s not happening. He drinks more. Turns out, wine tastes alright after the third glass regardless of the price tag of the bottle. Nicole notices he’s even more in his own head than at the start of summer, but she’s not the kind of girl to question him about it. It’s one of the things he likes most about her. 

His carefully built walls come crumbling down on an otherwise regular Thursday while he’s teaching Cleveland to sail. The boat is rotting, his life is rotting, the world is rotting, everything is fucked, and Conrad can’t breathe. There is an almost unavoidable urge to jump into the water growing inside him, to allow the ocean’s cold embrace to make him feel something other than fear and panic and failure. If Cleveland wasn’t holding a hand to his chest, he thinks he might actually leap. As it stands, there’s nothing to do but try to ride the wave of panic, and then the words are tumbling out of his mouth, he can’t stop them or hold them in any longer, and then they are out into the world. It’s real. His mom is sick and she is going to die, and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. 

It’s not about stepping on a crack anymore, his whole world is covered in cracks. They are everywhere, it’s only a matter of time before everything comes crashing down around him. But something Cleveland says weaves its way into his consciousness. It’s not on him. He is not the one who will keep his mom alive, he can’t turn back time and make his dad a better man. The one thing he can do is do his best with the people he loves while they are there. And that includes Belly. 

He stops hiding and pushing her away. Lets life take its course. 

Once the truth is out about his mom, lifting the weight off his shoulders, he feels lighter than he ever has. Admitting he needs her, he wants her, feels as easy as breathing. Easier actually, considering Conrad has found breathing occasionally quite difficult recently. When his lips first touch hers on that beach, their beach, he knows his fate is sealed. There will never be another girl for him. He will never feel about someone else the way he feels about her. The book bursts wide open, dreams flying around in every direction, filling the world in bursts of color he can only see with her slender hand held safely in his. 

Conrad smiles. He laughs, a pure, unadulterated burst of joy feeling his lungs, and he thinks they will be alright after all. His mom will fight, and she will win, as she has before. He will hold the only girl he’s ever loved close and never let go. They will be alright. He can have it all, his dreams are within reach. It will be okay.

Chapter Text

“Like the colors in Autumn, so bright, just before they lose it all”

Calling her is selfish, he knows that. Yet, the sound of her voice over the crackly telephone line is the only thing he wants to hear - in the mornings when he wakes up, hers still a bit rough and unused after sleep; in the afternoons while she’s studying and he promises himself he’ll make it his life’s mission to teach her everything she’ll ever ask about anything in life, if only she’ll let him; in the evenings when the sky is dark and the stars are bright and sharing their thoughts feels like whispering a secret dream straight into the fabric of the universe. 

He craves any interaction he can get with her, even if it’s just listening to her talking about people he’s never met doing mundane things at her school. He’d listen to her read him his chemistry textbook, if that keeps her talking to him. Actually, saying that, he might be into her reading him his chemistry textbook. Man, he really is pathetic for this girl. 

By Halloween, the world is enveloped in a soft gold hue from all the autumn leaves, his mom is responding to her meds and feeling better, and he’s admitted to Jeremiah that he’s desperately and irretrievably in love with Isabel Conklin. Then Conrad is driving 5 hours from Brown to Philadelphia to tell her that, and spends the entire trip trying to unsuccessfully calm his frantically beating heart. 

He stands in front of her, a bouquet of candy in one hand, offering her his whole self with the other, and then she’s launching herself into his arms and the world erupts into a burst of colors brighter than anything he’s ever seen before. Time stands still as she claims his lips again, and it might have only been two months, but to Conrad, even a day without her feels like eternity. 

After that, he’s craving more than just the sound of her voice. He now knows how warm her lips feel like against his icy cold ones, how soft her skin is under his palm when her jumper rides back and his fingers cautiously skim along her lower back. He knows how bright her smile is when he tells her he’s had to physically stop himself from getting into his car and driving to her at least eight times since he’s last seen her. And he knows she tastes like candies and salt air and summer, even in October. She tastes like home. 

—

“I was catching my breath, barefoot in the wildest Winter”

Mid December, as Conrad is lying on his side in his dorm room looking at her sleepy face through his phone screen, she tells him she dreamt of them running and playing on a snowy beach. She says it matter of factly, like she does with all her “weird dreams”, but as they drift off to sleep to the soothing sounds of each other’s breathing, he gets an idea. Because he’s promised himself he will spend his life trying to make Belly’s dreams a reality, and while some might be more challenging than others, and some might be downright unachievable, this one he can do. 

Over the next week, he tracks the weather forecast like a man possessed, and then the stars align two days after the start of the Christmas break. He wants to bottle the sound that comes out of her lips when he tells her his idea - it’s so full of joy and excitement, he thinks it could light up the night sky. He thinks it’s impossible for any person to ever sound happier than she does in that moment, but she’s nothing if not an overachiever set to prove him wrong. 

In the years to come, when he allows himself to think about that blissful winter escape from reality in Cousins, it won’t be the memory of the snow on the beach that will come to haunt him the most. It won’t be the sight of his necklace resting gently on her collarbone, a silent confirmation in the dead of night that she wants him, infinitely. It won't even be the echo of her, naked and oh so beautiful in the glow of the fireplace, steadfast and sure, offering herself to him in a way you can only ever do that first time - and he will dream of that more times than he’s ever going to be willing to admit. 

No, in the years to come, the memory that will haunt him, day and night, in his waking hours and when he’s asleep, the one image he’ll never shake, regardless of how hard he will try to, will be the look on her face on that snowy beach. Lying on the wet sand, cheeks flushed, cold hand enveloped in his, her eyes sparkling, her lips pulled into an incandescent smile - love, joy, exhilaration, pure happiness written all over her face. The look of a girl at the exact moment a dream comes true, and the knowledge that she will never look at him with that look on her face ever again. 

And that will be what keeps him up at night, replaying it over and over, wishing he could go back and stop himself from stepping on the crack that broke that fragile peace they’d found together. 

—

“Time won’t fly, it’s like I’m paralyzed by it”

Conrad is a fool. An utterly unforgivable, idiotic fool. Because he allowed hope to take root where it had no place to, and so here he is now in the aftermath, alone, with a heart fractured into a million tiny shards, dreams he’s allowed himself to believe might come true shattered at his feet, and no one to blame for any of it but himself. 

Susannah Beck Fisher takes her last breath as the sun sets on an unseasonably cold Friday evening, and Conrad thinks it’s fitting. She’s gone, taking all the warmth with her, leaving nothing but grief and destruction in her wake. Conrad feels none of it. It’s like the moment her eyes close for the last time, a light goes out, and leaves Conrad in a dark numbness where nothing can touch him.

The days bleed into an endless daze of people around him crying. His brother, he can understand, Jeremiah is not one to let his emotions fester, he expresses them and moves on. If his mind was less of a haze, Conrad might find Adam’s tears to be the definition of mocking his mother’s memory, because what right does he have to grieve her after everything he put her through. As it stands, the irony of the situation can’t quite reach him. Laurel deals by becoming a constantly busy pillar of strength, making phone calls, organising everything, ticking items off a list he’s sure Susannah made her write. Through it all, Conrad simply… exists. Numb. Surrounded by people. Alone. 

On the day of the funeral, Conrad feels like he’s underwater in a frozen pond. There’s a thick sheet of ice above him, separating him from feeling the devastation of the day. He knows, logically, he’s surrounded by people and noise, but everything around him is a muffled quiet, broken only by the sound of his own breathing. He doesn’t remember what the pastor says during her eulogy, the words floating around his brain but never fully forming into any meaning. He does register his father squeezing his hand and urging him to stand up, to walk to the podium, to pick up his guitar. He hears the sound of his own voice, frozen and flat, saying something about the song his mom liked him to play. 

His eyes land on Belly without his permission, and the first crack in the ice appears. He sings, and under any other circumstances he might have been embarrassed about having to do this, but this is for his mom, and so he sings. He tries to keep his gaze away from Belly, but she’s like a magnet, pulling him into her orbit again and again. The ice cracks again. 

After, standing next to his dad and Jeremiah, a long line of people he won’t remember offering sympathies and condolences that won’t change the fact she’s gone, he feels himself freezing over the cracks, finding relief in the numbness again. Deep under water, where it’s quiet, surrounded by dark blue, where grief can’t find him. And then Belly is standing in front of him, her face blotchy, streaks of tears along her cheeks, and she’s the most beautiful sight he’s ever seen, even in the blue tint of his underwater prison. After a moment’s hesitation she puts her arms around him and brings him into a brief hug, before moving over to make space for Steven and John behind her. Then she’s gone, and the ice shatters. He fights to keep himself underwater, where he’s safe, but it’s becoming harder to breathe. He thinks he might have fallen to the ground, because he can feel Jeremiah pulling him up, taking him to the car. 

The next thing he knows, he’s standing in the rec room of his childhood home, surrounded by his mother’s paintings, and he’s pulled above water, a gasp for air escapes his lips. And then another, and another, and he’s not underwater anymore, and he can feel everything, the numbness that had overtaken him disappearing along with the ice that was holding him in place, and he can’t breathe, the edges of his vision blurring, his heart pounding, darkness threatening to overwhelm him. 

He hears a voice over the sound of his gasps, feels arms guiding him to the couch, telling him to breathe in and out, counting as he does it. He’s holding himself together by a thread, his arms wrapped tightly around his body. Minutes or hours pass before he regains control of his senses and the world around him. He opens his eyes, murmurs a soft “Thank you” to Aubrey - for being there, for helping him when she owes him nothing, for not letting him crumble alone, and that is how Belly finds him - lying in Aubrey’s lap.

She looks so broken, and he registers just a fraction of a second too late how that must have looked to her. He runs after her, but she is armed with words to hurt him, and as they land, blow by blow, all the pain he’s been numb to for days but feels all at once now rears its ugly head and he lashes back out. A wounded animal fighting against anything he can, even though she is not the cause of his pain. In fact, what he wants more than anything is to say he’s sorry, to ask her to hold him, to soothe his pain, to give him strength to make it through. But he is hurt, and he is broken, and the words are coming out without thought or care. 

She’s gone before he can stop her, before he can stop himself, and even though every fibre of his being is screaming at him to run after her, to fix it, he doesn’t, and chooses to self-destruct instead. 

How ridiculous, how trivial, how utterly embarrassing, that in the wake of his mother’s death, it’s the loss of Belly that cuts him the deepest.

—

The weeks that follow are a blur. Time seems to be frozen and moving too fast all at once. Conrad does what is expected of him, but it takes every ounce of energy to do it. He goes to classes, because the thought of disappointing his mom is more than he can bear. His Stanford application is sitting on a desk somewhere in some admission office, waiting to be considered, and Susannah’s dream of him on the West Coast is reliant upon him dragging himself out of bed every morning and continuing his studies. So he eats, he sleeps, he does what is expected of him. He goes through the motions. 

At his weakest moments, he takes the necklace out, the one that used to rest delicately on her clavicle, the one she forcefully pushed into his hand that dreadful night at prom, and looks at it until his eyes are stinging and his breath is coming out too fast. He does not cry. He wishes he could scream. 

When he gets the call about the “For Sale” sign outside the beach house, he feels like he wakes up from a decade long dream. All of a sudden, he’s forced into action, he has a purpose outside of making it through the day. 

Seeing Belly again in the house, after that Christmas, while Conrad is standing in front of that fireplace with her so cold and detached, is a punch to his gut. He knows the only way he’s making it through the next few days with her there, because of course she’s not leaving - determined to wreck him even now, would be by focusing on the house and nothing but the house. Keep his mind on the task at hand. That is ultimately where he goes completely and utterly wrong. 

Day: One

While he’s busy trying to save the house they grew up in, the house that meant the world to their mom, where they can still feel her in every corner of every room, Belly’s busy falling in love with his brother, and he doesn’t catch onto what is happening until it’s crashing into him like a freight train. Until he’s standing outside his school, elated (there’s a feeling he hasn’t known in months), full of hope, excited to tell her that he loves her, that he never stopped, and he never sees a day he will,and then in a heartbeat any hope he may have had is gone into oblivion. 

There she is, wearing his Brown sweatshirt, pressed between the hood of his car and Jeremiah’s body, with his hands buried deep into her hair, and she’s kissing him like he’s the only source of oxygen left on the planet. 

Anger, loss, pain, confusion, frustration, shock, betrayal, he feels it all in that moment, and while he packs his dorm room, and while he’s forced to sit through a nightmare of a car ride with them both. The devastation, the final nail in his coffin, catches up to him later. In a crappy motel, after the worst night of his life (that is really saying something considering the year he’s had). After he’s told her he still wants her, after he’s seen her kissing Jere outside the motel anyway, through the dirty window of their crappy room. She’s made her choice, and he has nothing left to do but accept it. Try and salvage whatever pride he might have left, and keep their friendship at least. So he takes it all back, his whispered confession in the dead of night. “I still want you. Of course I do.” 

Words that, if left out into the universe, will destroy his relationship with his brother, will fracture any hope he might have of keeping her in his life, and will cost him the promise he made to his mom to look after Jere. So he takes them back, pulls them back into himself. With a pained smile and promise to see them in Coursins for the 4th of July, he walks away. 

And as he sits there, falling apart against a cold brick wall, struggling to stay in control of his breathing and to stave off the waves of anxiety washing over his body, he knows that this time, he’s really truly lost her. He sees the days ahead, stretching ahead of him like an endless cruel sea of grey, devoid of all the colors she brought into his life. Time, he knows, will be his best hope for salvation, and his worst enemy.

—

“Time is taking its sweet time erasing you”

Day: Thirty-One

He pretends he doesn’t know what day it is from the moment he wakes up. Goes for a run and refuses to think of Mickey Mouse pancakes and soft smiles. Walks the short walk from his newly leased apartment to campus and pays particular attention to the state of the art labs he will get to study in, and certainly does not remember a silver chain with an infinity charm that is meant to say much more than his words ever could. 

In the late afternoon, Conrad decides it’s well past time he makes the 40 minute drive to the shore and finds himself gazing out into the Pacific Ocean. It is…surreal. To be looking West instead of East, to see the sun set on the horizon, the ocean enveloped in a soft orange unlike any he’s ever seen. Before he can second-guess himself, he pulls his phone out and sends off a quick text.

Happy Birthday, Belly.

Conrad 

Simple. To the point. He hates it, regrets it immediately. To think that less than 2 months ago, she was his closest person, and now he doesn’t even know if his birthday wishes will be well received, or if his message will be deleted the second she sees it. At the same time, he knows there’s nothing for it. He can’t imagine a world in which he doesn’t wish Belly a Happy Birthday, despite all the distance between them. He does however wish he’d waited and sent the message somewhere else. Because now this beach, this view, sunset on the Pacific will always be linked to the memory of her too. As if he needs any more reminders. He’s an idiot, really. 

The ticks on the message turn blue. The speech bubbles appear, then stop. She doesn’t reply. She doesn’t acknowledge him. He has his answer. 

Day: Forty-Four

He knows he made a mistake coming for the Fourth the moment he enters the house and sees Belly and Jeremiah curled up together on the couch. 

Conrad has spent the last two weeks being resolutely busy and decidedly not thinking about his brother and his girlfriend together. Ex. Ex-girlfriend, he reminds himself for what feels like the millionth time. Or the fact that she wants nothing to do with him anymore, which apparently includes answering a simple birthday text. The stab to his heart doesn’t hurt any less, he notices with a hint of irritation. 

Still, moving across the country has provided ample distraction, learning a new city and getting ready for his classes at Stanford to start has helped his mind stay on course. So the only time the sad reality of his existence catches up with him is at night. 

His mom is gone. 

Belly is done with him, moving on in the arms of his brother. 

On a normal day, he repeats this in his head like a mantra. A truth he has to acknowledge, accept, move on from. 

On the days he’s feeling most masochistic, he allows himself to remember the feel of Belly’s naked skin against his, her soft moans, the way she’d always been so fucking responsive to his touch. But then his brain takes him down dark destructive paths, when he wonders if she makes those same sounds for Jeremiah, and… no, he cuts off that train of thought before it can cause him more pain than he can cope with at present.

He had thought he'd prepared himself for the sight of them together, but he could not have been more wrong. Bile rises up into his throat as he walks into his house that he fought so hard to keep and sees them in each other’s arms, softly whispering something, Belly’s laughter filling the space around them. He takes a deep breath, steadies himself, and makes a show of loudly closing the front door to catch their attention. There’ll be time to fall apart later. 

Now, he plasters a smile on his face that feels incredibly fake even to him, but Jeremiah is bouncing off the couch and running over to give him a bro hug, pretending that this is an absolutely normal Monday, and not the first time he’s seeing his brother since getting together with his ex, whom he knows Conrad is still in love with. If any of this is awkward to Jeremiah, he doesn’t show it. He’s always been good at pretense. 

Conrad chastises himself for the thought immediately. He may be resentful of Jere, but he understands him taking a chance. He’s not sure that, had roles been reversed, he’d have been able to stop himself. (That is also bullshit and he knows it, but he is determined to give his brother the benefit of the doubt.) Belly steps over with a pinched smile and gives him the briefest of hugs, then glances quickly at Jeremiah, who moves a bit closer and pulls her into a half arm hug. 

“How was the drive from Boston?” Belly asks, in an attempt at civility, though it feels like she has to squeeze the words out through her throat. 

“Yeah, good. Uneventful. It didn't take long.” He wants to throw up. On second thought, nope, he might actually throw up. 

“Sorry, guys, I’m beat… the flight and the drive… think I’m gonna take a quick nap before Steven and Taylor get here.” He makes the quickest excuse he can manage, rushes up the stairs towards his bedroom. Yep, definitely going to be sick. He deposits his bag on the bed, rushes back out into the bathroom, and has barely had a chance to close the door, before he’s emptying the contents of his stomach into the sink. 

Well, that’s new. He’s not at all convinced that this was a better reaction compared to the panic attack he had been expecting, but at least the worst part is over and done with. He’s seen them, and now he can get over the initial shock and the anxiety from all the build up, and just… What? Ignore them for the rest of their time here? He doesn’t know how long they are planning on staying but he had committed to three days. He can’t hide in his room for three days, so he’s just going to have to grin and bear it. Maybe it will get easier once Steven and Taylor get here.   

In the interest of being kind to himself, he does however take a very long shower, pretends to nap, and only makes an appearance when the sound of Steven’s voice carries over and around the house. He needs the buffer, and other people in the room. Sitting alone in his dead mother’s house with his brother and the love of his life would be an experience akin to torture that he simply will not be putting himself through. 

Dinner with the four of them is already excruciating enough. Conrad can see that Steven is trying to make this easier on everybody, carrying the conversation, filling any of the awkward pauses. Taylor… Bless her, even Taylor is putting in the effort, though he’s sure it’s not for his benefit. Every time Jere squeezes Belly’s hand, or pulls her in for a kiss, Steven doubles down with some other story about his prep for Princeton, how Laurel is helping him pack, how long the drive is. It’s boring, he knows it is. But he’s got Conrad’s back, and for that, he is immensely grateful. 

Yeah, there’s no fucking way he’s making it through three days of this. He’s gonna have to stay for the Fourth, simply because he can’t think of a reason not to, but he’s bailing the second he wakes up on Wednesday. He makes another lame excuse about being tired after dinner, and despite Jeremiah’s protests that they’ve not had a chance to catch up, he calls it a night. He makes eye contact with Steven, and the pity he sees in his friend’s eyes slices through him again like a knife through butter. Still, he nods his head in thanks, and goes to the stairs. At the last moment, he looks back and catches Belly’s glance. She’s looking at him with something akin to grief, but it’s so brief, he’s sure he imagines it. She blinks quickly and averts her gaze. He heads to his bedroom. Sleep doesn’t find him for hours, and when it does, it’s disjointed and haunted by sad brown eyes and fractured dreams. 

—

Day: Forty-Five

In life, there are good days and bad days, and there are days when nothing of significance happens. You can’t remember all the days of your life, they blend together to write the story of who you are. But then there are the days that stand out. Conrad will always remember his first July 4th after his mom’s death as one of the worse days of his life. Ranking - somewhere in between all those months holding the secret of his mom’s illness locked up inside him, eating him alive, and the day he’d left Belly with Jeremiah in that crappy motel in the middle of nowhere, East Pennsylvania. So, yes, bad. Not the worst, but certainly up there. 

That day Conrad realizes three things that change the course of his life. 

One, this house that holds the memories of all the summers he has lived, where every single detail was hand-picked and cherished by his mother through the years, this house he fought for at the cost of almost everything, is just a house. His mom is gone from this house, just like she is from everywhere else, her scent fading with every passing moment, and he can’t be here without feeling like the walls are closing in around him. 

Two, his brother might have a bit of a vindictive streak, showcasing it by trying to parade his relationship with Belly in front of Conrad like some sort of trophy he has won. He’s pulling her in closer to him the moment Conrad is in their vicinity, he’s making a show of kissing her soundly and repeatedly, and then wrapping his arms around her midriff and casting thinly veiled glances towards Conrad, something akin to triumph written all over his face. Belly, to her credit, tries to play it down, shimmies out of Jeremiah’s arms quickly, only allows small pecks and cuts him off whenever he goes in to deepen their kisses, but Conrad can see that she’s only doing it to try and soften the blow.

And so the third thing Conrad Fisher realizes that fateful July 4th, is that he can’t be anywhere near them while his heart is feeling this raw. It’s too painful, too fresh, he loves her too much. The words he never said to her are clawing at his throat, screaming inside his head begging to be released into the universe, and he has to bite his tongue repeatedly to stop himself from saying something he can’t ever take back. Sitting there, biting into a watermelon slice like an emotional support tool, while Belly and Jeremiah are laughing and playing around and having fun with Steven and Taylor, Conrad knows that he will not be back here, or anywhere they are, for a long time. 

He goes for a walk along the beach, committing each curve of the shore to memory, something he can pull to the forefront of his mind in days to come when he’s feeling homesick. He collects a bit of sand in a tiny glass vial and convinces himself that this will be enough. 

Later, when he drives away from the place that used to feel the most like home, but holds more pain that he can cope with, he pulls the vial of sand from his pocket and holds it tightly in the palm of his hand until the glass is warm, and the singular tear that slipped past his defences and down his cheek has dried into a trail as salty as the Ocean he’s leaving behind. 

Day: One Hundred and Sixty-Two

His study partner, a red-haired girl with a personality to match her fiery locks named Agnes, has become the closest thing to a friend he has these days. He keeps himself to himself, but she is stubborn, and takes excellent notes, and so they bond over long nights of reading, and coursework longer still. 

When Agnes bursts into his living room, loudly and uninvited, holding a wolf costume for him and declares, in a voice that brokers no arguments, that they are going to a Halloween party, Conrad can’t even find it in himself to protest. He can put on the ridiculous wolf outfit, which Agnes insists will make him “look fire”, or he can mope around his apartment, forcefully stopping himself from checking social media to see what Belly (and Jeremiah, by extension) might be up to. Trying to think about anything other than the fact that, a year ago exactly, he’d been standing in front of her house with a candy bouquet, declaring he could never get over her. He hadn’t been wrong about that part. 

He wants to hate her. He wants to blame her for how it all went down. It would certainly make living with himself easier. Instead, he blames himself for all of it. Hates himself so deeply it physically hurts him to look in the mirror. Loves her so much his heart might just bleed straight out of his chest with the pain of having lost her. 

He is a medical student, he knows, logically, that is not how the human body works. Heartbreak is simply a chemical reaction in the brain, and it can be overcome. But he also knows people have wasted and withered away from the pain of losing their loved ones for centuries, and only time can maybe heal the wound. That said, there is a gaping hole in his chest cavity in the shape of her, doomed to only fit her for all his days. He'll learn to live with it. He will burn it off and seal the blood flow. With time, it will scab over and dull, and he will live with it. But he will never be whole again, with her gone, and that hole shaped to fit her, and only her, ever again.