Chapter Text
Belly isn't sure why she's surprised to see Conrad pad into the living room of the little ski chalet Adam has rented in Chamonix for the week. She knew, when she'd accepted Jeremiah's invitation, that he'd be here. And yet it still feels like a surprise to see him, looking unreasonably cozy in a cable knit sweater and jeans.
“Conrad,” she says, dumbly, blinking and pursuing her lips to force her mouth shut. She's nursing a cup of coffee, watching snow fall in delicate little flecks outside the window. Adam and Jeremiah left early to go skiing, and she’d been enjoying the peace and quiet after a busy day of travel yesterday. “I, uh, didn't realize you were here.”
His hair is damp, almost curling at the ends. She tries not to think about how nice it looks and instead wonders when he took a shower — she didn't hear it run. She hadn't heard any sign of life since Jeremiah had loudly geared up this morning while she was still in bed.
“Good morning,” he says. “I got in late last night, I wasn't going to be waking everyone up.”
Belly nods. “Your dad and Jere are out on the slopes already. But there's, uh, coffee in the kitchen. Should still be hot.”
“Thanks,” he says.
She makes an effort not to watch him, staring adamantly out of the window as she hears him make himself a cup of coffee behind her.
“Mind if I join you?” he asks, a few moments later, mug in hand.
“Sure, go ahead,” she says, smiling at him. He settles into an armchair, not quite facing her, but not facing away from her, either. They sit there for a while in silence, sipping at their mugs. She feels his presence acutely, in every muscle in her body.
“You're not skiing?” he asks, breaking through the bright silence.
“Oh, uh, no,” she smiles ruefully. “I hurt my knee last volleyball season. I'm not sure skiing is in my future. Nor is volleyball.”
“Ah, right, Laurel told me about that,” he says. Not Jeremiah? Belly thinks absently, resentfully. She pushes the thoughts down. She's just annoyed at Jeremiah because of the ordeal at the airport. How he'd left her in regular security to go through precheck without her, how he'd accepted the upgrade to first class, leaving her stuck in the middle seat of her row while a random standby person got the window seat vacated by Jeremiah. A standby person who, Belly suspects, could have been an offensive lineman in a past life. None of that means that he deliberately doesn't communicate with Conrad about her. It could just mean Laurel told him first. Conrad had an excellent memory, that way. “How's it doing? Your knee.”
“Fine, mostly! Just, not good enough to ski,” she says. “I was never very good at skiing anyway.” And it's true. The extent of her skiing experience was a school trip to Spring Mountain, in middle school. It was hardly the French Alps. Neither her or Taylor had ever been, and their friend Katie had only up with teaching them on the bunny hill for like an hour before she got bored. Since Susannah died, Jeremiah usually met up with his dad and Conrad for the holidays to go skiing somewhere: Aspen, St. Moritz, Whistler. This was the first year Belly had been invited, though.
“Fair enough,” he says. “I'm not skiing either.”
“Oh? Why not?”
“I'm running a half marathon in January,” he says. “My training partner would kill me if I blew out a knee and had to bail.”
“Of course you are,” she sighs, sitting up straighter on the sofa.
“What?”
“Running marathons. Stanford med school wasn't enough.”
“It’s a half marathon,” he protests. Belly giggles.
“Have to leave some glory for the rest of us, to maybe one day surpass you,” she says. “Well, not me. Running long distances isn't in my future.”
“You've always been more of a swimmer,” he says. “Or, uh, you were. Sorry, I guess, I—”
“No, you're right,” she says.
“My dad should've booked a hotel with a pool, then you wouldn't be stuck sitting around doing nothing the whole time.” Conrad frowns.
Belly shrugs. “There is a hot tub.” The word maybe is on her tongue before she bites it back. She's already said too much. Suggesting, in any form, that they should spend any time together in a hot tub felt insane.
Thankfully, Conrad only wrinkles his nose. “Public hot tubs are disgusting. Worse than a petri dish, with all those germs floating around in warm, wet conditions.”
“Can't take you anywhere,” Belly chastises playfully, shaking her head. “You need to let loose a little bit.”
“I let loose,” he protests.
“By what, jogging?”
“Among other things.”
“Dungeons and Dragons? Reading anatomy textbooks?”
“Hey, I'm also known to tear up bar trivia from time to time,” he says, laughing faintly at himself and reaching up behind him to stretch. A glimpse of his bare abdomen is visible for a second and Belly's mouth suddenly feels very, very dry. Her coffee cup is empty.
She excuses herself, trying to hide the gruffness of her voice, and climbs the stairs up to the loft bedroom where her and Jeremiah are sleeping for the trip. She putters around uselessly, unpacking her clothes and folding them into the dresser. Not something she typically does, but she's trying to busy herself while Conrad is still downstairs. She assumes he'll find some form of entertainment for the day, whatever he came on this vacation for, and then she'll be free to relax until Jeremiah comes back.
Being alone with Conrad was just odd, unsettling. She hasn't been alone with him since, fuck, their conversation in the motel. Not something she needs to think about. She fidgets nervously with the flower pendant around her neck, perched on the end of her bed.
After it's been quiet downstairs for long enough she's convinced he must be gone, she tiptoes nervously back down. When she's right at the bottom, her foot catches awkwardly on the corner of a rug and she slips and falls hard on her back.
“Belly?” Conrad's voice cuts through her daze. “Are you okay?”
“Leave me alone,” she groans, covering her face with her hands.
“Are you hurt? Can you move?”
“I thought you were gone.”
“Nope, still here,” he says. He kneels next to her. “Let me help you up.”
“I’m fine,” she lies. Her shoulder hurts but she tries not to wince, too hard. “Just give me a minute.”
“Okay,” he says, and then he lies down next to her on the rug. “How bad does it hurt, on a scale from one to ten?”
“Eleven,” she says, groaning. And she means it, when factoring in the hurt to her pride.
“You are such a baby when it comes to pain,” he says.
“No I'm not,” she protests. It's a reflex, at this point, to protest against any “baby” accusations, especially from one of the boys.
“I mean, that fall you took was no joke,” he says. And for a second Belly feels the sincerity in his voice, and it's nice. Unreasonably so. But then he continues. “Seriously, it was like when animals slip and fall in cartoons on banana peels.” He mimes it with his fingers.
“Are you calling me an animal?” she asks, looking at him, indignant.
Conrad shrugs, his mouth smirking and Belly can't help but laugh which sends a twinge through her shoulder. They lie there for a beat. Belly stares intently at the ceiling, scared to look over at him, though she can feel his eyes on her. “I'm going to pick you up, Belly. And I'm going to carry you to the couch.”
“No, I'm too heavy for you. Just, leave me,” she says.
But he's already moving, sitting up and kneeling beside her. “I know I can't bench press my body weight like Jere, but I can pick you up, Belly.”
He gives her a countdown, and lifts her into his arms bridal style. Her hands are looped around his neck. It feels strange to touch him. She forgets the pain in her shoulder, her tailbone. There are only little pinpricks, like static under her skin, at the points where they are touching: the side of her body pressed against his chest, the underside of her knees and a line along her back against his arms, her hands on the nape of his neck, and the slight brush of the fluffy ends of his hair. He must have just recently gotten it cut.
He places her gently on the sofa, where she'd been sitting earlier and stands over her, smiling softly.
She thinks, then, in that moment, as they look at each other, that she’ll always love him. A little, at least. Tucked softly, safely, in a small corner of her heart, where it'd stay forever. The thought settles over her warmly, like she's basking in the sun after an early-summer swim.
“Do you need anything? Ice? Tylenol?”
“I'm fine,” Belly says. “Thank you.”
“Of course,” he says. “Let me know if there's anything I can get you. And, uh, don't fall asleep, if you can help it. In case you hit your head.”
“I don't think I did,” she says.
“Still.”
“Alright, Conrad.”
They spend the day together, but not together. She has him fetch her laptop, which he hands over with a disapproving frown and warning about screens and concussions. She puts on Christmas movies that she downloaded to watch with Jeremiah on the flight. Conrad starts a fire in the little fireplace by the stairs, and settles into his same chair from earlier, reading a book.
She tries to see what it is, but she can't make out the title and she doesn't ask.
Belly's stomach grumbles some time later, and she looks up, self-conscious that Conrad has heard. He's still intently reading his book, his body curled around it in a way she finds a little breathtaking, like a sculpture.
A few minutes later, he suggests ordering something for lunch. They get croque monsieurs and tomato bisque, which arrives quickly. Belly protests she should pay, or at least cover the tip, but Conrad waves her off. “Make my dad pay for it, we're saving him on the ski rental.”
After lunch, Conrad switches to a crossword book. Belly notices then what he's been reading all morning, as he has set it down on the coffee table — Frankenstein. She smiles to herself. When she told her mom that Jeremiah had invited her to Chamonix, Laurel had recommended it to her. She imagines Laurel suggesting it to Conrad, too. She looks at Conrad, his pencil moving quickly as he jots down an answer, and remembers the mornings he spent with her mom, heads ducked over the crossword at the end of the kitchen table. She misses it, then, painfully. The vision of him at the summer house. She's spent time there the past few summers, but it's never felt as magical. Not without Susannah, but not without him, either.
“Is that the old one from the summer house?” she asks, noticing he's halfway through it.
“Oh, uh, no,” he says, and if Belly squints she thinks he may be blushing slightly. Just a little pink in the apples of his cheeks. She could be imagining things. He's a little tanner than she'd have expected. She supposes even in winter it's sunnier in California. She wouldn't know, this is her first trip away from the east coast. “I, uh, do these to relax.”
Belly can only giggle.
Belly's not sure how it happens, but at some point during Casablanca (her third movie of the day), after pointing out that it's “not a Christmas movie,” Conrad ends up on the couch next to Belly. Outside the window, the sky has darkened.
They watch Rick and Captain Renault walk off into the mist and the credits roll and Belly wipes at the tear stinging in the bottom of her eye. She tries to be subtle about it, so Conrad doesn't notice but of course he does. She can feel his eyes on her as if they're the sun, warming the tip of her nose. “This movie makes my heart hurt,” she says, before he can tease her for crying.
“Why? She was better off with Laszlo.”
“Rick and Ilsa are obviously meant for each other,”
“Their little love story was nothing compared to the work Laszlo was doing for the resistance,” Conrad retorts and Belly recoils as if she's been slapped. Conrad is standing up, and Belly immediately feels colder, even though they weren't touching. As if he noticed, Conrad immediately mutters something about getting more wood for the fire from outside.
“You are way too young to be this cynical!” she calls back after him.
He's prodding at the fire when the door swings open, and Belly's immediate reaction is to chastise Conrad for not shutting it all the way. But before she can, Jeremiah’s voice rings out.
“Honey, I'm home!” It's too loud, it feels out of place in the cabin her and Conrad have occupied in a settled sort of quiet all day. It jars Belly into a world she'd almost forgotten. Jeremiah. Her boyfriend. That’s her reality. “This looks cozy.”
She looks over at him, catches the way his eyes dart once, twice between her and Conrad, who's standing up and wiping his hands on his thighs in Belly's peripheral vision.
“Hey, man, good to see you,” Conrad says, crossing the room to his brother. He pulls him in for a hug. “How was it out there?”
“Great,” Jeremiah starts, but Adam walks in behind him before he can continue.
“Connie! You're finally here!” Adam exclaims. He claps Conrad on the shoulder and nudges him in for an embrace. Belly notices the tension in Conrad's shoulders, the awkwardness and discomfort. She looks away, at Jeremiah, whose eyes, she's surprised to notice, are already on her. “We were going to get cleaned up and then head out for dinner, in like, half an hour, if that's good with you?”
Belly realizes when Conrad glances over at her that no one asked if it was good with her. But, she supposes, she is just a guest. She's not really part of the family.
“Yeah, that sounds good,” she hears Conrad say. She gets up to follow Jeremiah upstairs.