Work Text:
Conrad,
I start classes tomorrow. My senior year. It feels exciting but a lot of the time I feel more scared than anything else. Being in high school is something I know how to do. Living at home and seeing Mom every morning, sleepovers at Taylor’s where us and Lucinda stay up until 2am eating ice cream and talking about whatever new guy Lucinda’s started dating. It’s all kind of boring, but in a safe way. Does that make sense?
It’s like my life right now has a cheat code. I know what tomorrow will look like, what next week looks like, next month. You get it. But after this, it’s blank. There are no clear answers. It’s so scary. Did it feel scary for you?
I know I shouldn’t say this, but I think of you all the time. I think about you in California and I wonder if moving there felt terrifying or like a relief. Maybe both? I guess I could see how it would be a relief. I can see how getting the entire width of the United States away from me may be a good thing for you. I hate that. I know it’s selfish, but it’s true.
Everything feels weird and wrong here and I couldn’t figure out why for a while, but I think I finally have. Last year, before everything fell apart and I lost you, when I pictured my senior year it always included you. I imagined late night phone calls like we used to have and weekends where I visited you at Brown. I pictured you proofreading my college essays and me making sure you weren’t forgetting to eat in between study sessions.
Now, all of that is gone. And I miss it. Is it weird to miss something that never existed in the first place? Well, I do. So much.
I do hope you’re okay. Of course I do. I hope you’re finding yourself just like Susannah always thought you would. I hope you’re happy- or at least closer than you were. You deserve happiness, you know? I hope you feel like you’ve got all the cheat codes, or at least like finding the answers is exciting and not completely impossible.
-Belly
Conrad,
It’s prom in a little over a week. You’d think I’d be excited about my senior prom. Jere keeps talking about how it’s going to be the “best prom ever”, whatever that means. I can’t tell him that that’s impossible.
I went dress shopping with Taylor a few weeks ago and bought the second dress I tried on. It’s fine. She told me I looked “snatched” and that Jeremiah would be speechless when he saw me in it. Apparently that’s what counts. I just wanted to get it over with, honestly. Every dress I tried on just made me think of the dress I wore with you and how none of them would ever be as perfect.
The truth is, I could wear the most expensive dress in the world and have corsages up and down both arms and it won’t matter because it’s not you. God, Jeremiah would freak out so bad if he ever found this letter and read that.
A few days ago we were talking on the phone about prom logistics and he was telling me about the proms he went to and without even thinking I asked him if you went to prom with Aubrey. He got pissed and we fought for an hour. “Does everything have to remind you of my brother?!”. I wanted to scream. Instead I just apologized over and over and said it was a stupid question and I didn’t know why I asked.
Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I didn’t end things with you last year. Would we have worked through things? Would you have let me be there for you when we lost Susannah? Would we still be together and would I be counting down the days until I got to see you in a tux again and have a re-do? Maybe not. Maybe it all would’ve blown up anyway.
Sometimes I wonder if this idea of you I’ve always had in my head will go away, or at least quiet down enough that I can move on. When we kissed that first time, I remember thinking it was all my dreams come true. I remember thinking (hoping) we’d be together forever and how lucky I was to have found my person so early.
Now I just feel foolish and naive.
You probably don’t even think of me. Or maybe you do, but maybe I’m just an anecdote you tell your new friends about the girl you grew up with and dated for a few months. Maybe I’m a cautionary tale.
I wish I had more pictures of us from prom, even if you did look kind of sad in all of them. You still looked beautiful. You always looked so beautiful, Conrad.
-Belly
Conrad,
I got my acceptance letter from Finch. I didn’t tell anyone else this, but I applied to Santa Clara University. I googled it and it’s only a 33 minute drive from Stanford. I knew my GPA probably wasn’t good enough to get in, but I was still hoping. I told myself that if I got in, it was a sign. I told myself if I got in, I’d call you. I’d come there and maybe we could start over.
I didn’t get in. I found out after school one day and told mom I had a ton of homework and locked myself in my room. I texted Jere and told him I had a migraine. I ignored Taylor’s texts. I cried all night.
I don’t even know if moving to California would have been possible or realistic. It would’ve cost a ton more money, so maybe mom and dad would’ve told me I needed to pick somewhere local. But just having the possibility was holding me together in a way I didn’t realize until I lost it.
“Finch is FUN”
I keep hearing you saying that every time someone asks what my plans are after high school. It’s probably way too dramatic, but sometimes I think that was the worst day of my life. That was the end. I know I saw you on the fourth, but it barely felt like you.
Speaking of the fourth, Jere told me you couldn’t make it to Cousins this summer. He said it in passing, like it was no big deal. I’d suspected as much, but hearing the words knocked the breath out of me. “You know Con, always too caught up in his own shit to worry about anyone else”. Except that’s not you at all. You’re the opposite, actually. You’re too tied up in everyone else’s feelings to worry about yourself.
Sometimes I wonder if Jeremiah really doesn’t know you at all or if he just acts that way as some kind of shield. It’s like he thinks if he says enough passive aggressive shit about you, I’ll forget the you I know. The you I have always loved. I appease him. I nod along and agree because some fucked up part of me wishes I could hate you. That would be a lot easier.
I looked up Stanford’s course catalogue the other day and just tried to guess which classes you’d taken. I wish I could ask you about them. You used to get so intense when you’d talk about your classes at Brown. It was like you were excited about them and simultaneously scared that you were going to miss something. I could always picture you in the classrooms there. You’d have that little line between your eyebrows you always got when you were super focused. You’d be writing a mile a minute in some kind of shorthand only you’d understand, trying not to leave anything out.
The way your voice would get higher when you told me about the classes you really loved- god I loved that. If it were anyone else I’d probably call them a dork. Actually I’m almost positive I’ve called Steven a dork for the exact same thing. But for you? It was exciting. I was excited for you. You’d talk so fast, like there was some timer getting ready to go off that would keep you from telling me everything you wanted to. I guess there was, actually. Now I don’t know anything about you or your classes or your life. Isn’t that weird? To go from sharing every little detail of our days with each other to being strangers.
No. We can’t ever be strangers. I don’t like that, not even in theory. You’ll always be a part of me, and someone who’s a part of you can never be a stranger.
-Belly
Conrad,
I graduated and the first person I looked for in the crowd was you. Isn’t that stupid? It’s embarrassing even writing it. Of course you weren’t there. Why would you be?
Jere was there. And mom, dad and Steven, of course. But not you, and not Susannah. Everything feels empty without both of you. Nothing feels right. I keep waiting to wake up from a bad dream and find out that everything is still good and right. You’re still mine and Susannah is still alive and everything is like it’s supposed to be. How did it all get so fucked up?
-Belly
Conrad,
We’re all in Cousins. Well, you’re not here. Obviously. But the rest of us are and I keep waiting for it to feel like it used to or like it’s supposed to. Maybe it’ll never be like that again. Maybe that’s all gone. Lost to time or whatever.
Dad is here. Mom said she invited him to “be nice” but I think really it’s because she needs as many pieces of what used to be as possible to get through the holiday. I see her staring off into space all the time. I know she’s thinking about Susannah. We’re all thinking about her but not really talking about her, which feels fucked up. As if not saying her name means she isn’t really gone. Like she’s going to pop up in the kitchen or walk out by the pool any minute.
I was riding with Dad to the store earlier and he had on some classic rock radio station and that song Black by Pearl Jam played. He turned it up and looked over at me smiling and said “Remember how much Connie used to love this song?”. Of course I remember. He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel and sang along and all I could think about was that time in your bedroom when you played it for me. You wouldn’t look at me. You were blushing a little and I knew you were nervous because your voice was a little shaky and you messed up the chords I think, but I didn’t care. It’s the only version I ever want to hear.
I know someday you'll have a beautiful life
I know you'll be a star in somebody else's sky
But why can’t it be mine?
I miss you. I miss it all and I’m starting to think I’ll never get any of it back.
-Belly
Conrad,
Remember that time when I was 9 and you were 11 and the moms let us take a walk down the beach alone for the first time? Before then they always insisted on coming with us, I guess maybe because they thought we’d get kidnapped or lost or jump in the water and drown? I always knew we wouldn’t. I always knew you’d keep us safe.
I picked up shells and handed them to you, and you didn’t say a word, just held them in your hands and kept walking. I felt like such a grown up. You let us walk further than we were supposed to and when we got back to everyone else, I watched you carefully dump my little pile of shells into a baggie and put it in Susannah’s big straw bag. I always meant to ask you what you did with them. My little treasures.
There’s a conch shell on the desk in my dorm room that I took from your bedroom at the summer house a few years ago. You had it tucked between a bunch of books on one of your shelves and one day when you weren’t home, I snuck in and ran my hands over all your books and sailing trophies and that shell. I took it without even thinking. I guess I just needed some piece of you. Some proof that you were real and a part of my life.
I look at it when I’m writing papers and imagine you sitting at your desk writing a paper or studying or doing whatever it is you’re doing in California. Every now and then I reach my thumb out and run across the rough edge and remember the way it felt to run my thumb along your jaw when you hadn’t shaved for a day or two-rough but familiar.
Anyway, I’m procrastinating. I’m staring at your shell when I need to be doing homework and I’m wondering what you’re doing and if you think about me the same way I think about you- constantly, even when I’m trying everything I can fucking think of not to.
-Belly
Conrad,
Mom and I went to a Christmas market today and we got hot cocoa and I had to pretend I needed to use the bathroom so I could hide in the stall and force myself not to cry without Laurel looking at me with that worried face she always gets.
Will I ever be able to drink it and not think of you? Or think of that night? I think of it all the time, and I hate myself for that. What’s wrong with me? What kind of shitty person and horrible girlfriend thinks about her first time with her ex when she’s with her boyfriend of almost 2 years? I’m disgusting or broken or some combination of the two. I’m not saying this because it’s your fault. It’s not.
How do you convince your brain to stop replaying memories that feel so good they hurt? I think about the way your hair fell in your eyes and the way your skin looked amber and glowing against the light of the fire and sometimes I remember it so perfectly that it feels like I’m there again. So I indulge. I don’t force myself to think about school or Jere or any of the other things I should be thinking about. I think about you and the way you touched the ends of my hair like it was the most precious thing you’d ever seen. I think about how safe I felt and how I couldn’t believe it was you. It was really you. Maybe that’ll never feel real to me. I feel it all even though I know when it’s over the crash will hurt and I’ll be left in a reality where you’re thousands of miles away.
Do you feel lost ever? I do. All the time.
-Belly
Conrad,
I've been trying to write to you less. It feels like betrayal sometimes- telling you these things I would never say to Jeremiah. I know I’m not even sending these letters, so I don’t know why it feels that way, but it does. They sit in a box in the bottom drawer of my desk underneath a bunch of junk meant to hide the truth and sometimes I think about Jere finding them. Sometimes I fantasize about him finding them.
He’d be so angry. So hurt. I hate that the idea thrills me sometimes. Obviously I don’t want to hurt him. I never want to hurt him. But at the same time, that’s what got me into this in a way. I wonder a lot of the time if we would have ever gotten together if not for the promise I made to Susannah.
It’s all so twisted around in my head now. The promise, the want, the reality. He should be everything perfect. He should be all the things I ever wanted. And sometimes he is. Sometimes I go days, even a week or so, happy and content with him before my brain reminds me of you.
I wonder if you can ever feel me thinking of you? Like you know that thing where people say if your ear is itching someone is talking about you? Does your ear itch when I think of you? If so, I’m sorry. If I could find a way to stop, I would.
Steven called me the other day and mentioned you two had talked a bit. He said you seemed good- called you your “old self”. That made me smile. I miss you. The old you and the new you all at once. I just miss you.
-Belly
Conrad,
I came home for the weekend and there was a stack of mail waiting for me. One of the last things in the stack was a speeding ticket. I forget that they can do that now- send you a ticket through the mail. Feels like some real bullshit to me. I should only have to worry about tickets when an actual cop catches me! Don’t you agree?
You’d probably say “Belly, you shouldn’t be speeding. You need to be careful” or call me a bad driver like you used to. I only speed when I have to- when I’m running late or something. I’m being careful, Conrad. I promise.
Remember that time you came to visit from Brown and I was driving us to the movies and singing along to Brown Eyed Girl and you laughed at me and said you loved how I didn’t just sing along when I drove, I performed. You said you wished you could contact the city of Philadelphia to get traffic cam footage of me singing at red lights so you could compile it all and make me famous. You said I’d be a star.
-Belly
Conrad,
I’ve not written in a while. It felt like the right thing- to stop. Especially after Christmas. I felt like it was holding me back from letting myself really be with Jeremiah in the way he deserves.
I found out last night that he cheated on me. It happened on spring break when he went to Cabo. Lacie Barone. I heard her bragging about it at a party while I stood in a cramped bathroom and tried to convince myself I was misunderstanding.
He has all kinds of excuses, but none of them make it easier or better. None of them make me stop imagining him having sex with her while I counted down the days until he was back and we could talk and things could get back to normal.
I feel so stupid. I feel like every decision I’ve made for basically my entire life has been the wrong one and it’s so embarrassing. All I ever wanted was to make everyone proud. Mom and dad, Steven, Susannah, Halmoni, you. I always wanted you to be proud of me but look at what a mess I've made of everything.
-Belly
Conrad,
I’m at the hospital sitting with Steven. It’s kind of impressive how annoying he’s still able to be even after a car accident and coma. He’s been making me play Uno with him and gets mad when I beat him (which is almost every time. Surely you remember my uno skills).
I know he has the doctor he has because of you. I know that mom is calmer because of you. She was a mess when she got here and then I heard her answer a call and step into the hall and when she came back, she looked like she was going to be okay- like she knew everything would be okay. I asked her who it was even though I already had a hunch and she said “Connie” and I wanted to cry.
I wanted to call you and cry and tell you how scary it was when I imagined my life without Steven. It was terrifying, Conrad. It physically hurt to think about. He’s annoying and arrogant and a pain in the ass, but he’s mine. I can’t lose anything else. Not for a long time. It hurts too much.
-Belly
Conrad,
We’re leaving for Cousins in half an hour for Susannah’s memorial garden dedication ceremony. You won’t be there. Mom said you got a clinic job that’s a big deal. I’m so happy for you, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed. It’s not the same there without you. It never has been, all these years you’ve been gone. But I’m proud of you. We all are. I wish I could tell you that without being afraid of what else I’d say.
After the dedication Jeremiah and I are telling everyone that we’re engaged. It happened really fast, but I think it’s good. I think it’s the right thing. Relationships are hard and take work and compromise and it would be dumb to throw away four years because of one mistake. What if I regretted it? I’ve spent too much time regretting things. Saying yes seems easier-better.
I’m not going to write to you anymore. It doesn’t feel right. So, since this is the last letter and since you’ll never see any of them anyway, I figure I may as well be completely honest.
When we were together at the summer house last Christmas, I remember looking up at you from the couch and realizing I would always love you. That hasn’t changed.
I’ve loved you since I was 5 and you were 7 and you held my hand every time we crossed the street.
I’ve loved you since I was 10 and you were 12 and you taught me how to play chess instead of playing video games with Jeremiah and Steven and never let me win because you knew it would make me mad.
I’ve loved you since I was 16 and you were 18 and you kissed me on the beach and my entire world changed and I thought some past version of me must have done something right to end up in a reality where Conrad Fisher was kissing me like he meant it.
I’ve loved you since I was 18 and you were 20 and I barely knew anything about you anymore besides the way my heart broke when things fell apart.
I love you now, when I’m almost 21 and you’re almost 23 and I’m planning to marry someone else even though I spent my entire life imagining you at the end of the aisle.
I’ll probably love you when I’m 80 and you’re 82 and I’m covered in wrinkles and you can’t hear out of your left ear and we’ve both lived separate lives.
And I think that through it all, I’ll always imagine the version of things where I had you and kept you and all my dreams came true. It’s a nice thought, even if it’s just not how life works.
When I see the Cousins Beach sign now, it doesn’t feel like it used to. It used to make me think of your mom cutting hydrangeas in the front yard and belly flops and the way your shoulders would freckle when you started to tan. I know growing up means losing some of the magic, but I hoped I’d never lose the magic there. But the truth is…without you, the town’s just an ocean now.
Love Always,
Belly