Chapter Text
v.
In moments of shock, Jeremiah has learned that one tends to say the wrong thing. The incoherent thing. Perhaps even the insensitive thing.
There is, of course, also—
“Oh fucking fuck,” Jeremiah swears, hastily tugging the sheet up to his chest, covering Belly as well.
Conrad looks between the two of them, pale suddenly, like he’s a ghost, and then swiftly turns on his heel, the door closing with a soft click. Jeremiah still flinches. His heart crawls out of his ribcage, limps towards his throat.
“Fuck,” he swears again, with feeling.
Belly sits up, looks at him.
“I don’t regret it,” she says to him plainly.
Somehow, it cuts through the shock, the fear, the guilt, the panic. It’s like a bullet ripping through skin.
“I don’t regret it,” she repeats, and she finds his hand through the mess of sheets, links their fingers together. “I don’t.”
There’s noise downstairs, footsteps and voices, intruding on their peace, on them.
And still—
“I don’t either,” he whispers, small like a child. Then he thinks of Conrad’s face, and he shakes his head, steps out of the bed. Belly follows, changing as he does. By the time they reach downstairs, Conrad is nowhere to be found.
Belly’s mom is in the kitchen, as is Steven and Taylor.
He flushes bright red, certain they can see right through him. That they know what it was they were doing. Him and Belly both have hickeys on their necks, hair still mused. They aren’t holding hands, but they hover close to each other, like it can’t be helped.
“Oh fuck,” Steven swears, glancing between them with wide, panicked eyes. Laurel looks less than impressed.
“Is now really the occasion for this?” she asks, and Jeremiah nearly shrinks into his skin.
“You guys came early,” Belly challenges, an indisputable edge to her voice. Jere looks down at the floor, clears his throat. His body is screaming at him to go to the beach, to flee, to find Conrad.
She looks at him, and she reaches for his hand. Squeezes it.
“You go find Conrad,” she says. “I’ll join you in a minute.”
“Bells—”
“I’ll be fine,” she says. She smiles at him, and he remembers kissing her and kissing her, and it felt like coming home. He smiles back, strained but genuine, and reluctantly lets her hand go.
When the door closes behind Jeremiah, Belly takes a deep breath. She remembers last time she was here, of course she does. Her and Conrad in the winter, but it feels so long ago. Barely even in a memory.
She hadn’t been thinking of it last night, when she and Jeremiah had sex. Hadn’t thought of it until Conrad had burst in and his face had dropped. She wonders how it wasn’t the first thing on her mind – her sixteen-year-old self would have been appalled, heartbroken, confounded.
Almost twenty-one-year-old Belly feels quite differently.
She’s not sixteen anymore, or fifteen, or seventeen, or twelve.
She’s no longer the girl who is in love with Conrad Fisher. And if she’s being really, truly honest with herself, she stopped being that girl a long time ago. She doesn’t know when. Can’t pinpoint the precise point in time he stopped being the centre of her universe, the reason for her to breathe. The sole factor in whether or not she was pretty, lovable, desirable.
Her world exists outside the confines of Conrad Fisher, and she’s not about to apologize for it to anyone.
“Belly,” Steven says quietly. “What’s going on?”
Taylor looks confused herself, mildly hurt.
“Jeremiah and I are close,” she replies. It feels small, insufficient. Almost trivial. Jeremiah has grown into so much more than being just someone she’s close to.
“Are you two dating?” Taylor asks.
“I’m not sure,” Belly confesses. “We haven’t had a chance to talk about it yet.”
Laurel sighs in the background. “Haven’t we been here before, Belly? That summer—”
Her temper flares.
“That was over four years ago,” Belly interrupts harshly. “I’m no longer that girl anymore, Mom! I’ve done so many things and been through things you don’t even know the half of. I’m sorry that I’m not fulfilling the fantasy you and Susannah created for me, okay?” She scoffs, almost laughs, hands gesturing wildly. “Actually, you know what? I’m not sorry. I’m not sorry at all.”
Her chest heaves as the words echo through the kitchen. Stony faced, her mom sets her hands palm down on the counter.
“Steven, Taylor – could you give Belly and I a moment, please?”
They go quickly, muttering their excuses, and soon it is just Belly and her mom in this house full of ghosts. Belly has so many happy memories here; with Susannah, her mom, her brother, the Fisher boys. She learned to love in this house, learned to laugh and be and feel pretty for the first time. But she learned even more outside of it. Cousins may be where her dreams used to linger, but her horizons have grown out of it, expanded to places otherwise unthinkable.
She’s not the same girl she was, and she doesn’t want to be.
The house hasn’t changed, hasn’t grown since Susannah died.
She’s just outgrown it.
Laurel is quiet for a long time. Belly can see the tension in her shoulders, the anger lining her spine. The anger that has been brewing there since the funeral.
But Belly isn’t frightened by it anymore. What is she now? A whore, a traitor, a troublemaker? Perhaps she should feel selfish, but she just feels bold.
“A part of you has hated me since the funeral,” Belly says. Laurel’s neck snaps up, gaze darting to her face with a sense of panic that almost makes Belly laugh. “Just admit it. We can both feel it, can’t we? If we’re going to air out our dirty laundry, let’s start from the beginning.”
“I don’t hate you, Belly,” Laurel says, aghast. “I was just—”
“Angry? Sad? Disappointed? Furious that I somehow managed to fuck it all up again?”
“Fine,” Laurel grits out, putting a hand on her hip. “It was Susannah’s funeral, and I was furious with you for making it about you. Are you happy?”
Belly thought she would be; she isn’t. Not one bit.
But she isn’t broken by it, either.
“I just wanted to hear you say it,” Belly tells her honestly. “I know you thought it, but you never said it.” A pause. Her own anger creeps into her throat, crawls up her spine, steady like an electrical current. “I was seventeen, and I needed you.”
Laurel’s face turns. Crumbles, more like.
“I fucked up – I let you down, Susannah, but you—you let me down, too. And I’ve fucked up since then, Mom. I have. I’ve become an entirely different person and you didn’t even notice.”
“You’re my daughter,” Laurel says. ‘I love you more than anything. I was grieving, and so lost. I missed my person.”
“Jeremiah is mine,” Belly reveals.
Laurel pauses; the doubt on her face is brief, but there.
“I’m so sick of this,” Belly spits. “You and Susannah and your grand plan for me to marry Conrad. To end up with him. Do you have any idea what you did with that? Do you?”
“You liked Conrad—”
“I was a kid!” Belly cries out. “And I’m not a little kid anymore, Mom. I’ve had sex. I’ve gotten drunk. I lived on the other side of the world for almost a year. I had an abortion. I’m not that girl anymore. I lived and died for Conrad, I made him my whole world, and you did nothing to help me sort through that. Nothing.”
Laurel shakes like Belly has slapped her; like each word is a physical blow.
Belly lets the righteous fury engulf her; feels its flames lick at her face, her heart, her stomach. Clings to it.
Tears slip down Laurel’s face. She looks around the kitchen, Susannah’s kitchen, and her hand rests of her forehead. Belly’s mother looks so small, standing there. It helps the anger ebb a bit. But Belly isn’t in a forgiving mood. Not yet, anyway.
“I miss her so much,” Laurel whispers. “Losing her brought out an ugliness in me. Made me selfish. And I failed you. I didn’t mean to hurt you, Belly. We thought you loved Conrad, not Jeremiah—”
“That’s not the point,” Belly stresses, not unkindly. “I can’t live my life for you or for Susannah. For what you thought was how my life should be. This is my decision. And I love Susannah. I miss her. But I can’t—I won’t contort myself to fit her vision of my life and her fairy-tale. It’s not fair.”
Laurel swallows, nods. Steps forward.
“Did you—did you really have an abortion?” Laurel says.
Shaken, Belly nods.
“Jeremiah was there for me,” she replies. “He had no reason to be there, but he was. He stayed by my side without question. And it’s not gratitude – me wanting him. I just do. And that’s it. And I love you, I want you in my life – but this has nothing to do with you. I’m tired of trying to fulfill the conditions for your love.”
Laurel frowns. “My love—Belly, for you and Steven, it’s limitless. It has no end.”
“It hasn’t felt like that,” Belly says. “Not to me.”
They stare at each other.
“Alright,” Laurel breathes. It feels like there’s something stuck in her chest. “I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to convince you of that.”
Belly bites on her lip. She doesn’t want to lose her mom. In this house, Susannah’s house – there’s too much love left for her to turn it away. What can she say? I’ll try to be worthy of it. What line is there between honouring your parents sacrifices and their love being unconditional?
Belly, who beat herself black and blue forcing herself back together, has no idea what the answer is.
Her eyes dart to the back door Jeremiah disappeared past.
“We have time,” Belly says. “To figure this out more.”
Laurel nods, wipes at her cheeks. But she doesn’t turn away. She lets Belly see this outpour of emotion, of vulnerability. It helps peel the walls that have drawn up since the funeral.
She moves forward, and she hugs her mom loosely. Laurel clutches her to her chest, and they hold each other like that for a long while. Even when they let go, Belly is certain she’ll carry the weight of her mother forever. Her love, her shadow, her expectations. Everyone carries their mom with them, inside them.
They just learn to bear it.
Jeremiah finds Conrad relatively close to the house, crouched in the sand. He’s ripping the odd weed out from the ground. Jeremiah plops beside him, tries to remember how to breathe. Conrad ignores him, keeps looking ahead, as the sun glares down on the waves.
“You going to transfer to Stanford, too?” Conrad asks after a while.
Jeremiah glances at him.
“Going to also become a doctor? Going to find every other girl I’ve dated and—”
“Conrad—”
“What?” his big brother demands. “Hmm? What? If you didn’t think you were doing anything wrong, you would have told me.”
“That was—” Jeremiah stops. What can he say? That was the first time? It wasn’t.
“That was what? The first time?” Conrad must see the guilt in his eyes, because he laughs, sharp and bitter. “Of course, it wasn’t.”
And there’s something that bristles inside him at Conrad; at how he’s casting this entire thing. Like his relationship with Belly is something dirty and wrong and cruel. Like they haven’t fought to rebuild it from the ashes; like she hasn’t given him so much peace, so much kindness, so much strength.
“That’s not fair, Conrad,” Jeremiah says. His voice almost breaks; hoarse and delicate, like it’s fragile. He forces himself to keep his head held high. He’s not twelve anymore. Not ten or nine or seventeen, lost in his brother’s shadow. Always smiling. Always pushing his emotions away. Easy-going, sunshine Jeremiah, who never got angry. Who never really fought for something because no one ever thought he’d be serious about something enough.
Conrad meets his stare head on.
“It’s not. You haven’t spoken to Belly properly in years—”
“So what?”
“What do you mean so what?” Jeremiah demands. “I should have told you, sure. But I’m allowed to have a friendship with her—”
“I didn’t know you fucked all your friends still, Jere, how proud—”
“I’ve known Belly as long as you have!” Jeremiah snaps. “Always your connection with her was made out to be this greater, better, brighter thing. You had your chance with Belly, and you blew it. You blew it. You had all this time to make it right if you loved her so much, and you chose not to. You chose to do that. No one forced you.”
What else can he say? What else can he do? To say he has a chance now with Belly doesn’t seem right either. Their friendship is more than a buildup to sex and kisses. It means more to him. They have the potential to be more.
“I’ve loved Belly for a long time,” he continues quietly. “And I tried to tell her. I did tell her, and she chose you. And then, at some point it changed, and she started choosing me too. And I don’t want to lose that. I won’t. I love her for who she is now, and I don’t think you have any idea who that is.”
Conrad blows out through his mouth. Pinches the bridge of his nose, slowly shakes his head.
“I always thought it would be Belly and me. That one day we’d find our way back to each other. For Mom.”
At that, Jeremiah stiffens. Susannah. God, he misses her. But Conrad isn’t wrong, is he? In their mom’s eyes, it was always Belly and Conrad destined to be together, written in the stars. It seems like stones sink in his stomach, make him plummet and ache.
“I think Mom would want us to be happy,” he says, remembering what his therapist told him. “No matter what.”
Conrad laughs again, a bit more broken this time.
“We’re losing the house,” Conrad says. “I think she wouldn’t want that.”
Jeremiah hums, looks to the sea. For a moment, it’s almost like he can see his mom on the horizon. He can feel her so vividly here, like she’s in the air, in the breeze.
“Doesn’t that bother you?” Conrad continues, tone pitched. “Losing this? Cousins—Cousins is home.”
He remembers what Belly said in her first email to him. About all roads leading back to Cousins. Recalls what he said to her in turn; about feeling like the magic of Cousins died when his mom did. She was what made it special, and the memories; without it, without her, it’s just a house. Just a beach. Just regular old sand.
“To be honest,” Jeremiah says lowly, guiltily, “it hasn’t been home for me in a while.”
Conrad’s mouth twists angrily, but Jeremiah jumps in before his brother can explode again.
“I love this house, and the memories I made here,” he says. “And Mom… this is where she was happiest, too. But we’re barely here anymore, Conrad. You and me. This house stays here, and it rots. And that makes me more sad than anything.”
“We can try and come down more, visit more—”
“I’d like to,” Jeremiah says. “But Conrad, it’s not… it’s not plausible for us. Not now. You are going to be in med school for another three years, then there’s residency and your internship. I have my final year coming up, and then I’m going to be travelling all over if I get my dream job. We’re not going to be here to love it.”
“But we’ll be letting her go. Mom.” Conrad’s eyes swim with tears. “We’ll be letting her down.”
Jeremiah closes his eyes tightly. Breathes in the smell of sea salt. Hears the seagulls squawk overhead.
“I don’t think that’s true,” he rasps. “It’s not a crime to move on, Conrad. To live and to learn and to change. Mom wouldn’t—Mom would want us to do what’s best for us. I love this house. I’ll always love this house. But I don’t need it to carry Mom with me. I do that everywhere.”
Conrad bows his head and sobs. It’s the first time Jeremiah has seen his brother cry since the funeral. Without thinking, he tucks himself closer to Conrad, puts an arm around him. Conrad falls into him, and it’s like he’s shattering.
“You don’t need to be so strong all the time, Conrad,” Jeremiah says. “I know I have my own shit to deal with, but you can break, too. You can.”
They sit there for a while until the tears stop.
“I don’t know how to let Mom go,” Conrad says.
“I don’t think we are.”
From the corner of his eye, Jeremiah turns and sees Belly approaching them. She looks a little nervous, but otherwise determined. Conrad follows his gaze, notices her.
“You know, I think a part of me knew,” he confesses, not without some bitterness. “After she reached out to me to check on you last year. I knew. She broke all that silence for you. I just didn’t want to think about it.”
“We’ve never been very good at talking about her, have we?” Jeremiah muses.
Conrad chuckles, uncomfortable.
“Do you want to talk to her now?” Jeremiah asks.
“No,” Conrad tells him. “I think I need a minute.”
“Okay.”
Jeremiah pats him on the shoulder and stands. Looking down at his brother, he can’t help but see so much of their mom. No matter how far they grow, she’ll always bind them together. It’s in their blood, in their marrow.
He meets Belly before she reaches them.
“You guys okay?” she asks, noticing his red eyes.
He nods briefly, and his eyes catch on the house. The reality of losing it is almost too much to bear. But he wasn’t wrong before; already he can see the wornness in the house. The chips in the paint, the lack of lusciousness in the garden. This house deserved a family to love it fully. To live and breathe and make a home of it.
Now, for them, with how busy they all are, how scattered—
It’s more like a tomb. A husk.
“We will be,” he answers, and she tucks herself into his side, rests her head on his shoulder. “We will be.”
Belly is there when Conrad and Jeremiah talk to their dad. She sits on the couch next to Jere, nearby if he needs her. Her mom sits with Steven and Taylor on the other, listening quietly as the boys negotiate the terms of the sale.
It’s Jeremiah’s idea for them to insert a clause where they can inhabit the house for two weeks every summer if they provide notice, and Conrad agrees, sadness full on his face. And then, sitting there in the living room of her childhood, the heart of her dreams, they agree to sell the house.
Their dad gives them three weeks to say goodbye before the movers come.
“Is that agreeable to everyone?” Conrad asks. “We’re the ones who love it most.”
And, with bated breath, they all agree.
It’s awkward, the first few days. Belly moves her things into Jeremiah’s room, which her mom pretends not to notice. They spend lazy days by the beach, with Conrad and Steven surfing more often than not.
Belly and Jere stay by the pool. She’s on a floatie, and he swims around her, rests his chin on her stomach. Taylor had confronted her a few nights ago about her secrecy, but they’d made up as best they could. “I just want you to be happy, girl,” Taylor had said.
She watches them fondly now.
“You okay?” Belly asks.
“Yeah,” Jere mumbles, nudging his nose into her sun kissed skin. “Just sleepy.”
“You sleep, sunshine boy,” she urges, and by the time Conrad and Steven return, Jeremiah’s head is propped on her stomach as he snoozes and she floats. The more time that passes where her and Jeremiah are just together, just existing, the more sense it seems to make to everyone.
One day, she turns on the news. Sees the news where they overturn Roe v Wade. Jeremiah is there with her, and he holds her the whole day. The go by themselves on the beach, dip into thew waves, and she’s draped over his back, her arms fixed around him as she cries silently into his neck.
When they come back, she finds her mom has left flowers in her room, a card with some chocolates. It tastes a little like forgiveness, and a bit more like love.
If anyone else notices her red-rimmed eyes when they watch a movie, no one says anything. Jeremiah is there through it all, silent, quiet, and steady.
Just where she wants him to be.
Jeremiah falls asleep on her again, and Steven carries Taylor upstairs, and her mom has gone home for a few days. It’s just her and Conrad there as the credits roll, Jere fast asleep by her.
“He looks happy with you,” Conrad says. “You look—you look happy with him. With Jere.”
“I am,” she replies evenly. They haven’t spoken much these past few days; merely interacted around each other in larger group settings. She hasn’t felt like it was her place.
And, to be honest, she doesn’t think she has anything to apologize to him for. Well, nothing to apologize for about Jeremiah.
She won’t ever apologize for him.
But she does for the funeral, and, surprisingly, he offers her an apology as well.
“I was scared and grieving,” he says. “And I didn’t know how to handle it, and I took it out on you. I’m so sorry.”
It’s a bit gratifying to hear, in some ways. Like there’s validation for her seventeen year old self that she wasn’t crazy; that he was pushing her away on purpose. But what does it matter anymore?
It does though, she realizes. Conrad Fisher will be in her life forever, even if it’s not in the way her younger self wanted once.
Jere stirs against her shoulder.
“I always thought it would be you and me,” Conrad continues lightly. “It’s basically what—what we were taught to expect, wasn’t it?”
After a moment, she nods.
“Do you remember what I said to you on the beach that summer?” she questions.
His quizzical expression is her answer.
“I said that I didn’t want you to need me, I wanted you to want me.”
“I remember now.”
“It wasn’t true for me,” she tells him softly. “At that time, I did need you. I’d tied myself to you for so long that if you didn’t want me, didn’t love me, I felt like I was nothing. I felt like that for a while after we broke up. And that’s no way to live. Susannah said once, and my mom. That I only shined when you were around. By the end, I was sick with it. And it’s not your fault, or my fault, but I don’t—I don’t think I would have ever gotten around that, needing you, if we hadn’t broken up when we did.”
Conrad’s gaze drifts to Jere, who is still sleeping soundly.
“And you don’t need Jere?”
She considers his question for a moment.
“No,” she replies soundly. “I don’t need Jeremiah to live. To function. To like myself. To think I’m worthy of love. He enriches my life. He adds colour to it that otherwise would never be there. I can live without him if I had to; I just don’t want to.”
A few minutes later, right as Conrad is about to respond, Jeremiah blinks himself away, stirring back to life slowly.
“Did I miss anything?” he groans into her neck.
She touches his cheek with her hand, caresses it. She can’t imagine a summer without looking at his face.
“No,” she says, and it’s not a lie at all. “Nothing at all.”
She presses a kiss to his cheek, and Conrad doesn’t flinch.
Belly’s birthday arrives a few short days before they’re meant to leave the house. Laurel comes to celebrate during the day and promises to stay until they’re due to leave, though she begs off crashing their celebration for the night.
Jeremiah gets Belly her favourite blueberry muffins for breakfast, and buys her a film camera as a gift.
So you can document all your adventures, he writes.
She kisses him gently when she opens it, and it’s the simplest, naturalist thing in the world. He’s glad she’s feeling better since the news about Roe v Wade. They’ve already arranged to attend some protests when they get back, but for now they’re allowing themselves the time to grieve, to find their way.
To be happy.
They buy some weed, all of them, and get high on the dock before playing beach volleyball. Steven referees, and he and Belly play against Conrad and Taylor. By the end they’re all so high none of them can keep score, and they fall into the sand, laughing and giggly.
At night, they shower and change into some fancier clothes, and walk along the boardwalk until they find a karaoke bar. They down shot after shot, Belly close by his side throughout, and they all go up to sing at various points.
Belly dares to go and sing Raining Men, and he goes and does just that. She laughs so hard she cries, and she takes pictures of him she swears will follow him to his grave. Taylor and Steven sing three duets in a row, and even Conrad is persuaded to go on stage for a song or two.
And then Belly, as the birthday girl, clad in a tiara someone from the bar found for her, takes the stage. Her cheeks are flushed pink as she chooses her song, and soon Taylor joins her as they scream along to the Beyonce song.
“In the darkest night hour!” they croon, and Belly points right at him as Jeremiah records, and Steven records him recording Belly. “I search through the crowd / your face is all that I see, I give you everything / baby love me lights out—”
She doesn’t lift her eyes from him once.
“She really loves you, dude,” Steven yells to him above the roar of the crowd. Conrad hears, and though he doesn’t smile, he doesn’t glare at Jeremiah either.
I’m happy for you, his brother mouths, after Belly runs off the stage and crashes into Jeremiah’s arms, making him spin her round and round.
And it’s not Jeremiah’s birthday, but it feels like a gift anyway.
They show videos when they get back to Laurel, and she watches the videos Taylor took of him and Belly.
“Susannah would be so happy for you both,” she says, and she smiles so widely Jeremiah nearly cries.
They leave Cousins on a Sunday morning.
Conrad is the first to leave, but the hug he gives Jeremiah isn’t brief at all.
“Brothers forever,” he says. And, Cousins are not, that won’t change, even if they still have more growing to do.
“Brothers,” Jeremiah says.
Then it’s Steven and Taylor, who make them promise to go on double dates with them before they drive off, and then it’s Laurel, who cups his face in her hands.
“I’m sorry,” she tells him. “I should have checked in on you more, sunshine boy. I’ll call you, if that’s alright.”
He can feel Belly watching them, but he’s all smiles.
“It is,” he says. Cousins may leave them, and they may leave Cousins, but that doesn’t mean they have to leave each other.
Soon, it’s just him and Belly. In an hour, the movers will come and take everything. They’ve already packed whatever they want to keep; the pictures his mom painted, photos, old movies, things they made. It’s all in the car.
“I think I know what I want to do,” Belly says. “Besides volleyball.”
He glances at her. “You decided you’re going back?”
“I am,” she determines. “But I think, outside of that, I want to make sure that every woman – every person who can possibly get pregnant has the same choice I did. The same support. That’s what I want to do outside volleyball.”
“And you will,” he promises.
They kiss, sweet and soft in the summertime. He fell in love with her first in summer, but he knows he’ll love her in spring, in fall, in winter. Through all the seasons. He tells her this, and she brings their interlaced hands to her mouth, kisses every one of his knuckles.
Soon, they’re in the car, and the house is in the horizon. His heart feels strange; heavy, but also lighter. Soon the house will be in the care of another family, and they’ll be able to come back if they want to, if they have the time. And maybe when they’re older, when they’re ready, they can build their own memories here with a family of their own.
But that’s in the future, and Jeremiah—
Jeremiah is very happy to enjoy his present.
“I feel like I’m leaving something behind,” Belly confesses. She looks at him though, then ahead. Hums a little.
“I wouldn’t worry too much,” Jeremiah replies lightly, and he puts his hand on her knee. She laces their fingers together, and he doesn’t know for sure if this will last forever. People fall out of love and change. But he’ll cherish it every day it does. Some people, he determines, you never really stop loving. They stay with you forever, no matter what happens. Just like his mom.
“I have a feeling we’ll find our way back.”
End.