Conrad's Version Ch 49 Vol 3

I hit the steering wheel as hard as I could. I should have left. I should have left them all there but I couldn’t because I was their DD. They came out to the car an hour later even more drunk than before, none of them able to walk straight, hauling Jeremiah between them. He couldn’t even hold his own weight. They folded him into the back seat and shuffled in around him, filling the car with the smell of alcohol and the sour undertow of vomit.

The drive home was silent.

I watched them haul Jeremiah up the driveway and inside when we got home. The lights were on in the house. I stood by the car for a moment, looking at them, and knew I couldn’t walk in there, couldn’t sit in a kitchen and act normal. So I turned around and walked toward the beach instead.

It was well past midnight. The wind had picked up and the night had gone cold with it. I didn’t care. I made it down to the shore and climbed the lifeguard tower, hauling myself up and sitting under a crescent moon with the sound of the waves below me, trying to get my thoughts in order, trying to get Redbird’s voice out of my head. How he’d talked about Jeremiah hooking up with Lacey like it was nothing, and how Jeremiah had laughed.

“Jere.” I heard a voice from below, faint against the wind. I stood and looked down. Belly was running toward the tower. She got close enough to see it was me and I watched the disappointment move across her face before she could stop it.

“Belly?” I gripped the railing.

She looked up. “Oh, Conrad. Hi. Jere was supposed to meet me here. Did he send you?”

“No. I had no idea you were meeting here. But Jere is—” I looked back toward the house. “He’s not coming.”

The wind pulled her hair across her face. She looked crestfallen, standing there in the dark. “What are you doing out here anyway? Everything okay?”

“Yeah. No. It’s nothing,” I said.

She looked at me, then at the waves, then back at me. “Isn’t it against the rules to be up there?”

I looked at her for a moment and felt something give way in my resolve. I loosened my collar. “I don’t think anyone’s out here to bust me right now.”

“Look at you breaking all the rules,” she said, smiling.

I made the mistake of looking straight at her when she said it. After everything I’d just heard, my restraint went with the wind. “Why don’t you come up? Sit with me for a minute.”

I watched the surprise hit her, then her curiosity. She took a step toward the tower, then glanced back toward the house. “I should probably head back before they send a search party.”

“Just come up for a second,” I pressed.

She hesitated another moment, then started up the ladder. I held out my hand. She paused before taking it, her hand warm and familiar against mine as she climbed the last few steps. I let go as soon as she was up and we sat down on the bench. The wind moved around us. Neither of us said anything.

“Did you guys have a good time?” she asked.

“They did.” I smiled, tight. “They all had quite a bit to drink.”

I watched her take a sharp breath in through her nose.

“Jere barely made it home,” I said. “He was that wasted.”

More frustration built on her face. She pinched the bridge of her nose. Then she turned back to me. “Same old Jere,” I said, my own frustration bleeding through. “Same old habits.”

She glared. “I think he’s allowed one night of partying at his own bachelor party. You should cut him some slack.”

I nodded and looked back at the water, rubbing my palms on my jeans. We sat in silence. After a moment she moved to stand. “I should go back.”

I felt the moment slipping and panic crawled up my spine. “Belly. There’s something you should know.”

She stilled, hands on the railing. I watched her take one breath, then another. When she turned around, her face was neutral. “What is it?”

I looked at her. Every feeling I had ever had for her was right there at the surface, clawing. I swallowed hard.

“Jere cheated on you. Over spring break, in Cabo.”

Her face didn’t move.

“I know,” she said quietly. “I’ve known for a while.”

The last thing I’d expected her to say was that. I felt my face fall in surprise, then disappointment and anger moving through me at the same time. “You know,” I said, my voice cracking on it.

“Yes.” Firmer now. Her hands tightening around the rail. She was working hard to hide the embarrassment but I could see straight through it.

“And you’re still…” I stopped. “You know what he did and you’re still marrying him? He was with someone else five months ago, Belly. What the,” I swallowed. “What the actual fuck.”

She looked down at her feet, then shook her head. “People make mistakes. He’s sorry. He’s suffered for it and I forgave him and we’re good now.” Her hands moved, a short defensive gesture. “We’re good. Everything is fine.”

I laughed, humorless. “You’re joking.”

“It’s not any of your business anyway.”

I stood up. “No. You’re wrong. It is my business because Jeremiah is my brother and he’s being a piece of shit and you’re…” I stopped. The word I wanted wasn’t one I could say. “You’re just not the kind of person I pictured putting up with something like that,” I said instead.

She laughed, sharp. “That’s rich coming from you. I put up with way worse from you.”

I clenched my fist. “How can you say that? I never thought about another girl. I never so much as looked at another girl when we were together.”

She turned to the ladder. “This conversation is done.”

She went down so fast I had to jump to catch up. “Belly, wait. I’m sorry. You’re right, it’s none of my business, I just,” I followed her down the beach, the sand shifting under my feet. “I just don’t understand. Why marriage? Why can’t you just move in together first?”

She wasn’t answering, walking faster. “Belly, I’m talking to you. Why do you have to get married? You’re getting married at the country club, for god’s sake. I don’t even know who you are any...”

She whipped around so fast she was in my face before I’d finished the sentence. “Who am I? You have no right to ask me that.” Her voice was shaking now. “You disappeared, Conrad. For years. You don’t know me anymore and I sure as hell don’t know you.”

I stood there, stunned.

She put her finger against my chest. “You need to leave me alone. Stop following me or I will scream. I promise you I will scream loud enough for all of Cousins to hear me.” She turned back around.

“Belly. Please. I’m sorry.” I took a step after her.

She kept walking.

“Belly, stop. Just…” The desperation was climbing up my throat and I couldn’t stop it. “I still love you,” I shouted.

She froze, then turned around slowly.

I stood there in the dark, waiting for her to look at me, to see it. My breathing was ragged, and so was hers.

I closed some of the distance between us. “I can’t get you out of my head. Out of my system. You’re always here.” I pressed a hand to my temple, then to my heart. “And here. Always.”

She looked at my hand on my chest. Then at me. “This is what you do. You say things you don’t mean in the heat of a moment and then you take them back. You’re only suddenly saying this because I’m marrying Jeremiah.”

“Suddenly?” I shook my head. “No, Belly. It’s never been sudden.” I looked at her, trying to make her understand. “Don’t you know by now, haven’t you realized, that it’s been always, for infinity.”

She stood very still. “You’re too late,” she said softly. Then again, harder: “It’s too late, Conrad. And the fact that you waited until now to say this is beyond fucked.”

She turned back toward the path.

I reached for her wrist without thinking. She turned, anger clear on her face, and I let go immediately. “I know this is fucked up, trust me I know, but please just hear me out. One minute.”

I closed my eyes. Tried to find solid ground somewhere. When I opened them she was still there. Her lower lip was trembling.

“I fucked up so badly four years ago. I fucked up so many things. But especially that night at the motel, you remember it?” She gave the smallest nod. “I told you I still wanted you. You were right there and I didn’t know how to reach for you. I couldn’t sleep that night.” My voice broke on the last word. I pushed through it. “I loved you then. But I was scared. I was scared I’d hurt you, that I’d let you down somehow, and I couldn’t live with that.”

The wind came off the ocean, lightly coating us in salt water. I pressed on.

“I was in so much pain and I had seen you with Jere at Brown. I saw how happy you were after everything I’d put you through, and I thought the noble thing was to let you go.” I watched her chest rise and fall. “I really tried to let you go. For years. Why do you think I moved so far away?” My voice cracked again and I had to collect myself. “Then this summer you came back and being around you was so hard but I just wanted more time. Talking like we used to. And there were moments where you looked at me, like you used to, and I felt…”

I took a deep breath as my eyes welled with tears.

“Being around you again, everything I worked so hard to build just crumbled. Every plan I ever made just went to shit.” I looked out at the waves, then back at her. “And I know it’s all fucked up because I love Jeremiah. He’s my only brother. He’s family. And I hate every part of myself for feeling the way I do.” My eyes were wet, tears spilling. I didn’t try to hide it. “But when I watch him with you. When I see you both together.” A sob broke loose on the last word. “I fucking hate him.”

She started shaking her head and I kept going.

“Don’t choose him. Don’t marry him.” I could feel my own heartbeat in my hands, in my throat. Everything I had ever swallowed down for four years, rising back up. “Choose me.”

I watched her jaw work. When she finally spoke her voice was measured and cold and it cut through everything. “You will never be what Jeremiah is to me. He’s my best friend. He has loved me unconditionally, and he’s never made me second-guess myself. He doesn’t run when things get hard.” A pause. “No one has treated me better than he has. Least of all you.”

Tears ran down my face. I watched her eyes track them and for one moment, just one, something in her expression came loose. Then it closed back over and she was stoic again.

“You and I were never anything,” she said. “And we never will be again.”

She turned away.

I waited for her to look back. She didn’t. Not once. She just walked, steady and certain, until she rounded the corner and was gone.

I felt it happen before I understood it. My knees hit the sand, and my hands went to my ribs, pressing hard, like I could hold myself together from the outside. Then the sound that came out of me, I didn’t recognize: a wail that had been living in me for years, finally finding its way out, all at once. Every version of us I had ever imagined, every morning I had told myself to let her go and failed, every moment of this summer: all of it poured out of me into the empty darkness.

I stayed there until there was nothing left. The sand cold and wet beneath me, the wind pulling at my shirt, the moon gone behind the clouds. I had loved her my whole life. I had loved her before I knew what the word meant and through every version of myself I had been since. And kneeling there in the sand, I felt the enormity of losing her. Like something had been keeping me upright all these years and now it was just gone.

She hadn’t looked back once.