Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Right up on it now, Conrad could count the seconds – the 13th, 8:08pm in June was the day. He could feel his muscles tense underneath his white coat that he was set to remove for the last time in about twenty seconds. He had given this some thought. Thought long and hard on days when he was managing the ER, seeing victims of terrible accidents and dumb mistakes come through the pressured doors. He would’ve lost his mind if he stayed. He was too close to death and after three years of this he thought he might feel better but the closer he got, the older and how his mother wasn’t there he felt nauseous. And nothing made Conrad sick. He was a tank, let him tell it. Bars after 32 hour shifts to shoot the bull with attendants. They really enjoyed his company and all the women that came with it. He’d never get drunk-drunk, not enough to kill somebody if he got into a fist fight which had been happening more and more these days. He just missed his mother, that was all. One night it was so bad he almost lost his medical license when deciding to tail a car that cut him off in traffic two miles past his destination. The girl almost ran off the road, nearly hit a tree, nearly died. It takes almost nothing to blow your whole life up. 

He remembers Susannah calling him magic, and pulls off the white coat in the resident suite of the hospital. He folded it neatly and placed it on the on-call bed. Danny was still asleep up above, but he didn’t care to say any goodbyes to no one. Now, in a black button-up and slacks, fancy shoes and a wristwatch he corrected himself and walked out of the door at 8:09 a.m. 

The hospital was bustling with life – so much death, he thought. So much to lose but he didn’t panic. He simply walked out of the door as one of the nurses at the front desk called for him. He said nothing. He didn’t stall, he wanted out and he knew where he was headed. 

“Hey Jer, I know it’s been a while. Yeah, I just can’t do it anymore, man. I’m going home.” He left the voicemail and jogged through the rain to his Range Rover. The voices in his head were okay now. He didn’t feel so flustered about what to do, no he was determined to be okay and found that he was making the right decision. 

In reality, Conrad hadn’t thought this through. Some people internalize pain and it wears the bones. He was tired. 

In the comfort of his car, he pushed started the engine and pulled out of the parking lot. It was an eleven hour drive. He’d go to his apartment in Union Square and gather his things, that in which he wanted and then he’d head home. Cousins was all he knew. Maybe he’d stop by the bar, take a swig and throw one back for old times sake, he didn’t know, but drinking just felt right, you know? 

He drove in silence the whole way, even as Jeremiah rung his phone. One time, six, he didn't pick up. 

Conrad just wanted to mourn because three years is a long time without your mom. Susannah was magic. She was magic. She was everything to him and he took advantage of that time. He's sorry. 

There's no going back now. He'll end up right where he's going. 

Chapter Text

Cousins had not gone downhill but it certainly wasn’t how it used to be. Maybe because everyone had moved on, moved away. It could’ve been that the Country Club was going down and no one was around to host charity galas. Susannah was the one to do that. Susannah did a lot and Conrad’s brain would not let him forget it but that’s the hallmark of motherhood. It impacts you in a very deep way. Feel it in your bones, type of love. Take out my marrow when it’s gone. 

Conrad pulled into the corner store a few miles from the beach house he had spent so many summers in. Outside, standing were women giving him the eye though he looked ragged, hadn’t slept since pulling into a truck stop to take a nap. He was able to knock off his shoes. The ones he didn’t change even when he got to his apartment to grab his stuff. Usually he’d wear flip flops, but because of the circumstances he was wearing closed toed dress shoes. Black, shiny and very rare.

He changed instantly into something more comfortable, turned off the car and went inside to pay for gas. 

“Conrad?” The voice was small and coming from somewhere behind him as he nodded to the cashier. When he turned around Nicole was standing, five feet four behind him. Conrad towered over her, he looked at her and gave his signature crooked grin. 

Conrad didn’t think he’d see anyone this  early in the morning. He smelled. He could smell it, booze and peanuts. He could feel the grim of the hospital still on his skin, going stale now. When Nicole proceeded to hug him he was shocked. 

“Nicole,” he said. He was able to get the words out fine. He recognized her well enough because she hadn’t changed. She still had the same brown skin, and blazing brown eyes that he’d known from the summer of ‘22. When they fucked, he could count the stars in them.

“I didn’t know you were in town. How is everything?” She said, placing one hand on her hip and moving slightly to the left to let patrons go by. Conrad stood tall. 

“Oh everything is everything.”

She nodded, a slow smile dancing across her face. Yeah? 

He didn’t know how to say anything else. Everything had backed up in his brain. In the past few years even medical terms had gotten away from him. Shit he knew well. But right now, staring at the past, he couldn’t do anything but nod as well. What backfired was not enough. Words, sometimes, were never enough. He couldn’t explain to Nicole, this beautiful woman that he used to date that he’s a failed resident. That he got so far to only get so far. That he had abandoned post and came running home. Although it would’ve made sense to Nicole, she wouldn’t have judged, he felt it was uncalled for. He didn’t want to say anything else so he did what he does best – stood tall. 

After a few moments of penetrating silence. Even the store had gone cold, Nicole backed away and told him she’d see him around. 

“You’re around?” He suddenly called out. 

She giggled, "I'm just here for my parents' anniversary. Gotta get back to Paris, Shayla’s going to be missing me soon.” She threw up a hand and disappeared out the back door.

Conrad could feel his stomach churn with something tough. He ran through the front door, the bell knocking back and forth emitting a jingle to the front of his truck and started vomiting. When he was finished, and it took a long time because he was dry heaving, he looked around and no one was around. Without even pumping the gas, he rushed to the car door and sped ninety five down Dillard, straight to the beach house. 

_______

So, he sat there. The Range had been idling for a long time. He could feel it getting ready to cut off. He had been sitting in the driveway for nearly an hour. The car needed to rest and he did too. While sitting, he watched as birds flew to the door, into the window of the glass way on the third floor and stopped short of hitting it. He smiled at the blooming daisies out front – they were still growing and that was something. He felt a sudden urge to drink but he had nothing. His mouth had gone dry and when he smiled again when he rolled down the window to hear the crash of the waves, he felt his lips crack. Things had gotten just that bad.

Once he was out of the car, he was able to breathe normally. Inside he felt himself hyperventilating at every passing thought. And he could see her. She was smiling and she was there and she was alive and she was shining. He had pressed his forehead against the horn and only then did he become alert enough to get out. 

The trees whistled as the breeze caught between them. Stems let go of their leaves and some fell to his feet, bright green, the leaves. He walked over them and around to the backdoor so he could see the pool. It was still the same. Memories are hard to get right but when you do, they are painful. To have the past within reach but not real is cruel. He saw it, the Fourth of July BBQs and the stragglers that came for cake. Susannah’s favorite holiday. The way her dresses swung when she appeared at the glass doors, coming down the few stairs and placing everything delicately out. He could see it – his brother and friends that were like family playing fish in the pool. He saw Nicole among them too and he didn’t know if it was just because he had just ran into her or because she was a part of these memories. For a long time he had been foggy, but to admit that is to say that he was negligent on the job. He was a doctor for fucks sake. 

But, he could see it – the smiles and hear it – the laughter. As he touches the knob of the door, flipping the key around in his other hand, he draws a deep breath. He could absolutely do this if he wanted to. He twisted the key in and opened the door. After being nearly knocked out with the smell of floral lavender, he pulled his bag onto his shoulder further and walked inside letting the door slam behind him. 

Inside the house there were things out of place so he knew Jeremiah must’ve come by at some point. A towel was thrown over the couch and he picked it up to take upstairs. 

He sighed deeply and moved in further. He touched nothing else. Everything was as she left it, save for what Jeremiah did but that was okay. It wasn’t much, nothing that couldn’t be repositioned. 

Before the tears threatened to drown his cheeks, he saw a picture on the mantel. The summer she died. She wasn’t herself, but lights always go out. In that photo, what she captured was the glow before it extinguished itself. He wondered about her too. He took one last look around the living room before running up the stairs where he opened the door to his childhood bedroom and flopped on the bed. 

She did a great job, this girl. He thought about the picture and the memories by the pool, his mother. He could feel her presence like a warm embrace when he fell onto the pillows. 

Him and Isabel Conklin did not talk, hadn’t spoken since the funeral but just as she radiated she was able to capture in that photo downstairs of Susannah her light. Only a few people saw it anyway. Many thought she was simply a rich, know-it-all, but oh how they were wrong. 

Conrad pulled out his phone as it vibrated and threw it up against the wall.  The whole thing shattered with no case and fell to the floor. In New York, he was having the time of his life he thought but yesterday came and something inside him broke. He gave it his all now he wants it all back. 

Chapter Text

That morning, before Conrad left New York, he had gotten into a fight with a girl he messed around with. Claire was top-tier, a resident too. They all seemed to move in packs besides people in medicine seldom dated outside of medicine, if at all. She was a pretty blonde with hair shiny and golden in the sun. A transplant from Florida, she hated the city and liked to complain about it. Conrad would listen with the phone on speaker sitting on the dresser while he got dressed. She talked so much she barely realized that he really didn’t talk at all. Once in a while she’d get a “yeah”, an “okay”, something of the sort. She thought he was being coy but honestly he wasn’t interested. 

After tailoring his shirt to his build, he buttoned the cuffs and walked out of the room. 

At work Claire made a scene. At first she wasn’t speaking to him. Purposely ignoring him on rotations, being unapologetically nasty about his diagnoses, and speaking to someone else when he was speaking to her. Fair enough, he was not the best communicator either. Claire reminded him of their phone call by lunch time. She sat long enough to curse him out then she was gone; just like that. 

Conrad doesn’t care about a lot of things. He certainly did not care about a three-night stand that he was going to stop answering messages to anyway. But while in Cousins, sitting on the foot of the bed, staring at his shattered screen on the floor, he thought he might text her. Apologize, even. He knew he was wrong. He knew you didn’t play with people’s hearts. 

His first morning back in the beach house was morphed with feelings of anxiety and perpetual grief. He wouldn’t have named it before but he could see nothing but his mother. At one point he wondered why he’d come back anyway – to this shrine of her life. This beautiful set up of the things she’d done in her life. The house was hers. Everything in it, she touched. He could’ve gone anywhere. His inheritance would allow it but when he weighed the options he felt he had no choice. This place here was where he was supposed to be. 

Conrad padded down the stairs, his bare feet slapping the wood making his way to the kitchen. On his way, he opened cabinets. Looked underneath the tv stand, he was searching for something Laurel had cleared out years ago when she did her last walk through. Laurel hadn’t been back to Cousins since. 

The alcohol was gone. It was nine a.m. and the alcohol was gone so he would have to have coffee without the kick. A day without a daze. 

“Damn it” he slammed the cabinet in the kitchen when he finally realized. 

There was also anger coursing through him that he would never acknowledge. At least not right now because he wasn’t angry. His body was just sensitized to his surroundings. Everything hurt. He was like exposed nerve endings walking around, his body was attacking him – he thought he didn’t know why.  

Despite every effort to drink enough coffee, he eventually ended up pouring it down the sink. He could find a bar, he thought. There are so many and he absolutely wouldn’t run into Nicole again like he would if he tried the store. 

The change happened suddenly, the door bell rang and he opened it. 

She was radiant, wasn’t she? Haven grown up with her, he'd always known she was a pretty girl but now she was a beautiful woman. He’d recognize her anywhere. 

“Nicole said she ran into you in town? I thought I might find you here,” she said, looking spooked. Her head angled to look inside the house. She didn’t know what she was looking for and he didn’t either. It didn’t matter anyway. 

He didn’t say anything to her either, at least not for a moment. 

“Belly?” He said. He scratched his messy hair trying to smooth it down. 

She was wearing yellow and looking like sunshine. Her hair was still the jet black silk he knew. He could’ve reached out to touch it right then and there. 

“Yeah, I mean, just came back to check on things.”

She shifted her weight on her foot. Conrad noticed but he didn’t invite her in. 

“How’s residency? I talked to Jeremiah –”

“You know what, Belly, I gotta go.” he broke the conversation in half. His heart, too when he said it. 

Belly looked like she’d been slapped but she knew how bad wounds can be. So she stepped back a bit. Her sandals hitting the concrete of the driveway. She was driving a Mercedes. It was black and still on parked behind his truck. 

“Okay, I thought I’d just come by,” she said. “It was nice seeing you.”

Conrad’s chest concaved right then. He felt those nerve endings again and they hadn’t become desensitized to her yet. He couldn’t tell if he would ever be but he thought not today.  He thought he might go surfing after a pint, float around in the water a bit, live in the blue a while. Belly sped off after backing up. Her car left streaks on the pavement, he’d look at them a long time wondering why he said what he said. You don’t say shit you don’t mean, he knew that. Conrad had become somewhat emotionless over the course of the years – death does that. He took his heart out and buried it so deep, so far away out of sight, it’d take a miracle for even Isabel Conklin to find.

 Conrad kicked the door closed on his way back inside. 

A buried heart does die, you know, sometimes on its own but sometimes life can find it and kill the thing itself.

Chapter Text

Coastal was messy, even at the start. The bartender had been working there since opening back in 03. Conrad had seen his dad come out of the place with a woman named Shelly one time. He never told his mother. 

His car sat, parked double spaced in front of the door. He could go in or he could go back to the beach house where there wouldn’t be anyone and he could relax like he wanted to. But his brain was bad, it felt constantly on and wouldn’t allow him a break. He needed reprieve and that’s what led him to turning the car off and going inside. 

It smelled like a bar – a mess of tequila and sweat. Everything was clean though. Conrad sat at a booth. Without his phone he felt awkward so he got up and went and sat at the bar because a pretty girl was there so perhaps he could have a good time. 

“Fisher boy’s back in town!” Andy exclaimed, coming from out of the backroom. He had white hair now. Times really had changed. He was one of the stragglers, knew Conrad’s father well. 

While in stasis, sitting cold on the stool, the man knocked Conrad on the shoulder in joy. “Good to see you.” 

You’d think he’d pushed the beer closer to Conrad, the one he had mindlessly taken off the shelf but he didn’t. Andy thought doctors didn’t drink on the clock. He assumed Conrad was on the clock because he heard he was a doctor now. Boy’s growing up, he thought. Conrad extended his arm and grabbed a hold of the warm substance in the bottleneck glass. Andy did not say anything. 

“Saw Jere a few months ago around these parts,” he went on completely ignoring how fast Conrad chugged the beer down. It clanked when he placed it back on the table. Therapy had been hard, maybe he needed to go back, Conrad actually thought that sitting there signaling for another beer. Nobody could say he wasn’t self-aware. He was one of the good guys who got fucked up off grief, and that matters because it shows how destabilizing death is on the body. Yes, he drank beers when he was younger, smoked a lot of weed too but after Stanford and after traveling to Uganda, he’d slowed down immensely. Now, he was picking it back up with lightning speed. Fast. Too fast. No one has ever seen the wreckage of a bullet train and the people on the inside rarely survive. 

He was going at a record speed now. Throwing two, six, eight beers back while Andy hollered across the bar at Ted and Jake, two regulars he had to tend to. There’s a girl there though and she’d been eying Conrad since he walked in. 

Budding alcoholics need their fix. Andy wasn’t going to serve him any tequila because he knew his dad. Unfortunately for Conrad, the beers weren’t enough. At ten bottles, Andy cut Conrad off. 

The girl scouted over one stool and raised her hand to the table. Conrad studied her pretty hands with the red nail polish on the tips. He looked up and there she was. Her name was Blaze and she was a lady of the night. Her hands stayed clean and waxed above the knuckles. She had pale skin, wearing a pretty brown wig and eyes that stained when they looked at you. 

“Come here often?” She said, her voice raspy. Nothing like the way she looked. Conrad liked the intrigue, he leaned in, careful not to knock both of them to the ground. Budding alcoholics, they say, don’t know when they’ve had enough. 

Conrad chuckled, “You really gonna start with that.”

The pretty girl named Blaze shrugged. She wanted to keep him on his toes. 

Conrad was already interested so she didn’t have to do much work. 

What happened next is they ran out to his car. She hopped in the passenger seat and he pulled out into the hot sun, parked at the beach and they had sex in the backseat of his truck. He rubbed his big hands up the side of her shirt, loose fabric, nearly see through. He could see the piercings of her breasts so he started there. His tongue flicks the tip of them while Blaze throws her head back in pleasure. It was  such a turn on hearing her moan, her voice got higher when she was feeling good. He readjusts himself and pulls her up to straddle him. Things move quickly and they would finish almost as quickly after Conrad came. He wanted to give her the experience too so he kept going, groaning and moaning into her ear too. She loved the pace, but she hated when he leaned over her during their final run and called her Isabel as he emptied himself. 

His eyes were closed when he came back. After they finished, her nipples were still hard. She wiped the smeared lipstick from his mouth with a wet finger. She smiled at him and he did a thing he doesn’t do often – he smiled back. And they waited like that either catching their breaths or admiring one another for a while. The sex had sobered Conrad a bit so, he jumped back into the front seat of the Range Rover and pulled away from the beach, back onto the road to a diner because the girl said she could eat. 

When they pulled up, Conrad was about to take his seatbelt off but she placed her hand over his and said: “Wait.”

He looked at her with intrigue again. “What?” 

“I just remembered I don’t know your name or what you do?”

“I’m Sam and I don’t do anything. I’m just driving through.”

Blaze turned around in the seat and picked up her purse that was on the floor. Inside were the contents she had been craving since getting in Conrad’s truck. “Well, Sam,” she started opening a clear bag with three pills in it. “Here.” She placed the blue pill in his open palm and told him to open his mouth. The after effects of the alcohol had worn off. They didn’t last that long anyway for him anymore. 

He opened. She placed the other blue pill on his tongue and then he closed his mouth. His eyes rolled to the back of his head, and he rested it against the headrest behind him.

“For good measure. This was fun but I don’t need a man to buy me food.” She told him, grinning. Blaze then hopped out of the car and headed for the diner.  She lifted her hand when she got to the door and turned back looking directly at his truck, probably trying to catch his gaze before going inside or before he left. She had a strange premonition she’d never see him again anyway.  His taillights beamed bright red at the end of the gravel before they disappeared into a blend of cars and his Range started to look like another expensive car. 

Conrad looked back through the rearview mirror before he had pulled into traffic to find Blaze still staring in his direction. He didn’t know if she wanted more sex or more money. More something. Honestly, he believed he had not much more to offer her. And he remembered what he called her during his release and he hated himself for it. The kick of the pill though — he feels high in a way he hadn’t before especially on alcohol. A few minutes down the street he had to pull over and press his head against the window because he was simultaneously hot and cold. His brain felt like mush, sloshing around his head but when that subsided what he felt was a complete and utter drug high. He felt good. Distracted from any other pain, he felt alive, not dead. He felt more alive then he had in the past years in medical school then residency. Because everything was hard without her and her and her. The three most important people in his life he had lost no matter what it was in the same summer – his mother, Laurel, and Belly. Jeremiah encouraged him to call while he was out in New York but he was always too busy. School is demanding, maybe he was busy, but he knew not busy enough. He could slip a phone call in between leaving the hospital and heading to the bar for after work drinks. 

Conrad was human too. Not a superhuman, though he wanted to live forever and ever. Get things back on track and just be okay. All that to say, the high felt great and he was able to drive again in five minutes. He signaled back into traffic and continued down the road. 

The thing about some people is they want to defy the odds, even try to. They love the intrigue, the thrill – they fight for it. But when the damage comes around they want to hide. It’s too much. No, no, take everything back. Life has never worked that way and it is not kind. Conrad has wanted things to yield for him for a long time but time shows you what it can do. And life does not yield.

__________

Not everybody likes talking about their battle with grief. All Conrad knew as he was driving down Dillard and passing signs constantly reminding him that he was in Cousins, and that made him miss his mom. There was a time when she would let him put his feet in the ocean and pick up pretty rocks that washed up along the shoreline and they’d laugh together. They’d do it for hours, Jeremiah laughing while he paddled in the water in floaties. Conrad was taught to surf early on and he hated that he couldn’t do that in New York. His mother felt like such a distant memory that he had no access to. Not enough anyway. He wanted to remember everything but something about memories that no one tells you is that they can and will vanish. Your eyes darken at the sides and the things that were once crystal clear become hazy and distorted by the dark. He just wanted it all back. All the summers. All the weed smoking sessions with his brother when they hid from their dad and then came back high as fuck to dive into the pool, wet the feet of their mom. 

His foot hoovered over the brake as he came to a slow stop at a light. While he sat he looked into the console and found a backup phone his mother kept in his car. It wasn’t on but Conrad decided he’d call and see if he could do that in order when he got back to the house. He tossed it on the passenger seat and braked again before speeding through the green light. 

Do you understand what’s going on here? 

What do we think of self-destruction? How long does grieving last? Quite literally nothing can prepare you for the death of a mother or a father or a guardian. Someone who probably lost themselves in raising you into your personhood. These are questions Conrad’s New York therapist asked him right after he moved out there and the residency director suggested every one on his rotation go. 

“This shit is hard,” Conrad thought he was talking about the program. Turns out a lot of “shit” is hard. He did three sessions but the therapist broke him open like an egg. You don’t just stop going to therapy once you’ve been made. That’s the whole point. You start learning when you’re both at an understanding of where you are. Conrad forced himself to talk about pain in the most literal sense and for the next session he scheduled on a Tuesday morning when he knew he needed to be at the hospital at 5am until 11pm. When Micheal called he didn’t answer. Conrad did listen to the voicemail, and actually told Dr. Rogers he’d gone. 

The drugs were settling in deep when he pulled into the driveway and what he saw was the same red jeep he’d been seeing over the course of his teenage and adult life. This time it was dingy, dirty, and had a worn dent in the side of it. 

Conrad shut his eyes and hit his steering wheel with both fist. 

Slowly but surely, another car  pulled up and behind him he could see the same Mercedes from earlier. 

He proceeded to turn off the car and hopped out mad as hell,  slamming the door to his Range. He jogged to the door, not making the effort to turn back and acknowledge Belly who was locking up her car and moving towards the door.

“Conrad!” 

Inside the house was his brother, golden skin with big blue eyes. Jeremiah had grown a beard. He kept his hair curly and it shined. 

“What are you doing here?” Jeremiah asked. 

Conrad turned back behind him to find Belly standing under the halo of the door. She hadn’t stepped inside. In fact, she wasn’t sure she wanted to. Coming by twice in one day might’ve been enough for her. 

“Jere –”

“Conrad, what the fuck are you doing?!” 

Conrad looked down and nodded, “Listen Jeremiah I’m just taking a little break, okay? Believe me.” 

Two brothers standing on the precipice of something extraordinary. Jeremiah had just got fired from his job last week. Came to stay with Belly in her new home, three miles east of theirs. He didn’t want to stay at the beach house by himself so he came to swim and that was it. Belly didn’t come at all. Susannah was all over. 

Jeremiah nodded yes. He understood but no, no, he didn’t. 

When the silence broke, Jeremiah asked, “How long are you staying?”

The longer Conrad stood there the more he started waving side to side. He quickly caught himself by putting his hand on the mantle to hold himself up.

“Is there something I can do?” Belly asked. 

“You can –”

“No,” Conrad said.

“Conrad,” Jeremiah started. “Belly lives up the street. How long are you staying?” 

“Just a few days. Just a few days.” It was getting harder to scramble words together. “Just a few days.”

Jeremiah nodded, “Okay.”

When Conrad turned back towards the door that was still opening letting in bugs he saw Isabel hugging herself. Conrad gestured his long arms for them to go. “I’m okay.” 

Jeremiah didn’t fight it, he just told him: “And answer your damn phone,” before walking  over to the door with Belly. Before they could say anything further Conrad pulled the door closed. 

He almost made it up the stairs. He doesn’t know what the fuck he took with Blaze but his vision went very hazy all of a sudden. Everything was too bright and it didn’t help that the house was practically made out of glass. Sounds were penetrating his thoughts with the veracity of a pitchfork. He wanted to scream. The boy wanted his mother. He could cry about that right? 

He watched the clock as minutes ticked away. He felt scared by that because no, he wasn’t ready. Time steals. It positions you in a certain moment and once that moment is up, it’s gone. In his moments he wanted to spend them right there in that house, so once the drugs wore off he planned to turn the solitude back into a home – go to the grocery. Hold a house warming party. He was confident some of the boys he grew up with were still hanging around Cousins. He always wanted to feel something. But what happens when there’s nothing to feel? Does that mean you’re dead? How long before you know after churning out hours and days and months and years of life? One single moment. One bomb in time that detonates abruptly and there goes your entire fucking life. 

Time takes, takes, takes things away. He could’ve smashed every damn clock in the house when he thought about it.

Chapter Text

Isabel pulled into her house with the shorter driveway than she knew in Cousins about five minutes after leaving Susannah’s beach house. It was a fancy house no doubt and she’d worked hard for it over the years. In the right city, sport psychology pays well. 

“Look, don't worry about Connie. He’ll be good,” Jeremiah said, suddenly. His face turned toward the window that was tinted black. He could make out the windows on the house, the ground, but they weren’t close enough to see the beach and he didn’t know if would’ve from the car anyway. 

“I know but did you see him? Like something is wrong,” she rebutted. She pressured her hands against the steering wheel and head back against the headrest and let out a big sigh. 

Jeremiah put his hand on her thigh. Belly flinched. She hasn’t had him touch her like that since they were eighteen and everything was different then. They are proper adults now — can drink, own houses, get fired from jobs that daddy can’t fix right away. All the things. Isabel just looked at Jeremiah and shook her head, “We can’t.” 

“I’m not going to fuck you after just seeing Conrad. Are you crazy?” He said abruptly and opened the door to the car and got out. “I’ll see you inside.” And he closed it leaving Isabel alone with her thoughts. 

They went rampant. It had been so good to finally see Conrad, she didn’t even know where he ended up. If school went well. If all his dreams came true. After the funeral, once Susannah’s body was cold in the ground she decided to leave Cousin — leave the beach house. Leave them. Laurel was of course froth with grieving her best friend and secret lover. She had to tell the kids finally that in college, for one singular night, Susannah and her had crossed the line. That matters none to any of them. They did not care. Laurel admitted she never got over it so staying was just too hard. Steven, older, decided to stay behind for a while. Princeton hadn’t picked up yet and he had time. 

Belly could cry too  right then. Her thoughts were jammed back with memories she didn’t want anymore. So why was she in Cousins? In walking distance from that house that held so much. She had already abandoned her promise to herself since moving to Cousins full time. Finding work at the local medical center and settling down. She promised herself she would not go to the summer beach house for anything. She wanted to extract her summers at Cousins from her body and mind and live a life where she knew no one but her family. It had hurt too much. Losing too many people at once does that to a growing girl. But she’s an adult now, she makes her own choices so now she makes another vow to herself – I’m not going back to the beach house from here on out. I’m going to do this for myself because I need it, she thought. 

Isabel pushed open the door to her Mercedes and grabbed her things, went up to her house door and went inside without a bother or a tear on her face. 

Inside she had everything designed well and truthfully everything she needed. There were pops of pink, yellow, of course, and memorabilia from her home in Philly. She took most of her mother’s things because Laurel was downsizing as an empty-nester now. She wanted to write novels in different countries. Trying Spain for a while then maybe heading over to Paris. She was in Rome by this time that year. Isabel wanted so badly to call her but she didn’t. A novelist's excursion for peace is a long one and should not be interrupted only under dire circumstances. Isabel thought, I'm an adult. I can figure things out. And anyway she had known really what her mother went all that way for. She needed to get out of America to explore her sexuality. For so long she was repressed, upset even about how things ended with Susannah. She said she kept in touch with the boys when Isabel said she wouldn’t. It was a miracle Jeremiah even found her. Now he’s living with her, squatting more so until he picks up another job and heads back East. He said it wouldn’t be long. 

Isabel dropped her keys on the door landing and walked to the back of the house, to the den to have a seat. 

There was no one to call. 

At one point she had Taylor, but days get long after a while of friendship. They simply grew apart and didn’t need each other. There was nothing wrong with that, right? Both Belly and Taylor had fought for it but fate has a strange way of telling us the truth about a matter. It didn’t bother Isabel much anymore. Taylor had flourished after college at Finch. She went straight to New York with some sorority girls where she lived last time Belly heard. Where she was thriving, last time Belly heard. 

She bumped into the couch realizing that she never actually sat down after making her way inside the den. The room was covered by four glass windows that opened up to a large pool. Arguably smaller than the one she knew but just as blue. Some things don’t change. 

She felt off-centered. She would go swim but she thought she might drown from the destabilization of her body or the anger coursing through her. She would ram right into the wall if she got into that pool – crack her skull in half, see her brother again.  

Chapter Text

Because Cousins is a small, coastal town full of privilege and pretty people who don’t die during the summer, many people don’t talk enough about grief and the nonlinear parts of healing. Scar tissue is real and the threat is pain. It’s amazing that so many people neglect getting treatment for their hurt. That so many people tend to sacrifice their happiness, their luck, and everything they are offered because grief is scary. The death of a loved one leaves a tremendous mark and death of oneself is incredibly petrifying. This shit is not easy. It’s like moving backwards in slow motion watching the characters of your life manipulate time and show you what you once had, but isn’t that cruel? No, people don’t think so. Individuals seldom understand that life gives and it takes away and humans cope how they cope. Cousins Beach is not above the law of living – privilege does not mean anything. Being pretty, I’m sorry, does not stop it. 

It’s not thought about enough, long enough, or correctly. Life moves at record speed and tackles the marrow when it wants to – no need for an explanation – absolutely, no way to completely extract. Life is a big girl, she’s grown now. She can do what she wants. 

By now you understand, that there isn’t just one grieving person, but the whole of them are grieving. The world lost two people from this small pocket of home, took from these small pack of humans. These are not tiny things, these are big things that have very big consequences that may cause irreversible damage. 

Understand that at some point Belly lost Steven – a brother. Conrad, his mother. This can feel like everyone at once, or a singular person all in the same breath. No matter where they go from here you must understand. How could you not? Cousins Beach has these people who move through the world with two feet on the ground, a heart in their chest, and a lot of fight in them. Beautiful if you think about it long enough. 

We are all passing through. 

That in which is gone, has gone so we hope, we pray, we stay up at night looking  for that last shooting star because that means everything wasn’t a lie. Life isn’t just what we said it was and there’s more. There has to be more. There has to be more out there for us. There has to be more and more and a little  more. Belly and Conrad are feeling it in their chest and one won’t survive their grief. Life will move on unfortunately. Time does not stop. Healing does scar. The part of summer that is measured by the number of days they have  stayed in Cousins does count as living yet all that has meant nothing thus far. Belly and Conrad have singled out summers, defining them as the worst part of their life. But they were living in it in the now,  building lives, making promises, and touching back on the past with hope. Do you think they even notice what they’re doing? Do you think they understand?

Chapter Text

The house party idea came and it stuck so he had to go through with it. Conrad had used the same folder his mother had in the kitchen drawer. The one with the caterers names and numbers in them. He ordered the booze over the phone and there was a lot of it. Well, it wasn’t necessarily a house party in the technical definition, just a get-together held at eleven pm with people he didn’t exactly know or remember. The people he would’ve wanted to come didn’t and couldn’t, and those who came were there for the same reasons he was – to forget. Cousins was a quiet town, not much happened. Parties seldom were held during the night, only during the day where everyone was  seen and their clothes could be admired and their hair, their shoes, the glistening jewelry.  

The drugs at Conrad’s party were passed around like secrets on a playground – a rogue game of telephone – nobody knew exactly what they were taking but also didn’t care. Conrad took so much, so many colorful pills for the first time in a long time he could only end up in one place. He passed out on the couch, mouth open and arms splayed back. If Jeremiah didn’t know any better when he came the next afternoon, he would’ve thought his brother was dead. 

Conrad’s system was so overwhelmed with painkillers and alcohol that it shut down before two a.m. – that’s the best way to put it. When he woke up, the house was clear of everybody who’d come but standing over him was his only brother. 

Jeremiah thumped him in the forehead as Conrad’s eyes blinked open. It was hard adjusting to the light so he shut them quickly and then tried again. Soon he couldn’t tell if he was in Heaven. Everything was so bright. Then Conrad saw his brother shaking his head but after a while he simply disappeared. Conrad shot up from the prone position he had passed out in and looked around the house – he knew he didn’t dream it – he knew he was there. He could smell the freshwater scent lingering as it penetrated the house. Wet hair and sandy toes still. 

“Tell me something,” Jeremiah said, appearing in Conrad's sight again. He’d walked over to the kitchen, to the mantel made sure nothing of significant value was missing. Conrad would do the same soon. He would never have another house party when he saw how off center the photo was – how closely the frame was to the edge. How it could’ve shattered and broken his heart. Some things are just unforgivable in his eyes. “Why are you here?” 

Conrad pressed his palm against his forehead, “I could ask you the same thing, Jere.”

“You’re a doctor. Don’t they like never get time off.” 

Conrad debated what to say before picking up off the couch. He didn’t want to think about that. “I’m taking a sabbatical,” he said. 

“A sabbatical?”

“Yeah like a –”

“I know what the fuck that means. Why are you taking one is my question? You haven’t been to Cousins for damn near two years. Christmas I call, you’re busy. Thanksgiving, busy. Hell, fucking Easter,” Jeremiah started. 

Conrad walked around him trying to tune him out but Jeremiah just followed him into the kitchen still ragging on where it was no doubt brighter but at least he could get water or suffer some more from the light that was breaking even the shades. 

They went back and forth about Conrad being home but Conrad didn’t break. Jeremiah was moving in a good direction, he thought. He was healing. His grief seemed to be subdued and he could smile right. Conrad would hate to bring up his pain and by proxy, throw him off. Jeremiah was well, save losing his job. He was good.  At least as good as he could be. As far as Conrad knew Jere wasn’t throwing drinks back like he was at sixteen. He had matured beyond that. And if he did have a drink, he could absolutely handle his liquor. Where Conrad was failing, Jeremiah was thriving. It hurt his heart in the worst way that he couldn’t even pretend right anymore that everything was okay. Now it just showed on his face and everyone seemed to ask questions, find concern, and yet not understand at all. 

“Seriously, what are you doing here?” Jeremiah asked. 

Conrad held the beat a little longer than he was supposed to so Jere punched him in the shoulder. “Can you just – just chill.” 

Conrad had been away for so long. Not just from Cousins but from Jeremiah too. While he was living his life in Los Angeles with his ex-boyfriend, Nic, Conrad was attempting to do the same. Of course, this all looks different. Conrad could have easily called. He could’ve called, but he never did. So, days went on and they drifted apart. Mostly because of missing each other by telephone, ignoring each other’s text messages, and not responding to voicemails. When they did talk, it was never long enough. 

So, this felt too raw. This conversation Jeremiah was attempting to have with him. He would rather have it with someone else. Mostly, he would just rather not have it at all. 

“I’m going to go shower,” Conrad said. “See yourself out.” And he turned around and headed out the kitchen. 

Jeremiah yelled something but by then everything he said was inaudible by Conrad. That’s another thing, when they talked, neither of them listened. 

__________

It had absolutely consumed him. Alcohol and going to the bar. He saw Blaze from time to time and they fucked in the back of his truck. Sometimes at a motel, but he never brought her to the house. It wasn’t long before they were just having casual conversations over pints of beer. Her taking in liquor of a stronger kind. She told him that she needed it. And she really needed it. He told her that there was no way he could get through the day without it and she responded with her lips almost to the glass, “I don’t believe that for a second.” Conrad shrugged. Perhaps she was right but right now, this is what it was. This was how things were going to go for him. He could feel a crash coming soon, but he wasn’t there yet and was not ready (nor prepared).  

Blaze licked her lips. Her hair color had changed, he noticed. Where it was once a smearing brown, now it was a fiery red. She was pretty anyway, but Conrad liked the red and he told her so. 

“So, Sam, ” she said, emphasizing the ‘s’, “What are you doing back in town?” 

Fuck, Conrad thought. He bowed his head so low if the pint was any bigger he’d drown in it. 

“Gotcha, big boy,” she said smiling. “Tell  me seriously, what the fuck are you doing here?” Her voice was laced in concern. She squinted, looking him up and down and thinking about his watch which was real silver and real expensive and if he was any other guy she'd have stolen it by now. There was just something about him and all the women thought so. He attracted them, lured them in and gave them nothing. The feelings were never mutual because each girl gave him so much but Conrad had only ever given one girl that. She doesn’t even want to be around him. He thinks of Belly often, means to say something about her in a coded way but doesn’t bother. He took another swig of beer and said, “you got me.” 

“Yeah,” Blaze said softly. 

“I’m not from out of town. I’m from up the street, truthfully. I was raised here in Cousins just back for a visit.” 

“What’s your name?” 

He smiled into his drink, then looked at her for a long moment. Assessing, probably but not really he already knew what he needed to know about the way she moved and called him out. “Conrad Fisher,” he reached out his hand. A gesture. An olive branch — a way to start over. 

“Renee Tingle,” she said, putting her hand in his. They were small in comparison but it fit. “Everyone calls me Blaze so don’t go around this fucking place calling me Renee. I’ll cut your fucking balls off.” 

They laughed and for the rest of the day they sat talking about nothing and everything. Everything but his life’s truth, his pain, or his mother Susannah. Actually he was actually able to get around talking about her twice. He just pivoted, or took another drink and cleared his throat. He didn’t think it’d hurt so much. The damn memories, but they did. A lot of them did. He forced himself to think about Steven and when it happened that’s the precise moment the freight train crashed. It was always off course, a little destabilized on the fast track. But Blaze had brought up friends and he was one he always knew. Almost picked up his phone to show her a picture but that would’ve meant questions that he had no answers for. 

The beer was no longer numbing. He asked Blaze for a pill. She said yes. She gave it to him. Just one but it was bigger this time. The drive to the beach house was quicker because he sped, keeping his foot on the pedal worrying about passing out. That’s what the pill was for, eventually going to sleep to forget shit. 

He didn’t feel like he dreamt when he slept anymore. Not even nightmares. He felt he had just vanished from the world for a bit and for some reason was coming back in a couple hours when the drug wore off. When he woke up, he grabbed his phone, stuck from earlier in his front pocket. All over his screen were messages from his dad. He had the urge to do it again. Throw the thing up against the wall but he didn’t but he also didn’t pick up the phone. Instead he went to his voicemail and listened to the abysmal messages he left. He said, he heard from the program – “YOU LEFT?!” – he said, you damn idiot. First Brown, now this. Conrad had started to cry after the third one. His father said, “Your mother would be disappointed.” He said, “You should be ashamed of yourself.” 

Conrad sat the phone down and pressed the flat of his palms into his eyes, rubbing away the tears. When he came to, he was able to get himself together enough to go eat from downstairs. Then he sat by the mantel looking at the photo again. Watching the light shine directly on it. Isabel wasn’t in it, she took it but there they all were, so happy that summer goddamn – him, Jeremiah, Laurel, his mother, and over in the corner, cut off at on the shoulder with droopy black hair was Steven Conklin. He placed the frame down and didn’t look at it for a long time after. 

His phone rang with a text message and it was Jeremiah. He wanted to know if Conrad wanted to get dinner. There’s a Korean BBQ place that opened up while he was away that they could go to and talk. Conrad said, yea .  No surprises, he told Jeremiah over text. Just bring your ass, he responded. 

Seven? Jeremiah asked. 

Drop the address.

Chapter Text

Conrad didn’t think Cousins' food could be better than what he had in New York. The eclectic style, the diverse population, and just the people were more cultured. He didn’t expect much from the new restaurant but he went anyway with expectations at his knee caps and a heavy heart. 

Somewhere Belly was eating dinner by herself – a frozen pizza because memories. 

Conrad walked into the place with flip flops on, but the aesthetic seemed to be pretty high class. He knew he could eat with the best of them, dress with them too, but he hadn’t felt like it these days. His arms were limp by his side and his eyes were bloodshot even though all he did was sleep and sit around at Coastal’s. Jeremiah was already at the table. His curly brown hair peered over the booth. Conrad pointed and the host let him on by. 

“Mr. Fisher,” she nodded and said quietly once he was out of earshot. 

Time also sometimes makes you forget an ex-girlfriend. Someone you’d had a year long relationship with who let you play with her boobs in high school. The girl had known that Conrad went on to do big things, she had no doubt he would. A lot of people felt this way about him in Cousins. Thought he’d go on to be that big cardiovascular surgeon his mother was always bragging at the Country Club about. When he got that feeling in his gut, when he was reminded like he was then when he saw Candance at hostess both, he could’ve thrown up. 

“Hey, man,” Jeremiah said as Conrad scooted into the booth. 

Conrad nodded by way of hello. 

“Can you stop being an asshole man? For like one day.”

“Jeremiah, you do realize we haven’t talked in what – six months? Do you understand that? I have nothing to talk about.” 

“Mom would hate this, you know that right.” 

Conrad looked at him silly. Could’ve easily clocked him in the nose, broke it and waved off the pain while leaving the restaurant altogether. His brother bleeding in a booth. He would not care. 

“I guess that’s my cue,” Conrad said, getting up from the table just that quickly. One of the waiters had already turned the grill on.

“You can’t even listen to a conversation involving mom. Conrad, you need help.”

“Fuck you,” he spat. Despite the heat and the indentation of the table where the grill sat, Conrad had mistaken it for the table as he reached for his phone. His hand was on it for three seconds before the pain registered and his brain caught a hold of what it was supposed to tell him. Conrad was arguing with Jeremiah, they were really going at it then all of a sudden he looked down, wide-eyed and started screaming. He yanked his hand back and looked at the destruction. On the grill there were bits of his skin, little patches cut out from his hand being burned, starting to catch fire. 

With his palm turned to him he finally saw it was fiery red. The places where the skin was gone was bleeding violently, blood falling straight to the ground. A simple mistake had gone and transformed a life his mother wanted for him. He was sorry. Conrad was always so very very sorry. 

And then everything started moving so fast. People started noticing the blood and were screaming too. An older woman ran to the hostess desk and frantically told her that there was blood – and a lot of it. The girl Conrad used to date came around the corner of the booths, wide-eyed, frozen in place not knowing what to do. The cooks had to call. 

If he had ever thought about reapplying to residency, which he hadn’t, he would be declined times three. No one would want him. He’d fucked up his hand. His right hand. His money-making hand if he was to go for surgery like his mother wanted him to, he'd have no use. 

He didn’t cry. Didn’t move. 

When the ambulance arrived, he simply climbed into the back, Jeremiah by his side. The paramedic had wrapped everything up. She told him about the potential damage – how he may lose feeling but Conrad didn’t say much in response. The paramedics thought it was shock, like how could he have been so stupid, but truthfully it was because he was taking in the finality of what he had just done. 

I’m going to take your blood pressure. 

This will help you breathe. 

Are you feeling lightheaded at all? 

Follow the light, Mr. Fisher. 

All these directions and commands didn’t make him more likely to comply although they were coming from professionals. He knew what was about to happen. He had studied burns throughout medical school. In New York he’d witnessed more severe cases anyway – people with third degree burns on their face having to take skin from their thighs to replace it. Melted off skin from irons. Which in his mind meant he didn’t have it that bad. He just thought that it was his fault. Nobody else’s. This was karma. He deserved this. Conrad’s body could not register anything but the pain. He was already tailored for death; if it had happened then he might not have felt it at all. 

Isabel’s body moves robotically now. She feels all of her limbs, all of the time. She feels like a rust bucket, hardwired, full stop. She could feel the screws and bolts and mechanics of everything going on in her yet she did not understand it. At some point this wasn’t the case, she believed it was only youth that kept the sand between her toes and waves in her hair from the water, now this was adulthood – there is no sugar dust this time around. 

After getting off from work earlier, she took a full bath and washed her hair and it did nothing but crinkle. She sat at the table and glanced out at the pool, again. The summer sun was pounding on it – she could almost count the heat waves. But then it got dark and she was supposed to go to bed but Isabel stayed up. She wondered about the house because Jeremiah was gone and she was alone. She used her fingertips to touch the ends of the sofa, the stitching and clawed her nails on the wallpaper. Everything was static, nothing was damaged or moved. When she was done, she lifted herself up the stairs and closed herself in her bedroom. She saw pictures. It hurt. Memories circled her consciousness until she dozed off and dreamt about one particular summer where Steven was alive too. 

Jeremiah called Belly because of course he did. At first it was to tell her that he would be home late, leave the porch light on if she could but then he got frantic. The calmness left his body, he was speaking quickly and the words jumbled up. The only thing Belly – Isabel – Bells – the only thing she heard was Conrad and Hospital . That’s all he had to say. She was on her way. 

The scary part about the hospital are the people. Every single one of them are either sick, know someone who is sick, dying, know someone who is dying, or the people trying to save a life. Conrad didn’t know which one he wanted to be. He was absolutely certain he wasn’t ever going back to anyone’s residency program. He was now so damaged, his skin was falling in shreds – he couldn’t understand it. He felt like a loser when they wheeled him into the ER from the ambulance. His hand was still wrapped up, the nurses would pull back each layer kindly. He was catatonic through it all. 

When they tested his blood for good measure, they found four different drugs. 

_____________

Cousins is idyllic, scenery that’s masterful in its architecture and pleasantries. Quaint bookshops with dated books, and flower shops that deliver to far away places. His mother loved it . It’s somewhere people go on vacation. No one actually lives there, right? It’s hard to imagine anyone growing old in a town weathered with teenagers and college students during three months of the year as the town jumps to keep up. The ones who grow up there move away, and no one ever comes back. Conrad thinks of how the population is a little under nine thousand as he waits for the doctor to come in. They admitted him to a room. Jeremiah is sitting beside him, feet tapping the floor as his nerves jump.

Nine thousand and one. 

“What the fuck were you thinking?” he whisper-shouted to Conrad. 

Conrad’s eyes were closed. He had his head pressed back into the pillow. Maybe if he pressed hard enough he could disappear within the mattress. He could just go away.

“Fuck Connie. Dad is going to be pissed.” 

“Fuck Dad. He can’t come around once a year and think he gets to dictate what I have going on every second of the goddamn day,” Conrad spat. “Now leave me the hell alone.”

For a while nobody spoke but the newscaster talked about the heat wave for tomorrow. 

Jeremiah suddenly changed his tune, “What if they call the cops?” 

“They can’t.” Conrad responded. 

Did he forget Conrad was a junior doctor? That he has been on the other side. He felt insulted that Jere asked him the questions he did at all. Nobody asked ‘why’. And no, Jeremiah did not bring up their mother this time.

Isabel Conklin could get through the front desk quickly. She had a badge and knew some of the nurses. She said his name, Conrad Fisher and they pointed in the direction of his room. 

“Thanks,” she said, following the arrows on the floor. It took her around the corner. Down a long hall and right to another nurse station. One of them with plaits the color of chocolate said, “He’s in room 662.”

The doctor said he’d need a skin graft. Conrad knew that. He said he could do it in the morning but he also wanted to talk about the drugs. 

Jeremiah sat up straighter. 

“There are a lot of concerns here, Mr. Fisher. You know I know you well. I remember you when you were just a boy. You too, Jeremiah,” he smiled. “And God, your mother, she –”

“Can we —”

“---was a light. The community misses her.”

Conrad sank a little further. 

No matter what, Conrad will always feel the effects of his mother’s name on the wind. He hates when people bring her up. He wished they would stop, but he also wished for other things too. 

“Conrad,” the doctor sighed. “Listen, I know these last couple of years things have been tough. Trust me I get it with your mother and your friend – these were good people. All those things take a toll, but buddy, drugs are not the answer.”

Jeremiah nodded but Conrad didn’t see. His focus was on a point on the wall. 

“Drugs?” Her voice is quiet, not small, but barely there. It brings the room to a standstill though. There’s no world where it would not have.

Chapter Text

When Conrad was in New York he used to go out for drinks with one particular resident. He had made a friend, and he was always cautious of those but this guy reminded him of another friend he had. He was funny without meaning to, wicked smart. A real handsome guy who the ladies of the pediatric floor loved. During their rotation together in the Disney Pavilion, even the moms tried to talk to them. So, yes, they were the dynamic duo of Mount Sinai Hospital — good lucking and smart as hell. He never thought they’d fall out of friendship. One day Darius just stopped showing up to Happy Hour, messaging saying that he was too tired and then not messaging at all. Then when Conrad tried to speak with him, there was a cavern that split open between him when Darius said he was passed up for an internship he applied to because the supervisor already had someone else “in mind”.

“What?” 

“Don’t act like you didn’t know,” Darius said. He leaned against the on-call room door. Darius tried to walk away from the eyes and ears of the hospital – the nurses. He didn’t want to make a scene. 

Conrad wasn’t confused, he’d heard. “Dude, come on, you know —”

“Just forget it, Conrad,” he said, shaking his head. “You’ll never understand anyway.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Beet red. 

“Conrad, look at you, man,” Darius emphasized. He twisted the doorknob. “You ooze privilege.” And just like that he’d lost another buddy. 

__________

Belly walked further into the room. She let the door slam behind her but it scared her when the lock actually clicked. She jumped. Jeremiah stood up. 

The doctor recognized her immediately, “Isabel Conklin,” He said. 

It was in fact a reunion. 

Conrad looked at Jeremiah who did not have his attention anymore. Jeremiah was walking towards Belly standing at the door. “Did he say drugs?” 

“What is she doing here?” Conrad said, and just like that the monitor started beeping. His blood pressure was increasing, heartrate. Panic was shown on his face. He was not okay. 

“I apologize Mr. Fisher. Would you like me to step out?”

Conrad nodded and the doctor excused himself, touching Isabel’s shoulder before exiting. 

Isabel goes, “Thanks, Dr. Philips.”

She walks closer to the bed, afraid of what she might see in his eyes. She used to could see the ocean in the blueness of them but now they’ve gone bad on her. She doesn’t know what she sees. 

They stare at each other a minute. Conrad is taking in her beauty that was untampered with through all the storms and Belly, she was looking for the worst of it. She shook her head, lowered it and then looked him straight in the eye. 

“If you say one thing about Susannah, I’ll have you thrown out of here.” Conrad said. 

He knew her well. She bit her tongue and said something she never thought she’d have to say to this man, she said, “She’d hate this on you. You know it.” 

Conrad couldn’t say much just because he felt it. His eyes pleaded with Jeremiah to do something. To stop her before she went too far, but he didn’t even know where “too far” was. They were in the vicinity of a cliff. She was about to go over it. That’s all he knew.  He couldn’t understand himself most days either. It’d been three years he should have found some sort of solace, yet here he was. He couldn’t believe how stupid he was to have one, burnt his hand and two, let the doctors test his blood so soon after the binder he had. It was baby’s first time taking that many drugs, Blaze would be proud. 

He reached across his lower half with his good hand and press the nurse call button. 

“-- you don’t get to do this, okay? Jeremiah called me and he was crying. Do you understand what you’re doing, Conrad?” 

Conrad closed his eyes again – now, he was only listening, not seeing how dramatic Belly’s movements are when she spoke to him. It distracts him from thinking about how they once were so in-sync with him. They moved like the flow of a creek river and that was forward, always forward. He didn’t have to think about all those times they argued but all she needed was a kiss and reassurance that no, he wasn’t going anywhere. That yes, he did love her very much. These are the things that mattered to her then. 

Then they went and got big on different sides of the world, now Conrad doesn’t know how to calm her down. How to soothe her. How to bring her back to stasis so he could explain. He’d convinced himself that he would explain things to her if she would just shut up. 

“Susannah wouldn’t want this for you.”

He’d carry that a long time. Even when they are in a good place, he’d be reminded that she did say this. It clotted in his mind, stayed there and swelled. 

When the nurse finally came in, Conrad had angered Isabel so with his non response and his uncaring behavior that she left herself. 

“I’ll see you back at the house, Jeremiah,” she said. Shaking her head on the way out. 

When Conrad opened his eyes, Belly was gone, and a lone tear shroked his upper cheek but it went thin before it hit his gown, which meant  he didn’t even look like he had been crying at all. 

His fucking hand was throbbing now. His chest contracting every five minutes with palpitations. He wanted to move on from this. Tomorrow he could move on from this. The doctor said he’d do the graft very early in the morning. He could heal at home. “No more visitors. Please. For the love of God, nobody else.” Conrad was tired, if that makes sense. His body was more active than he was. His movements were now contrived because all he wanted to do was rest. Jeremiah didn’t say much after Isabel left the room. He settled in for the night. Conrad told him he didn’t have to, but he was right, Jeremiah thought. They hadn’t seen each other or talked in a good six months — seven months, to be fair.

In the middle of the night though Conrad was thankful somebody was there. When he awoke and everything had marinated, he felt increasingly worse both physically and mentally. The psychological trauma that this burning did a number on him. He hadn’t been prepared to potentially lose feeling in his dominant hand. What if when he was okay again he’d want to go back to be a doctor? Now that dream had gone to shit. And, he’d worked so hard to get there too. Some people believed in him, and others just thought he was the town’s bad boy because girls liked him. Liked to have sex with him to say they did and he’d do it. He’d let them talk, even when there was nothing much to say about it. People had sex and left afterwards but these girls he was fucking around with were convinced they had just discovered the world laying down with Conrad Fisher. They’d tell anyone their story. 

The dream was simple, Steven, Jeremiah, Belly, Mom, Laurel, John, Aunt Julia, and Skye — all in a straight line. They stood tall, these people he loved. Amazing how time conspires against you to take all the fun from your life. That paradise on earth doesn’t last long and who the fuck knows what is after. Conrad doesn’t want to think about the Big Lonely, as Susannah called it. 

“Jere?” Conrad said, his eyes misty from tears but blank of anything else. They couldn’t give him pain killers because of the heavy drugs they found in his system. “This is the best I can do,” Dr. Philips said, hanging a ibuprofen drip. Conrad could truly snatch that shit out of his veins. But he was tough enough. He could endure. 

“Jere?” He called again. 

Jeremiah was already up – the moaning and groaning of pain his brother felt didn’t lend well to a good night’s rest. Besides the last time he’d been in a hospital he was walking up with a collection of belongings to his mother and not his mother. She had been reduced to her things, like we all are. 

“Yeah, man,” Jeremiah finally said. He leaned up against the bed. He couldn’t see much in the dark but he could hear the sound of the rough bed as Conrad adjusted. 

“I dropped out of the residency program in New York,” Conrad revealed. 

Jeremiah had already known. He’d been talking to their father. 

“I just, I just couldn’t do it, you know? You know how sometimes it’s just difficult to hang on to something that major for such a long time? I’ve been wanting to be a doctor since I was nine.” 

Jeremiah just let him go on but there was a beat of silence so deafening even the monitors seemed to quiet themselves. Conrad in a violent plea said, “Don’t ever call Isabel on my behalf again. I don’t want to see her.” 

He nodded in response in the darkness, “Yeah.”

Conrad couldn’t see shit in the room, but he felt like he had gotten his point across. And he knew, someday, he would need to see her again anyway.

Chapter Text

Sight and vision are two different things. When Conrad sees Belly, every fucking time, he falls back in. Summers clearly mean a lot there but there are some summers that should be scrubbed from memories, Conrad thought. When he sees Belly now he wants to forget. 

“You’re not doing yourself any favors,” Jeremiah said all of a sudden. Belly had been gone hours and the room was quiet. The tv was muted and the machines were stabilized. At least a bit to where the noise wasn’t blood curdling. To where at least one could think. Jeremiah stood up from the seat he’d been occupying the whole time. He walked closer to the door, thought he’d go down to the cafeteria now, but turned and said: “You’re going to have to talk to her at some point.” Conrad didn’t respond. He chewed on his bottom lip with his eyes closed again. 

The doctor did the graft and released him almost immediately. The burn didn’t tear too much of his skin off. Some parts were still salvageable. He didn’t have to take him apart too badly to fix him. 

Once he was back at the beach house, things looked a little different. There was still a mess. He still needed to mop the floors, pick up a few strays of paper. There were red solo cups sitting on the counter. He needed to throw everything away, expunge his brain of that night. He honestly needed a drink. Now that he was back again, by himself, Jeremiah had dropped him off at the house, he could do what he wanted and that’s what he wanted. His truck would sit at the restaurant for a few days. Just long enough for him to be able to grip things again. He wanted a blue pill, too. These are things that crossed his mind. 

Conrad’s phone vibrated in his back pocket just as he was about to get settled in – a New York area code. He figured it was just his program calling so he declined it. Then they left a voicemail and he didn’t listen. Besides the random phone calls and text messages throughout the day of people “checking in” Conrad was essentially on his own with his thoughts. Therapy wasn’t an option anymore. He didn’t trust too many people in Cousins and sometimes confidentiality were just words. 

He flopped on the couch. He typed a message to Isabel. He said: Hey, sorry about earlier. Hope you’re not concerned or anything. Don’t worry about me. He debated if he should send it. It kind of felt corny from where he sat. He was an asshole, he knew that but he also knew Jere was right. He sat on it for a bit, erasing and retyping the same message over and over again until he settled on just one: Hey . 

Blaze said she would come over. Every time he saw her she had different colored hair, and he said so. 

“Can’t a girl live,” Blaze said. She hugged him and then looked wide-eyed at his wrapped up hand after it touched her back. “What the fuck happened, dude?”

Conrad closed the door once she stepped inside. He didn’t say anything about it. 

“I’ve never been to a beach house before,” Blaze admitted, taking in the scenery from across the room. She had quickly made herself at home. 

Conrad chuckled, “How have you lived in Cousins your whole life and never been to a beach?”

“Two things, Mr. Know-it-All, one who said I’ve lived here all my life? And two, I said I’ve never been to a beach house .” 

Conrad raised his hands in surrender, “Because people don’t forget girls who kick football players in the balls their freshman year of highschool.” 

Deadpanned. 

Blaze turned back from the glass doors she was looking at the pool through, looking over at the beach too, seeing everything there was to see. She somehow had never looked at Conrad, but then she really looked at Conrad. 

“I’m not stupid,” Conrad said. 

“Why didn’t you say anything before?” 

“Because it doesn’t matter. I like to think people are new at some point in their life. You’re not the same girl you were in high school” 

Blaze walked closer to him and studied his crooked grin. She playfully punched him in the arm, “Why’d you have me introduce myself then? Fucker.” 

He shrugged and moved about the living room. He kept turning back to see if she was following him and she was. Blaze was two years younger than him. She was a firecracker in high school. That’s how Conrad remembered it. When Victor called her ugly when she started at Finch High School, she took it upon herself to show up to the boys football practice and handled Victor right on the field – in front of the whole team. She was suspended immediately effective that day but she also laughed at herself. She was happy and she was going home. Conrad remembered thinking that was badass. You don’t forget badass people, just like people don’t tend to forget their first love. 

“Change your hair all you want. I see you, Renee,” Conrad said. 

Blaze eyes moved to the ground but she grinned but it disappeared just as fast as it came. “Thought you’d be married by now,” Blaze took a seat behind him. In the rocking chair his mother loved. He tried not to stare too hard, he looked away but his glance kept coming back. 

“Thought you’d be that big shot doctor by now.”

“You have a lot of assumptions about me sounds like it.”

“No,” Blaze said. “I just remember too.”

Conrad nodded slowly and walked past her while she was sitting. His bare feet were slapping the wood floors. He was pacing, creating a draft. He didn’t exactly realize it.  

Blaze slapped her hands together, then asked: “So, where is everybody?”

“Who?” But Conrad could guess. She was talking clear, straight to the point. He knew exactly who she was talking about. “Jeremiah’s around here somewhere. He came back to Cousins too –”

“Cut the shit, Connie baby ,” she mocked. “Why isn’t she here right now? You guys should’ve been married by now.” Her feet were placed flat on the floor. This was intentional, Conrad thought. All her questions were like swords to the heart. And they were precise and the give was tough, the knives never fell out. 

“I see her around town a lot. Walking all pretty with that nice ass hair.” 

Conrad nods but doesn’t say anything yet. 

“She even works down at the hospital. One of my clients busted his knee and talked my ear off about her one night.” 

“What’s your point?”

Blaze stood up, “Just curious, y’all used to be so close. Let Susannah tell it y’all were born to wed.”

“First of all, no we’re not going there. Second, life moves on. People stop talking. It’s not a big deal.” Conrad’s nerves were getting bad. He could explode any second now. 

Blaze got comfortable quickly. She started pacing with him, moving in the house like she knew it. Conrad said nothing. He could’ve said so much but he chose to say nothing. 

“We are talking about the same person, right? The same people?”

“Sure,” he answered. 

Blaze squinted. Someone knocked on the door. Conrad moved to the left and Blaze did too. She smiled up at him, his broad shoulders straight on as he shivered. “I’ll get the door.”

Isabel went around and circles trying to decide if she should go by the beach house, go see Conrad. She needed to see him. To ask him to his face if he’s doing it again. 

When he opened the door, she stood there plainly. She wore these black leggings and a skin tight athletic shirt. She had just come from the gym, he could’ ve figured that. She got his message and that’s why she was there too. Some conversations do better in-person than over the phone. Miscommunication can be crazy and dangerous for people like them.

“What are you doing here?” 

“You texted?” Isabel said, holding her phone up like it explained everything. 

“Yeah – I —” Conrad started. 

“Can I come in?” She said, gesturing to the inside of the house. She never thought it would come to this. This place, Susannah’s beach house, the Fisher home used to be a surrogate home for her. She never thought she’d see the day that it changed. 

Conrad thought and didn’t move. He didn’t know how to introduce Blaze to Belly or Belly to her. Not that he needed to explain himself; it was just going to be awkward. His palms sweated so he rubbed them against his khakis. 

When she rounded the corner, Blaze said, “And just like that…”

Conrad stood behind Belly for a moment before getting in front of her. 

There was no need for an introduction, they both knew who each other were. Blaze gathered her bag from the chair and started for the door. Conrad looked, surprised that he didn’t want her to go. Taken aback that he couldn’t stand being alone with Belly. He looked down at Belly who hadn’t said anything since coming in. A small wave was all she had. There’s another girl, she thought, but that’s all she thought. 

“Let me walk her out,” Conrad said following Blaze to the door. 

“What?! Don’t look at me like that,” Conrad said to her as she grinned, removing herself from the house. Her beat up Toyota was parked in the front of the house. 

“Boom, Connie baby,” she said before spinning around and walking to her car. She threw her hand up by way of saying ‘later’. He swallowed a lump in his throat, and stood as Blaze slung her car around the curb and disappeared into the city limits. 

Their conversation was soft. They hadn’t been soft with each other since high school when summers were clean. When the damage wasn’t done, and they could stand to look at each other. 

“Hi,” Isabel said, shifting uncomfortably. “Sorry if I interrupted anything. I was in the neighborhood and I got your message. Thought you might want to talk.” Isabel looked around the house and remembered so much. She thought she could hear her own laughter bouncing off the ways or Steven screaming from upstairs that she couldn’t go to the beach party with the boys. 

“Yeah, no, you’re fine. I just wanted to apologize for yesterday.” He said. 

He rubbed the back of his head and his hair stood up on end. The brown floppiness of it messing up a bit. 

Isabel leaned in and said, “Conrad,” her ponytail swinging to one side. She looked at him, “What are you doing?”

He chuckled and looked at the floor, “C’mon, let’s not.”

He couldn’t look at her straight on. 

“Look at me,” she said. She walked closer, he could see her tennis shoes in his sight now. When he finally did look up she was still staring at him. “I’m not mad anymore.” 

The Night of 

4.5 Years Ago – Cousins Beach

The car would hold in a high speed chase. With Conrad driving, it could easily be the winner. The getaway car, if need be. 

This is the summer before Conrad leaves for medical school. The boys are all home. Steven is on his way to Princeton, and Jeremiah is going north. They are essentially kids here. The summer nights are long, so everything that is supposed to happen happens. There are no interruptions right now, so everyone is happy. 

Susannah hasn’t cut her hair because she is supposed to so she doesn’t have to see strings of it coming through the spaces of her fingers. Laurel is home. Belly Conklin is just Belly, Bells, not Isabel – nobody calls her that. 

“So, you understand, right?” Steven says on his way down the stairs. He’s constantly looking up to see if Conrad is listening but he’s deep in his phone. He got a Goodmorning message from Belly and after last night, he has to respond. 

“Dude!” Steven smacks Conrad on the shoulder and Jeremiah laughs. 

“You already know who he’s texting,” he says. 

“Man, I don’t want to hear about you texting my sister. Are we taking the mustang or no?” 

Steven and Jeremiah weren’t allowed to drive the mustang. Conrad was the oldest. He was the one responsible. 

“Yeah, man,” Conrad finally says, attention back on the boys. “Yeah, yeah, we’ll take the mustang.” 

“Don’t you boys look nice,” Susannah says with a smile on her face. Laurel stands beside her and she is grinning too.  “One,” she says and Laurel confirms it. 

The boys have to be back by one a.m. They know this. 

Fast cars are so cool. It only hurts when the clutch gives out, the brakes automatically lock along with the seatbelts and the person who isn’t thrown from the vehicle is trapped inside a burning apparatus. It only hurts when you lose a part of yourself, a brother even – someone you swear you know well.

Chapter Text

Isabel was holding her stance now. She was looking Conrad straight in the eyes. She saw nothing where she used to see herself. Conrad said, “Don’t.”

Isabel is not willing to stop now, she’d come too far. She tried to grab his hand. Long nights in an empty house, with no tv and the lights out does that to a girl. She had thought about some things. She’d heard conversations that Jeremiah had through the wall on Conrad’s behalf – talks with his father about Conrad’s absence from New York – what is he doing? The ones with Danica, his resident leader who was way friendlier than she was supposed to be, and sometimes even her own mother. 

He slowly pulled back. 

He looked down at her polished fingertips as they grazed him when she felt him let go. Both their arms dropped to their side, limp.  

“You don’t have to say that,” he said. “Never say things you don’t mean.”

“Conrad,” Isabel pushed the flyaways of her hair from her face, looked at him deeply though he didn’t know and said, “I won’t let you rot. You know that.” 

He had never wanted to forget everything so bad. He wanted to do something that was equal to having the beer he drank course through his veins. That feeling of slush that he turned into when things got good. Conrad knew stuff could get bad when he drank, but it also felt so fucking great. Isabel brought out a different side to him — both good and dangerous.

Since the day she came over there has been a heavy energy static in the space around the living room. Conrad avoided it, stayed in his room, missed calls from important people and ate Cheetos for breakfast. The chip dust he wipes on a white towel that he takes from the bathroom that was for the pool. He has nowhere to go.

Blaze texted a flyer and on it is a band he’s never heard of – tells him to come tonight and bring his “girlfriend”. He messaged back a middle finger emoji. She laughed on the other end. 

When Jeremiah called he picked up, “How’s the hand?” 

“It’s hanging in there,” Conrad responded. He started throwing a small ball up at the ceiling while he waited for his brother to say something with his phone on speaker. 

“Have you talked to dad any?” 

“No.”

“Conrad –”

“Jeremiah.”

“Stop acting like a little baby and call him. I’m sick of making excuses for you.”

“Then don’t. I don’t care what dad thinks,” Conrad spat. He sat up. 

Jeremiah had been waiting to bring this up, he said, “Yeah because all you want to do is hang around with a damn prostitute." 

“Fucking what?” Conrad said, anger boiling in his gut. Blaze was his friend and she could do what she wanted but he wasn’t going to let his brother or anyone disrespect her. He did not care. 

“This town is as big as your palm. Everybody knows.” Jeremiah concluded. 

“Isabel told you, right?”

“Doesn’t matter. Stop fucking around. Take your ass back to New York or find a fucking job you can’t just sit around on your ass all day.”

That was hard for Conrad to hear – reality. Everyday since getting back to Cousins he’s felt wrong. He doesn’t want to leave though. Something about being there still felt somewhat right but somehow felt like a punishment, like he knows what he’s done and he needs to pay. Like towns don't forget tragedies either. 

He recalls the time Darius talked about his brother who was shot in Mayfield, Mississippi when he was twelve. On the playground. Conrad thought about how he struggled to get the words out because they sat tight in his throat, a lump or something that he couldn’t cough up. Something that was too big to extract – it would kill him. Even bad memories serve a purpose, if only to show you that you’ve survived the big things. Take them all out and you die. It’s a feeling at first, but anything can be lethal. 

There is no proper time to tell anyone about how good they’ve had it. Everything felt like it kept coming to Conrad. Of course, his dad was angry with him for dropping the residency but he didn’t understand why. Of course, Laurel was disappointed (because he knows Jeremiah has told her). Absolutely, Belly was wondering if he’s going back, and how far this time. These were all valid. He knew this. Conrad was not a bad person. He was adjusting to life. His grief had stained him a little bit, for he couldn’t move like he used to, he had to purposely readjust since he was not healing. Healing would look like trying. And everyone has always known Conrad before Conrad had known himself, therefore, he was not trying. They’d said it to him. 

He couldn’t have succeedingly  left the gravesite without getting dirt on his shoes. Dirt on the shoe tracks. The grains will embed themselves. Years later when dirt shows up in the home you’ve built – for Conrad it was his New York high-rise, you can imagine his first thought isn’t that it came from Cousins. It tracks, dirt, and grief, it’ll reveal itself when it’s ready and the devastating thing about it is it can make a mess. 

New York felt suffocating in a way that he couldn’t explain. He always felt partially bad for having gone anyway after everything happened. His gut was telling him to stay but Laurel Conklin, a surrogate mother to him like how Susannah was a surrogate mother to Isabel and Steven, told him to go. Go, be big now, Laurel said. Take the world for what it is or you change it with what you can. Don’t just sit around. I’m not., she smiled. I’m going to continue to live life because that’s what they would’ve wanted for me. I’m going to go. I hope you don’t stick around here too long wondering ‘what if’. Conrad, she said, look at me. I’m not mad. Laurel shook her head while Conrad’s remained in his hands. At one point he sniffled so Laurel continued. It was six days after the funeral, I really hope you’ll at least try that opportunity in New York because you still deserve it. You haven’t diminished in my eyes. You’re still worthy of so much love. And I know you are going to give it to the world in whatever way you can. I don’t want you to let go. She patted him on the shoulder and went back inside the beach house for the final time before flying to Europe. 

New York had afforded him a lot. The day he decided to leave the residency, he had been thinking about for a while. His heart was just too heavy and when you’re a doctor you see too many things. Death is your friend. There’s 007 – one of his cohort buddies was that. There was DOA – he’d gotten plenty of those. Truthfully, and all he really knows, is that it didn’t work out. He regreets a lot of things, can’t actually sleep properly anymore but leaving New York, chucking the residency down a blender, fucking up his hand, he does not regret those things. 

After hanging up with Jeremiah. He decided to try going downstairs again. But first he looked out the window overlooking the pool. When he looked down, there she was again. Standing at the lip of the water. He took a deep breath and watched as she walked the perimeter of the pool like she was inspecting it. She didn’t dip her toe in or anything. She just stared. Conrad watched her watch it for a moment before going through the stuffy living room and answering her knock on the glass door. 

“Sorry,” was the first thing she said. 

Conrad shook his head no. 

“How’s your hand?” 

“It’s healing.” 

When Conrad was cleaning before he got knocked out by the stuffiness, he discovered a bag of pain killers stuck in the side of the chair Blaze was sitting in. Then earlier he’d gotten a text saying “Bring that to the concert.”

He had taken one so his movements were sluggish, slow. 

He stepped back and let Belly inside. 

“You don’t have to knock, you know.” He reminded her. He underwood that the beach house used to be hers too. 

“I’ll never just walk into your home.” 

Conrad nodded, “Fair enough, but you have stakes here too.” 

Belly tilted her head and her shiny black ponytail went along with  it, she smiled a little, a soft smile, one that disappeared quickly but he caught it. “I don’t,” she said softly. 

Conrad stared down at her and remembered. Her features haven’t changed much in her face since they were younger. She still has those dazzling brown eyes that dance in the presence of any light – fake or not. The plumpiness of her lips are highlighted with a tinted red. She smacked them several times during their conversation, mindlessly licking them. 

“Did you want to swim?” He asked after a beat. “Is that what you came over for? I saw you from upstairs, I thought maybe you’d want to swim or something. The house is yours.”

She shook her head. “I have a pool. No, I was just looking at it,” she started. “Actually came over to see you.”

“Whose sending you?” Conrad asked. He thought Jeremiah first but then he thought his dad might've finally gotten ahold of her. 

Isabel was taken aback. “No one?” 

“Was it my dad? I’m sure he was just ecstatic when he found out you were here too with Jere. Probably thought you could talk me into going back to residency, right?” 

“You’re so angry,” she said. “And you are wrong.” It was true. No one was sending her. She kept coming back on her own accord. Some people fester in their pain, others  like to move around with it and once Isabel’s rustic hold was released after some time. She was able to move more freely. “You don’t need to be angry anymore.”

Conrad wiped his eyes, a misty coat had taken over but he shook his head — he choked out some words but they were indiscernible to Isabel. She didn’t ask for him to repeat himself. 

“Can I give you a hug?” 

“No,” he said quickly. “I – I—” He broke at that moment. He felt something inside of him tighten when she said that because she wasn’t supposed to. Not to him. Not after all this time. Stay mad. Keep his feet to the fire. Let him rot. He deserved it. 

Conrad moved to the kitchen to grab a paper towel to wash his face. He groaned, keeping the paper over his eyes until he finally removed it. “I’m going to go,” Isabel said. She looked at her wrist, saw the time, and said: “I have a client in two hours and I need to get ready.”

“Gotcha,” he said. Gotcha. 

Without asking again she gave him the quickest hug she’d ever done. Her arms did not even get to extend around his back before he pulled away. She wasn’t shocked. No, but it did hurt her that they had come to this. 

Once she showed herself the door, he jogged after her and said, “There’s a concert tonight on the beach. Let me know if you want to come? I can send you the flyer.”

She held it for a beat. Couldn’t believe he even asked her that after the moment they had, but a part of her understood because how could she now. “Yeah, send me the flyer.”

She opened the door and pushed outside. Her car was waiting for her. The birds seemed to sing when she walked out. The squirrels skidded across the gravel in hurried glee. He thought she's got the entire world waiting at her feet.

Chapter Text

Conrad knew it was time to go once it got darker outside. He hadn’t talked to Blaze yet, but he took another one of her pills. Folding it underneath his tongue and shook his head as he drank the water to push it down. He didn’t know if Belly was actually going to come, but she responded to his message from days ago when he was out of the hospital saying “Nine?” 

Conrad replied “Yes, north beach. You’ll hear it.”

Belly didn’t say anything but she read the message. He could see it. 

On his end he waited for as long as he could then he walked down to the beach. The concert was loud. He was surprised he didn’t  hear sirens from the police cars. It was something he heard often when he was younger. He wasn’t able to stop them – they just kept coming. 

Conrad understood that the walk would be menacing, being out by the water again. He felt the breeze. His skin wore it in the form of goosebumps. He brushed his hair back with his hand and started staggering. The pain pill had kicked in. 

Just a ways before you could get to the stage, there were guys handing out beer bottles, already cracked open. He took one but didn’t say anything. The dudes were cheering for no reason. He high-fived one of them with his good hand and then kept walking. 

In the midst of the crowd he didn’t recognize anyone he knew. He’d bet they were all younger than him though. The crowd unbecoming to age, but filled to the brim with audacious behaviors. Conrad had no room to talk, so he didn’t give it a second thought. Before no time he’d run into Blaze anyway, and that’s when things really kicked off. He was not able to control anything – things just got out of hand really quickly. They got bad in a hurry, so when he looked back on it his vision and memories were so fuzzy and messed up he couldn’t make out what caused it. If there was a reason or why. There was just an unfiltered need to go backwards all the time. Conrad could not stay in the present. He’d tried, and failed too. 

Blaze was wearing a tube top, her dark skin was glowing even under the moonlight. Light was dying fast and the bonfires all over were reaching for the stars. There was laughter – high and low. Everybody seemed to come out during the summer nights. It was the joke of Cousins – the place disappeared in the winter because no one was seen on the beach or in the streets. Only in the summer was it alive. The winter killed things, so many damn things. 

“Thought you weren’t coming,” Blaze said leaning into Conrad. Her voice loud over the band. 

“I said I was,” he responded. Blaze smiled, “Where’s wifey?” Conrad didn’t even engage though he thought about Isabel, whether or not she was coming or was her response futile. Meant nothing. Maybe she was just entertaining him and she never intended to come. Perhaps, it was all a joke that’s why Blaze brought her up – she was in on it too. 

“Here,” Conrad picked his pocket and with a closed fist placed the remaining pills in her hand. 

Blaze looked down and said, “Looks like someone had a party.”

“Yeah, whatever,” and for a second Blaze thought she saw a smile. It could’ve been the light. Everybody knew it did strange things in the night. 

“Follow me?”

“Hey,” a voice barely audible over the loudness said. But Conrad would know that hushed tone anywhere. 

When he turned around he saw Isabel, she was wearing red. Dazzling, shimmering, almost gleaming up against the back light of the  fire. She looked good and this was something he would not forget. 

“Hey.” Conrad forgot about his wrapped hand, so when he tried passing the beer to his other hand it fell. The contents spilled all over Isabel’s feet. He immediately dropped to his knees. 

“Oh, I’m sorry, Belly,” he said. 

Of course she didn’t mind. She saw Blaze standing there smiling. 

“I seriously thought you guys would be married by now,” she said. And she was serious. Her face locked in a position that said so. She stood, her eyes, almond-shaped with hearts in them. She saw it all over them…their love for each other. 

“Can you stop saying that?!” Conrad said, turning back around to try to clean up his mess. 

Blaze threw her hands up in surrender, “I’m just saying. Hi, how are you, Isabel? Looking lovely tonight, if someone else doesn’t say it” she said. She pointed her thumbs at Conrad whose hands were deep in the sand now. 

He was frustrated. Embarrassed even and didn’t know what to do. 

“I’m good, Renee,” Belly responded. 

“Finally proposing I see.” Jeremiah. 

Conrad lifted himself from the ground, leaving the sand on his knees. He rolled his eyes and looked over at Belly, apologizing again. She touched his shoulder, told him it was okay. But he’d messed up what looked like some expensive sandals – she could not forgive him. He would go on apologizing throughout the night and Belly would be confused on what about after a while. She couldn’t keep forgetting him because it was unlocking her memories. It was destroying her peace to keep going back. At some point you have to draw boundaries. What Conrad was doing, though nothing was intentional, to Belly she didn’t feel like it was, was that he was constantly on the verge of apologizing for that summer. Again and again. Truthfully she didn’t want to hear it but she didn’t know how to say that without sounding insensitive – like she did not care. Because she did care. Looking out of the calm of the night water, she felt his presence, oh, she cared something serious. Their grief just moved differently. Being two separate humans does that, even to supposed lovers. She could not absolve him of whatever it was he needed to be pardoned for anymore because at some point she thought she was the only one who could. Now, after years of thinking, talking to her mom, being in Florida and then coming back to Cousins, she knew more. You just live, and you start to know way more than you thought you did. 

“Cut the shit, Jere. It’s not funny.” Conrad gripped his bad hand which was literally pressed against the ground seconds ago. It was now throbbing. 

“You okay?” Isabel asked him. She saw him wince as he shook his hand out. 

Conrad nodded, “Yeah. Are you good?”

“I’m good.”

Blaze looked at them from the outskirts. She was standing behind Jeremiah who was over six feet tall, covering her small frame. Conrad didn’t forget she was there but she’d bet everyone else did. 

Conrad reached around Jeremiah and grabbed Blaze’s wrist and pulled her over. “There you are,” he said. “Don’t hide now.” 

Isabel chuckled, standing there watching them. She thought about what she just said. I thought you guys would be married by now. What has Conrad told her? She thought. Why does his friend seem to think they would be married? Has Isabel given any indication that’s what she wanted? And when? Conrad and her hadn’t been together seriously since the summer after he graduated high school. That was four years ago now. She was not the same person and she could tell, neither was he. Yet she asked herself if that would’ve ever been possible – her and Conrad out in the real world, hand in marriage, talking about kids, and white picket fences or beach houses. How would that life look for them? What happened to it? 

Isabel had to intervene on her own thoughts because she was about to spiral. 

“I’m going to go get a drink?” Isabel said. She moved her crossbody purse to the other side digging in it for her pepper spray. 

Conrad didn’t have to see it. He was going to go anyway, “I’ll come with you.” 

“Good. Good. Gives me time to get to know your little friend here,” Jeremiah said. He turned to Blaze and extended his hand to her. Jeremiah, he said. 

Blaze rolled her eyes, and walked away. 

“You know you didn’t have to come with me, right?” Isabel started. “I’m a big girl.”

Conrad bit his tongue and said nothing as they weaved through the crowd of already drunk ass men. Of course, he was on  his way to being one of those men but right now he wasn’t. Right then he was on a mission – to safely get Belly a drink that wasn’t spiked. 

“Here we are,” Belly had found a small corner of the beach where there were coolers sitting in the sand. “Is this safe?” she said opening one up. Inside were different types of canned margaritas, beer, and jell-o shots. She asked that while lifting one of the margaritas out. “They can’t get in here, right?” Conrad still didn’t say anything, Isabel went on analyzing the can. “It has like the least amount of alcohol. That’s good.” She popped the top and brought it to her nose to smell it. 

Conrad politely took it out of her hands. “No. That’s what we’re not going to do.”

Isabel was lowkey thrilled that he did so. It meant something. Perhaps they were moving on in a good way. If anything it showed that he still cared about her. That he hadn’t completely abandoned ship. That the lighthouse was still attracting sirens, and she would get the opportunity to guide him back home. 

“I would never be able to forgive myself if something happened to you over a two dollar drag of alcohol,” he said softly, pouring the contents out. After a while the liquid changed colors and he knew. He threw the can up against a car parked too far on the beach. The alarm went off but he didn’t give a fuck. Nobody heard it, but if they had, Conrad still would not have given an actual living fuck. 

After their moment of silence. Watching people walk up to the car, trying to inspect it in the dark. Some trying and failing to get the alarm to go off. You could tell it wasn’t even their car. 

“Can I ask you something?” Isabel asked, looking up at Conrad. They were standing shoulder to shoulder and he was not looking at anything in particular. 

“Hmm.”

“Why’d you invite me her? Was it to meet Blaze again? Are you trying to set us up or something?” She giggled. He knew she was joking. 

His crooked smile peaked. 

“Sure,” he answered. “Definitely doing that.”

“Do you think Sus—” 

The punch came out of nowhere. It really fucked up his eye. The rain started so when Conrad was knocked to the ground, he saw his lip was spilling blood. A spill the size of a quarter beside him. 

Isabel screeched. She didn’t know which way was right or left. She did not know what to do. 

The guy was giant. 

Conrad stood up. 

“I hate a bitch slap,” he said. Then swung his good hand into the guy's nose. It cracked instantly. Belly heard it at the same moment she stopped seeing Conrad and started seeing someone who was more aggressive and mean and ready on ten toes, ready to fight. 

“What the fuck is going on?” Jeremiah and Blaze came running down the beach yelling. The music had ceased but the crowd was still hungry for ruckus. Blaze pulled Belly back as she watched in horror Conrad slamming his fist into this dude’s face, who he had managed to get to the ground. The guy had a good two inches on him. It didn’t matter. 

“Conrad!” Belly screamed. She was actively trying to get out of Blaze’s grip. Blaze was trying to keep her from getting hurt too. The man was swinging mindlessly and no telling what could’ve happened. If Isabel got hurt, Blaze thought she knew Conrad good enough right now to safely say, this would not end well. Even if she wasn’t right, things still weren’t  fated to end well. This set a lot of shit in motion, they just don’t know it yet.  

The sirens started as the clouds spit out droplets of rain. It started off soft, then the rain picked up momentum and then the guy who hit Conrad friends jumped in and the only person there to help Conrad was Jeremiah. He punched one guy and immediately broke his hand. He;d done it so hard. 

“Conrad! Please!” Belly shouted. “Jeremiah!” 

Only the cops could break them up. They were so in it and everybody around was so hooked on booze and small pills and white lines that they were tuned out of the world to hear the sirens.  They started running when the police stormed the beach. Apparently they had come from the backroads anyway, so no one would’ve heard or seen them until it was too late. 

The police arrested Conrad and Jeremiah Fisher for aggravated battery that night. 

Their father had no choice but to catch the red eye to Cousins as soon as he got the call. 

When Isabel got close enough to the guest window at the jailhouse to see and she watched Conrad being led down the way in handcuffs and thought she was watching her word implode again but in slow motion. Reckless dangers are a hearts last resort - an act of true yearning. We see it all the time. 

Conrad wasn’t a fighter although he had been in multiple fights. Isabel did not even know about them. She wasn’t attuned to his life like she used to be. And she felt that that night. Conrad’s been there before  – both in trouble and so close to telling Belly everything, but only if she asked again. One singular time is all they think about though. It’s amazing how he could fall back into his past with one fell swoop. The mess was egregious, it stunk, and it stuck. He could never walk it back even with the tracks he’d made.  

When someone looks back three, four years from now, they’ll understand what triggered this incident. Until then, all they knew was that Conrad had fucked up once again. His father was coming this time, Susannah couldn’t save him. Adam was an asshole and a cheater. In Cousins, people don’t forget that. He’ll land, and Conrad will be pulled back further.

Chapter Text

Some people say sick rain is the rain towns get when their loved ones die. 

___________

June 18th, 3 years ago 

Cousins Beach

There was a storm coming, brewing in the waters when she died. No sunlight, just clouds, it was almost like she really was magic. In their eyes, each one of them, were small specks of pockets of light. They all went out. 

They had to call Jeremiah from his boyfriend’s house. 

Conrad was on the phone with the prospective residency director. 

Belly was watching tv in the summer dream house. 

And Laurel, Laurel was by her side the entire time. 

Susannah told them not to cry. She told Laurel to make sure they didn’t cry at her funeral while she gripped her hand. She said, just like this, she said: “I’ve had the time of my life.” And that weak smile went across her face, died before she did. Laurel cried but washed her tears with her other hand before Susannah could see. She knew what this was. She didn’t want to let go of her hand because she was afraid if she did, she’d slip too soon. If she gripped tighter that meant she could keep her earthside just a bit longer. For a little while longer because that’s how life worked, right? 

Laurel said, “Can you just stay a bit longer?” 

Susannah shook her head slowly, “I gotta go and be with him.” 

Laurel bowed her head. She wished it was her instead, he was her son. Sometimes that happens when your best friend, someone you’ve loved since you’d met them, is going. You want to trade places but only for a moment – Laurel could’ve done it a lifetime over. Every time she would choose this death, her pain rather than her own. Perhaps it was easier. She saw Susannah's eyes flicker close, and around the world lights went out and it rained. They did not open. Her face relaxed, her hand dropped, she became a weight, heavy without meaning to. They’d carry her, and she wouldn’t like that but that’s what death does to a family. 

Conrad was confused when his line cut. 

Belly’s show had a ten-minute commercial, or more. 

And Jeremiah, he stopped thinking for a singular moment. Couldn’t think of anything to say. 

Life went out somewhere and then somewhere else something seemingly minuscule happened. Terrible. 

None of them, not a single one, will ever function, move, look, or feel the same again. So, in a way Susannah absolutely was magic. A fairytale  on a beach for a collection of summers– but people learn to let fantasies go when their children. They had to learn. Cousins is no mystical town, there is no fairy dust, only sand. We must go. We must go. We must go…when it’s time. 

___________

The further back you go, the harder this gets. 

Doesn’t matter if you’re pulled or you let go. 

Perhaps it is easier to say you’ve tried. 

Doesn’t matter, though — it’s the length of the pull. The way it gives before you release, that’s the point. 

No one knows your grief, that is the point. They don’t know the full story because there’s always something else. Or is there?

Hope is not the presence of comfort. You have to know what to do with it. When to give in to it. Hope requires trust. You need to believe in something, someone or the release, that give before everything happens will destroy you. And mama can not save you. 

_______________

Present Day 

Conrad and Jeremiah were held six hours before being released at the request or demand of their father, Adam Fisher. The system can rot some people, those two survived another day. The arresting officers  knew they were Susannah’s children upon pushing their head down to fit into the backseat of the car, blood still running on Conrad’s face. They did not care. They had been wanting Conrad for a long time anyway – couldn’t get him for the underage drinking or the drugs. Thought Connie Baby was too coddled from the start. And  Jere was just crazy – no boundaries – ever. The station remembered the accident. Remembered what came after because the scene was clear of them. They knew Conrad or Jeremiah had been driving the fucking car for fucks sake. No one is stupid. The people who survive the winters in Cousins, and don’t go someplace else, chilling by the water hoping for snow, think they know everything. They do not.