Chapter Text
Belly
‘You…you kissed my brother…’ His hand slipped away from my knee and the enormity of what I had done to him hit me. Tears shone in his beautiful blue eyes and hurt poured off him in waves. When they hit me, the spell Conrad had cast over me that morning on the beach broke. What on earth had I done? Jeremiah was my best friend. These past few weeks since we kissed, they’d set my world on its head. How he’d waited for me, given me time, supported me. The whole summer, his kindness offsetting Conrad’s cruelty.
Panic makes me gabble. ‘I mean, we wanted to tell you…’
‘You’re already a we?’ he gasps in shock, pain made sound.
‘No – I, I mean I don’t, I didn’t want this to be weird – ’ what the hell am I saying? I don’t want to be a we with Conrad anymore, I can’t think why I ever thought I did, this morning was a huge, huge mistake and the agony on Jeremiah’s face turns to anger as he springs up off the bed.
‘Yeah, well, it is weird, Belly. But I get it. You were just using me as a distraction while you waited for Conrad.’ The way he spits his brother’s name breaks my heart. What have I done to them? They need each other right now.
‘No, Jere, please – you’re one of my best friends – ’
‘No,’ he says, and his voice is as icy as the blue of his eyes. ‘You don’t get to call me that.’
I feel sick, not knowing what to do. I love him. Fuck, I love him. But he’ll never forgive me for this, never. I know he won’t. How can he, when I can’t forgive myself? I just saw his heart break, and I did that to him. His huge heart, the one that loves so fully and freely, that he offered to me, and I’ve broken it. I don’t deserve this boy.
‘And great timing, by the way. It’s not like my mom has cancer or anything.’
I deserve that, though. Every word.
I try to say something, anything, but he just spits, ‘Now will you please get out.’
Even at his most angry, his most hurt, he still says please, and I feel my own stupid heart smash into pieces in my chest as I go past him, unable to look at his face.
'Oh, and just so you know. He's going to break your heart.'
No, he won't, Jeremiah. Because I just did that to myself.
Later on the beach I try to tell Conrad about it, about how angry he is. I don’t want to break his heart too, so I pretend that I just want to press pause.
‘No,’ he says. ‘I hate that.’
He’s so selfish in that moment. On the way back from the beach earlier, when I was in that stupid little girl dream, he’d said he’d speak to Jere, that he never took anything seriously. He hadn’t given him any credit, and neither had I. For that hour, I’d forgotten him entirely, drowning in the attention I thought I’d always wanted. Does he even care about his brother at all?
I didn’t understand what I had with Jeremiah until I realised that I had lost it, what I could have had with my best friend, the boy who always loved me, who saw me. Who always included me, who chose me. Not this one in front of me, the one I’d idolised, who only truly liked the attention I gave him, until now. He gives me the necklace he was too much of a coward to on my actual birthday. He’d almost ruined my sweet sixteen, and who had saved it? Jeremiah. The boy who knew me.
I still love Conrad, even though I think he’s been a fool this summer. But I'm not in love with him. I never was, how could I have been, when I never knew what love meant? I let him put the necklace on me, even though it burns my skin. I half hear him tell me that whatever happens, we’ll always be infinite. He’s wrong. The only thing that’s infinite is my regret that I ever let him kiss me.
That I ever let his brother go.