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Walking out of Jeremiah’s room, she feels the itch to do something stupid. Tomorrow she’ll be married. She’d be Isabel Fisher. This is the name the minister will say tomorrow, the last time it will ever exist: Isabel Susannah Conklin.
Do you take this man for your husband?
She wasn’t sure. No. She was sure. She just—needs a second. She needs a fucking drink, that’s what.
That’s all. Something to soothe the juddering ache leeching into her heart.
In her stomach is a black hole. Conrad had told her about them when she was younger, how at the center of them was a singularity. A tiny, infinitesimal point that held the mass of a black hole. Her singularity: Jeremiah Fisher loves her. No matter what. And he chose her. And he’s going to marry her.
At the gas station, Jumper gives her shit when she presents her—finally real—drivers license to him. He holds it up to the light, scratches it with his nail.
“Is this legit?” He squints at her. Tilts his head. Suddenly, Belly feels naked, the cami she traded her pajama top for lacy and too thin. She remembers the first time Jumper had looked at her, the sweetening thrill that had built in her stomach when she’d caught the glint of interest in his eye. Could a boy really look at her like he wanted her? The first one who’d let her watch him eyeing her up. Maybe it’s all his fault. “Isabel? Really? That’s your full name?”
She doesn’t have the energy in her to bite back. He’s still looking at her, too deeply for someone who knows she’ll be getting married tomorrow. The thought hits her: this is her last day as a single woman. Her stomach roils. “C’mon, don’t be a dick. Give it.”
Jumper grins. He slides her license across the counter and nods toward the bottle of margarita mix in her hand. “On the house, sweet girl. One last time.”
A cold snap washes over her. This isn’t allowed—or, at least—she shouldn’t be tolerating this. Belly thinks she’s smiling as she throws down a twenty, as she swipes her license off the counter, as she shoves out the door. Maybe it’s a grimace. She can’t tell anymore.
By the time she gets to the pool she’s halfway tipsy. Well. Mostly tipsy. Probably a little drunk. The bottle sloshes hard in her hand, the lid discarded two swigs ago. Her flats are wearing thin, the gravel road digging into her heels.
The hinge squeaks loudly and she winces, glances up at Jeremiah’s window. Then, as she tries to close the lock, the gate slams in too hard. Damn it.
But nobody comes down. Nobody else has trouble sleeping before the wedding, clearly.
Hidden in one of the drawers of the poolside table is a pack of cigarettes. The label has peeled. They smell kind of musty. Shoved in the carton is a lighter that takes three clicks to ignite, and flickers sadly in the beach wind.
She chooses one carefully. Wonders, guiltily, if Conrad had ever put one to his mouth before tucking it back into the box. If she’s putting her lips on his again, years between them.
Conrad trudges up from the beach when she’s managed to figure out which end of the cigarette goes in her mouth. The empty margarita mix bottle rolls against her ankle. She’s cupping one hand around the flame, trying to get the half-damp cigarette to catch. Maybe she should have joined in whenever Jeremiah offered her a joint. She’s going to get married tomorrow and can’t even light a cigarette.
She hiccups, swaying, her skin sticky with salt. Conrad’s looking at her with this horrible little tilt to his mouth, undeniable fondness in his eyes. She hates it. His shirt flaps with the breeze, the white cotton translucent with the sea spray.
The cigarette falls out of her mouth when she accuses, “You’re late.”
She struggles to push her hair out of her face. “God, you’re such a bad best man. Look at you. It’s midnight, Conrad. Your brother’s getting married tomorrow. And you’re coming back home now? Are you gonna, like, sleep through the ceremony?”
“Co-best man,” he says. He waits a second before sitting at the opposite end of the lounger, hand curling around the corner of the cushion.
She should really kick him out. In fact, she shouldn’t even be here. She should be in bed, her hopes and dreams caught up in one last sweet night before becoming reality. She should be checking her garment bag for moths and wiping down her makeup brushes. Adam had offered to hire a stylist for her, the same as he’d bought for Jeremiah. She’d declined. Now she thinks that was a mistake.
Belly ignores him. She rifles through the carton on her lap, choosing another cigarette. This one a little darker at the tip. Surely, this is the one that Conrad had almost used, and put back.
She jolts, realizing, once more. He’s right next to her. He’s watching her, eyebrows creased. Like he’s waiting for another opportunity to tell her he loves her.
“You know those are going to kill you, right?”
“Maybe.” She can’t get the cigarette to catch. “Shit! C’mon. Come on. Why can’t it just—”
Conrad moves closer, and takes the lighter from her. She tilts her head up, the cigarette poised on her lips, waiting for him to light it. She sees the moment that it hits him, what she expects him to do.
“Fuck, Belly,” he says, and looks away, a hand in his hair. The paper of the filter is damp on her tongue. Sour-tasting. Weird. Wouldn’t have expected that. She waits, patient, and he turns back to her, hand outstretched for a second before he drops it. “This isn’t you.”
“How would you know?” She holds the cigarette in her fingers before she says this; she hasn’t figured out how to move her lips without dropping it yet. “You don’t know me, Conrad. How could you possibly know if this is me or not?”
For a second his hand twitches; she knows he would grab the cigarette from her. If it were anyone else. If she wasn’t his brother’s fiancée. If he wasn’t her first love. “Drop it, Belly. It’s late.”
“Why?” A thin, painful smile stretches her lips. “What will you give me?”
Conrad lets out a breath like he’s dying. He stares at her for a second, then reaches out and snatches the cigarette from between her fingers, then the box on her thigh. She feels the brush of his skin against hers like a brand. Belatedly, she realizes she should be protesting.
“What? Give that back! Conrad!”
He squints at the box. “Shit. These were mine? Jesus, Belly, these are ancient. They’re probably all moldy. They’ll definitely kill you.”
“I just—I—” She throws her hands up in the air. “I’m gonna get married, and I haven’t smoked before. Isn’t that embarrassing? Isn’t that just—I just—”
Fervently, Conrad crushes the box under his shoe. A few cigarettes roll out, settling in the grooves of the pool tile. He doesn’t say anything, but she knows he’s looking at the empty bottle next to her, calculating how much she would have drank. That’s his problem. He’s too fucking considerate.
“Jere fucked a girl in Cabo,” she says suddenly. Conrad swings his gaze to her, something wretched in his eyes. She holds her hand up to her mouth, oops! “I just—I don’t know. I forgave him. But he still did it. So I think I get a pass, too, right?”
“Belly,” he says quietly. Half a question. When did he get so close?
“I mean, I deserve one, don’t I?” She’s not drunk enough to be this stupid, but maybe he thinks she is, and maybe he’ll go along. “It’s my last night. Free. So why—why waste it?”
Conrad’s eyes look almost black in this light. The opposite of a star, he’d told her at thirteen, is a black hole. “I can’t do that to him.”
She shrugs. “So don’t.” Curls her toes in her flats, the adhesive of the sole leaking through. Sticky. “Don’t do it to him, then. Do it for me.”
For a moment she’s not sure if either of them are breathing. Then Conrad surges forward, seeking, mouth finding hers with painful familiarity, his hands coming up to cup her jaw. She leans into him, the lace hem of her camisole rumpling under his touch.
Somehow, he gets her onto the couch, hands running up her ribs as she grinds down into his lap, searching for pressure that isn’t there. The sober part of her mind tells her this is batshit fucking crazy, that if anyone—anyone—were to look outside their windows, they’d see her throwing her head back so Conrad can lick a hot line up her neck. They’d see her shudder when her clit rubs against the button of his jeans, when she rocks down again and again, fingers gripping his arms for purchase.
But the windows are dark. The house is quiet. All she hears is their breathing, the crash of the waves agains the shore. Nobody else is up late enough to be having second thoughts.
Conrad works a hand up through the leg of her shorts, pushing the gusset of her panties aside. For one frantic second, she thinks about the lingerie set waiting for her at the bottom of her suitcase. It’s too strappy to wear under the dress, and she knows there won’t be any time to change into it before they make it back home. Poor Taylor, she thinks, for buying something that won’t ever be seen. And then Conrad runs a finger up her folds, and her thoughts trail away in smoke.
All these years, and he still knows how to drag his fingers around her clit, the soft almost-there pressure she’d accidentally trained herself into liking, pimple-faced and frantic in her teenage bed, learning for the first time what sex meant. The first time she’d touched herself, it was to the memory of Conrad the summer prior, the way he’d held onto her as the boys paraded her to the pool. The smell of him, salt and gear lubricant from his sailing, how he’d said, there you are when he caught her. How he’d dragged her out of the bush by her ankle and lifted her up over his shoulder.
“There you are,” he says now, reverent. Belly scrunches her face up. She feels like she’s going to die.
Conrad scrapes his teeth under her ear, breath rushing over her skin. One hand splayed wide on her back to keep her in place, the other rubbing tight, steady circles around her, pacing himself until she starts to gasp to trail down, dip his fingers into where she’s hot and wet and waiting.
She can’t say his name, but she wants to. She catches his mouth between her lips, tastes herself on his tongue, all sour sweetness from the marg mix. His hand tangles in her hair, all beach-sticky—she thinks, have to put it up for tomorrow—and when he pulls away, a thread of saliva hangs between them, shimmering in the moonlight.
His stubble scratches her neck as he worries at the tender skin. With the hand on her back, he hauls her in closer. At the same time, he pushes a finger into her, all at once, up to the knuckle. A moan tears out of her throat, too loud; he covers her mouth with his, nipping at her jaw like a reprimand.
“C’mon,” he says, a prayer, crooking a second finger into her. “Fuck, honey, you’re so wet. Is that all for me, Belly? Is it just ‘cause of me?”
She shudders, trying not to think of all the bottles of lube sitting in her dorm nightstand. She’d managed to convince herself that it was just a teenage thing, to have been so wet that she ruined her underwear, that she could soak through her panties and Conrad could smell it in the car, when she’d squirm under his hand on her thigh. “Don’t say that. Just—just—”
“What?” Conrad demands. He pulls back, searching her face. His eyes darken, mouth twisting. And then he curls his fingers in her tight, pressing them up, like he’s trying to make new space in her, and she jerks, mutters shit shit shit, the words trailing into a keening sound as he fucks her harshly, everything she needs and simultaneously not enough. “What do you want, Belly? You want me to act like—like what?”
“I don’t know,” she manages to say. She shakes her head, her moans caught in the roof of her mouth, sounds leaking out between her teeth. It would all be more believable, that she doesn’t like him, that she doesn’t need him, if she wasn’t rocking into his hand, wasn’t biting her teeth into him like she could tear out a piece of him for safekeeping. It doesn’t matter if she leaves marks. Nobody would know.
He scoffs. A cruel sound. “If you’re doing this, you know what you want.”
But when he kisses her again, it’s tender, his thumb rubbing sweet against her clit, just the way she’s always liked. “C’mon, sweetheart, isn’t this good? Isn’t this so good?”
“Yeah,” she gasps out, nodding into another kiss, gasping into his mouth. “Yeah, yes, Conrad, it’s good. So, so good. It’s always—oh,” as he changes the angle of his hand, somehow deeper than before.
She can feel him inside her, the bone of his wrist slick with her wetness, his thumb slipping against her as he presses harder, faster. “You deserve it,” he says into her skin, the place above where her carotid artery beats. He ducks down to her sternum, where her heart’s fluttering. “You deserve it all, honey. Every last bit of it.”
“Conrad,” she breathes, thighs slick, her mind spinning. She’s hot all over, her muscles twitching with promise. He draws his other hand up her back, tracing over each of her vertebrae, holding her head in place like she’d fall apart without him. And she probably would. Definitely would’ve, earlier this summer. “Please?”
And who is he to deny her?
His thrusts go deeper, slower, thumb rubbing her clit until she’s making throaty horrible noises into his jaw, her body turned into one tight line of pleasure. “Come on,” he says, and her vision starts to blur, sparks lighting at the edges. He crooks his fingers up hard, just—pressing against some soft spot inside of her, and she spasms, tightening around him, a sound dying halfway on her tongue.
He fucks her through it, slipping in a third finger when she starts to gasp, needing something to clench down on. He’s nice like that.
She stays slumped over him when he draws his hand out of her shorts, his other hand rubbing circles on her shoulders.
Then he nudges her. Lids low, eyes darting away. He can’t look at her. She doesn’t know if she can look at him, either.
“Big day tomorrow,” he says.
“Yeah,” Belly says. She wipes her mouth. The pool hums behind them, a silent witness.