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The second time Conrad shows up outside Belly’s apartment in Paris isn’t exactly like the first time he did.
Things that are different:
It’s early evening—he skipped the end-of-conference cocktail hour in favor of catching a train that could get him here by dinnertime—and the sun is low on the horizon. The sky is that shade of pale lavender blue that always promises a beautiful sunset.
It’s been four days since he saw her. When their train arrived in Brussels, just before seven, Conrad and Belly had breakfast outside at a café across the street from the station. Belly ate a crepe with strawberries and powdered sugar and too much Nutella, and Conrad hesitated before he remembered he was allowed to reach across the bistro table and clean the corner of her mouth with his thumb. She held his wrist, slightly timid, to guide his fingertip into her mouth, and his entire body flamed. Three hours earlier he was inside her, and that’s all it took.
Belly didn’t stay long. She didn’t bring a change of clothes, or even her wallet. And Conrad was going to be stuck in some garish hotel ballroom drinking shitty coffee for the next four days anyway.
So he made out with her on the train platform for twenty minutes and murmured “I love you” and “happy birthday” against her lips while he tucked a piece of hair behind her ear.
“I love you, too,” Belly returned, and it felt the same as it did in on the train that morning, and the two more times she said it since: blissful buoyancy, like maybe he wasn’t inside his body anymore. And then she said, “I’ll see you on Thursday,” with another brush of her lips against his, and Conrad was already lamenting the fact that time travel isn’t real.
Four days in the future, today, he’s carrying a bouquet of flowers he picked up on a whim from a stand outside Gare du Norde. It’s modest, a small bunch of pink ranunculus and tulips wrapped in butcher paper—because he’s terrified of coming on too strong or scaring her away (that fear is the same as the last time he was here).
Other things that are the same:
Conrad’s heart is beating so loud he almost can’t hear the city buzzing around him. There is no traffic noise, or idle chatter amid footsteps on cobblestone, or muffled French pop music from one of the open windows on Belly’s block. It’s just Conrad’s thoughts and that staticky pounding in his inner ears.
He’s holding his most prized possession—a crinkled postcard—between his fingers again, double-checking Belly’s address. As if it could have changed in the last four days. As if he didn’t spend an hour sitting on the curb staring at her building the last time he was here. Conrad has folded and unfolded the cardstock so many times in just six weeks, it’s starting to fade and tear a bit along the creases.
As he approaches her door, he thinks about how it’s almost the same shade of blue as the front door at the summerhouse. And then he enters her apartment number and presses the call button.
Things that are different:
Belly is home this time. She knows he’s coming. She wants him to. He has a text from her in his pocket to prove it:
no, you definitely don’t need to bring anything! i have big plans :)
Her voice crackles over the intercom within ten seconds, a little breathless as she announces, “it’s open,” and then the lock buzzes and Conrad is pushing into the ground floor of her apartment building.
His fist is soft on her door, but it swings open on the hinges almost immediately. And there she is: Belly, grinning, barefoot in a white sundress and red lipstick. She looks like a dream, Conrad thinks. He’s definitely had this dream once or twice before. He maybe even had it last night. He had no idea it was possible to dream about Belly more than he already did, but the last few nights have taught him to never say never.
They don’t even speak.
Conrad steps across the threshold and Belly moves toward him and his duffel hits the floor with a thump and now they’re kissing, an unhurried locking and unlocking of lips. His palm jumps from her waist to the nape of her neck to her arm, gripping and tugging and smoothing. He can feel Belly’s hands in his hair and on the sides of his face, and the soft sweep of her tongue over his bottom lip as her thumb sweeps along his jaw.
He's still holding her flowers in his hand when he rests it on her hip to pull her even closer. The brown paper crinkles loudly between them and Belly laughs, short and sweet, against his mouth. Conrad drops his forehead to rest against hers and joins in her chuckling, winded and a little dizzy—from the kiss and also the four flights of stairs.
“Hi,” Belly squeaks, smiling nervously now, and Conrad knows he’s beaming back at her from the ache in his cheeks.
“Hey.” He whispers, and then a pause. “I got you flowers.”
“Mm-hm,” Belly nods, and her nose nudges his. Conrad can feel the air between their lips shift as bites into her grin. “Thank you.”
Unable to contain his curiosity any longer, he glances down at her collarbone. And sure enough, that familiar silver chain sparkles up at him.
A finger slips under the metal and then he’s gently adjusting her necklace until the infinity symbol is framed by the hollow of her throat. He rubs his thumb over the pendant, warm from her skin, and for a second Conrad’s eyes sting with the threat of happy tears.
He wonders how long it will take to get used to this feeling: seeing her wear the jewelry he picked for her as an anxious and lovesick teenage boy. She was right that night on the Seine, when she said their first go around feels like a million years ago—but looking down at her in this moment, Conrad can’t help but feel like he’s seventeen again.
Conrad’s finger stays looped around the pendant when he tilts his head up to kiss Belly again, pulling her in that last inch with a little tug on the necklace.
And there’s that wonderful sensation again: Belly laughing into his mouth, panting and warm. He could do this for hours, if she’d let him. He could stand right in this doorway all night, kissing her as many times as she’d tolerate, just for the sake of kissing her.
They do go into her apartment, though.
The windows are flung open, and she has music playing on a little speaker—something soft and upbeat in French. Conrad toes his shoes off and watches Belly grin, all rosy cheeks and glassy eyes, as she brings the bouquet of flowers to her nose for a long inhale.
He hasn’t been in her kitchen before; he never exactly got around to it the last time he was here. But this evening he trails behind her as she pads down the hall to find a vase.
Just like the rest of the apartment, her kitchen is beautiful and charming and perfectly suits her. Light green walls, yellow cabinets, a butcher block countertop, and a sink just below one big window. She has a retro lamp tucked in the corner and a French press beside the stove. It’s cozy. It’s Belly.
Conrad leans his shoulder against the doorframe to watch her. They exchange dreamy smiles as she moves, grabbing a vase to fill with water and unwrapping the flowers from their paper.
Belly glances over at him with a glint in her eye. “Are you gonna be mad if I don’t trim the stems?” The persnickety part of him sort of would be, but he’d never say that. She must see it in his face, though, because she giggles and rolls her eyes facetiously, reaching over for her kitchen shears in the knife block. “You’re going to have to show me how I should do it.”
“I will.” Conrad smiles, sheepish, before pushing off the wall so he can stand behind her. The heat from her bare shoulders radiates across his chest, and all he really wants to do now is lean down and kiss her neck. He forces himself to focus. “Cut the stems at a forty-five-degree angle,” Conrad instructs her, voice low. “And then you’ll want to pull off all the leaves from about,” he reaches around to demonstrate with his palm held flat, “here down.”
“Got it…” Belly nods, slowly, and her voice is barely above a whisper. Her hands are diligently following his advice, piling leaves up on the wooden countertop. The sink is still running beside her, and Conrad stretches over to flick the tap off, chest still covering her back.
“Do you want me to—” He starts to ask, and he hasn’t even finished the question before she’s nodding, stepping out of his embrace toward the window to make room for him right at her side.
They work in sync, Belly cleaning stems and Conrad trimming and dropping each flower into the water.
The pink sunlight is filtering in through the window over Belly’s shoulder, casting a glowing halo around her, and every time Conrad sneaks a glance, he feels his throat go dry.
“So…” He drags, and she glances up at him with that same smile she’s been wearing since he saw her. “What are your big plans?”
Belly twists back her grin. “Um, very nice try,” her eyebrows flicker up, “but it’s a surprise.” She looks adorable, Conrad thinks. He wants to ruin her, Conrad thinks.
He just smiles and turns back to where he’s dropping the last bright pink tulip into water. “I hate surprises,” he mutters under his breath, without any actual malice, and Belly snorts out a laugh.
Conrad gathers up their trash—butcher paper and leaves and chunks of stem—while Belly scoops the vase up and grins.
“Pretty!” She declares, glancing over at him as he dumps everything into her kitchen garbage bin, and he thinks I love you.
Then he remembers he’s allowed to say it whenever he wants now, so he does.
“I love you.” It’s easy, simple, and he’s looking her right in the eyes when he speaks.
Belly’s gaze softens and her smile turns fond. She pivots to place the vase back down on the counter beside her and then she’s taking the two steps toward Conrad to wrap herself around him. Her arms lock around his shoulders, and he bends down to curve his own around her waist, and then they’re kissing again.
These kisses start out unhurried again, but they very quickly become very hurried. Belly’s hands are clawing at Conrad’s hair and his are groping shamelessly at her hips. Her head is tilted back to open her mouth for his tongue and he’s getting increasingly lightheaded as the blood in his body collects between his legs.
And can you really blame him? It’s been five years and suddenly the love of his life is right in front of him kissing him back like she feels the same way. (And she does feel the same way, which is easily the sexiest part for Conrad).
He missed kissing Belly. Not just over the last ten minutes (though he did), or over the last four days (again, he definitely did), but over the last five years. Conrad has kissed plenty of people in his life, but none of them know how to kiss him like Isabel Conklin does. It’s probably just because she’s her, he knows.
Currently, Conrad is trying to calculate exactly how to kiss every part of her body that he wants to kiss as soon as physically possible—her mouth and her neck and her shoulders and her hands and her stomach and her thighs and, potentially most of all, right between her legs. Preferably with plenty of time to stop and look at her in between, because another thing he’s missed is looking at Belly.
“Are these big plans,” Conrad murmurs, kissing and licking and nipping his way down her neck now, “time sensitive?”
He feels the laugh in Belly’s throat under his lips as she tilts her head to the side. “Only, um,” she starts, breathy giggle morphing into a moan when Conrad’s hands roll her against his hips, “moderately.”
His teeth close around the skin at the base of her throat and she inhales the tiniest gasp. It’s one of Conrad’s favorite sounds. “I can do moderately,” he says, and then he sinks to his knees in front of her.
Belly’s fingers are still in his hair when he bows his forehead into her stomach, right over the white cotton of her dress. His palms slide up under her dress, cupping the back of her bare thighs, and he can feel the shiver that rolls through her body when he kisses just below her navel.
“Is this okay?” Conrad looks up from under his eyelashes, and she’s looking down at him with dark, sparkling eyes and parted lips. Her hair is fanning down around her cheeks, and the ends brush her jaw as she nods.
“Yes. Please,” Belly whispers, and Conrad feels his entire body shudder.
It’s almost embarrassing, his desire for her.
He bends to press a kiss above her knee. “Hold your dress up,” He murmurs, right into her skin. She does.
Conrad didn’t get a chance to do this last time, and it’s been killing him ever since. So today, when he goes down on her in her kitchen, he savors every moment: the flush in Belly’s cheeks when he kisses over her lace underwear; the way her fingers, gripping the hem of her dress against her stomach, squeeze and tighten the first time his tongue touches her; the soft, slick skin of her thigh when he hooks it over his shoulder; the wet heat of her around one finger, and then two, and then three. Conrad takes so many pictures in his mind. He thinks, idly, about how one day he wants to take actual pictures of this.
By the time Belly finishes and he stands back up to kiss her, Conrad is so close to his own release he thinks just looking at her another minute could be enough; ultimately it only takes a few strokes of her hand, shoved right into the front of his pants, and the hot slide of her tongue against his.
Two hours later, they’re walking along the cobblestone path beside the Seine. Belly is carrying a tote bag with a picnic blanket. Conrad has a bottle of wine in one hand and a second bag in the other, filled with cheeses and bread and fruit and crudités and hummus—Belly must have cleared out the Monoprix this afternoon. It’s crowded along the riverbank tonight, with groups of friends and couples and little families spread out on blankets or sitting on benches everywhere.
Conrad quickly realizes where she’s leading him, a mushy smile creeping onto his face with each step closer to that spot they slow danced and kissed a few nights ago. When they arrive and Belly stops beside the water, he’s wholly beaming.
“This is very romantic of you, Isabel,” Conrad tells her, his voice low and probably a little awestruck. He wants to reach up and touch her cheek, but his hands are full, so he settles for hooking his wrist around her lower back, fingers still wrapped around the neck of their bottle of Malbec, to pull her into his chest.
“I have flying across the world to show up at my door to live up to, Conrad,” Belly declares through a smile, eyebrows flickering up briefly. Conrad just laughs, a hearty chuckle, and presses a quick kiss above her brow.
“That was fucking insane, wasn’t it?” He mutters right into her skin, and he feels Belly’s head shake, back and forth, under his lips.
“It was the most romantic thing anyone’s ever done for me.” Her voice is quiet and oh so sincere.
Conrad’s cheeks warm. He does a mediocre job of swallowing back a smug smile. And then he says, “Should we have a picnic, Belly?”
They spread their blanket out and sit beside each other facing the river, shoulders almost touching.
They drink wine out of little plastic cups and toss grapes at each other and laugh, a lot. Conrad tells Belly about his conference and Belly tells Conrad about her birthday—a night out dancing with Gemma and Max and Celine—and they continue the catching up they started four days ago. She eventually discovers the chocolate he brought from Brussels and snuck in with their other food when she wasn’t paying attention. Conrad memorizes her delighted squeal, tucks it in his back pocket to save for a rainy day.
The sunset is beautiful, and Conrad manages to sneak a few pictures of Belly when she’s not looking, cheeks glowing and gaze settled somewhere in the distance.
“Hey. Can we have a serious conversation?” Conrad eventually asks, leaning back on one hand and absentmindedly reaching out with the other to brush a hair off Belly’s cheek. Even though the sun is long gone now, there are a few remaining streaks of pink across deep blue sky. Her eyebrows flicker up. “Not a bad one,” Conrad quickly amends. And then, gentle but firmly, he says, “I want to be with you, Belly. If I haven’t already made that obvious.”
Her smile is tender when she tilts her head. “You did.” She pauses, and Conrad can feel his pulse embarrassingly picking up speed in his chest. Until Belly adds, “I want to be with you too, Conrad. If I haven’t already made that obvious.”
“That’s a relief,” he breathes out, only half-joking, and he knows he must be grinning like an idiot.
A few moments pass like that, just the two of them smiling at each other. Streetlamps are beginning to flicker on.
Then he swallows. “Um… I know you’re staying here for a while. I want you to.” Conrad realizes how that may have sounded a second later, so he adds, “I mean, I’d love to carry you around everywhere I go.” Belly is looking at him so fondly now, her eyes shiny and her hair a little messy, and Conrad feels his chest squeeze. “But I know you have this… beautiful life here. It really suits you.”
He’s waited five years already—another year or two, years where she’s still thousands of miles away but thousands of miles away and his, will be more than manageable.
Still, Conrad says, “I know it won’t be easy. There’s… so much to figure out,” he laughs once, at his understatement of the century, and Belly rewards him with a soft little smile. “But I just wanna be yours.”
He holds his hand out, palm to the sky, and instantly she laces her fingers through his. Conrad squeezes and she hums.
“I want that too,” Belly says, and her gaze is open and dark and locked right on his. “I don’t want to make any promises I can’t keep,” she adds, and Conrad opens his mouth to reassure her just as she keeps talking. “But this—Paris—isn’t going to be forever. I love it here, obviously. But it’s not home.”
Belly drops his hand to pet his cheek, looking at Conrad like she’s willing him to understand everything she isn’t saying with words, and he leans into her touch and nods.
“I’ll visit whenever I can.” He murmurs, and then he smiles. “I’m gonna be a really annoying texter, though,” he says, again only half-joking, and Belly snorts. “I mean, like, triple and quadruple texting. All hours.”
She just nods and tries to look serious, but a stray giggle escapes as she’s leans over to kiss him square on the mouth. “Yeah, Conrad, I think I’ll allow that.”
(Months from now, they’ll bicker about whether their anniversary is today or four days ago, when Belly chased him down on the train. Conrad will be convinced it’s today, and Belly will be certain it’s four days ago—but he’ll be pretty sure she just likes the idea of sharing her birthday and their anniversary. He’ll let her win, obviously. But for the rest of their lives, he’ll get her a bouquet of flowers four days after their “official” anniversary, anyway).
There’s still a lot to talk about, he knows. By the look in her eyes, she does too. But he’s staying for two more days, and they’ll have plenty of time to talk.
Tonight, Conrad just pulls her over to straddle his lap on their picnic blanket beside the Seine and kisses her. They’ll be Belly and Conrad later; tonight, they’re just another young couple making out beside the river, devastatingly in love.
It’s languid and drowsy and only interrupted by the occasional joke or smile. Conrad relearns the contours of the inside of Belly’s mouth and each sound she makes when he kisses somewhere new—the top of her shoulder or the shell of her ear. He ignores the fact that he’s already hard and aching beneath her. He tells her he loves her into her mouth and her throat and her hair, and she’s generous in breathing it back. Over and over and over.
Another hour later, they go back to her apartment and make love.
Unlike last time, they make it out of her stairwell and all the way through her front door before his fingers end up inside her.
Other things that are different:
Belly does not kick Conrad out when it’s over. They sleep together—actually sleep together, curled up spooning and naked in her too-small bed—that night, for the first time in their lives. Isn’t that funny? Conrad has known Belly since the day she was born, has loved her for as long as he can remember, called her his girlfriend for six months, and has never shared a bed with her.
She snores, which he already knew about her. She also hogs the duvet, which he did not already know about her. He doesn't mind.
When they wake up, tangled together with soft morning sunlight coating their bodies, Belly whispers “I love you” into his throat. Conrad has to remind himself he’s not dreaming anymore.