Chapter Text
Belly Conklin is pretty sure the universe is fucking with her.
Two years ago, she spotted Conrad Fisher (who she’s been in love with for, like, her whole life) in the airport when she was about to board a flight to Paris, which she’d booked on heartbreak, adrenaline, and an impulse. He hadn’t seen her, so she took it as a sign not to say anything. Besides, she needed to grow before she reached out to him. Wanted to grow more before she reached out to him, because he deserved that. They both did.
Two months ago, she was having lunch with Max and Gemma at their favorite café, was mid-bite into a chocolate croissant when she spotted someone who looked exactly like him: tall with dark hair that brushed his temples, his hair wet from the rain. His head was bent down, looking at his phone, but his side profile was the same.
“Sorry,” she’d said to Gemma and Max, jostling the table as she stood, unable to take her eyes off of him, her heart pounding so loudly she could barely hear her own thoughts. “I think I—”
And then he turned, and it wasn’t him. It was a stranger.
She sat back down, defeated, cheeks red, heart hammering.
Last week, she’d been at her local supermarket, debating between a few different kinds of apples, when someone reached into her line of sight and plucked an apple off the display.
The first thing she noticed was a wristwatch wrapped around a pale hand with long fingers, a leather strap, and the hands ticking softly. Similar to the one Conrad had worn that summer they spent together in Cousins, the last summer she’s spent in Cousins.
Her eyes traveled up the stranger’s arm, her heart pounding once again. Was it him? Could it actually be him?
It wasn’t.
In the years between those two interactions, there have been countless others—she’s been walking along the Seine, in line at the bookstore, on the metro with Celine, and thought she spotted him.
It’s never been him.
She’s dreamed about him: about their nights in Cousins, about prom night where in her dreams it had a different ending and they were still together. Each time, she woke up missing him even more. The Conrad-shaped hole in her heart grew a little bigger.
Now, she’s at the airport. She’s been engrossed in a worn paperback romance novel for the past few hours, has been sitting in the same seat with her legs stretched out on her blue hard-shell carry-on, lost in the world of these two characters.
Suddenly, she has the urge to look up.
She does.
And there he is.
He’s running through the airport, dodging suitcases and weaving around people like he’s seconds away from missing his flight.
Of course he looks gorgeous even while running through an airport, his brow furrowed and eyes intensely focused on his gate as though it’ll disappear if he looks away, his hair flowing in the wind like a hero on the cover of a vintage romance novel.
Belly allows herself to look, allows her heart to ache at the sight of him, because there’s no way it’s actually him.
It can’t be, because every other time she thought it was, she’s been wrong. Except for that very first time in the airport two years ago, but she had a lot of learning and growing to do, and approaching him would have undone that, would have probably hurt both of them more than it would’ve helped.
He's wearing a gray crewneck that says Stanford in navy blue block letters, and he’s . . . approaching this gate. The gate with the direct flight to Boston.
Her gate.
So maybe it is him.
But what the fuck would he be doing in Paris? Why wouldn’t he have at least reached out?
Because the last time you saw him, he told you he’s in love with you and you’ve been radio silent ever since? her mind whispers.
That’s . . . not entirely true. She saw him the morning of her failed wedding (which had been to Conrad’s brother, of all people), and it was brutal.
And, well.
There was the phone call, a year ago.
She was sitting on her bed in the apartment she inherited from Gemma, looking out the window at the Sacré-Cœur. The sky was dark, which reminded her of the ink in Conrad’s favorite brand of pen. He’d gotten really particular about pens, still chose to write most of his essays and notes by hand, the pen gliding across the page and filling with his messy script.
She’d stolen one of those pens that summer before her wedding. It was sitting on the kitchen table, and she needed something to write out the thank-you cards from her wedding shower with. That was the only pen in sight; she’d rummaged through the kitchen junk drawer and there was a pack of them, torn open, half-empty. The pen had a perfect glide, was comfortable between her fingers, and didn’t smudge.
It was the perfect pen, and for some reason, she couldn’t wait to tell him, was nearly giddy with it. She didn’t even know she was searching for the perfect pen until that moment.
From ages ten to sixteen, she’d scribbled Isabel Fisher in the margins of her notebooks (the i in Fisher was dotted with a heart, obviously) and pictured Conrad each time. She’d only ever pictured Conrad when she fantasized about her future, her wedding, until all of those fantasies stopped with her junior prom. As she wrote out her thank-you’s, she couldn’t help but wonder what her younger self would think about the fact that she was becoming Isabel Fisher because she was marrying Jeremiah, not Conrad.
Those thoughts were quickly abandoned when he came in after wiping out while surfing. She’d cleaned his wound and almost kissed him, had forgotten about the pen completely as she helped him up and then sat on the edge of the tub, reeling.
She was thinking about this that night, as she stared out at the ink-dark sky, her comforter bunched in her lap. That pen and that day and him, how alive he made her feel. She hadn’t felt that way with anyone else, not even Jeremiah.
To this day, Belly doesn’t know what possessed her to pick up the phone and dial Conrad’s number, even though she’s discussed it countless times with her therapist, a woman in her early thirties with wild blonde curls named Mathilde.
Her heart pounded as she pressed call. It rang, and rang, and then there was an automated voicemail—he still hadn’t set up his voicemail, a fact so out of character for him that she would’ve likely smiled at it if she hadn’t been so nervous—telling her to leave a message.
The phone beeped, indicating it was time to leave a message. Or she could hang up.
Fuck.
She hadn’t thought this far. Truthfully, she hadn’t even thought of what to say if he answered. She just missed him with an ache as wide and as deep as the ocean, and she wanted, needed, him to know.
She swallowed hard and immediately cringed, certain that he’d be able to hear it when—if—he listened to this.
“Hey,” she said, and cringed again, because what the fuck? The last time they spoke, it was on her wedding day and that conversation had mostly been him apologizing and breaking her heart all over again. Then, she’d had to watch him leave, and now, here she was, saying hey as if it’s been a month and not a year since they last spoke? “It’s me. Um, Belly. I was looking at the sky and it reminded me of you. I’m sorry. I didn’t—I should’ve—” She paused, took a deep breath that rattled in her ribs, exhaled roughly. “I still . . .”
She trailed off, and there was a sudden rush of hot tears prickling at the corners of her eyes. She knew, immediately, that she was seconds away from sobbing, so she hung up.
I still . . .
That kept her awake all night. It hadn’t felt fair, to say the words to his voicemail, when he hadn’t even answered, when she hadn’t apologized, hadn’t said any of the other things she’d wanted to say.
He never called back, didn’t even follow up with a text. Probably thought she was drunk. She almost wished that was the case.
Now, that I still . . . echoes in her mind, the way it has countless times since that night, as she thinks she spots him rushing toward her gate at Charles de Gaulle.
He swipes a hand through his hair and glances at the watch adorning his wrist. From here, it’s hard to tell if it’s the same one from that summer, with the leather wrist strap, but she’d bet money that it is. Conrad’s always been sentimental that way.
She can’t stop staring at him. She can’t believe he’s here. If he’s here, that means he was in Paris.
And he didn’t call her.
Why would he? He’s only heard from her once in the last two years, and it was a voicemail where she couldn’t even finish her sentence before hanging up.
It’s not like he knows about the letters.
A large group of people stands when their boarding group is called, blocking her view of the boarding area and also of Conrad.
When the view clears, he’s gone.
Her heart sinks. It must not have been him. Again.
She’ll see him soon, though, so she better figure out what to say beyond I still . . . She can’t trail off this time.
It’s the weekend of her mother Laurel’s birthday, and she’s invited all of her loved ones to celebrate at Susannah’s beach house in Cousins, which happens to coincide with when Belly is moving back to Philadelphia after two years in Paris.
Laurel is on tour for her latest book, and she has events tonight, so she won’t get to the summerhouse until tomorrow morning. Belly will be alone until then, which is fine with her. This way, she can get all of her feelings out by herself, cry as much as she wants.
In Cousins this weekend, it’s going to be Laurel, Belly, Steven, Taylor, and Conrad. Belly hasn’t seen Conrad in two years, since the morning of her not-wedding to Jeremiah (who had also been invited this weekend, but he and his girlfriend are on vacation in Italy), and she’s been trying to figure out what to say to him.
Adam, Susannah’s ex-husband, had barely put up a fight when Laurel mentioned wanting a birthday trip to the house, which was unlike him. He usually puts up a fight about everything, at least in Belly’s experience.
Belly hasn’t been back to the summerhouse in two years. She never thought she’d go back, but this was what Laurel wanted, which means that Belly will not only have to contend with the place that meant so much to her, but also the people that occupy it, for the first time in two years.
It’ll be totally fine.
She hasn’t had any sleepless nights about this at all.
(This is, of course, not true. She’s lost a lot of sleep thinking about the summerhouse.)
If Conrad were in Paris, then it would make sense that he needs to be back in Boston for Laurel’s birthday. He was invited (Laurel told Belly as much), and he would go, even if it meant having to see Belly, because he wouldn’t miss a long weekend in Cousins. Not for Laurel.
It doesn’t explain what he’s doing here now, though. Maybe he’s on a work trip, or he’s visiting with his girlfriend. Is he seeing someone? Surely Laurel would’ve said, right?
Fuck, I still love you.
That’s what he’d said, that night on the beach, which has echoed throughout her mind various times in the years since. He wouldn’t have said it if it wasn’t true.
You and I . . . You and I were never anything.
Even as the words were coming out of her mouth, she knew it was a lie. A lie designed to hurt him as much as he’d hurt her by confessing his love in the eleventh hour.
Not her finest moment.
I still . . .
The flight attendant calls her boarding group before Belly can further spiral about the night of her ill-fated bachelorette party, the conversation she and Conrad had on the beach, the countless times she’s thought of him since then.
Her foot taps against the carpet as waits in line, but she gets through boarding and onto the plane, and there’s no need to worry. The economy section is three seats per side, and she exhales, thankful she didn’t book the middle seat.
She’d booked the seat by the window, and she’s thinking about where the best spot to stow her carry-on is when, out of the corner of her eye, she notices him.
Conrad.
She does a double-take.
He’s sitting in an aisle seat at the very end of her row, his leg bouncing, and the face of his watch—it is the same one from that summer—catches in the early morning sunlight streaming in from the open window. He takes a deep breath, lets it out through his mouth.
Holy shit.
There are still a few people between Belly and Conrad, between Belly and her row. Someone sits in the middle seat, looking at something on their phone.
With her heart in her throat and her mind spinning, she stows her carry-on above where she’s standing, since there isn’t space next to her row.
“Conrad?” His name falls from her lips in surprise even though she knows, now that she’s in front of him, that it’s him.
It has to be, unless this is a dream.
She pinches herself.
Okay. This isn’t a dream.
His head snaps up, and for the first time in two years, his eyes meet hers. They’re as green as she remembers, clear and bright and now clouded with confusion. His eyebrows furrow, and he blinks hard, like he can’t believe she’s here.
The person behind her huffs, irritated. Don’t they know that her whole world is tilting on its axis? Don’t they know that she’s losing herself in Conrad Fisher’s eyes, something she never thought she’d do again?
I still . . .
“Hey, can you hurry up?” the person behind her asks, irritation laced in their voice.
Belly blinks, exhales quickly. Conrad’s still staring at her like he isn’t sure if he’s the one dreaming.
“I’m, um, in the window seat,” she says, and that spurs Conrad into action.
He nods quickly and stands, moves to the aisle so that she can pass him. The person in the middle seat gets up, too, obscuring Conrad from view.
She knows he’s there, though, even though she isn’t looking at him. Whenever they’re in the same room, she knows where he is.
Once she’s seated, she puts her phone in airplane mode and takes out her book. It’s a romance novel that Laurel recommended; she was on a panel with the author for a book event, and it’s about a woman who goes on a wine tour all around France and falls in love.
“A little on the nose, Mom,” Belly had said with a laugh. “You know I’m coming home soon, right? And I’m not seeing anyone.”
She’d had a casual fling, Benito, once she moved to Paris, because she’d been determined to be with someone whose last name wasn’t Fisher. That ended after a few weeks, when he wanted something more, something real, and she didn’t. Couldn’t. How could she, when there’s now a stack of unsent letters in her carry-on, all starting with Dear Conrad?
How could she when, realistically, she left her heart on the beach the night of her bachelorette party? Left her heart with him?
“I know, Bean,” Laurel had said, pulled Belly from her thoughts, and her heart ached at the use of the nickname. While she loved Paris, and had grown so much as a person, she missed being at home. “I thought you might like it.”
Overall, it’s a good book. The romance is interesting, and the main character’s quite funny. She and the love interest have a lot of chemistry, and Belly’s curious to see how they get together.
However, right now, with Conrad a seat away from her, she isn’t thinking about the book.
She doesn’t even look at the pages in front of her. Instead, her gaze stays locked on him.
His appearance hasn’t changed in the last two years, although he’s not as tan, his hair isn’t highlighted from the sun. He’s pale and his hair is dark, tousled, falls at his temples. He’s just as beautiful as she remembered; it almost hurts to look at him, yet she can’t seem to stop drinking him in.
She thought she wouldn’t see him until she got to the summerhouse, at the very least. So much for being alone at the summerhouse until Laurel gets there. Out of all the possible scenarios, she didn’t think “being alone with Conrad Fisher before they even get to Cousins” was one of them.
For the past few days, she’s been thinking of what to say to him when she sees him for the first time, turning words and phrases over and over until she finds the perfect fit.
She hasn’t found the perfect thing to say to him, especially now that he’s unexpectedly here; she thought she’d have more time. Everything she had prepped to say to him flies out of her brain and she has no idea what to say now that he’s actually in front of her.
She’s lost countless nights of sleep picturing their reunion, and not once has it gone like this.
The flight attendants have started the safety demonstration, and while she’s watching them, her thoughts drift to him.
He hasn’t even said anything, had looked so surprised to see her that he probably doesn’t know what to say.
The safety demonstration ends, and she glances at him. He hasn’t even looked at her, is instead staring at the headrest of the seat in front of him, his fingers drumming on the armrest, his leg still bouncing.
A memory comes to her: Susannah’s voice, a few summers before she’d died, talking about a trip she took to Italy with the boys while Adam was away on a business trip (ie, probably fucking his 20-something assistant).
“Conrad was so nervous during the flight,” she’d said, her voice as warm and bright as Belly remembered, this time twinged with concern. It was the first night in Cousins, and she, Laurel, and Belly were prepping for their movie night. They were watching Sabrina, the one with Audrey Hepburn. Belly was searching for the DVD, and Susannah probably thought she wasn’t paying attention, but she was. She always was when it came to Conrad. “We’ve flown countless times and I’ve never seen him like this. He was fine once we took off, but I was so worried . . .”
The rest of whatever Susannah had said fades into memory, and as Belly studies Conrad now, she realizes that she’s rarely seen him in a season that wasn’t summer. There were two separate times at Christmas, once on purpose and once on accident, but she’s never seen him on a plane. Has never thought about him having flight anxiety.
“Conrad, are you—” she starts, leaning forward and attempting to make eye contact. It doesn’t work; he’s leaned back against the seat, his eyes closed, his hands clutching the armrests, he’s breathing heavily. Her heart rate speeds up, frantic.
He looks one second away from a panic attack.
Overcome with a need to be near him and without thinking about the distance or anything other than him, she taps the person in the middle seat on the shoulder.
They’re engrossed in a book but glance up when she taps them, a little confused. She would be, too, if she weren’t so worried about Conrad. “What is it?”
“Would you mind switching seats with me?” She gestures to Conrad. “I know him, and he doesn’t do well with flying.”
The stranger occupying the middle seat glances at Conrad, then back to Belly. They smile sympathetically. “Of course.”
“Thank you,” she says, shutting the window before exhaling and gathering her things from underneath the seat in front of her.
Get to Conrad, her heart whispers.
It occurs to her the second she’s sitting next to him that he might not want to see her.
She has to do something, though.
“Conrad.” She reaches out to touch him, to have him hold her hands instead, but stops. What if she’s the reason he’s panicking, and it has nothing to do with what Susannah said years ago? That information is years old, at this point. It might not be relevant anymore.
What if seeing her again is the reason he’s panicking?
His hair falls in his eyes as he glances at her, his brows furrowed, his eyes filled with panic. He’s breathing heavily but trying to control it, trying not to cause a scene, which is so typical of him that her heart aches even more. Her mind flashes back to the bathroom after his surfing accident, how he said he was fine even as she was helping him; he’s never been one to draw attention to himself or accept help, especially not when he was in pain.
“Just focus on me,” she says, keeping her voice low. She’s never helped him through a panic attack before, has never helped anyone through a panic attack before. But it’s him, and she would do anything for him, even now, even after two years. “Breathe with me, okay?”
Her voice is drowned out by the wheels of the plane rumbling along the runway, but he’s keeping his eyes on hers, so he must’ve heard her say something.
She holds out her hand and he takes it. A spark shoots up her spine when their hands touch, warm and electric, but she hopes he doesn’t notice.
All she can focus on is him.
She takes a deep breath, exaggerated for his benefit. Then, she holds it for a few seconds, before exhaling softly. He follows, and they continue like this while the plane ascends, staring at each other in the middle of this crowded plane, hand in hand.
“Distract me,” he says after a moment, not looking away from her, his breathing ragged. “Tell me about living in Paris.”
Hearing Conrad's voice for the first time in two years is like being doused with a bucket of cold water.
Belly's imagination has gotten his voice wrong. It’s a little lower, a little huskier, in real life, and her brain immediately gets to work on rewriting every time she’s heard his voice in her head so that it sounds like the real thing.
This probably shouldn’t be as devastating to her as it is. Her heart sinks like a stone thrown into a river.
“It was really lonely at first,” she says, setting aside her sadness to help him through this. She laughs, a little self-deprecating. Is this helping him? Probably not. “I had no idea what I was doing. I barely even knew French, for fuck’s sake. I mean, I thought I knew French, but then I got here, and it was . . . God, Conrad, it was horrible. I was so bad at it.” She laughs, shakes her head.
“I’m sure that’s not true,” he says, immediately, serious as ever, even in the throes of a panic attack.
“It was! But it’s okay. I got better at it. I had never been on my own before, and a lot of the time, I was doubting the decision to be on my own for the first time in France. Until one day, my friend Celine showed me the rooftop of this building she used to work in, and from it, the whole city stretched out for miles and miles. It was easier to think, to breathe, up there. I spent a lot of time there. I’d made such a mess of things back home, and I felt like I couldn’t come back—” Couldn’t come back to you, she thinks, but doesn’t say. “Until I had all of that figured out. I kept thinking about what you said, about watching the sun set over the Pacific.”
The panic has faded from him, his shoulders are no longer tense and he’s breathing steadily, yet he still doesn’t look away from her. His hand is still in hers, and he doesn’t move it.
“You remember that?” he asks, his voice still rough from the remnants of his panic attack. He tries to smile at her, but it’s guarded, and that hurts even more than not remembering what he sounds like.
She used to know every single one of his smiles, used to call him out on the fake ones, but she can’t do that, not anymore.
“Of course I do. I thought about it every time I would watch the sun rise over Paris from that rooftop.”
She’d thought about reaching out to him, too, every time, but after that first phone call, she hadn’t.
Mathilde, her therapist, had been the one to suggest the letters.
“You don’t ever have to send them,” she’d said, with that soft, typically-comforting lilt to her voice, shrugging one shoulder, as if she had given her feelings on today’s weather rather than suggest Belly do an incredibly terrifying, possibly life-changing thing. “But it might be nice to write all of your feelings down. Get all of it out there, the way that Conrad did the night of your bachelorette party.”
“That feels insurmountable,” Belly had said.
Mathilde smiled sympathetically. “Start small, then. Tell him about Paris.”
“Paris,” Belly echoed, as tears welled in her eyes. He didn’t know this side of her, had no idea how hard it was sometimes. There were days where all she wanted was to share it with him, to call him. She wanted nothing more than to tell him about her adventures in Paris, to hear about his days in med school. Was watching the sun setting over the Pacific still weird to him, or did it feel like home now?
Calling him hadn’t exactly worked out, so she wrote to him instead.
When she got home that night, Belly started her first letter. She took out a pen with black ink—once again reminding her of Conrad, of the ink-dark night sky and his messy handwriting and his favorite pens for his meticulous note-taking—and wrote Dear Conrad.
And then, she stopped. What was she supposed to say?
Anything you want, her mind supplied. It’s not like he’s ever going to read these.
Well.
That much was true.
She stared at the words on the page (just two of them), and thought of that phone call again.
I still . . .
So, she took a deep breath, and began to write.
“I can’t believe you remember that I said that.” Conrad shakes his head with a disbelieving laugh, snapping her out of her thoughts. “That was a million years ago.”
She’s not sitting at the desk in her apartment, the Sacré-Cœur lit in the dark through the open window, pouring her heart out to him.
Right now, she’s next to him. His hand is in hers, the weight of it comforting and familiar and grounding. He likely doesn’t even notice he’s still holding her hand.
“I know.” She bites her lip, thinks of the letters tucked away in her carry-on that he’ll never read unless she shows them to him, which . . . Should she? Not now. She pushes those thoughts out of her mind. “I remember everything you’ve ever said.”
Fuck, I still love you. I don’t think I’ll ever get you out of my system. You’ll always be there. Here.
And then, that morning after, the two of them standing in the middle of the kitchen, the air taut with tension.
His voice comes back to haunt her, not for the first or even hundredth time since then. I love you. I will never not love you. I think you know that.
Now she’s the one that swallows hard. She wants to apologize, to tell him that she’s missed him so badly that a permanent, Conrad Fisher-shaped ache has taken up residence in her heart.
Was saying that too much? Was it too bold? Should she have toned it down, kept it chill, said something less intimate?
She’s never been chill a day in her life, not when it comes to him.
He stares at her for a long moment, his eyes searching hers. She’s about to ask him what he’s looking for when he says, “I remember everything, too.”
“Really?” The word is more breath than sound. For some reason, she’s shocked.
“How could I not?”
“I didn’t think—It’s been two years,” she says, although what does that mean, really? It’s been two years for her, too, and she still remembers everything. If she closes her eyes, she’d be right back to that Christmas they accidentally spent together, watching Casablanca and doing a crossword puzzle. Not doing anything but existing in the same space. “You were in Paris, and I didn’t hear from you.”
“I wasn’t,” he says. He’s so gentle, so kind, even now, and her heart hurts. “I was in Brussels for a conference, and one of my friends was there too. She wanted to explore France for a few days, so I went with her, and Charles de Gaulle was the closest airport to where we were staying, so . . .”
She’s fully chewing on her lip now, trying to reconcile the last time she saw Conrad (technically, from across the airport, while she was about to board a flight to Paris) with the Conrad sitting next to her now, two years later.
“Oh,” she says, so eloquently. There are so many things she wants to say. How did you like France? Have you thought about me as much as I’ve thought about you? Do you regret that night on the beach? I’m sorry for telling you that we meant nothing. You meant everything to me, and that’s why it hurt so much. That’s why I—
Nope.
She can’t say that.
Instead, she continues with, “Laurel will be excited to see you.”
And then, once she realizes how that sounds: "Not that I’m not, right now, obviously. There’s so much I want to say to you, so much I want to tell you.”
Maybe she’s forgotten how to act around him. If that’s the case, should she just avoid him for the weekend and hope nothing happens?
You want something to happen, a voice in the back of her mind says, a little smug with that knowledge.
After two years with thousands of miles between them, as much distance as she could possibly think to put between them, she misses him so much that it takes seeing him again to realize the depths of it, that she’s missed him as deeply and endlessly as the ocean, as the sky stretching into infinity.
It knocks the wind out of her, and she makes a sound somewhere between a choke and a squeak.
I still . . .
The unsent letters are probably burning a hole through her carry-on. She should have recycled them, or burned them, or at the very least, left them in a locked safe in Max and Gemma’s incredibly spacious, incredibly chic apartment.
She certainly shouldn’t have brought them with her. Not when she knew she was seeing Conrad this weekend.
Conrad smiles softly, squeezes her hand. So he does still know they’re holding hands. He hasn’t forgotten, and her heart swells. She should tell him about the letters. She wants him to know. “I know. Me too. Not here, though. Later, okay?”
“Later,” she says solemnly, nodding, even as her heart pounds. Why does he want to put it off? Does he not love her anymore?
(Yes, that is an asinine thought for her to have, especially considering what she said to him that night. She truly has zero chill.)
“I just want it to be us when we have that conversation,” he explains, even though he doesn’t have to. He gestures to the plane around them with his free hand. “This isn’t exactly the place to do that.”
Relief floods through her. “That makes sense. Later, then.”
He smiles, which is devastatingly attractive, his eyes sparkling from it. “Do you want to watch a movie?”
She grins back, even as her mind whispers later, later, later with each thump of her heart. “Let’s do it.”
They scroll through the movies on the screens in front of them. Neither of them says a word when Casablanca appears, and they scroll past it without a word.
She hasn’t seen it since that Christmas they spent together at the summerhouse. They weren’t supposed to be there, but there they were, existing in the same space. He’d sat in the armchair by the fireplace, doing a crossword puzzle, while she lay on the couch, watching old movies.
That night, they’d both sat on opposite ends of the couch, watching Casablanca on her laptop, the fire roaring. They didn’t acknowledge the fire, because every time Belly so much as looked at it, she was reminded of their first time, which had been in front of the fireplace.
That morning, after she fell down the stairs, he’d carried her to the living room and deposited her on the couch. She tried not to relish being in his arms again. She failed miserably.
As she looked up at him and he stared down at her, the thought hit her like a gut punch, like a sand-filled timer being turned on its head. If she were standing, her knees would have buckled. A part of me will always love you.
Her stomach dropped all the way to her toes.
Conrad hesitated for a moment, but he smiled reassuringly and said, “I’ll get you some ice.”
Was that what he’d wanted to say?
Now, two years later, she glances at him, her eyes traveling from his index finger swiping at the screen in front of them, up his arm, his shoulder, the long column of his neck, all the way to the side of his face.
He looks the same: long lashes framing his green eyes, his lips plush, that same beauty mark above his left lip. She had worried that he changed.
Does he replay that day as much as she does? Does he know what she was thinking?
She glances away before he catches her staring.
They decide on an action-adventure movie about two rival treasure hunters (who may or may not be in love) that neither of them have seen, but that doesn’t stop them from talking through plot points, and laughing, and making jokes.
At one point, when the two characters go into a darkened cave crawling with bugs with dying flashlights as their only source of light, Belly whimpers. She’s never liked bugs.
Conrad slides his hand over her eyes.
“Conrad,” she breathes out, giggling softly. “What are you doing?”
“I know you hate bugs,” he says, as if it’s the simplest explanation in the world. “At least, you used to.”
“I do,” she answers, without thinking.
Eventually, the scene ends, and his hand falls back to his side. She almost whimpers at the loss of his touch, but swallows the sound instead. Be cool.
This whole time, they’ve been holding hands, and neither of them moves away.
Belly is incredibly aware of his hand in hers, how warm it is, his long fingers laced between hers, his watch pressing against the sleeve of her long sleeve shirt. She says nothing.
They fall back into a light and easy rhythm, as if it’s been two days since they last spoke and not two years. It’s astounding, how easy it is.
Halfway through the movie, Conrad falls asleep on her shoulder, both of his arms wrapped around one hers, their fingers still laced together, his other hand on top of hers.
She doesn’t move, in fact she barely even breathes because she doesn’t want to disturb him. Belly’s focus is no longer on the movie but on the weight of his head on her shoulder, even though she’s trying not to think about it.
It doesn’t mean anything.
Her shoulder just so happened to be the closest thing for him to lay his head on.
That’s all.
Eventually, she must drift off to sleep, because the next thing she knows, she hears Conrad murmur, “Wake up, we’re about to land.”
His voice is so soft, so low, that she cuddles closer to him, turns and presses her face into his shoulder. If she were more awake, she’d be embarrassed about this, but right now, she can’t bring herself to care.
“Five more minutes,” she whispers, her voice rough from sleep.
She squeezes his hand, just to make sure he hasn’t let go.
He hasn’t.
He laughs softly and even in sleep, her heart swells at the sound. It’s a laugh meant just for her, pressed against her hairline, and she tucks it inside her heart, keeps it close like something sacred. “Okay.”
The next time she wakes up, it’s on her own, because he’s let go of her hands and is gently pushing her back into her own seat.
She hums in protest, aches to pull him closer, to dig her fingers into the soft fabric of his crewneck as she pulls his arm close to press her face into his arm and breathe him in deep.
I’m sorry I left in the first place, she wants to say. Instead, she blinks awake blearily, embarrassed that she fell asleep on him. She’s sure her cheeks are flushed. “Where are you going?”
“Sorry I woke you. I need to go to the bathroom,” he says, his expression neutral but his eyes are bright. “I’ll be right back. I promise.”
She sits there for a few moments, still in that liminal space between sleep and waking, a small smile on her lips.
Then, she sits up, just in time for the flight attendants to announce they’re landing soon. Belly pulls her purse from underneath her seat and glances up at where her carry-on is stowed overhead—approximately, anyway.
The letters are there. And she’ll be in close proximity to Conrad, who these letters are written for, all weekend, for the first time in two years.
She wants to show them to him, wants him to know how often she thought of him while in Paris, but would he want that? Maybe he’s no longer in love with her and only sees her as a friend. Maybe that’s why he didn’t call her back last year, because he would’ve said she’s too late and he didn’t want to do that.
“Everything okay?”
She turns, surprised, at the sound of his voice. He’s sitting again, his long fingers clicking his seatbelt into place as he glances over at her. It’s still surreal that he’s here, that they ended up sitting next to each other completely by chance. “Yeah, I’m good. Just thinking.”
He nods, and opens his mouth to say something else, ask her what she’s thinking, but then the plane starts its descent, and panic crosses his face. He squeezes his eyes shut and glances away from her.
Without thinking, she takes both of his hands in hers and squeezes.
“The movie was really good,” she says, hoping to distract him. “I think you would’ve liked it.”
Why is she talking about this when she could be talking about anything else?
I still . . .
Okay, maybe not anything else.
“The main couple—I forget their names already—found the buried treasure, like, incredibly easily,” she continues. “It would’ve been kind of unbelievable just how fast if it hadn’t been established that the two of them worked that well together. They were so in sync, and when they fought the snakes at the end, it was this really cool fight sequence with a lot of lightning and rain.”
“That’s wild.” The plane drops a bit then and Conrad leans his forehead against her shoulder, then turns his face into her neck, their hands still clasped between them. “Is this okay?”
“Yeah,” she breathes out, her heart pounding from his sudden nearness. She pushes the armrest up between them and pulls him closer with an arm around his shoulders. “That wasn’t even the best part. As it turns out, she’d been in love with him the whole time, and that’s why she was so pissed at him all the time. She didn’t know how to deal with those feelings and was afraid he didn’t love her back, I guess.”
He lets go of her hands to twist his fingers in her shirt, likely needing something to ground him to the moment. “Did he love her?”
Her breath hitches. It’s ironic that Conrad is asking her that, because that’s what she wants to know: does he still love her? Does he know that she still loves him, that she would hold him during every flight just to make sure he knows he’s safe with her?
Ask him! her brain whispers, but she can’t do that. Not now.
“Yeah,” she says, isn’t shocked when it comes out as more of a whisper. It’s a miracle she’s finding words at all. “They had this epic love confession after that final battle and kissed in the rain.”
“Like in The Notebook? You used to love that movie. Thought it was so romantic that they wrote each other letters. You cried at that love confession scene so much that the moms had to ban it from movie night.”
“First of all, that scene in the rain is iconic and you can’t tell me otherwise. Second of all, and perhaps most importantly—”
“Oh, you have a list?” He’s teasing her, so talking about this, distracting him, must be helping.
“Absolutely. Second of all, you cried too,” she points out, instead of what she wants to say, which is: You remember that? “I seem to remember you putting up a fight that we had to watch it again, but when I looked at you during that love confession, you were crying.”
She used to look at him during that love confession to see if he was looking back at her, if he was as emotional about it as she was, if he was as in love with her as she was. She hadn’t meant to tell him that.
“You got me,” he says, still amused.
Belly holds her breath, waits to see if he’ll say anything about that, if he picked up on what she revealed.
He doesn’t.
Instead, he tucks her hair behind her ears.
The plane lands then, the wheels rumbling along the runway, and he inhales sharply, looking away from her.
“Come here,” she says, opening her arms for him to fall into.
He does, buries his face in her neck again and breathes her in deep. Does she smell the same? Does he even notice?
She wraps her arms around him and her fingers curl into the back of his crewneck, making sure to keep her voice soft and soothing, low enough that only he hears it. What she doesn’t do is think about how intimate this feels, how this is the closest they’ve been in two years, how she’s dreamed about having him close again. “I’m here. You’re okay.”
She whispers it to him over and over, alternating between I’m here and you’re okay, until the plane has stopped at their gate, and then he pulls back, looking at her so tenderly that if he didn’t already hold her heart in his hands, he would now.
Her arms fall from around him, and immediately, she misses his warmth, his broad back beneath her palms. She misses holding him.
“Thank you,” he whispers. His hand finds hers and squeezes it just once, before he lets go.
Around them, people pop open the overhead bins and rush off the plane as if they can’t stand to be on it any longer (or maybe they have a connecting flight), but Belly hardly notices. She’s looking at Conrad, and everything else fades until it’s just him looking back at her.
She nods distractedly, still reeling from his proximity.
After barely twelve hours in his presence, she’s already fallen this hard this quickly?
Oh, Belly is so fucked.