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“Seriously?” Belly’s voice cuts though the tinny Madden sound effects emanating from the TV, the toe of her sandal knocking repeatedly against the wooden frame of the couch, “Steven-”
“What?” he shoots back, eyes staying fixed on the game in front of him.
“Mom said fifteen minutes, it’s been almost an hour,”
“Well go find something to do,” he mutters, irritated as his pass play is broken up.
“I need fresh air-”
“Go down to the beach then, Jeremiah’s already down there-”
“I don’t want to go down to the beach,” she whines, continuing her assault on the sofa like a toddler would the back of an airplane seat.
Her antics finally succeed at getting the better of him and he grits out a long, drawn-out groan of frustration, thumbing the menu button on his controller.
“Belly can’t you just…” he begins aimlessly, wracking his brain for a solution that won’t require him to move.
Belly had been (im)patiently waiting for someone to take her into town all day. She had spent the last week, their first week in Cousins, sick. This morning, mercifully, she had woken up able to breathe through both nostrils again and itching to get out of the house after being cooped up. Before Laurel left with Susannah for their pedicures she had made Steven promise that he would save his game after fifteen minutes and make use of his new highly coveted driver's license. (“If I’m letting you drive my car, you’re going to help me with your sister.”)
“No, okay,” Belly starts to reiterate petulantly, “mom said-”
“Belly I’m busy! Can't you just…just go ask Conrad,”
“Ask me what?” a deeper voice cuts in from behind her, Belly swiveling her head around to see Conrad coming into view from the kitchen.
“Belly wants a ride into town-”
“Steven was supposed to give me one forty-five minutes ago,”
“Please dude? I’ll owe you,” Steven begs, giving Conrad a pleading look over his shoulder.
Conrad turns his attention toward Belly then, her brown eyes hopefully trained up at him, and lets out a small resigned sigh almost immediately. A smile tugs at his lips and he begins walking backward.
“Where are we going?” he asks as he reenters the kitchen, snagging his keys off of their hook on the wall, hearing Belly gasp.
“Really?!”
“Yeah,” he says, incapable of keeping his grin from widening further at her excitement.
“Oh my god thank you- okay, I just have to run upstairs and grab my purse- hold on-” she sputters, racing to the bottom of the stairs.
“Purse,” Steven teases to himself as he resumes his game. Belly had started carrying one religiously at the start of last school year (she was in high school now, after all), and she felt very grown-up about it. Steven had made sure to continue reminding her that she very much was not.
“Okay!” she chirps mere seconds later, bounding back down, “Ready! Let’s go!”
“Thanks man,” Steven says, and Conrad gives him a quick nod before walking over to meet Belly, now eagerly bouncing on the balls of her feet in the entryway.
“How much sugar have you had today?” he chides as he opens the door, watching her all but sprint out of it and toward the car.
She pops the passenger door open, quickly muttering “I might have had the rest of my Chunky Monkey for breakfast,” under her breath.
Conrad huffs a laugh as he slides into the driver's seat, ”Alright, so some real food first then,” he says, and Belly nods, beaming as she quickly buckles and kicks her shoes off so she can swing her legs up onto the dashboard the way Conrad loathes. (“What if we get into an accident?” he’d ask, to which she always would confidently reply “We won’t, you’re a great driver.”)
Of course, in the end, he'd let her keep them there (despite the fact that it really was very dangerous). It was a short trip into town, he figured.
(And he would like you to know that it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that his still newly-pubescent brain really likes seeing them propped up like that, all soft and tan......definitely not.)
Belly watches Conrad buckle with a childlike restlessness, rolling her crossed ankles around over the glove box. When he finally puts the Range Rover in drive she lets out an excited squeak, eliciting another fond smile from him that he tries to hide as he pulls out of the driveway. She’s thrilled to be out again, away from her piles of crumpled tissues and half-drunk mugs of green tea. She begins to turn away from him to roll her window down, longing to feel the ocean breeze and afternoon sun on her arms, but then she stops-
Suddenly, her eyes lock onto something far more interesting than their elderly neighbors on their TerraTrikes.
Just as they begin to turn out past the open gate, Belly catches Conrad sliding his phone from his pocket. She watches as he scrolls through his playlists at the first stop sign, shuffling one (blandly named, simply, “Alt-Rock”) after it connects to Bluetooth, and then very responsibly tosses it face down into a cup holder. He pulls onto the main road, and she thinks she hears him say something about it being a nice day, but Belly’s not listening. She’s no longer restless either, or thinking about lunch, or intent on opening her window and basking in the warm Cape air. No, she’s completely entranced. She tries to tear her eyes away, but she can’t.
She can’t because…
Because..
Well.
Conrad's hands.
Truth be told, before this very moment, Belly hadn’t given them much consideration. I mean she was kind of obsessed with every part of Conrad, especially since he’d hit that second growth spurt before last summer. He’d shot up, seemingly overnight, and it had intensified Belly’s crush tenfold (which she didn’t think was possible). Six feet tall, just like that. And still growing. Susannah was constantly talking about how quickly he’d been outgrowing his clothes and shoes. (“He went through three pairs of cleats just last season Laur,” she’d squawked through the phone last weekend.)
Belly couldn’t believe that little boy she grew up with was…him. This like, actual…man.
She had to look up at him when she spoke to him, like really look up- strain her neck, nearly. And he had to bend down to hear her (something he did for the first time when they were at the pier last June, their second day in, buying wristbands for the midway).
She had been standing close, using his shadow for shade, trying to raise her voice over the crowds of kids around them, asking if she could “pretty please” get a caramel apple after he let Steven and Jeremiah loose. He had leaned down, all the way down, and for a very brief moment she thought he was going to, like, kiss her on the cheek right there in front of their brothers. She totally froze. Suddenly her lips were millimeters from Conrad Fisher’s earlobe as he hummed a casual questioning “Hm?", and she could smell the spearmint of his toothpaste mixed with the sharp, intoxicating scent of his cologne. (Because he wears cologne now too, by the way, which is also literally insane.) Then, after they got their bands (and her apple), and released the human tornadoes onto the masses, the two of them had found the line for Mega Flip. She was running the tip of her tongue over her braces, trying to dislodge the thick molten sugar, and watched as the ride operator let him right on. Didn't even look up, just waved him right through. (He still quickly gave her a once-over, though, despite the fact that she’d been over four-foot-eight since she was ten, but she digresses.)
Oh..and then there was also that other thing.
When they got back that evening she had asked him to grab her a cup while she went for the POM in the fridge. When she turned back around, juice acquired, she saw him stretching to grab her favorite one (which just so happened to be on the very top shelf). (Which he can reach now, because he's ginormous.)
As he lifted his arm a little higher, his shirt rode up, and...
There was a very thin, defined line of hair running from just below his belly button down into the exposed waistband of his boxers. Belly had a difficult time pulling her eyes away then too.
That night, as she lay in bed, she couldn't stop thinking about what the view would be like sitting on top of his shoulders. She'd never done that before, not even playing chicken in the pool, because...well, she was one. She wanted to sit on them at the dock while they watched the fireworks on the fourth. When she closed her eyes she could picture it; her looking out at the unimpeded deep-blue expanse of sky, steadying herself with her hands in his hair, the solid warmth of his neck between her thighs. She also couldn't stop thinking about how his t-shirt, which was about two sizes bigger than it would have been the previous summer, would probably come down to just above her knees. Like, she could totally wear it and nothing else and get away with it. (And no, she didn’t "steal one from the laundry room a few nights later to try on", why would you even ask that?)
And, more than anything, she couldn't stop thinking about what she saw when it rode up.
So his height? Totally. Happy trail? Definitely. But his hands? Hands weren’t really her thing. I mean she was fourteen, she didn’t have a thing..yet. But sitting here, watching the way they nimbly flick the turn signal on, and adjust the rearview mirror, and turn down The Strokes…she thinks maybe she’s beginning to develop one. Right now he’s rhythmically drumming his (really, really long) fingers against the stitched leather as they wait for a parking spot, and it’s making the tendons beneath his skin dance.
God they’re like…bigger than her face.
Belly thinks she can feel her lips part a little. The size of them on the steering wheel…
That’s almost not normal.
♪ ♬ The room is on fire as she's fixing her hair ♪ ♬
“Belly?”
Her eyes dart up, her train of thought comes to a screeching halt. She can feel a flush overtaking her cheeks in record time.
“Y-yeah?” she asks, her voice faltering traitorously.
She sees the corner of his mouth twitch.
“You okay?”
“Mhm,” she hums lightly, playing it off (poorly). Conrad watches as she shifts in her seat, pulling her legs down. “Totally,” she continues, needlessly, “super..okay..”
She’s going to kill herself, she thinks.
“Totally super okay,” he mutters amusedly under his breath as he finally begins to pull in. Belly grimaces, scrunching her nose in embarrassment as she turns to unbuckle, hurriedly opening the door and hopping out before he’s even engaged the parking brake.
═══════
Main street is bustling as usual this time of year; kids freshly out of school running unsupervised up and down sidewalks in front of large bay windows, mouths sticky and shirt's stained, clutching half-melted ice cream cones and Otter Pops. There are vendors of every kind dotting the pavement as far as the eye can see, and red, white and blue pennant banners wrapped around every tree. Conrad is smiling watching Belly take it all in, looking around with that same sense of wonder she always carries, as if she hasn’t been here over a hundred times throughout the years.
She’s..really fucking pretty, he thinks.
Precious, he quickly corrects with an imperceptible shake of his head.
“So,” he says before clearing his throat, breaking his own trance now, “I was thinking..sandwiches?”
She snaps her head back at that.
“Lucca’s?!”
“Mhm,” he nods, watching her face further illuminate at the confirmation. Without another word she eagerly takes off in that direction, heading toward the forrest green awning in the distance. He follows behind, eyes tracking her sleek dark ponytail as it swings from shoulder to bare shoulder, acting as a sort of metronome. It goes a touch auburn each time it catches the light, and her skin is slick from her Banana Boat Sunscreen. She’s wearing, um...he thinks it's called a romper. She's worn them since she could walk, but this one is...it’s short- like, if she bends over, he’s going to have to make sure he's standing behind her, lest he beat to death every man in the vicinity, short. It’s more a coverup than it is clothing. As she turns her head to look both ways before crossing the street (good girl), the tied halter neck of her new bathing suit top peeks out; the bathing suit Laurel wasn’t so sure about buying her, a fact he'd eavesdropped a few weeks ago while he studied for finals. (“She’s growing up too fast,” she’d said to his mom, his ears perking up one room over like a dog hearing the word "treat", his pencil going still. “It’s really not that revealing,” Susannah had replied, “I mean we used to wear-” she’d begun to go on, Laurel thankfully cutting her off. “She just really..fills it out,” he’d heard Laurel agonize then, but after that…nothing. Nothing, not because his mom and Laurel had stopped talking, but because Conrad had completely zoned out picturing it- picturing Belly filling out her swimsuit. A “way too small” bikini that she had “begged for”, apparently.)
He was sitting there at his desk, staring at the pythagorean theorem, picturing the slick, supple curve of her budding breasts over the top of two quarter moon shaped cups. Then he paused; 'What if it’s a triangle bikini?’. He felt his sweats tighten at the mental image of the tan lines it would leave; of her stripping it’s cold wet lycra off to shower away the sand and sun, standing in the summerhouse's upstairs bath, waiting for the spray of water to warm, two pale isosceles painting her chest each bullseye’d with small, round, pebbled-
And, well..he didn’t get much studying done after that. Instead he dragged himself and his now painful hard-on to the bathroom, taking a long, cold shower. He was standing under the stream, running a hand back through his hair, mentally walking through your standard boner-killer checklist: Baseball, Math, Grandma. But he hated the Red Sox, both of his grandmothers were dead before he turned two, and math...triangles...
So, with his toes on the verge of going numb, he finally adjusted the temperature, closed his eyes and wrapped a hand around himself. He washed his self-hatred (and come) down the drain forty-five seconds later.
Anyway, it is a triangle bikini, and she does…fill it out. The tan lines have yet to materialize, but he’ll surely be the first to notice when they do.
Now it’s thin straps, in a bow (a pretty blue and white polka-dotted bow), were teasing him just below the nape of her neck. Something comes over him, as he falls further behind her; an almost primal urge. He wants to tug at it's beaded ends. Needs to, really. It's only knotted once, he notices; so incredibly tempting. For the briefest of moments he lets himself imagine doing it, back at the house; watching her scramble to hold it up to cover herself, the way her cheeks would go pink like they did back there in the car. Maybe she'd even let out a little gasp.
It's fucked. He's fucked.
And yet still, his fingertips are almost aching.
He does know, by the way; he knows all of this is so fucking wrong. He knows that this is Belly he’s talking about. This is the girl who still sleeps with stuffed animals, and uses a Cinderella toothbrush (it’s her favorite color, and plays A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes while she brushes). He was supposed to be protecting her from boys with thoughts like these, not-
“Coming?!” she calls back after she gets nearly half a block ahead, and he quickly snaps back to reality, lightly jogging to catch up with her
═══════
They end up ordering their usual (smoked turkey for Conrad and house baked ham for Belly), and when they reach the register Conrad pulls his wallet out before Belly even has a chance to pick their chips. Her stomach does a familiar flip.
He had never let her pay for anything growing up; if it was the four of them, and the boys were using their allowances to foot their bills, it was always Conrad using his for himself and Belly. She would diligently remind herself that it was only because he felt a certain sense of obligation when it came to her; he was the oldest boy, and she was the youngest, and a girl. She knew it was, like, in his DNA. But even still, it always made her feel special. Always made her smile to herself. Always made her feel a little bit like they were on a date. (He had even continued doing it after Laurel had, three summers ago, accidentally knocked Bacon (Belly’s former piggy bank named by Steven) off of Belly’s dresser and about two hundred unspent dollars in ones and fives came spilling out of his broken halves.)
She watches him now as he pulls a twenty and ten from the tattered leather fold, her eyes tracking the cash pinched between his index and middle fingers.
Have they…
Have they always been…almost the length of a bill?
“Grab one,” Conrad nods toward the cold case, rows of glass bottles expertly arranged within; elderflower and rose lemonades, with painted watercolor flowers printed onto their pretty pink labels. Belly had once curated a small collection of these emptied bottles; she used to take them down to the beach to fill them with layers of sand and shells. Conrad would help her, and then he would carry them back up to the house and line them up on her window sill- that was, until the day Steven and Jeremiah stole them from her beach towel before he got the chance, and decided to use them for slingshot practice. Conrad came very close to breaking their arms.
“Really?!” she asks for the second time today, and he nods. She grabs one instantly, cheeks almost sore from smiling.
As they make their way back outside Belly asks “You wanna sit on a bench?”, eyes already trained on an empty one overlooking the water. Conrad nods, and she begins to head that way, arms swinging at her sides.
“Hey,” he says, voice stern but not unkind. She stops immediately, obediently, looking back at him as he walks over to very responsibly take the bottle from her. He can foresee a disaster; the slippery glass flying from her fingertips in her excited strides and shattering on the pavement. Belly watches his hand dwarf hers as he does, his fingers curling around the neck, making eight ounces look like four. She thinks his pinky might be the size of her ring finger.
She also thinks she might be going a little insane.
He’d taken her hand more times than she could count over the summers they’d spent together, most of the time to stop her from getting lost or running into traffic. (He was pretty sure she had a death wish from the ages of three to five.) He’d held her hair up while she got a drink of water from the fountain at the boardwalk. He’d taught her how to throw a football; where to place her fingers along the laces, the perfect form to produce a spiral. She’d watched him strum a guitar, tie sailing knots, carefully turn the pages of story books...he’d steadied her handle bars, handed her muffins across the kitchen table, gripped the necks of syrup bottles..
These were not those hands. These were…hands that she could see doing other things.
Things that Taylor had told her about; things that Belly hadn't attempted herself. Yet.
“This one?” Conrad asks, dragging her back to the present once more, “Careful,” he goes on after she nods a bit dumbly, reaching down to test the temperature of the painted wood in that exceedingly thoughtful way he always-
“You wear a ring?” Belly blurts, before she can stop herself; before she even realizes that’s her voice she's hearing. She’s staring- gawking, really, at Conrad’s left middle finger. There, however many inches down at the very base, is the faintest band of pale skin wrapped all the way around.
Conrad pauses, his hand stilling flat. He looks up.
“Um…yeah. I had take it off..for training camp,” he says, watching the way she follows his hand as he lifts it back up, “Forgot to put it back on,” he adds as he slowly extricates her lemonade from where it was being held against his side by his elbow. Her eyes meet his as she takes it from him, almost reverent in a way that's making something coil in Conrad's stomach.
“You’ve just never…like…worn rings before,” she says, her voice gone a little shy.
They sit, and Conrad begins to unwrap the butcher paper around his club. “Yeah…uh, mom bought it for me, end of last summer. One of those street vendors,” he says, nodding back toward the shops, “I think it's supposed to be, like, made out of a spoon or something,”
Belly giggles at that, nodding. “I think I’ve seen those on Pinterest before,” she muses.
“Yeah,” he says again, wordlessly (and without even looking) reaching back over, plucking the bottle from her incapable hands, and cracking the cap's seal. Annoying. She'd only struggled with it for, like, a millisecond. God. (And a millisecond too long if you asked him.)
She takes it again with a grateful smile, ignoring the heat she feels flooding her body, and sips it twice before she begins to open her sandwich too, asking,
“What does it look like?”
Conrad turns his head toward her, his mouth now full of his first bite, chewing and clearing his throat a bit as he asks,
“Th- r-ng?”, to which Belly shrugs nonchalantly in response. “Uh..” Conrad continues, trying to swallow as much as he can so he can actually speak, “it’s,” he says, another swallow, “it’s got..two chevrons. Really basic,” he finishes, waiting to see if she’s going to inquire further before he takes another bite.
Belly just nods, her mind drifting, picturing it; constructing an entire scenario in her head, actually, of him sliding it back on at the end of a long practice. He'd have a towel wrapped around his waist, his hair wet from having just showered, and he’d be standing in front of his open locker. He’d grab it from the metal shelf up top and slide it down past the knuckle, and that one vein that runs along the back of his hand would probably be more pronounced, from the hot wat-
“You want one?” his voice cuts in, and Belly looks over from where she was mindlessly picking the flakes off of the top of her Dutch crunch roll.
“What?”
“A ring, like..from that stand? They had other ones…other designs,” he says, and a small smile splits Belly’s cheeks as her hands do likewise to her sandwich.
“Oh..no, I’m okay,” she says before taking her own first bite.
“You sure? I can…” Conrad pauses for a second, like he's considering how this might sound, “I’d buy you one, if you want..” he says, and it takes every ounce of fortitude Belly has not to melt at his feet.
When he looks over at her, her eyes are doing that reverent thing again, and he relishes the way she looks down at her lap, unable to hold his eye contact.
“I’m sure,” she bashfully murmurs after a swallow.
Fifteen minutes later, after Conrad’s housed his entire club (and half the bag of salt and vinegar chips they had agreed to split) he asks,
“So…where to next?”
Belly’s just wrapping up the other half of hers for later, carefully tucking it into her bag as she replies,
“Dunno,”
Conrad looks over at her, cocking one brow. “What?” he asks, a bit playfully, “What do you mean? You didn’t have anywhere you wanted to go?”
Belly shakes her head, and he chuckles. Of course she didn’t.
“I just really needed to get out of the house,” she sighs contentedly, and Conrad smiles, shaking his head as he looks back out at the water in front of them, and then he hears her add, “Thank you, by the way,” and his head pivots back to her, watching her squint over the sun behind him, “For the ride, and the sandwich..and,” she says, holding up the last of her lemonade with a coy smile.
He watches as she wraps her plush lips around the opening of the bottle, tipping it up, finishing it (good gi-). She pulls the glass from her lips with a soft pop when it's all gone, lightly tapping the rim on her tongue to make sure she gets every last drop.
“Any time Belly,” he says, his voice gone a bit thick. She has no idea how much he means it.
“So home?” she asks as she recaps it and stands, about eye level with him now. Conrad drapes his long arms over the back of the bench and hems and haws for a moment (collects himself for a moment).
“Lets stop on the way, get some snacks,” he says finally, watching again as her face beautifully transforms at the suggestion, her irises glowing gold in the now waning sunlight.
“Movie night?!”
He nods, and Belly squeals. She had missed It Happened One Night with the moms. Her throat had been hard to swallow around when they'd arrived that afternoon, and by the time they pressed play she had a fever of over one hundred one. He knew how disappointed she was.
They start their trek back toward the car and Belly smiles at Conrad over her shoulder when she hears him pull his keys from his pocket.
“Hey, maybe I could-”
“In your dreams,” he says, and Belly thinks yeah, pouting playfully instead.
“You’re so mean,” she says, just this side of flirtatious.
“Uh-huh,” he smirks, mindlessly spinning the key ring around his index finger at his side and…yeah, a driving lesson right now would definitely be a bad idea.
═══════
When they finally pull back into the summerhouse’s driveway it’s magic hour, and the mental image of Conrad’s hands are now permanently seared into Belly’s brain.
His left grabbing two bags of Sour Patch Kids, a bag of Brookside Dark Chocolate Blueberries, a Snapple Peach Tea and a Smart Water from the shelves of the marina's market. The feeling of his right pressing flat against her lower back though the thin cotton covering it as he guides her around throngs of people in line on their way to the self-check kiosks. Both, right now; the hair on the backs of them illuminated by the setting light of dusk, the way they’re casually draped over the wheel, and then grip the gear stick as he shifts it into park in front of the garage. The way one is running smoothly down the length of his seatbelt to press the tips of two (very long, like just so so long) fingers into the red button of the buckl-
“Okay,” Conrad says, Belly's nearly glazed over eyes sweeping back up to meet his as she fidgets her purse into her lap, silently praying there isn’t drool on the corner of her lips. “What are you looking at?” he asks, ripping the Band-Aid right off, and Belly feels her stomach lurch.
“What?” she tries at first, her tone confused, innocent.
“What are you looking at? You’ve been…staring at something all afternoon..”
“I..” Belly tries again, incredulous this time, “I have not..”
“You absolutely have,” he says, a smirk beginning to tug at his mouth.
“You're seeing things..” she mutters under her breath, reaching for her own buckle as warmth washes over her already sun-kissed cheeks.
“Seriously,” he says, his tone almost knowing, "Tell me,"
“I literally do not know what you’re talking about,”
“Come on,” he goads, his voice a bit lower, and all of a sudden Belly seems a little flustered.
She's readjusting her bag, sliding it back off of her lap and to her side, unable to hold his eye contact, biting her bottom lip (lightly tinged blue from the candy she just had to open before they made it back to the house) as she takes to toying anxiously with a loose thread on the seat cover beneath her.
"It's..it's nothing," she says, quieter now, and it's sick what seeing her so nervous is doing to him.
"So tell me then.." he counters, his timbre almost soothing.
She can feel the air in the cabin growing thick, a standoff developing as the silence stretches between them.
"It's..." she starts to say again when her resolve wavers- but almost immediately she thinks better of it, shaking her head before looking away once more.
“It's..?” he echos, not letting her off the hook, his smirk widening.
“Nothing,” Belly begins to lie again, dragging out the word this time in bratty defiance, but she cuts herself off before she can finish- because suddenly Conrad is leaning over, reaching across her body.
She goes completely still as his arm comes into view in front of her, nearly brushing against her chest, watching as he manually locks her door (something he could have much more easily done with the button on his own, mind you). Her eyes follow his hand as he pulls it back (because of course), her stomach twisting when she meets his gaze.
“You have to tell me,” he says firmly, and she feels the words run up through her like a chill.
What Belly actually has to do is resist the urge to press her thighs together.
“Did you just lock me in?” she asks, her voice half an octave higher, a small disbelieving giggle escaping her.
"I'll let you out if you tell me," he says, and Belly thinks she's beginning to develop another thing.
“Conrad..” she exhales, half plea, half playful.
"I could sit in here all night," he crows, acting like he's going to reach for the button on his seat to move it further back, to get comfortable.
"Oh my god fine," she relents, and she wants to smack (kiss) the smug look it elicits off of his stupid face, “It’s like..”
“…like?” he says with a taunting lilt, her entire body prickling with heat.
“Your hands,” she finally admits, bluntly, shaking her head again, this time because she can't believe he really got it out of her; that she really just said that to him. And neither can he. Actually, Conrad is pretty sure this is better than anything he could have guessed might come out of her mouth.
“My..”
“Yes, okay? Your hands are like…Conrad they’re huge,” she says, a kind of wonder lacing her exasperated tone.
He lets out a laugh, almost involuntarily, and Belly groans in humiliated frustration.
Ugh, she fucking hates him.
(Fuck, she fucking loves him.)
Conrad removes his hands from where they were resting; one on the wheel, one on the center console. He holds them out in the space between them, looking at them in faux bewilderment.
“They are not that big..” he says deadpan, and Belly squeaks for what feels like the umpteenth time this afternoon.
“Shut up…look at them,” she demands. He flexes his palms, fingers fully extended. “They're literally like…twice the size of mine,” she goes on, and at that Conrad looks up at her. She can see the gears turning behind his eyes. Then, after a long beat, he-
Oh, God.
He turns his right hand over in the air, keeping his eyes on her; an offering. Belly looks up at him, and then back to his hand (ohmygodohmygodohmygod). Before she can overthink it, before she ruins whatever's happening right now, she very shyly brings her own hand up (adorned with a woven friendship bracelet around her tanned wrist, and glittery baby blue nails that match her bikini) and she places her palm flush to his. It’s her left, and his right; perfectly aligned. His thumb twitches slightly as she makes contact, brushing against hers.
(Cliché incoming..)
When they touch, Belly sees actual fireworks; no, like real exploding bursts behind her ever-expanding pupils. Her rods and cones rejoicing. His hand is so warm- much warmer than she'd imagined it would be. Like a furnace- no, like a bonfire. She’s certain he hasn't always been like this- felt like this. Actually, when they were little, he was always cold. Like, he would get so cold after their night swims he’d be trembling as he got out of the pool. He was rail thin, lips bluer than hers are now from Blue No. 1, and Susannah would bundle him snug in a beach towel and then in her arms.
But again she’s reminded, this Conrad isn’t that Conrad. This Conrad isn’t rail thin; his shoulders are broad, and his forearms are thick, and he feels like fire. He feels like the red-hot tips of the cigarettes Belly knows he’s hiding in his desk drawer.
“Literally twice the size..” Belly says, softer now, inching the heel of her palm down the tiniest bit so they’re perfectly squared. She thinks she can hear her heartbeat in her ears, and she’s hiding it exceedingly well all things considered.
Conrad’s looking at their hands, at the way his swallows hers, and he’s trying (and failing) not to think the things he is.
“Yours are just small,” he says, a cockiness to his tone that he just can't suppress.
“Are not.” she counters instinctively, and his smirk grows.
“Are too,” he says, “Tiny.”
“They're normal sized!” she insists (adorably, he thinks through a tightened jaw).
She brings her other hand up, laying them heel-to-fingertip (to measure, of course).
“Look,” she says, “Two of mine, basically,”
Conrad wants to grab her wrists now more than he wants to untie her bikini top. He wants to wrap one hand around them both- because he could. Because he can. He’s brainstorming how he could get away with it and play it off as simple curiosity.
And okay, let’s be honest, his hand is not quite as big as two of hers, really. But, I mean, it's not like he's going to correct her. It's close enough. Whatever she says.
Belly feels startlingly emboldened by the fact that he hasn't pulled his hand away yet. He actually doesn't look in any rush to ever take it back. She very briefly hesitates doing what the Taylor on her shoulder is screaming at her to do- but then, with a second wind of courage (and a silent mental "do it"), she takes hold of his hand with both of hers. She pulls it over into her lap like it belongs to her, holding it palm up, and asks,
“Was your coach, like…wow?”
First, before Conrad can answer, he has to get the blood to rush back up into his brain where it's needed. He has to focus- focus on the question and not on the way his hand looks hovering above her thighs. Not on how it really does look so fucking "huge" (that was the word she used, wasn't it?). Not on how badly he wants to bury it right betwee-
“Wow?” he asks, his lips remaining slightly parted after the word leaves them. He thinks briefly that he’d probably let her cut it off and keep it, if she really wanted to.
“Yeah…I mean they’re kind of perfect for football,” she observes, and he shifts in his seat.
“Mhm,” is all he can manage in response, eyes fixed on the way she’s pressing her thumbs into the meat of his palm. And then she runs the tip of her index finger over one of the deep creases indenting it, the curved one that begins just below his index finger.
“Our setter taught me how to palm read,” she says, almost absentmindedly. The way she says it reminds him of when she was seven, and she told him “I know how to do a cartwheel,” .
Conrad’s pretty sure he’s about to do something very fucking reckless- in a minute, though, because at the moment he can’t do much of fucking anything. He’s kind of…comatose. He’s leaned back a little like he's trying to get a better view, a more complete picture of Belly looking his hand the way she used to look at toys of his she wanted to play with, watching her with a, frankly, blatantly hungry look in his eyes. His adam's apple bobs as he asks,
“Oh yeah?”
Belly nods, “I think this one’s your heart line..” she says.
Conrad wonders if she can see her name written on it.
“Which one?” he asks, as if he didn’t see, as if he isn’t committing her every movement to memory. His voice is absolutely wrecked.
“This one,” she says again, running the tip of her finger back over it, slower this time. “I think..” she continues, “this,” she circles her finger around the mound just below his thumb, “is the mount of Venus.”
“Venus?”
“Venus,” she nods. When she looks back up at him his pupils have almost entirely eclipsed his irises.
“What does it mean?” he asks, and Belly's cheeks instantly go half a shade darker. He's fucking thrilled.
“Oh..” she says, sheepishly, and Conrad latches onto it like a pit bull.
“Oh?” he asks, and now she's back to nervously avoiding his gaze.
“Yeah- I mean..no-," she stammers. (Fuck, he thinks.) "She just…it’s...”
“It’s…”
“I think it’s, like…a sex thing..” she says, her voice nearly a whisper.
“A..”
“Yeah,” she says, “I think she said the, like, um...bigger it is..” Belly trails off, her entire body humming, “The more…" she murmurs, "..passionate,”
Conrad thinks that if his brain were undergoing an MRI, the pleasure center would be lighting up like a fucking Christmas tree. He swallows thickly, jaw ticking as he wars with himself.
Belly. This is Belly.
This is fucking Belly.
You still babysit her- because she’s a fucking baby. You used to take baths with her. She’s your mom’s best friend’s daughter. You’re-
“Is mine?” he asks, "Big?"
He watches then as Belly's eyes go round, and she looks back up at him, blinking slowly. (And if it isn't the hottest fucking thing he's ever-)
He's fucked. He's so fucking fucked.
She’s trying to get her mouth to move, trying to get her brain to form a single coherent thought. She’s a deer in headlights, in every sense.
You're holding Conrad Fisher’s hand in your lap.
You're holding Conrad Fisher’s hand in your lap and he’s talking to you…about sex.
And he’s looking at you…
Conrad is looking at her right now in a way he never has before (not to her face, the omnipotent narrator corrects)- in a way she’s only ever seen him look at girls his age. Girls he’d leave the house to meet after their moms had gone to bed. Girls he was interested in. Girls he would sneak Mike’s Hard Lemonades for and flirt with and kiss. Girls he buys those condoms she also knows he’s hiding in his desk drawer for.
She realizes, in this moment, seeing herself reflected back in his eyes…she's becoming one of those girls.
“Yes..” she says, voice so quiet it's nearly inaudible. She watches as another familiar yet foreign-to-her look flickers across his face, his eyes darkening (or maybe it’s the nearly-set-sun’s light finally dipping behind the house, she tries convincing herself), his eyebrow ticking up just slightly.
He slowly begins to sit up. She wonders if he can feel her trembling.
“What else does it say?” he asks, and she’s completely paralyzed; she honestly thinks she might pass out. She feels like a gazelle in one of those nature documentaries.
Then, her breath catches in her throat; she feels his hand begin to turn over.
She's definitely going to pass out.
She still, even now, naively believes that he would never touch her in any way that wasn't chaste. (She really has no idea.) But then his palm settles on her tender bare skin; warm, and heavy, and claiming. His coarse fingertips skirt just below the hem of her shorts, and his fingers very slowly begin to slip between her legs, curling themselves around her delicate inner thigh.
The act sends a jolt up through her body so intensely her toes curl against the rubber mat at her feet.
But just then, abruptly, the car jostles.
Belly nearly yelps, Conrad pulling his hand back so quickly he almost elbows the window behind him, and that’s when she hears Jeremiah's muffled voice over her shoulder.
“Come on! We're going back down to the water before-” he begins to shout through the glass, Conrad looking at him through it like he just got caught with…well…his hand in the cookie jar. Belly turns, crimson cheeked and doe eyed, and watches as Jeremiah’s face changes in real time. He looks between them; to her, then to Conrad, resettling his glare on her with an accusatory tone as he asks,
“What are you doing?”
Belly’s mouth has gone completely dry from the whiplash of the last ten seconds, her mouth opening, but nothing coming out.
“We’re..coming,” she hears Conrad say from behind her, and another wave of warmth washes over her.
Jeremiah looks back at him, and Belly feels like one of those gazelles again.
“Well…hurry," he says, his gone tone cold, speaking exclusively to Conrad now, "We only have fifteen minutes until it gets too dark,".
And then he’s gone, and the silence that reclaims the car is deafening. She can feel Conrad’s eyes on her, on the back of her head, and she starts to reach for the door handle as all but instructed- but then she stops herself. She stills there, and before she can lose her nerve, before she turns back into a pumpkin, she turns around,
“Are we…still watching a movie later?” she asks, timidly.
Again something flickers across Conrad’s face....arrogance? It’s subtle, but it’s there. It’s the same look he’d get when he’d pretend not to be thrilled with beating Jeremiah at a ten-meter dash down the beach.
He nods, and she smiles, in a way that undoes whatever there is left in him to undo, finally opening the door to join the boys. Conrad can’t though, unfortunately, and unbeknownst to Belly.
“Hey-” he says, and Belly twirls back around, standing in front of the open door, “I’ll um..be down in a minute,” he says, and she nods a bit confusedly, closing the door before making her way toward the side yard.
He watches her walk, watches the swish of the fabric tickling the tips of her thighs, and the little skip in her step, and he sits there, taking a few long, deep breaths.
Baseball…Math…Grandma…
Fuck.