Chapter Text
Cousins Beach always looked the same from far away, but the closer the car got, the more Belly Conklin realized that was never really true.
It had been eight years since she had been there properly. Eight years since summer meant something simple, something lighter. Now everything felt slightly displaced, like the place had stayed still while she had been pulled forward into a version of herself she wasn’t fully sure she liked yet.
The familiar coastline appeared first, then the long stretch of beach, and finally the houses — all lined up like they were waiting for something that never changed. Still, even through the nostalgia, something felt off. Smaller details she couldn’t name. A repaint here. A new fence there. The kind of changes that made you realize time had passed whether you were ready or not.
Her mother was already talking about the plan for the summer, about how this trip was meant to be “good for everyone,” especially after everything that had happened recently — things Belly didn’t want to name in her own head because once she did, they stopped being abstract and became real again. The breakup she still hadn’t fully healed from. The friendship that had ended so sharply it still echoed in moments of silence. The college situation her parents called “temporary uncertainty” but felt more like a door quietly closing.
And underneath all of that, the reason they were really here: her parents trying, in their own careful way, to fix what had been breaking between them for years.
Her brother was excited in a way that felt untouched by any of it, talking about Princeton like it was already a certainty, something waiting at the end of a straight line.
Belly mostly stayed quiet.
When they finally pulled into the driveway of the house they had rented, she stepped out slower than everyone else, letting the weight of the air settle around her. The house was beautiful in that neutral, intentional way her mother liked — clean lines, soft colors, everything arranged as if emotion was something to be avoided. It wasn’t theirs, but it was meant to feel like it could be.
As she followed her family inside, she heard it before she saw it — voices, sharp enough to cut through the calm.
It was coming from next door.
Through the open window, she caught fragments of a conversation. A man’s voice, frustrated. A woman’s voice, controlled but strained. Words like “he left”, “responsibility”, “this family”. Something about a son. Something about distance. She didn’t catch it clearly, but it lingered anyway, like a conversation that didn’t belong to her but still settled in her mind.
“Who lives there?” she asked quietly.
Her mother glanced briefly outside, distracted. “The Fishers. Old family here. Two boys, I think. Older than you.”
Belly nodded, though the information barely stayed in place. She had vague memories — distant summers, boys laughing on the beach, Steven trying to keep up with them, her sitting nearby pretending not to care.
But those memories felt like they belonged to someone else now.
Later, as they drove toward the country club for lunch, Cousins began to feel even more familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. The roads, the trees, the small details of the town all triggered something in her, but it was layered over everything she had become in the past year — the disappointment, the heartbreak she still avoided naming fully, the friendship that had collapsed without warning, and the college rejection that felt like it had shifted her entire future off its axis.
This trip, her parents kept saying, was about celebration. About Steven and Princeton. About moving forward.
But Belly could feel the unspoken tension beneath it all — the way her parents barely looked at each other, the way conversations stopped and restarted carefully, like even silence needed managing.
So she let herself drift inside her own thoughts instead.
And that was when she saw him.
Through the glass walls of the country club, in one of the open studios, a boy was teaching a couple how to dance.
He moved with a kind of control that didn’t feel forced. Confident, but not loud. Firm, but not harsh. He guided them through the steps like it wasn’t just movement, but something closer to language. Something he understood in a way others didn’t.
Belly slowed without realizing.
There was something about the way he held the room — even though it was mostly glass and light and open space, it felt like everything in it was orbiting around him. His voice carried just enough to be heard clearly. His posture never wavered. He corrected mistakes without hesitation, but not unkindly.
And then, as he turned slightly to demonstrate a step, his eyes lifted.
They landed on her.
For a moment, everything else blurred. The couple he was teaching, the sound of the room, even the movement of people passing outside the glass walls. It was just that brief, steady look between them.
Belly didn’t know him.
At least, not consciously.
But something in the back of her mind shifted anyway, like a memory she couldn’t fully access.
He held her gaze for a second longer than expected.
Then she looked away first, almost automatically, as if caught doing something she wasn’t supposed to.
Her heart was beating a little too fast for no reason she could explain.
And she didn’t look back again.
Not yet.
-
Conrad Fisher had stopped believing summers came with clean breaks a long time ago.
Cousins Beach was supposed to feel like home, but lately it felt more like a place he passed through rather than lived in. The house was full — his parents here for the season, conversations happening in rooms he didn’t fully enter anymore — but he stayed detached from most of it. Present, but never fully available.
That was easier.
He had moved into a rhythm that worked better for him now. Teaching at the country club in the mornings and afternoons, taking private lessons only when absolutely necessary, saving what he could so he wouldn’t have to rely on anything or anyone when he went back to college. The job wasn’t something he talked about much at home. It wasn’t something his father approved of, but that was part of the point.
Everything with his father felt like a quiet argument that never ended properly. And everything with Jeremiah — with the version of family that used to feel simple — had shifted into something he didn’t know how to fix anymore.
So he stayed busy.
Busy meant not thinking.
It also meant refusing the constant stream of private lesson requests that came his way at the club. He knew exactly what they meant — people trying to get closer for reasons that had nothing to do with dance. The offers were always polite, always framed as harmless, but he had learned to read between the lines early.
“No,” he said again that morning, closing another request without hesitation. “Not available outside scheduled hours.”
The manager sighed like it was a negotiation. “They’re offering double.”
Conrad didn’t even look up. “Still no.”
Money wasn’t the issue. It never had been.
Control was.
Later, he arrived at the club earlier than necessary. His parents were already planning lunch there, as they often did during the summer — a routine that felt more like maintenance than togetherness. He didn’t mind it. It kept things structured.
The studio was already prepared when he stepped in.
Glass walls, polished floor, light spilling in from every angle. It was a space designed to be watched, which made it uncomfortable in ways most people didn’t notice.
He preferred it anyway.
“Alright,” he said to the couple already waiting. “Let’s start again. Don’t think about the steps. Think about each other.”
They laughed nervously.
He corrected their posture, guided their timing, moved with them across the floor in steady rhythm. There was a confidence in his instruction that came from repetition more than ego — he knew what worked, and he didn’t waste time pretending otherwise.
Halfway through, he felt it.
That shift in attention.
He looked up.
Outside the glass, near the entrance of the club, someone was standing still.
A girl.
Brown hair catching the light, posture slightly uncertain, like she was still adjusting to being here again.
For a second, he didn’t place her.
Then something in his memory flickered — distant summers, smaller versions of people, the beach, laughter he wasn’t part of but had still heard in passing.
Conklin.
He thought that was her name.
Belly.
He didn’t know why he remembered that.
Or why it mattered.
She was looking at the studio, not at him specifically at first, just observing the movement inside. But then, slowly, her gaze shifted.
And landed on him.
Conrad didn’t stop what he was doing. He finished the step, guided the couple into position, kept his voice steady.
But he was aware of her now in a way he hadn’t been a second ago.
She didn’t look away immediately.
Neither did he.
It was only a moment.
But moments like that had a way of staying longer than they should.
Eventually, she broke eye contact first, turning away as if she had been caught doing something she wasn’t meant to.
Conrad exhaled quietly, resetting his focus.
“Again,” he said to the couple, voice steady as before.
But something in the rhythm had already changed.
And he didn’t know why he couldn’t ignore that.