Chapter 15: Three months
The goodbye at the summer house had been all stiff hugs and forced smiles. Belly hugged Susannah for a long time, breathing in the familiar scent of her perfume and feeling the bird-like frailty of her shoulders. She looked at Jeremiah. “see you later” she said he waved smiling as he stood rigidly by the door. Conrad carried her bag to the car. His hand brushed hers as he set it down, a spark that made her flinch.
“Infinite,” he’d said softly, his eyes on the necklace she wore under her t-shirt.
She just nodded, her throat too tight to speak.
The drive home with Steven and her mother was a blur of highway hypnosis and static-filled radio. Steven chattered about preseason training; her mother asked polite questions about the summer. Belly gave one-word answers, her forehead pressed against the cool glass of the passenger window, watching the pine trees and dunes dissolve into strip malls and suburbs.
Home was different. The air didn’t smell like salt. It smelled like lemon polish and the lingering ghost of last night’s pasta. Her bedroom, with its organized shelves and cheerleading trophies, felt like a museum exhibit of a person she no longer was. The silence was a physical presence. No crash of waves, no screen door slamming, no low murmur of Susannah’s voice downstairs.
For the first week, she jumped every time her phone buzzed. It was never him. Neither of them.
Taylor tried to get the details, but Belly shut it down. “It’s complicated,” she’d say, and Taylor, for once, would let it be.
She got a job at the local bookstore, spending her days alphabetizing mysteries and wiping dust from hardcovers. The mindless routine was a relief. She found herself tracing the infinity symbol on her necklace constantly, a nervous tether to that beach, to those final moments.
Conrad’s silence was different. She expected it. He was a fortress, and she had asked him to lock the gate. But it ached, a dull, persistent throb beneath her sternum. She’d lie in bed at night, phone in hand, staring at his name in her contacts. She never tapped it.
Three months unraveled like that. The sharp edges of the summer began to soften, blurred by the mundane rhythm of home. The memory of Conrad’s kiss became a dream she replayed until it felt less real.
Then, on a Tuesday night when she got home, her phone vibrated in her back pocket.
She pulled it out. The screen glowed brightly in her dark room.
Conrad Fisher.
Her thumb hovered, a sudden, static charge zipping up her arm. She stared at his name until the letters blurred. The caller ID pulsed, a live thing in her palm.
She answered.
“Hey,” she said. Her voice came out thin, a little breathless.
A beat of silence. Then his. “Hey.”
It was just one word, but it carried the weight of every unsaid thing from the past three months. It sounded older. Tired.
She heard him take a slow breath, the rustle of something. He was probably running a hand through his hair.
He was probably running a hand through his hair. She could almost see the gesture, the blond strands falling back into place. The silence stretched, elastic and thin.
God, she missed his voice.
“I, uh, didn’t expect to hear from you,” she said. She sat down hard on the edge of her bed, the springs groaning.
“Is it okay that I’m calling? I shouldn’t have. This was dumb. I’m sorry.” The words tumbled out in a rushed, anxious stream. It was the most he’d said at once all summer.
“No, no, no, no, it’s okay.” She was talking too fast, matching his pace. “We’re still friends, right?”
“Yeah. We’re friends, yeah.” He said it like he was convincing himself.
“Yeah. And, um, friends can talk on the phone.” She traced a seam on her quilt, her finger following the neat, straight line.
“Yeah. Nothing weird about friends talking on the phone.” A faint, hollow echo on his end suggested a stairwell or an empty common room. Stanford felt infinitely far away.
“So how’s, um, college life?” she asked, grasping for the most neutral topic.
“Uh, it’s cool. My roommate snores louder than you do—”
She cut him off, a reflex. “Oh, come on, I don’t snore!” She laughed, the sound surprising her. It felt strange in her quiet room.
Something in his chest pulled. He missed that laugh. Her laugh.
“Yes, you do. A thousand percent. I’ve heard you through the walls for years.” His tone softened, drifting into memory. “Only when you were tired, though.”
“How’s college for you?” he asked, pivoting the focus.
“Boring. Painful.” She collapsed backwards onto her pillow, staring at the ceiling. “I mean, who invented trig and why do they torture college students with it?”
He laughed. It was a low, warm sound that traveled down the line and wrapped around her. It was the laugh from the boardwalk, from before everything.
She kissed that laugh. His laugh.
“It can’t be that bad,” he said, a smile in his voice.
“No, it’s bad. It’s really, really bad. I can’t keep up with all the letters.” She groaned, pushing her textbook with her foot. It slid off the bed and thumped onto the floor.
“Well, the first thing you gotta do is determine if it’s a right angle triangle.”
A sharp knock rattled her bedroom door. “Belly have you seen my 20kg dumbbells?” He asked.
“No it’s not in here, I’m on the phone,” she said, her voice sharp with irritation.
“Tell Taylor to go to bed,” Steven shouted back from the hall, his voice fading as he walked away.
Belly fumbled with her phone, her face flushing. “Hi Steven,” Conrad said, his voice tinny and amused through the speaker. She’d forgotten it was on loudspeaker. Her brother’s head popped back into the doorway.
“Hey Conrad,” Steven said, a knowing grin spreading across his face. He gave her an exaggerated thumbs-up.
“It’s not in here, okay? Get out,” she hissed, waving a hand at him to leave.
“Okay,” he said, finally retreating and pulling the door shut with a soft click.
Conrad laughed, a rich, full sound that traveled effortlessly through the line. It made Belly laugh too, a release of the awkward tension. She switched the phone off speaker, pressing it close to her ear.
“I missed your laugh,” he said. The words came out in a rush, a blunt confession he hadn’t meant to make.
Her stomach flipped violently. She was silent for a moment, the only sound the staticky whisper of the connection and her own quickened breath. “Uh, sorry, I—” he started, backpedaling fast.
She stopped him. “It’s okay, Conrad.”
“No, I’m sorry. That was weird.” He sounded like he was pressing the heel of his hand to his forehead. She could picture the exact gesture, the way he’d shut his eyes tight.
She smiled into the dark of her room, her free hand finding the infinity pendant at her throat. It was warm from her skin. “I missed your laugh, too.”
She heard him breathe out, a long, shaky exhalation that was almost a sigh. It was a sound of relief, of a weight being lifted. The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was thick, charged with everything they were both too afraid to say next.
“So,” he began again, his voice quieter, more intimate. “The right triangle. You check for the ninety-degree angle. Usually there’s a little box in the corner of the diagram.”
“Right. The little box.” She scrambled for the fallen textbook, her fingers clumsy. She found the page, her eyes scanning the problems. “Okay. I see it.”
“Good. What’s next?”
“I… use the formula?” she asked, her confidence wavering.
“Yeah. But which one? You gotta ask yourself what you know, and what you’re trying to find.” His voice was patient, focused. It was the same tone he used when teaching her to skip stones years ago.
She told him the numbers from the problem. His side of the line went quiet, but she could hear the faint scratch of a pen, the rustle of paper. He was working it out with her.
“You got a calculator?”
“Yeah, on my phone.”
“Use it. Punch in this.” He guided her through the steps, his instructions clear and slow. The math began to untangle itself, the meaningless letters resolving into a neat, single-number answer.
“I got it,” she said, a little triumph in her voice.
“Told you it wasn’t that bad.” She could hear his smile. “Do another one.”
They worked through three more problems. His world became numbers and hypotenuses; hers became the sound of his voice explaining things, the occasional soft chuckle when she made a silly mistake. For twenty minutes, there was no summer, no Jeremiah, no sick mothers, no infinite pause. There was just this.
“I should probably let you go,” he said finally, though he didn’t sound like he meant it. “You need sleep.”
“So do you. Don’t you have, like, astrophysics at 8 AM or something horrifying?”
“Geology, actually. Rocks are less judgmental than stars.” He paused. “Belly?”
“Yeah?”He paused. The silence on the line grew heavy, filled with the ghost of every word he was swallowing. What was he supposed to say? I miss you? I think about you every day? I think about our kiss? He couldn’t. The words were a physical blockage in his throat.
“Conrad?” she asked, her voice small.
“Yeah, sorry, I, uh—” He cleared his throat, the sound harsh in her ear.
“You?” she asked, pushing just a little, her heart hammering against her ribs.
“I just… wanted to hear your voice.” The admission was quiet, stripped bare. It hung between them, a fragile, honest thing.
Belly closed her eyes. The pendant dug into her palm where she clutched it. “You heard it.”
“Conrad.” His name was a breath, an ache.
“Yeah?” he asked, his voice quiet.
She thought about what to say. She couldn’t say what she wanted. The words—I miss you, I dream about the beach, are we ruined?—piled up behind her teeth, a tangled, dangerous knot. “I—can you stay on the phone a bit longer?” she asked.
He breathed in, a soft, static-filled rush. “Yeah. Of course,” he said.
She slid down further under her comforter, turning onto her side. The phone was a warm patch against her ear. “What are you doing right now?”
“Just sitting on my bed. Staring at a rock sample for lab tomorrow.” She heard a faint clink as he presumably set it down. “It’s literally a gray rock. It’s the most boring thing I’ve ever seen.”
She smiled. “Describe it to me.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. Tell me about the rock.”
He let out a short, amused breath. “Okay. It’s… jagged. Kind of oblong. There’s a white vein running through it here, like a lightning bolt. It’s cold. And it smells like… dust and the inside of the geology lab’s cabinet.”
She closed her eyes, picturing it in his long fingers. “Is it heavy?”
“Not really. Fits in my palm.” A pause. “Why are we talking about a rock?”
“I don’t know.” She traced the edge of her pillowcase. “It’s just… normal. I like normal.”
He was quiet for a moment, understanding her. The summer had been anything but normal. “Yeah.”
“What else do you see?” she whispered.
“My desk. My stupid laptop with, like, seven tabs open. A half-empty water bottle.” His voice dropped, softening. “The view from my window is just another brick building. No ocean.”
No you, she thought, but swallowed it. “I have the same dumb view. Mrs. Henderson’s recycling bins.”
He laughed quietly. “I’d take her recycling bins over this brick wall.”
“Liar.”
“You’re right. I’m lying.” He shifted; the sheets rustled on his end. “I’d take your view. Any day.”
Her heart did that painful, hopeful squeeze again. She pressed her fingers against the pendant until the metal edges bit into her skin. The silence stretched, comfortable now, a shared space. She could hear the faint, rhythmic sound of his breathing, almost in sync with her own.
“Are you tired?” he asked after a while.
“A little. Not really.” She was wide awake, every nerve attuned to the crackle of the connection. “Don’t go.”
His chest ached at her voice. His stomach flipped, a visceral lurch that made him grip the phone tighter. “I’m not going anywhere.” He said.
The line hummed with the truth of it. He heard her settle deeper into her pillows. He lay back on his own bed, the gray rock forgotten on the floor. The brick wall outside his window vanished. There was only the dark and her breathing.
“Do you ever wish we could just rewind?” she asked. “Back to before the deb ball. Before any of it.”
“No.” His answer was immediate, startling her. “Then I wouldn’t have kissed you on the beach.”
The memory flashed, vivid and warm: his hands on her face, the salt on his lips, the world narrowing to that single point of contact. Her skin prickled with the ghost of it.
“Conrad?”
“Yeah?”
“What happens when you come home?” She held her breath. The holidays were a minefield of tradition, all of them together under one roof.
He was quiet for so long she thought the call had dropped. “I see you,” he finally said. “I see you, and I talk to you. Because you’re my friend. And I miss my friend.”
The word ‘friend’ sounded like a life sentence. But beneath it, she heard the unspoken strain, the sheer willpower it would require. Her eyes stung.
“I miss my friend, too,” she said, and it was true, even though it was the smallest part of the truth.
The word hung between them, a fragile bridge over everything they couldn’t name. Static filled the space where a response should be. She heard him swallow.
“You should get some sleep, Belly,” he said. His voice was rough at the edges, worn thin.
“So should you,” she said.
“I know.” He didn’t move. The line remained open, a live wire. They listened to each other breathe for God knows how long before he spoke.
“Good night, Belly.”
“Good night, Conrad.”
They listened for a while before they hung up. The soft click was a tiny, definite ending.
Belly lay there, the phone a cooling slab against her cheek. The darkness of her room was absolute now, the shapes of her furniture swallowed by the night. Her heart was a slow, heavy drum. She brought her fingers to the necklace, tracing the infinite loop until her skin memorized its shape.
She didn’t sleep. The conversation replayed in fragments—his laugh, the description of the rock, the way his voice broke on I wanted to hear your voice. She stared at the ceiling where her childhood stars had once glowed, now just blank plaster. A part of her felt scraped raw. Another part felt more settled than she had in months.