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I wasn’t in Cousins. Conrad and I weren’t together, and Susannah was dead.
Maybe letting myself forget how good it used to be will make things easier.
I thought I knew what heartbreak felt like. I thought heartbreak was me, standing alone at the prom. That was nothing. This, this was heartbreak. The pain in your chest, the ache behind your eyes. The knowing that things will never be the same again. It’s all relative, I suppose. You think you know love, you think you know real pain, but you don’t. You don’t know anything. I’m not sure when I started crying. When I got started, I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t breathe.
“I’m sorry” was just as pointless as rayon.
It just wouldn’t be summer without Beck’s boys.
All I knew was, I wanted her to look at me like that.
When I was near her, I just wanted to grab her and hold her and kiss the shit out of her. Maybe then she’d finally forget about my asshole of a brother.
When I was sure he was asleep, I leaned in, I whispered, “Conrad. There’s only you. For me, there’s only ever been you.”
How do you regret one of the best nights of your entire life? You don’t. You remember every word, every look. Even when it hurts, you still remember.
I wanted to memorize it all in case I didn’t get to come back again. You never know the last time you’ll see a place. A person.
I could hear it over the phone: All she wanted was to be left alone with her grief.
Maybe part of me needed that, someone to look up to. My big brother, the guy who couldn’t lose.
The one thing I had to take was Junior Mint, my old stuffed polar bear, the one Conrad had won me that time at the boardwalk a million years ago. I couldn’t just let Junior Mint get thrown out like he was junk. He’d been special to me once upon a time.
Did my mother ever feel about my dad the way I felt about Conrad—alive, crazy, drunk with tenderness? Those were the questions that haunted me.
I didn’t want my love to fade away one day like an old scar. I wanted it to burn forever.
No matter how many times he hurt her, I knew that if he wanted her back, she was his. She always had been. But maybe now that Conrad wasn’t standing in the way, she’d see me there too.
Her words stung me so badly I wanted to hurt her back a million times worse. So I said the thing I knew would hurt her most. I said, “I wish Susannah was my mother and not you.”
My mother told me once that when Conrad was very young, he called her “his Laura.” “Where is my Laura?” he’d say, wandering around looking for her. She said he followed her everywhere; he’d even follow her into the bathroom. He called her his girlfriend and he would bring her sand crabs and seashells from the ocean and he would lay them at her feet. When she told me about it, I thought, What I wouldn’t give to have Conrad Fisher call me his girlfriend and bring me shells.
“Conrad is sensitive. He has a lot of pride. Let him have that.”
Conrad raised his eyebrows at me. “A reward system, huh? What else do I get?”
“Do you still—” Care. Think about me. Want me. Roughly, he said, “Yes. Yes, I still.” And then we were kissing again.
I will never look at you in the same way ever again. I’ll never be that girl again. The girl who comes running back every time you push her away, the girl who loves you anyway.
I release you. I evict you from my heart. Because if I don’t do it now, I never will.
And right there, I felt it, the glow, the satisfaction of being the one who left first.
Then I reached across, and I took his hand and laced my fingers around his. It felt like the most right thing I’d done in a long time. I worried he’d let go, but he didn’t. We held hands like that the whole rest of the way home.
