We'll Always Have Summer (Summer, #3)

by Jenny Han

I’ve only ever loved two boys—both of them with the last name Fisher.

Conrad was first, and I loved him in a way that you can really only do the first time around.

And then there was Jeremiah. When I looked at Jeremiah, I saw past, present, and future. He didn’t just know the girl I used to be. He knew the right-now me, and he loved me anyway.

I think I always knew I would be Belly Fisher one day.

It was four in the morning, and I was studying for the last final of my freshman year at Finch University.

Anika was my closest friend at school besides Taylor.

We had started dating right before I began senior year of high school. “Dating” didn’t feel like the right word for it. We were just together. It all happened so easily and so quickly that it felt like it had always been that way. One minute we were friends, then we were kissing, and then the next thing I knew, I was applying to the same college as him.

I just wanted to be near him. I wanted him for all seasons, not just summer.

Even now, after being boyfriend and girlfriend for a whole two years, I still blushed a little when he said things like that. “Thanks,” I said. I was wearing a sundress that I had borrowed from Anika. It was white with little blue flowers and ruffly straps.

He was the first boy I ever kissed. He was my best friend. More and more, I understood. This was the way it was supposed to be. He was the one. My one.

I wasn’t really paying attention until I heard Lacie’s voice. I heard her say, “He looks hot tonight, right?” Another voice said, “He always looks hot.” She was slurring as she said, “Hell yeah he does.” The other girl said, “I’m so jealous you got to hook up with him.” In a singsong voice, Lacie said, “Whatever happens in Cabo stays in Cabo.”

“Belly, it was when we were on that break. When we were broken up.” I stared at him.

“I want to be totally honest with you, Belly. I don’t want any more secrets.” He really broke down then, crying hard. I went totally still. “We had sex.”

I had pictured them hooking up, making out. I hadn’t even considered sex. I was so stupid.

You’ve ruined everything. I’ll never trust you again.”

“I’m not in love with her!” he cried out. “I’m in love with you!”

“I love you so much,” he said, his whole body shaking. “It’s always been you, Belly.”

“We can’t get it back,” I said, and I said it to hurt him. “What we were, it’s gone. We lost it tonight.”

A fight is like a fire. You think you have it under control, you think you can stop it whenever you want, but before you know it, it’s a living, breathing thing and there’s no controlling it and you were a fool to think you could.

“If you think I’m so stupid and selfish and wasteful, why are you even with me?” Before I could answer, before I could say, You’re not stupid or selfish or wasteful, before I could end the fight, Jeremiah said, “Fuck it. I won’t waste your time anymore. Let’s end it now.” And I said, “Fine.”

I never asked him if anything happened in Cabo. It wouldn’t even have occurred to me to wonder. This was a boy who had loved me my whole life, and I was a girl who believed in that love. In that boy.

I was still a virgin. I’d never had sex before, not with Jeremiah, not with anybody.

“Jeremiah cheated on me.” Anika sank onto the bed. “Shut the front door,” she breathed. “When? With who?” “With Lacie Barone, that girl in his sister sorority. During spring break. When we were broken up.”

“I’m so mad at him,” I said. “For hooking up with another girl and then not telling me all this time. Not telling is the same as lying. I feel so stupid.”

“I feel… like maybe I don’t know him like I thought I did. I feel like I can’t trust him ever again.”

“I was all alone at home, and I just felt like coming. What are you doing here? I didn’t even know you were coming back.”

But just because you bury something, that doesn’t mean it stops existing. Those feelings, they’d been there all along.

He was a part of my DNA. I had brown hair and I had freckles and I would always have Conrad in my heart. He would inhabit just that tiny piece of it, the little-girl part that still believed in musicals, but that was it. That was all he got. Jeremiah would have everything else—the present me and the future me. That was what was important. Not the past.

Firsts were important. But I was pretty sure lasts were even more important. And Jeremiah, he was going to be my last and my every and my always.

Conrad, the Ghost of Christmas Past.

he got down on one knee, right in front of me. Very softly, he said, “You could marry me.” At first I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right. But then he said it again, this time louder. “Marry me.” He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out a ring. A silver ring with a little diamond in the center. “This would just be for starters, until I could afford to pay for a ring myself—with my money, not my dad’s.”

“I love you so much. These past couple of days have been hell for me without you.” He took a breath. “I’m so sorry for hurting you, Bells.

“I’ll try so hard, I swear to you. We’ll get an apartment off campus, we can fix it up nice. I’ll do the laundry. I’ll learn how to cook stuff other than ramen and cereal.”

“Don’t you see, Belly? It’s been our story all along. Yours and mine. Nobody else’s.”

I don’t ever want to be without you. Ever. You are the only girl for me. I’ve always known it. In this whole world, I will never love another girl the way I love you.” He took my hand again, and this time I didn’t pull away from him. “Do you still love me?” he asked. I swallowed. “Yeah.” “Then please, marry me.” I said, “You can’t ever hurt me like that again.”

“Isabel Conklin, will you marry me?” in as serious a voice as I’d ever heard him use. “Yes, I’ll marry you,” I said.

College life as I knew it was about to change.

He was marrying my girl, and I couldn’t do anything about it. I just had to watch it happen, because he was my brother, because I promised. Take care of him, Connie. I’m counting on you.

There hadn’t been one specific moment. It was like gradually waking up. You go from being asleep to the space between dreaming and awake and then into consciousness. It’s a slow process, but when you’re awake, there’s no mistaking it. There was no mistaking that it had been love.

I’d stayed away for two years. I had to. I knew I shouldn’t even be at the summer house, because being there, being near her, I would just want what I couldn’t have. It was dangerous. She was the one person I didn’t trust myself around.

If she knew how much I still cared, it was all over. I wouldn’t be able to walk away again. The first time was hard enough.

I saw her love for me die. I’d killed it.

Quietly, he said, “Two years ago, I fucked up. But not in the way you think. That night—do you remember that night? The night we were

driving back from school and it was raining so hard, we had to stop at that motel. Do you remember?”

“I see you again, and everything I planned goes to shit. It’s impossible.… I love Jere more than anybody. He’s my brother, my family. I hate myself for doing this. But when I see you two together, I hate him too.” His voice broke. “Don’t marry him. Don’t be with him. Be with me.”

I dropped down in the sand and cried for Conrad and then for me. I cried for what was never going to be. It’s a known fact that in life, you can’t have everything. In my heart I knew I loved them both, as much as it is possible to love two people at the same time. Conrad and I were linked, we would always be linked.

“What do you want from me?” he yelled back. “I laid myself fucking bare last night! I put it all out there, and you shut me down. Rightfully so. I get that I shouldn’t have said any of that stuff to you. But now here I am trying to find a way to come out of this with just a little fragment of pride so I can look you in the eye when this is all over, and you won’t even let me have that. You broke my heart last night, all right? Is that what you want to hear?”

“I still love you. I never stopped. I think you know it. I think you’ve known it all along.”

“Do you have any idea how badly you’ve hurt her, over and over again? You treat her like a toy that you just pick up and play with whenever you feel like it. You’re like a little boy. Someone else took what was yours, and you don’t like that one bit, so you swoop in and shit all over everything just because you can.”

“Don’t eff up my best friend’s life, Conrad. Don’t