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And there were other things, too, that annoyed me. Things I’d never known about Jeremiah, things I couldn’t have known from only seeing him in the summer at the beach house. Like how obnoxious he was when he smoked weed with his suitemates and they ate pineapple-and-ham pizza and listened to “Gangsta’s Paradise” by Coolio and they would laugh for, like, an hour.
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Meg
“Yes, you are definitely the selfish one in this relationship. It’s always about you, your friends, your stupid fraternity. Have I told you I think your fraternity is stupid? Because I do.” In a low voice, he said, “What’s so stupid about it?”
“It’s just a bunch of entitled rich guys spending their parents’ money, cheating on tests with your test bank, going to class wasted.” Looking hurt, he said, “We’re not all like that.” “I didn’t mean you.” “Yeah, you did. What, just because I’m not pre-med, that makes me this lazy frat guy?”
It was something I had thought before but never voiced. Conrad was the one who was pre-med. Conrad was the one at Stanford, working a part-time job at a lab. Jeremiah was the one who told people he majored in beerology.
LMAOOOOOOOOOO!
Looking up at him, I had this sudden thought. Oh my God. I still love you. I’d thought my feelings for Conrad were safely tucked away, like my old Rollerblades and the little gold watch my dad bought me when I first learned how to tell time.
But just because you bury something, that doesn’t mean it stops existing. Those feelings, they’d been there all along. All that time. I had to just face it. 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.
That night I dreamed of Conrad.
The night Jeremiah proposed to her she dreamt of his BROTHER! 🤭
“Oh my God,” she said, still staring at the ring. “I know,” I said. “But, Belly… he cheated on you.” “We’re starting over fresh. I really love him, Tay.” “Yeah, but the timing is kinda suspect,” she said slowly.
“It’s gonna be an apocalypse,” she said, taking her drink back. “Like, dead bodies. Like, blood in the streets. And when I say blood, I mean your blood.” “Gee, thanks a lot, Tay.” “I’m just speaking the truth. Laurel is the OG feminist. She’s like Gloria freaking Steinem. She’s not gonna like this one bit. She’ll go all Terminator on his ass. And yours.”
“Not a big deal? You’re getting married and you don’t want it to be a big deal?” “I didn’t mean it like that. I just don’t care about all that stuff. All I want is to be with Jeremiah.” “All what stuff?” “Like, bridesmaids and wedding cake. Stuff like that.” “Liar!” She pointed her finger at me. “You wanted five bridesmaids and a four-tier carrot cake. You wanted an ice sculpture of a human heart with your initials carved into it. Which, by the way, is gross.”
I would rather have had someone shoot me in the head with a nail gun, repeatedly, than have to watch the two of them cuddling on the couch together all night.
SAME, CONNIE BABY!
I looked down at my plate. I wasn’t hungry anymore. I felt sick to my stomach. “Eat,” Conrad said. I took a small bite of chicken.
She looked at me directly. “Are we speaking honestly with each other here?” “Don’t we always?” Laurel nodded, taking a sip of coffee. “Yes, that we do. So tell me. What’s your interest in all of this?” I knew this was coming. This was Laurel, after all. She didn’t mess around. “I want her to be happy.” “Ah,” she said. “Just her?” “Jeremiah, too.” “And that’s it?” She looked at me steadily. I just looked back at her.
He was pretty quiet at the florist’s. Taylor and I had decided on calla lilies, but when I looked through the book of flower arrangements, I ended up picking peonies instead. When I showed them to Conrad, he said, “Those were my mom’s favorite.” “I remember,” I said. I ordered five arrangements, one for each table, just like Denise Coletti told me to. “What about bouquets?” the florist asked me. “Can those be peonies too?” I asked. “Sure, we can do that. I’ll put together something nice for you.” To Conrad, she said, “Are you and your groomsmen doing boutonnieres?” He turned red. “I’m not the
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Conrad reached out and wiped my chin with his shirt. It was maybe the most intimate thing anyone had ever done to me. I felt light-headed, unsteady on my feet.
It was all in the way he looked at me, just those few seconds. Then he dropped his eyes, like the sun was too bright behind me.
I was shaking as I piled peaches into a plastic bag. Just one look, one touch from him, and I was shaking. It was madness. I was marrying his brother.
“Did you hear my brother’s getting married next weekend?” I asked.
The show came back on, and we watched in comfortable silence. Then, at the next break, Ernie said, “So are you gonna cry about it like a punk, or are you gonna do something?”
I almost choked on my peanut. Coughing, I said, “What are you talking about?” He made another snorty sound. “Don’t be cute with me. You love her, right? She’s the one?”
“Ernie, two commercial breaks ago, you told me that if I didn’t try and break up my brother’s wedding, I was a punk!” Picking at his teeth, Ernie said, “If a girl’s the one, all bets are off, family or no family.”
Conrad was still looking out for me.
“I never thought you’d be the kind of girl who would put up with that from a guy.” “I put up with a lot worse from you.” I said it automatically. I said it without thinking. Eyes flashing, he said, “I never once cheated on you. I never even looked at another girl when we were together.”
He called out, “I still love you.”
He took a step closer. “I don’t know if I’ll ever get you out of my system, not completely. I have… this feeling. That you’ll always be there. Here.” Conrad clawed at his heart and then dropped his hand.
“It’s only because I’m marrying Jeremiah.” I hated the way my voice sounded—shaky and small. Weak. “That’s why you’re saying all this all of a sudden.” “It’s not all of a sudden,” he said, his eyes locked on mine. “It’s always.”
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?”
“That night, I didn’t sleep at all. I stayed up, thinking about what to do. What was the right thing to do? Because I knew I loved you. But I knew I shouldn’t. I didn’t have the right to love anybody then. After my mom died, I was so pissed off. I had this anger in me all the time. I felt like I was going to erupt any minute.”
He drew his breath in. “I didn’t have it in me to love you the way you deserved. But I knew who did. Jere. He loved you. If I kept you with me, I was going to hurt you somehow. ...
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“But this summer… God, this summer. Being near you again, talking the way we used to talk. You looking at me the way you used to.”
“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 want you to leave. Make up one of your bullshit excuses and just go. Go back to Boston or California. I don’t care where. I just want you gone.” His eye twitched. “I’m not leaving.” “Go,” I said, shoving him, hard. “Just go.” That’s when I saw the first cracks in his armor. His voice cracking, he said, “What did you expect me to say to you, Belly?” “Stop saying my name!” I screamed. “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
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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.” I pressed my lips together, shaking my head. “That’s not true.” “Don’t lie.” I shook my head again. “Have it your way. But I’m not going to pretend for you anymore.” With that, he walked down the steps and to his car.
else had that kind of effect on me. No one. Suddenly I had this feeling, this absolute certainty, that I was never going to be able to let him go. It was as simple and as hard as that. I had clung to him like a barnacle all these years, and now I couldn’t cut away.
When Conrad Fisher told a girl he loved her, he meant it. A girl could believe in that. A girl could maybe even bet her whole life on it.
I finally said it. The actual words, out loud, to her face. It was a relief, not carrying it around anymore, and it was a rush, actually telling her. I was in an elated sort of daze, on a high. She loved me. I didn’t need to hear her say it out loud, I knew it innately in the way she looked at me just then.
He looked down at me. “Are you marrying me to erase him?” “No,” I said, and it came out more like a gasp. “No.” “The thing is, Bells, I don’t believe you,” Jeremiah said, and his voice was strangely flat. “I see the way you look at him. I don’t think you’ve ever looked at me like that. Not even once.”
Breathing hard, I spat out a mouthful of blood and said, “Fine. I love her. I admit it. Sometimes—sometimes I think she’s the only girl I could ever be with.
Hoarsely, he said, “I need you to know that no matter what happens, it was worth it to me. Being with you, loving you. It was all worth it.”
I had to fight every instinct in me not to reach out, not to touch the bruise that was blooming on his left cheekbone. Conrad wouldn’t want me to. I knew him well enough to know that. He came up and kissed me on my forehead, and before he stepped away, I closed my eyes and tried hard to memorize this moment. I wanted to remember him exactly as he was right then, how his arms looked brown against his white shirt, the way his hair was cut a little too short in the front. Even the bruise, there because of me.
Then he was gone. Just for that moment, the thought that I might never see him again…...
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We never did see a shooting star, but it didn’t matter to me one bit. Before the night was over, I said, “This is one of my top moments.” He said, “Mine too.”
So no, he didn’t give me flowers or candy. He gave me the moon and the stars. Infinity.
“How do you think it makes me feel, knowing I’m second choice? Knowing it was always supposed to be you two?”
Jeremiah shook his head. “No, I’ll never be first. That’ll always be Con.” He hit his palm against the wall. “I thought I could do this, but I can’t.”
“I can’t. Not unless you can look at me right now—look me in the eyes and tell me you don’t still love Con.” “Jere, I love you.” “That’s not what I’m asking. I know you love me. What I’m asking is, do you love him too?”
I wanted to tell him no. I opened my mouth. Why wouldn’t the words come out? Why couldn’t I say what he needed to hear? It would be so easy to just say it. One word and this would all go away. He wanted to forgive and forget it all. I could see it in his face: all he needed was for me to tell him no. He would still marry me. If I would just say the word. One word. “Yes.”
He walked over to my dresser and picked up the letter from Susannah. “You haven’t read yours yet.” “I didn’t even know if you were coming back!” He ran his finger along the edges, staring down at it. “I got one too. But it wasn’t for me. It was Con’s. My mom must have mixed up the envelopes. In the letter she said—she said she only ever got to see him in love once. That was with you.”
There are moments in every girl’s life that are bigger than we know at the time. When you look back, you say, That was one of those life-changing, fork-in-the-road moments and I didn’t even see it coming. I had no idea. And then there are the moments that you know are big. That whatever you do next, there will be an impact. Your life could go in one of two directions. Do or die.
