Hi, I'm Sa. These are things that make me happy and I want to come back to see and read. (sideblog of obsessedrandomness) (willing to accept gif requests right now)
—a the summer i turned pretty fic about first love, first heartbreak, love lost, and love found 🦋
CHAPTER / THREE
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. How does a girl go on a date with a guy these days without fearing for her life? Three murders within two months and they still haven’t caught the suspect. In a town as small as Bristern, you have to ask yourself if the police ever plan on catching him at all.”
The in-ear headphones I’m wearing begin to whir with the mid-show harmonic sequence of drums and what I can only assume is a badly performed triangle. Despite having very few flaws, the podcast I’m listening to titled True Crime: Tales and Conversations has the distinct ability to never choose quite the right music for their show. I’m not sure who exactly is in charge of the sound department, but certainly, they cannot believe what they are correctly putting out is their best work. I really hope they don’t.
“And… we’re back! Let’s continue our conversation, shall we? Carlie brought up an interesting point before we left for our short break. Bristern is a very small town. Google says the population is only about ten thousand people. So what’s the problem? Why haven’t police apprehended the suspect yet? What’s going on?”
I stretch my fingers out over the handlebars of the vertical chest press I have been seated at for the last few minutes. I give myself a second or two to catch my breath before moving again. I push my arms outward, exhaling as I go, then inhale on my way back down. I do so repeatedly for another few minutes as the main podcast host, Niyukti, streamlines the conversation into bad police habits.
The two hosts – Niyukti and Carlie – are best friends. They met when they were in middle school and have been exploring true crime together since their playground days of unmasking the infamous zodiac killer.
Last year, they started True Crime: Tales and Conversations and I have been a loyal listener since their very first episode. They post a new episode every Tuesday and I never miss it. Although they aren’t the only hosts I listen to on a regular basis, their show is the only one I keep up with on a regular basis and follow on social media. I even have their official page tagged as a favourite on Instagram.
“Nikki, what do we always say? Fuck the poli–”
The latter end of Carlie’s remark flitters away into the digital rubbish bin when my phone starts to ring. I sigh and place the handlebars back prior to pulling my phone out of my pocket to check the caller. I would have picked up without checking, but lately, I haven’t been in the mood to answer spam callers without cursing them out. It’s only Monday morning, so the last thing I want to do is start my week off the wrong way with expletives I wouldn’t normally use.
My blood freezes as I read the number on my phone screen. I try to blink and to will it away, hoping and praying such a motion will work, and when it does not, I grumble to myself in annoyance. I don’t know why I hold onto hope that magic is real, that things aren’t always exactly what they are, like a little kid who never grew up. From a young age, I was forced to grow up faster than my peers. So why do I still act this way, as if there is a little bit of magic in everything? As if wishes ever come true?
I click answer on my phone and wait for a familiar voice to swim into my ears. I don’t bother turning back to the vertical press at all. I know my exercise ends here, now that Tawny Diaz is calling me.
“Hello?”
I take a short breath before answering her. “Hi, Tawny. How are you?”
“Not so great, kid. But you already knew that.” There is some movement in the back, and I assume she is shuffling around in the backroom of her burger joint. For whatever reason, she keeps tons of boxes back there, and I know for the fact that a whole lot of them are empty. “I gotta talk to you.”
“Sure.”
I brace myself for her weekly spiel about one thing or another. If there is anything Tawny is better at than making burgers it is complaining. She could teach a course on how to be a Negative Nancy.
“It’s about your dad. He’s been out more and you know where the money’s going.” Tawny scoffs, and I curl my hand into a fist to keep myself steady. “Really thought I’d marry him and live better and now look at me.”
It has been nearly a year since my father married Tawny at some rundown place in Vegas. They were both drunk and the marriage should have been null and void, but even after waking up the next day with clearer heads, they kept their marriage certificate and announced it to their friends on Facebook. It was all over everyone’s pages long before I found out. It was my cousin who reached out and told me, congratulating me because she thought I already knew. Technically, I should have. But my father has always been good at keeping secrets from me and this was just one of many.
The worst part is, they won’t get divorced. I want to believe it is because deep down they have feelings for each other, but the more sensible part of me knows what is truly going on, and once again, I am a slave to a life I never asked for.
“Do you need me to send you more money?” I had sent her fifteen hundred dollars two weeks ago already. It was stretching it, considering how much I get paid, but I knew I had no other options. Just like always.
Tawny sighs. “I know you hate this as much as I do, kid, but you know my circumstances. I’d cut your father loose if I had any other choice.”
I bite my lip, thinking through her words, before I let go again. “Yeah, I know. Thanks for taking care of him.”
“That’s what I signed up for.” Tawny seems to walk out into a room with people because multiple voices suddenly bounce off the other end of the call. “Just a thousand this time. I need to pay some bills.”
“Right,” I nod to myself, pulling up my banking app and signing in. “I’ll send it now.”
“Thanks, Rebecca. You’re a good kid.”
I lean back against the chair I’m sitting on, whispering a prayer to myself as I go to open my account. A bead of sweat starts to form on my forehead and I wish I could say it’s from my workout, from the amount of effort I put into keeping my body healthy, but in the end, I know it’s stress. Stress about the small numbers I will undoubtedly be seeing in a few seconds.
2,096.17
I should call Tawny back and ask her to hand my father the phone so I can tell him to go fuck himself for all the misery he puts me through each and everyday of my life, but I don’t. Because I know there is no use. Even if a paternity test stated he wasn’t my biological father, a part of me would care for him always and that part, that awful, unyielding part, would keep me doing what I have always done – taking care of him, even when he does not deserve it.
My hands tremble as I hold my phone, my fingers swiping the e-transfer icon on the left side. I will myself not to cry as I punch in the numbers and then scroll to Tawny’s email. Within minutes, the amount will be added to her bank account and I will anxiously await the next time she calls me for more.
I bend down to gather my bag and water bottle before standing up again. It’s almost 8 AM. I need to shower and head to Jeremiah’s office, like I said I would yesterday, before going to work myself at ten. The clinic I work at opens at nine, but as a junior therapist-in-training, I am not expected to come in until later when my boss does. For a clinical psychologist, who hears the amount of awful things she does in her career, I am surprised she is so lax about her work and how easily that flows into her employees.
The shower is pretty much empty when I enter it, which I’m thankful for. Not many people come in to work out so early in the morning, so I usually have my pick of sanitized gym equipment and clean showers.
As I scrub my body clean, I think about what I will say to Jeremiah when I see him. I haven’t seen him in months. Not since the last time Steven invited us all out to dinner. He was in town visiting Belly and decided to gather us all together for chili cheese fries and mai tais. It was weird–me, Belly, Taylor, and Jeremiah all went to the same university and we all said one day that we would venture out into different cities or maybe even travel across the pond, and yet, here we all are in our mid-twenties, stuck in Chicago.
After my shower, I catch a bus outside of the gym. I’m shackled to a post, sandwiched between a mother with a stroller and a guy bobbing his head to whatever music is playing through his headphones. Every time to try to make more space for myself, I get elbowed by someone else trying to do the same. It’s a ridiculous circle of pain which I eventually find myself giving into. If I stand perfectly still, maybe all of this will simply fade away.
Half an hour later, Jeremiah’s office falls into view a few meters outside of the bus station. I step off the city bus with my work bag and a heavy heart, my shoulders tense as I look up at the seven story building. Jeremiah always claimed that seven was his lucky number, which I suppose proves why he is on the seventh floor when usually, that is reserved for senior employees. Maybe it’s a perk of being the CEO’s son or maybe it’s sheer luck.
I’m at the bottom of the staircase leading up to the building when I find myself hesitating to take the next step. It’s as though every ounce of my being, of my body and all its parts, are pleading with me not to go. To not give into the asinine request my friend made of me yesterday afternoon. There is not a thing I would not do for a friend, especially a friend like Belly, but this feels like the entrance to a war I lost a long time ago, and it’s only come back to me for seconds.
But then, I’m reminded of the way she asked. The forlorn depression hidden in her eyes as she asked me to take care of something for her that she could not possibly do herself. Taylor was smart to detach herself from the situation from the get-go, knowing full well how this will inevitably end. I wish I had been given the same opportunity.
Right there, at the bottom of the stairs leading to my doom, I grant myself some grace and count to ten in my head. Then I do it again. Then one more time. When I was a child, and my mother still felt like the world was a decent place to live, she taught me how to calm my anxiety in situations of obvious distress. For years, it has worked well for me. So much so that I have taken to helping some of my patients with the same technique.
“One… two… three… four…”
On the very last ten, I rush up all the way to the top of the steps, breathing deeply as I paste a smile to my face.
I can do this. I can do this for Belly. I can do this for her happiness. I can do this, I can do this, I can do this.
When I walk in, the receptionist hurries out of her seat to greet me. Her jet black hair is tied back in an off-duty model-like bun with zero flyaways anywhere. Her ears are adorned with gold and her outfit is a simple white pencil skirt and peplum blouse. When she says my name, I’m surprised because I have yet to introduce myself.
“Hi. Rebecca Mercer?”
“Oh, you already know my name,” I start, tilting my head a little to get a handle on what is going on. “That must mean Jeremiah told you I was coming.”
The girl nods. I take a moment to read her name tag: Dallis Gregory.
“Mr. Fisher is expecting you,” she explains, walking back to her desk quickly to retrieve a key card. She hands it to me. “This will give you access to the seventh floor. Please keep it with you throughout the duration of your visit.”
What? I need a separate key to the seventh floor?
“Where do I…?”
Dallis beckons me to follow her. We walk along vinyl sheet flooring, both of our heels clicking musically as we move. I keep close to her, thinking she will lead me right up to the seventh floor when all she does is deposit me at the foot of the entrance to the elevators. We wait seconds for it to open, and when it does, Dallis invites me to step inside.
“Right here is where you can tap the key card,” she instructs, pointing a polished fingernail at a black keypad. “There’s no need to do anything else. The elevator will take you straight up.”
I nod in understanding. “Thank you.”
“No problem. Have a good meeting, Ms. Mercer.”
All alone in the elevator, I count to myself again. I have no reason to be so nervous, to be so unreasonably anxious about seeing someone I used to know, but I am. Ever since I met him, Jeremiah Fisher has made the rational part of my brain explode with visions of all kinds of insanity. I didn’t know what it was at age eighteen and I still don’t know it even six years later.
A white light accompanied by a ding just above the elevator doors announces my arrival on the seventh floor. I gear myself for seeing Jeremiah one more time by taking a deep breath. In and out. Then I paste on my best customer service smile and take a step out. But the moment I do, the heel of my shoe gets stuck in the bottom part of the doors and I stumble forward. I plan to fall right to the ground, ready to accept my fate as I accept every other part of it without complaint, when a pair of sturdy arms seize me in the middle.
I let out a short gasp, my heart thudding violently in my chest. I look up to see Jeremiah, holding me in a way he shouldn’t and in a way I should not like. Not after all this time. Not still.
“Hey, Beck,” he grins, the warmth of his hands piercing through my garments, setting my whole being on fire with a single touch. “Falling for me already?”
—a the summer i turned pretty fic starring my first and favourite book boyfriend, jeremiah fisher ♡
「moments: post-college, reader insert」
Turns out, as soon as you graduate from college, reality hits you like a truck. There is so much to do and so much ground to cover and so many damn things to pay for. I didn’t realize that with college ending, I would be thrust into this awful world where milk costs more than it probably should.
It’s summertime and I’m working as a receptionist. It’s a desk job, which I’m grateful for because the last thing I want to do is be on my feet all day working retail, and it pays decently enough. The physical therapist I work for is also a nice man who lets me take time off whenever I need it and his holiday gifts don’t suck. For the Fourth of July, he gave everyone in the office individual fruit and candy baskets – with the good kind of candy. None of that off-brand stuff.
With my pay, I take care of a quarter of the rent and put the rest aside for graduate school in the fall. Jeremiah takes care of pretty much everything else: most of the rent, the bills, and the extra expenses. I don’t know how he does it, considering the fact that he does work retail on a part-time basis. The other half of his time is spent interning at a security analysis company. We’re lucky they pay him for his time because the other ten companies he interviewed with said they don’t pay interns.
A few weeks ago, Belly, Taylor, and I went out to a bar downtown. They both came to visit me and Jeremiah in Boston for the weekend. We shopped and Taylor told us all about her and Davis and how they were going to be married next summer, after graduation, in a vineyard. Belly was finishing up her last year at Finch and looking into jobs. Her and Conrad weren’t really speaking apart from the letters they wrote to each other, but from everything she told me, she said she was hopeful that when she sees him again, things will be different.
When I told them about my life, neither of them could believe that Jeremiah had stepped up the way he had. Honestly, I was a little offended. Why did they automatically assume that my boyfriend couldn’t support us? He wasn’t a kid anymore. Both of us are twenty-two this year. We’re not children. We know what responsibilities are.
Taylor said she was “just surprised since it’s Jeremiah” whilst Belly quietly said that, “Jere is so unreliable. I didn’t know he could do all that.” I had left the bar that night feeling awkward amongst my closest friends, wondering if they would always view Jeremiah in a negative lens.
My phone rings as I’m gathering up all the trash in the kitchen. I had spent the last hour or so cooking dinner so my boyfriend and I wouldn’t end up ordering in yet again on a Friday night. We have been doing that a lot lately. I was always too tired to cook and so was he. It just made sense to have someone else do it and fork over a few bills for the pleasure.
“Hello?”
The person on the other end of the line asks, “Is this YN YLN?”
“Uh, yes.” I hold the phone away from my ear to check the caller ID. It’s from Wells Fargo. “I’m YN.”
“Good. I’ll transfer you to Mr. Fisher.”
“Wait, I–” I put the garbage bag down and fumble with my phone until finally, I can sit down on the floor and hold it properly. Mr. Fisher is calling me? Why? The line runs solid for a few seconds until a distinct and familiar voice falls through.
“YN? This is Adam Fisher.”
I swallow and sit up a bit straighter against the wall. “Hi, Mr. Fisher. How are you?”
“I’m well, thank you. I’m calling to ask about your schedule. Are you available for brunch on Sunday?”
“Um…” He wants to go to brunch? Why? And with just me? “Sure…”
“Great. Please let Jeremiah know as well. I have a number of items to discuss with you both so please arrive on time. My secretary will text you the details. Have a good night, YN.”
After he hangs up, I simply stare at my phone for a long minute. A very long minute. I have no idea what to make of what she just said or what it means or if Jeremiah is even cool with us meeting his father for brunch this weekend. The two of them have been patching up their relationship for a while but just like with his older brother, there are still issues there. I guess there always is between family.
I start to get up up off the floor and return to my trash disposal when the door knob jiggles. Jeremiah walks in a moment later, chucking off his shoes and swinging his car keys around his index finger. He grins at me as he walks in.
He slides his arm around my waist and smacks his lips against my cheek, giving me a wet kiss. “How’s my future wife this evening?”
“Confused,” I chuckle, letting him hold me as I show him my caller list. “I just got a call from your dad’s office. He wants to meet us for brunch on Sunday. Do you know what that’s about?”
A look of guilt passes over his features. He starts to let me go, but I hold onto his arm. “Jere, what’s going on? Your dad always makes plans through you. Why did he call me today?”
“I told him I’d talk to him next month. I don’t know why he’s…” Jeremiah shakes his head and steps away from me, running his fingers through his hair. He smells like the office he works at where everyone insists on wearing too much perfume. The scents all stick to him and although he looks great in an office suit, I don’t have it in me to dwell on that right now. Something’s going on and I want to know what that is. He looks at me. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll talk to him.”
“What are you going to talk to him about exactly?”
He shakes his head again. “It’s nothing. Just Dad being Dad.”
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing.”
I grab his arm again. There is so much distance between us now. I may not understand what is going on between him and his father but I know he knows something and that something is what he is keeping hidden from me. We always promise each other that we don’t hide stuff. Not the big stuff or the small ones. Clear cut communication is what we always promised. So why is he backing out now?
“What are you hiding? We promised we’d talk about everything. Even family.”
Jeremiah licks his lips, and then those same lips tighten into a line. He stares off at a wall, the one with a picture of us summer kids hanging on it. Next to it is a photograph of Susannah in her favourite white summer dress that she wore all the time. We even buried her in it.
“Jere–”
He makes a frustrated sound in the back of his throat then rounds on me. His blue eyes are wrought with pain. “He’s gonna give me an ultimatum.”
“An ultimatum?”
“Yeah. Either I work for him at the bank or he cuts me off.”
My heart stops. “Cuts you off? What does that–” The truth, the realization of what has been our life for months, maybe even since we started college, dawns on me. His father has been paying for everything. “Jeremiah, has your dad been paying our bills?”
He doesn’t say anything and only nods.
I reach down to pinch my thigh. Everything around me starts to blur. Everything I thought I knew. Everything I thought was the truth because that is what he told me it was.
“Then what about all the money you’ve been making at your jobs?”
He licks his lips, and then he turns away from me. I don’t let him get away with not looking at me. I need to see his eyes. I need to be able to see him to make sense of all of this. “American Eagle let me go last month and my internship doesn’t pay me enough.”
“What…?”
He sighs. “I was gonna tell you, I swear. But you’ve been working so hard and grad school starts in September for you so I just thought…” He sighs again, louder this time, like he’s so disappointed in himself and he wants me to appreciate that. “I can’t believe my dad.”
“I can’t believe you,” I argue, feeling my face heat up. I feel so betrayed. “All this time, I thought you were being responsible when you were just piggy-backing off of your dad just like always.”
His eyes narrow on me. “What do you mean, ‘just like always?’”
I startle myself with what I just said and I know it won’t lead to any good to argue about it, so I go, “Just forget it.”
“No. Tell me what you meant. I can take it.”
I roll my eyes, exasperated. “Can you, Jere? Can you really? I told you I’d get a better job and pay my half of the bills but you pushed me to take the clinic job instead because the hours were good and you were taking care of everything. But all this time, it was just your dad! We’re not kids anymore, Jeremiah! We’re adults! With adult responsibilities! If I can’t trust you to be a man and handle just the two of us, how will we ever manage a home and kids?”
His gaze drops down to my stomach. “Are you pregnant?”
I guffaw. I can’t believe him. “No, I’m not pregnant! I’m pissed off! I’m so embarrassed. Your dad probably thinks I’m some kind of freeloader, living off his dime.”
“That’s not true–”
“Isn’t it? What part of this apartment or the food in our fridge actually belongs to us, Jeremiah?”
He rolls his eyes. “You’re being dramatic.”
“No, I’m being honest. Because I’m not a freaking liar! My dad asked me several times if I wanted money and I was so proud to tell him you had everything covered. What will he think when he finds out I was just defending your laziness yet again?”
“My laziness?” His eyes are ablaze. He looks just as ticked as me. And he has zero right to be. “I was just trying to make shit easier for you, you know, so you could go off to grad school without being stressed out of your mind. Sue me for being a good boyfriend.”
“A good boyfriend wouldn’t lie to his girlfriend’s face for months on end!”
“I didn’t lie to you!” He yells, and this time, his voice booms and jumps off the walls. I wince, and take a step back. I have no reason to be afraid of him but I don’t appreciate him raising his voice at me either. He seems to figure it out fast and softens his voice. And when he gets that look on his face, he almost looks like a kid again as he says, “Look, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about where the money was coming from, okay? I have plans to pay my dad back. He just wants to force me into working for him now that Con’s off being a surgeon.”
I walk out of the kitchen and into the living room, dropping down on the couch we bought using his credit card. A couch his father paid for.
I put my head in my hands and stare down at the floor. Less than a minute later, Jeremiah sits down at my feet. He places his hand on my knee and I look up. His eyes are so soft now and he’s looking at me with so much pleading and remorse that I know one word from him and I’ll be giving in.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, rubbing my knee in circles. “I should have told you from the start.”
“Yeah. You should have.”
He sets his cheek on my knee and looks up at me, like a little puppy. “I don’t mind working for him. Lately, I was thinking it might be a good thing. I’d get paid better and my dad would be my boss so I’d have leg room to do what I want sometimes.” He presses a kiss to the same knee. “Don’t be mad.”
“Well, I am.”
He kisses me on the knee again. “What can I do to make it better?”
“You can start by actually keeping your promises and not lying to me.”
“YN…”
“I’m serious.” And because I can never stay mad at him for long, I find myself touching his hair, running my fingers through his gentle curls. He shuts his eyes for a moment. “Your hair’s so long now, you could join a boyband.”
He grins, and says, “I’d have so many fans.”
“Cocky.”
He winks. “Just honest.” And then he sits up next to me on the couch, hugging himself to me. “My biggest fan would get a private show.”
Humming, I ask, “And who would your biggest fan be?”
“The girl beside me right now, who I don’t deserve sometimes.”
I laugh and he keeps holding me and for now, it’s enough.
. . .
The both of us ended up meeting Mr. Fisher for brunch on Sunday. Jeremiah said he would go alone but I said no. There was no point in not going. His father had invited us both out and I would look like an awful person for bailing. Especially without cause. And truthfully, some part of me wanted to be there to hear what he had to say.
We had brunch at a Turkish restaurant where Mr. Fisher ordered menemen and Turkish tea. Everything was delicious and Jeremiah had twice what his father and I ate. I thought he was so cute, just like he was when we were kids. Jeremiah always ate the most out of everyone.
After we finished eating, Mr. Fisher paid the bill and we sat around for a few minutes longer enjoying our tea. Then he looked at Jeremiah and asked him what he thought about working for him. Jeremiah glanced at me and I squeezed his hand under the table. I wasn’t sure if the decision was a good one, whether or not it would come back to haunt us in the future, but for now, he thought it was a good idea and I did, too.
Mr. Fisher told his son that he expected him to start working there from September, when I would be in grad school at Boston University. After I complete my two-year Master’s program, he said Jeremiah can decide if he still wants to work with him or venture out on his own. We left brunch agreeing to his terms and feeling lighter than when we walked in.
Now, it’s Sunday night and I’m coming out of the shower after I napped for two hours, only to be hit with the scent of my mother’s famous rice dish – the one I looked forward to eating every week when my mother would make it. I used to eat it a lot, plates and plates of the stuff, and then I stopped eating it as much around middle school when my mother grew obsessed with my eating habits. My mother had made it for me a few times since the summer I turned seventeen, but now that I lived away from home, I hadn’t had it in a long while.
Jeremiah has a white kitchen cloth strewn over his left shoulder as he sets two plates and cups on the breakfast table. He even brought out the nice coasters, the ones I designed for an art class in college. When I was making them, I told myself that I really will have made it in life if someday, I could be using them inside an apartment I shared with Jeremiah. It’s funny how the thoughts which we once dreamed about become a reality we hardly notice.
I keep my eyes on him as I take a seat at the breakfast table, wondering if loving him will always be this way – crazy, wonderful, stupid, sad, and for forever. I really hope it will be.
“What’s all this?”
Jeremiah grins as he looks at me. “An apology for putting my girl through hell today.”
I pick up my cup of water and take a sip. “It wasn’t hell.”
“Well, whatever it was,” he answers, reaching out to grab my chin. He kisses me once, soft and perfect. “I’m sorry about it, and I hope I did justice to Wendy's recipe.”
I laugh, watching as he fills my plate with rice. The steam flies up for my nose and I nearly moan from the glorious scent. “You made this while I was asleep?”
“Yeah. Slaved over it just for you.” He takes a seat beside me and picks up a spoonful of rice. “Open up, babe.” I do as he says and munch down. He looks at me with hope in his eyes. “How does it taste?”
I lean out and kiss him. “Delicious.” He grins and feeds me again. “Even more delicious.”
He holds my chin as I chew. His eyes seem to water, just a little bit, and I know he’s really sorry. Really, really sorry about everything. There’s so much of us that’s still growing up and changing and learning, and it was wrong of me to expect him to be perfect and not make mistakes when we’re still so young.
“I’m gonna do right by you, Daisy,” he promises, and I know he means this one. Probably more than all the other promises he’s ever made me. “I know I let you down sometimes but you’re the most important person in the world to me. I want you to be happy with me, not stressed.”
“I’m not stressed.”
“You are sometimes, and you shouldn’t be. I told you you could depend on me and I let you down. I’m sorry I messed up, but I’ll do better. I’m gonna work hard for my dad so that when I ask you to marry me someday, no one’s gonna have any doubt that you’ll be alright.”
I place my hand over his and smile at him. “I’m always alright when I’m with you.”
He smiles, too. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I pick up that same hand and kiss the inside of his palm. “Even if we mess up a little along the way, I only want to be with you.”
He sighs, and then he gets this misty look in his eyes, like he is really mulling over what I said. “I thought I messed up enough for you to really leave me this time.”
His words make my heart ache. I wonder how much time he spends thinking this way, thinking that I would leave him just because he makes a few mistakes. I guess I have a right to be mad but I would never leave him. He’s a person and so am I. If we don’t fuck up from time to time, can we even call ourselves human?
“Come here,” I whisper, putting a hand on the back of his neck and pulling him closer. Our knees touch and I breathe him in, enjoying the feeling of being in his atmosphere. I could take on the whole world with him by my side. I stare into his ocean eyes, my favourite eyes on any person I have ever met. I used to find it hard looking at him after his mother died because his eyes remind me so much of her, of Susannah, the mother I always wished I’d had. But it’s easier now because looking at him, looking into his eyes, I know what true love is. “Every part of me belongs to you, Jeremiah. All of it. And every part of you is mine, too. The good and the bad and the ugly and the beautiful.” I search his eyes for understanding and see his ocean waves flowing towards me. “Whenever I think about the future, it’s not a house or kids or a job I see first. It’s you, smiling at me like you did the first time we met.” A few tears escape my eyes and I don’t move to wipe them away because he does it for me. His soft, familiar fingers drawing love on my skin. “You’re always going to be the most amazing person in the world to me. And I’m always going to love you exactly as I did when we were ten, and exactly as I love you now.”
He smiles and then he reaches out to kiss me hard, standing up from his chair so we can be pressed up against each other. And then he’s whispering, “I love you, too. Forever and ever,” and I’m climbing into his arms and he’s carrying me to our bed where he proves it over and over again.
—a the summer i turned pretty fic about first love, first heartbreak, love lost, and love found 🦋
CHAPTER / TWO
— a september, back in finch
. . .
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I mumbled under my breath. “Fucking fuck!”
All morning, I had stood in line at the financial aid office hoping to speak to at least one person who wouldn’t turn me away the moment they looked at my file. But with no such luck since good luck was the last thing I was ever afforded.
Finch University has a strict tuition policy. In the student handbook, it clearly states that tuition must be paid in full by the end of the first week of classes. If any student fails to do so, they will be placed on probation for a month and after which, if payment is still not made, they will be removed from school.
Greenie had promised me that the inheritance my mother had left behind for me in gold jewelry and a few thousand dollars in earnings would make it into my bank account before school started. She had promised and reassured me several times over the course of the summer. But when I received an email from the financial aid clerk this morning stating that I am at risk for probation, I knew my dear aunt had lied to me and I was in big, ginormous trouble.
After all the work I did to get into Finch, I was about to be kicked out for lack of sufficient funds.
The doors of Lincoln Dormitory swing open as a group of girls from my floor walk out. They wave at me as they pass me by, chattering about who’s hotter: young Leo or young Brad. If they had asked me, I would have told them young Matt Damon. There really is no other answer.
My stomach grumbles wickedly as the elevator takes me up to the seventh floor. In total, Lincoln has ten. We are the only all-girls dormitory on campus and one of the biggest in the city. The parties get wild in our building sometimes and it’s only the end of my second week here. I usually don’t mind it, especially since the girls in my hall are so nice, but they can be irritating when the RAs get on our asses about underage drinking.
“I’ll feed you in a bit,” I mumble to my stomach, patting it as I step off the elevator. I take a right from the door and head down. My dorm room is the second last one down the hall. It’s decently sized and has a big window overlooking a tennis court. “I wonder what’s for breakfast today…”
I hold my backpack against my body as I dig my keys out to unlock the door. But when I go punch them in, I find the knob already loose. A frightening chill runs down my spine. Being an all-girls dormitory, our RAs had mentioned that there could be instances in which we would have to be careful. They had emphasized those mostly took place during the night so we had to be sure to lock our doors well, but right now it’s daytime. It’s hardly noon.
Quietly, I turn the knob and take a step inside. On the right is my roommate, Isabel Conklin’s bed and all her things. On the left is mine. When I look at hers, I find it empty and devoid of anything but a white blanket and two pillows. On mine is a… a person.
The person is tall. So tall that his legs are hanging over the edge of my bed. He has his face stuffed in my pillow, one arm hanging off the side of the bed, and strangest of all, he is shirtless. I take a step closer to him, wondering if he is dangerous or a creep or both at the same time. I know a bit of karate, but would it be enough to fend him off?
I walk closer to him, my steps slow and soft and confused. When I’m close enough to really see him, I take in parts of his figure that weren’t discernible from the door. Like the fact that he is asleep and he looks like a little boy.
He has curly, dirty blond hair and around his neck is a silver necklace. He has a myriad of spots on his back, so many that it would take some time to count them all. They almost look like stars. Tiny, pretty stars on his skin.
From his build, it’s obvious that he works out. Quite a bit, too. His muscles are toned and heavy. He looks like he picks up weights just for fun.
By the bedside, I tilt my head to inspect his face. It’s squished up against my pillow and there is drool beneath his mouth. He must have been here for a while. I should think it’s nasty and gross because he’s a stranger in my bed, but all I can think is… he’s gorgeous.
I feel myself blush as I stare at him. Then I slap my cheek for feeling that way at all. I don’t know who this guy is, whether or not he’s a maniacal creepazoid who snuck into the girls’ dormitory, and I’m having cheesy thoughts about him. He could kill me with those big muscles of his, so why am I not more scared of him?
He is snoring a bit, not too loud to be annoying, but loud enough to add to my assumption that he must have fallen asleep here a while ago. He looks tired, like he was up all night. He also looks a bit familiar but I can’t seem to place my finger on it.
Despite all warnings pounding inside my head, I drop down into a squat so I can look at him some more. If he really is a creep, then I should get a picture of him both for my mind and my phone, right?
I look at him a little more, at his plump, pink lips and his thick nose and the stubble on his chin. I blush again because looking at him really shouldn’t feel this good nor should it be this easy.
At some point, I reach back in my pocket for my phone when I stumble and drop down to my butt. The crashing sound makes him wake up, and I look away immediately, feeling embarrassed even though he’s the one in my bed.
“Oh, shit,” the boy says, scrambling up. I lift myself up off the floor and take a step away from the bed. He looks at me with wide eyes while I blush from the top of my head down to the ends of my toes. “Who are–”
“You’re in my bed,” I spit out, throwing the words into the air as if they were scalding my tongue. I bite my lip then peek at him slowly. “Why are you in my bed?”
The boy’s eyes widen a fraction and he stares down at where he is sitting. He looks around for a second before realization dawns on him. Then he looks at me again. “Oh, man. My bad. I thought this was Belly’s.”
Belly’s?
“Who’s…?” I take a pause. “Are you talking about Isabel?”
“Yeah,” he nods, his curls flying everywhere. His hair is so long, longer than any guy’s I’ve met at school. I wonder if he likes it that way or if he’s due for a haircut soon. “I guess it’s Isabel now.”
Without saying anything else, he swings both legs off the edge of my bed and stands to his feet. As he does so, I stumble back again. I really think I’ll fall and hurt myself this time when he winds his arm around my waist, holding me up. He doesn’t even realize that his doing so lands me flat against his very open chest.
Upon impact, I inhale his cologne and it’s so good that I almost lose myself for a second. But then I realize what I’m doing and how close we are and how I don’t know this boy at all. Although he seems to know my roommate. I push myself away from him and stand tall. He looks down at me with a lazy smirk.
I open my mouth to ask him about Isabel when he poses a question to me instead. “What’s your name?”
“What?”
He licks his lips. I watch the moisture coat his pink lips, and then stupidly, I find myself tilting towards him as a result. What the hell is wrong with me? “Your name.”
“Oh… uh, it’s Rebec–Beck. I go by Beck.”
His brow slides up. So far up that they almost get lost in his bushfuls of hair. He doesn’t say anything and just stares at me, so again I go, “What?”
He shrugs, almost nonchalant even though a second ago, he looked almost spooked. “Nothing. It’s just that… that was my mom’s name.”
“Was?”
“Yeah. She died last year.”
This guts me. I know a thing or two about dead mothers.
“Oh. I’m really sorry.”
“That’s alright,” he grins. Then he shakes his hair out. “Wasn’t your fault. Unless you have the ability to give people breast cancer.”
“No, I…”
The boy chuckles and the sound rumbles from deep inside his chest. He tilts his shoulder towards me and leans his head down so our eyes meet. “I’m kidding, Beck.” I catch his eyes and find myself looking into an ocean’s abyss. “I’m Jeremiah. Belly’s boyfriend.”
In retrospect, his admission is one I should have seen coming.
Here is this beautiful boy in my dorm room and I don’t know him. It only makes sense that my roommate does. And a beautiful boy like him… of course he isn’t just a friend. It would be a travesty if he was. But a part of me still wishes that’s exactly what he was.
Silently, I find myself taking a step back from him. He keeps his eyes on me, though the spot between his brows tightens a bit. I have confused him. I suppose it’s best. If he knew what kind of thoughts I was having about him, he might run away screaming.
“R-Right. Um, I’ve seen you in a picture. Isabel showed me.” That’s why he looked familiar to me before. The day Isabel moved into our dorm, we stayed up talking for hours after we both set up our sides of the room. She had mentioned in passing that she had a boyfriend. She had even shown me a picture but it wasn’t just the two of them. It was a group photo of her with three other boys on the beach. They had all grown up together apparently.
His eyes spin with colour. He looks so happy all of a sudden. “Belly showed you a picture of me?”
“Yeah. A while ago. Sorry I didn’t recognize you.”
“Nah, don’t worry about it. I’m sorry I slept in your bed. I came here kinda hungover and just fell flat on my face.” He looks at me a little shyly. “Hey, don’t tell Belly I slept in your bed.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want her to get the wrong idea, you know?”
“And what would the wrong idea be?”
He shrugs. “I guess I just don’t want her to think I’d fall into any girl’s bed just like that.”
I don’t know what to say to him so I don’t say anything at all. He must take my silence as acceptance because then he easily walks around me and sits down on Isabel’s perfectly made bed and picks up a stuffed teddy bear off the floor. He sets it down on his thighs and grins.
“This is Junior Mint,” he explains. He uses one of the bear’s hands to wave at me. “Belly got him when she was a kid.”
I take a seat on the edge of my own bed. It’s soft and the sheets are all messy from when he slept on them but for some reason, I don’t mind that at all. “Did you get it for her?”
The question seems to sadden Jeremiah and I think he might change the subject, but then he doesn’t and he tells me, albeit quietly and more to the bear than me, “No. My brother did.”
“Are you guys close?”
He looks up again. “Me and my brother?”
I shrug. “Sure.”
“Uh… kinda. He’s at Stanford.”
I make an impressive sort of sound. “He must be smart.”
“Yeah, he is.” Jeremiah sets the teddy bear back on Belly’s bed. He sort of throws it, and it lands in the corner by her pillows. His eyes round on me once more. “What are you studying?”
“Forensics and psych. Double major.”
Jeremiah’s lips curve into a full circle as he releases a hoot. “That’s crazy! A double major?”
I can’t help myself–I chuckle. “It’s not hard. It’s just more classes.”
“I can barely handle the ones I have now. Especially the 8 AM ones. Those suck ass.”
“Can’t you take night classes?”
“The ones I need aren’t offered at night.” He pouts. “And I need the nights to do other stuff anyways. My frat brothers are always having people over.”
“Ah…” I nod, smiling to myself as I fold my arms over my chest. “So you’re one of those.”
“What? ‘One of those?’ What does that mean?”
“It means you’re probably one of those frat bros who’s all about the partying and the booze and the number of girls you can bed.”
Jeremiah’s mouth falls open and he appears genuinely offended and struck solid by my statements. I’ve been told plenty of times that I leave people speechless–and not in a good way. “We’re not all like that. Sure, we party, but we’re cool about it and we’re careful with the booze. And I wouldn’t cheat on Belly.”
“I…” This time around, I’m the one at a loss for words. “I’m not trying to insinuate that you would, it’s just that… frat guys have a reputation. I’m just saying it as I’ve heard.”
Much to my surprise, Jeremiah seems not too upset by my words this time around. He gets up and hands me his phone. I see the screen lit up with his Contacts app. “Add your number in there. I’ll invite you to one of our parties and you’ll see that we’re alright.”
Slowly, I take his phone and start to type my number in. I leave the name spot empty so he can write whatever he wants. Then I hand his phone back to him. “I don’t really party all that much.”
Jeremiah types in what I’m assuming is my name and puts his phone away. Then he walks towards me. I find myself holding my breath whilst my knees fill with hefty tension. Each step he takes makes me want to look away from him, petrified that he will see the desire written plain as day on my face. I’m the worst person in the world, lusting after my roommate’s boyfriend.
He reaches behind me and grabs something off the bed. When he’s in front of me again, I realize it’s the shirt he must have slipped off before he fell asleep. He puts it on with ease, his curly head poking through last.
“Thanks for letting me sleep on your bed,” he says.
“I didn’t let you. You just did.”
“Still, though,” he nods with a smile. “Thanks for being cool about it and not telling Belly either. I’ll be careful to fall asleep on her bed next time. Scout’s Honour.” He raises his right arm, his hand in the air, and covers the nail of his pinky with his thumb whilst his other fingers stand straight up.
The salute gets an honest laugh out of me and I almost collapse on my bed, grinning from ear-to-ear. Once he’s gone, I really do fall back on my bed. His scent is all over my sheets and I feel like a Class A creep for not hating it or getting rid of it right away. Instead, I bask in it and I lay in bed with my eyes on the ceiling as I think about him in a way I shouldn’t be thinking of him at all.
—a the summer i turned pretty fic about first love, first heartbreak, love lost, and love found 🦋
C H A P T ER / ONE
. . .
“I need you to be so serious right now.”
Isabel stares at me with wide and painstakingly desperate eyes. The sort of desperate one would only find in the eyes of a person left with no other choice, which, I suppose in her case, is true. I just hate that I know I can’t fight it or her as she asks me to do something I would rather peel my skin off than spend my next few months doing.
“Bex, please. I know you hate this stuff–”
“What stuff?”
Isabel makes indistinguishable hand gestures in the air. The motions make her look like a mime, and I almost laugh. Imagining her in stripes and black and white body paint is funnier than it should be. “Love and stuff.”
“I don’t hate love.” Half of me is offended that she would think that. The other half wants to agree with her even though she’s mostly wrong. I don’t hate love. I just don’t trust it. “Really, I don’t. What gave you that idea?”
“The face you make every time I bring Conrad up.”
“Okay, Miss Dramatic, I don’t hate love just because I can’t stand to listen to you talk about your fiance for hours on end.”
“You listen to your weird crime podcasts for hours every week!”
“That’s different! Those are actually interesting!”
“Conrad’s interesting, too! Or he would be if you actually made an effort to talk to him for longer than five minutes.”
I slide my sunglasses off my face and set them on the top of my head. Now that I can see her better, I realize Isabel looks closer to hurt than fuming. We have been sitting outside a cafe for the last ten minutes and she has barely touched her croissant or her coffee. In comparison, I’m down to the last few morsels of my blueberry cheesecake and my coffee is just about gone.
“Why do I have to talk to Conrad? He’s your fiance.”
Isabel tears off a piece of her croissant and stuffs it into her mouth. Then almost gruffly, she goes, “And you’re one of my best friends.” She wipes the corner of her mouth with a napkin even though there’s nothing there. “I don’t get you. It’s like you’re not even happy for me.”
I stuff my mouth with cheesecake. Then I talk around it, too. “How could I not be happy for you, Belly? This is the guy you’ve been in love with since you were, what? Ten? Eleven? You’re marrying your first love. That’s incredible and I am happy for you.”
Isabel sighs. “Then why do you avoid us all the time? Every time I try to set something up with all of us, you bail at the last minute. Even Taylor doesn’t do that.”
Taylor Jewel is Isabel’s best friend from childhood. The two of them have been attached at the hip for as long as I’ve known them. Even though they are vastly different people and their thoughts are usually clashing, the two of them have a solid friendship of almost two decades.
When we were in college, I used to envy that. My best friends, Raisa and Tamsyn, both moved out of the country for school and I didn’t hear from them much apart from birthdays and holidays and the rare catch-ups in between. We were all so busy with our own lives and with the time zones, it was hard to keep the friendship we had in high school. But Isabel and Taylor… no matter how much they fought, they stayed together. They were almost more like sisters than friends.
I play with my napkin. It’s pink and purple and has little white stars on it. I rip off one piece and start folding it into tiny triangles. “Tay’s known you guys since you were little. It’s not awkward.”
Isabel reaches across the table to touch my wrist, effectively halting my movements. I let my napkin go and look up at her sheepishly. To my surprise, she’s smiling. “Con’s in medical school and you’re working at a clinic. You guys would have a lot to talk about.”
“How many dead bodies do you think he’s seen?”
Isabel rolls her eyes, but she’s still smiling. “It’d be nice if, at my wedding, the two of you would be friends. Like you are with Jere.”
The sound of his name freezes me in place. It’s been a while since I last heard it, mostly because I avoided talking about him and Isabel has been so enthralled with wedding errands that she hardly brings him up to begin with.
Last I heard, from Taylor that is, Jeremiah Fisher is in New York at a work conference his father sent him to. His father, Adam Fisher, is the Chief Executive Officer of Fisher Financial, a banking company which opened its doors four years ago. As a toddler in the banking world, Fisher Financial offers small loans to keep themselves afloat for the time being. They were featured in Global Finance and The New Yorker last year, which Isabel mentioned Conrad thought was a good way of putting them on the map.
I break off another piece of my cheesecake and force it into my mouth which feels drier than the Sahara now. I grab my coffee, too, to help the slide down. “You know I’m only friends with Jeremiah by association, right?”
Isabel doesn’t hide the roll of her eyes this time. This time, she is less than subtle about it. It even feels as though she’s putting it on display. “Come on. You guys have known each other since Finch. And Jere really likes you.”
“Oh, yeah?” I ask the question with a tinge of humour in my voice. The idea of Jeremiah Fisher liking any part of me is downright hilarious. All we did in college was argue: about where to eat, where to hang out, or where to study. He and I never saw eye-to-eye on anything and I think it led to a whole lot of resentment by the end of our four-year degrees. “When did he tell you that little lie?”
“Gosh, Bex. You’re seriously impossible.” Isabel shakes her head at me and her lips twist into a pout. I’ve managed to seriously tick her off. “First, you don’t want to get to know Con and now you’re making up stuff about Jere? What’s wrong with you?”
I pick up my butter knife and use it to slice my cheesecake down the middle. Then I start slicing it in smaller squares until I have about four on each side. I pick up a piece and throw it into my mouth. “Belly, you can’t honestly tell me you thought Jeremiah and I were friends this whole time. We’ve never gotten along. Not once.”
“That’s not true. You got along plenty in college.”
“Yeah, for your sake. We can’t stand each other otherwise.”
“Okay, and why is that?”
Her question stumps me. Not because I don’t have an answer to it but because the only answer I do have is one she does not need to hear. And one I cannot bring myself to voice out loud ever. Never ever. Not for as long as I’m alive. Maybe when I’m dead, I’ll talk to God about it. But in this life? Abso-fucking-lutely not.
I grab another piece of cake and stuff it in. “He’s kinda weird.”
“How so?”
“I don’t know. He’s twenty-five and he acts like a kid. Remember when he told people he was studying beerology? Or how about that time he let those upper class girls lick chocolate off his abs?”
Isabel sighs again, sounding more defeated, and checks something on her phone. Her eyes light up at whatever is on the screen and it doesn’t take me long to figure out that Conrad must have texted. According to her, Conrad isn’t a big texter. He’s not even a big talker. But he texts her a lot. In our fourth year at Finch, he wrote letters to her. Real, honest to goodness handwritten letters in scribbly, doctor-like penmanship that was hard to discern, but Belly loved them more than anything else she had ever received in her life. She kept all of his letters in an old shoebox under her bed and before they got together again, she would read them all the time and cry.
“Is that Conrad?”
Isabel looks up, almost a little surprised to see me in front of her, and nods. “Yeah, he, uh, he wants to go out to this new Italian place downtown tonight, but I have to turn in early for work tomorrow. It just sucks that the only time he isn’t working or studying, I am. Our schedules rarely align.”
This time, I reach out across the table and pat her hand lovingly. I want to express my understanding and my sadness as best I can. I haven’t always agreed with her choices in love but when it comes to Conrad, I know this is it. He is it. “It’ll be easier once he’s finished with school. Then the two of you can swim in all the money he makes working as a surgeon.”
A laugh escapes her. A genuine laugh and I’m glad I was able to bring it out of her. I can feel the tension radiating off her shoulders already. Isabel says she is the opposite of her mother, but when it comes to things like stress and responsibilities, so much of them is the same. I wonder if all girls transform into their mothers one day. And if that’s true, what will become of me?
“I don’t know about that. Con says it’ll be a while before he can start making money. Like, a long while.”
“He’ll get there eventually.”
Isabel nods in agreement. Then, she pulls out a small notebook from her bag. “So, how about it then? Will you help?”
I knew our conversation – after Conrad and Jeremiah and everything else – would circle back to what she invited me out for this afternoon, but I still hate it. And I want no part in it. Except, one look at my best friend’s face and the earnest expression littered across it, I know I have no choice but to accept.
“Okay.”
Isabel lights up, almost entirely like a Christmas tree. It’s fascinating to watch and it fills me with love and admiration for her. All of us have been through a lot, including Belly. I remember the days when she would cry in college, missing someone whom I had never met but she would insist I would have adored.
“Susannah was like that. Everyone loved her. Even the ones who thought they didn’t. I think I loved her best of all.”
“Thank you, really. Taylor’s going to be so happy to have some help and Jere will definitely listen to you and–”
My brows pinch together. “Wait a minute. Hold on. You want me to talk to Jeremiah about this?”
Isabel’s once ecstatic expression falters as guilt begins to chew its way in. “Well… he doesn’t talk to Conrad and when he talks to me, I don’t have it in me to bring it up with him. Taylor said she won’t do it no matter what so I just thought…”
I sit back in my seat, stupefied by the predicament she has placed me in. I can’t believe I didn’t see this coming. It’s exactly like Isabel to make others do her dirty work. I took it enough times in college, but now? Now, it feels childish and I almost hate her for it. “So you thought you could just butter me up to do it.”
“It’s not like that. I just thought that since you and Jere are friends, he might listen to you.”
Aggravated, I swallow down the twisted pain in my throat and grumble at her, “For the last time, Belly, Jeremiah and I are barely acquaintances. Anything we are is attached to you. If he won’t listen to you or his literal brother, what good am I?”
Isabel bites her lip. The tension in her shoulders returns. “If I hadn’t hurt him the way I did, things would be different right now and I wouldn’t be asking you to help me like this. I’m desperate, Bex. Conrad wants his brother at his wedding and I want my friend there, too. If you won’t help me, what am I supposed to do?”
Maybe you should have thought about that before.
I hush the awful thoughts inside my head and begin to stand up, picking up my purse and slinging it over my shoulder. Isabel watches me with pleading eyes and I find myself giving in. If only to end this conversation here and now.
“Fine. I’ll talk to him and see what I can do. I’m not making any promises, though.”
Isabel smiles. “That’s perfect. Thanks.”
She waves at me as I walk away, taking haste steps towards the closest subway station. I had planned to go to the gym after our meeting, get my leg-day reps in since I had been avoiding them for two weeks now, but now that my mood is sour, I cannot help but want to go home and sink into the comfort of my pillows and blankets.
. . .
That night, I’m watching a sugar cube dissolve in my cup of tea when my phone alerts me to an incoming text message. I pick it up half expecting Taylor to be messaging me about dresses and flowers and all the other stuff Isabel has her taking care of as the maid of honour, but instead, I find a text from Jeremiah. I click on it to read the whole thing.
J. Fisher: hey! so belly told me ur coming down to my office tmrw morn. what’s up?
God, Belly. You told him already? What the fuck.
Bex: hi. yeah, i have something to talk to you about.
J. Fisher: oooh. ominous. but OK. see u then!
I don’t care how hot my tea is or the fact that I’ll probably be burning my tongue from this, but the moment his last text flies in, I pick up my mug and chug it back like a party shot.
—a the summer i turned pretty fic about first love, first heartbreak, love lost, and love found 🦋
P R O L O G U E
Everyone I know is crazy.
Crazy, foolish, and utterly ridiculous.
Take my father for example. Last year, he won a small-town lottery of five hundred thousand dollars and over the span of a few months, he spent all of that money on women. He wined and dined them and bought them expensive things. When he got bored of one, he moved onto another, and very quickly, it became a habit he revisited again and again until the money ran out. These days, he lives in a two bedroom condo on the edge of town with the last woman he was with. They’re not together – not romantically, anyway. She owns a burger shop and he works to earn his keep.
On the other end of the spectrum is my best friend from college, Isabel Conklin. Isabel, or Belly as she’s often called, is terribly in love. Head over heels, hearts for eyes, disgustingly in love to the point that it makes me want to vomit because she almost never shuts up about it. About her love and about the guy she’s marrying. Even though she claims it took her whole life for them to get together, I fear it may take all of mine to stop hearing about it.
And me, well, I’m crazy about serial killers.
It’s an obsession which began a few weeks after I turned fourteen. I was home alone on a Wednesday night because my mother was visiting my aunt and my father was drunk with some friends at a bar after work. Neither of them bothered to check up on me and I was okay with that. My parents lived very separate lives – from each other and from me. It had always been that way, for as long as I had been alive. My mother's sister, Greenie, who’s only ten years older than me, said it was because my parents got forced into a marriage. After my mother fell pregnant with me in high school, there was no other choice to be made.
All alone at home with my schoolwork done and nothing else to do, I turned on the TV. I scrolled through so many channels, almost fifty of them, before my eyes caught flashing lights and ominous music. A crime drama was on. I didn’t know what it was called or frankly, if my parents would even be alright with me watching it, but for the next two hours, that’s what I did. I sat on the old, black fabric sofa in our little townhouse and watched FBI agents chase murderous men and women through the streets of America. After that, I was obsessed. All I looked forward to from then on were new episodes of Criminal Minds, Law & Order, and NCIS. I talked about serial killers like I was a fan, and it got so bad that at some point in my junior year of high school, my homeroom teacher called my parents and spoke to them about it. I wasn’t allowed to watch TV for a whole month. And a month after that, it didn’t really matter what I did. Because my father had lost his job as a courtroom stenographer and my mother had blown herself up in the family car.
if you had been mine, i would have held you better. and i would have kissed you better. and i would have loved you better than anyone. if you had been mine, i never would have let you go.
—a the summer i turned pretty fic starring my first and favourite book boyfriend, jeremiah fisher ♡
「epilogue — yn, reader insert」
. . .
FEBRUARY
If I close my eyes and block out the noise around me, my mind swells with the memories of summer–out on the beach, sharing a sundae on the boardwalk, sitting around a bonfire singing along to nostalgic tunes.
Every morning, I sit at my desk and do this. Or at the very least, I attempt to. Some days are more successful than others.
I don’t know why I do it exactly. A part of me seems to invite the motion, beckons it closer until I have no choice but to give in. Summer in Cousins was more than five months ago. It’s winter now and I still cannot seem to shake it off.
This happens every year – this restive yearning – for time to go back. Back and back and back until it lands on the part I love most – my feet swimming through grains of hot sand, the sun on my back, my favourite person in the world calling my name.
I miss him; and I miss his brother, his mother, and all our friends. I miss everything.
“Okay, okay, everyone. Let’s calm down, shall we? You are all much too loud for 9 in the morning.” Mrs. Hurst pins her eyes on the group of boys at the back who are fussing over their Nintendos. “Boys, take a seat, please. We’re having a pop quiz today.”
The admission garners an appropriate response from everyone, including myself – a loud and collective protest. The boys start us off by groaning out, their deepening voices practically drowning out us girls who are mostly on our phones.
“But, Miss!” One boy – Silas – shouts. “It’s Valentine’s Day! We can’t have a pop quiz on Valentine’s Day!”
Mrs. Hurst straightens a stack of papers at her desk and smirks without looking up.
At a height of 5’10, our advanced calculus teacher is the tallest of all the female teachers in school. She’s also the smartest and funniest. More often than not, if you passed by her class, you would hear students laughing rather than crying, which given the title of the course she teaches is a completely valid reception.
“Who says?”
Silas frowns. “I dunno. Cupid?”
That little quip earns him more laughter and the black-haired boy eats it up like a delicious custard.
Mrs. Hurst walks up to him with a paper in her hand and places it face-down on his desk. Her semi-long, purple painted fingernail taps quickly on the sheet. “If Cupid swings by during the length of this quiz, all of you can tear up your papers. Deal?”
Silas’ frown deepens but he slumps down in his chair anyway. He knows he can’t win against Mrs. Hurst. Even though she is super cool and unlike our grouchy World History teacher, Mr. Peet, Mrs. Hurst is nothing if not adamant about her examinations. Pop quizzes especially. She says, in a lot of ways, they help her more than us. Because by making us do them, she can figure out which parts of the course we all need more help with and then she can allot more class time to that.
All of it makes sense, but we still hate it.
Once the quiz starts, Mrs. Hurst starts a timer. We have twenty minutes to complete five questions. There’s even a bonus question on the second page, which I promise myself I’ll do because I need the extra credit – no matter how miniscule.
Fraiser Mont accepted me as a student to their biotechnology program last month, but as it stands, any major dip in my GPA means I stand to lose the acceptance, a scholarship, and any chance of making sure I do right by my boyfriend. Jeremiah worked so hard to get in; into the school I wanted. I can’t devastate him by losing everything. I can’t do that to myself either.
Around the time I reach the fourth question, there are seven minutes left on the timer and I’m sweating it. Mrs. Hurst catches me lifting my head twice and panicking, and although she gives me a warm smile, it’s not nearly enough to silence the war raging within the middle of my chest.
I scramble to wrack my brain for the answer, to calculate the right answer as speedily as possible, when suddenly, there is a knock at the door. Mrs. Hurst walks towards it, her heels knocking hard against the floor, and opens the door to reveal two girls wearing an assortment of reds, whites, and pinks. On top of both their heads are halo headbands, and on their faces are smiles brighter than the sun piercing through the classroom window and hitting my desk just right.
“Hi, Mrs. Hurst!” Girl #1 greets. I recognize her as a freshman student on the junior girls basketball team. A few times a month, us varsity girls will coach them on our off-time. It’s a long-standing tradition at Helmshire High. “We’re here to deliver valentines!”
Mrs. Hurst appears flabbergasted. “Chloe, I thought you girls weren’t coming by until the second period.”
Chloe’s expression transforms into an awkward, almost apologetic state. “Sorry, Miss H. Principal Sri sent us out early.”
The girl next to her, whom I don’t recognize, smiles charmingly and holds out a single, red rose for our teacher. “Here you go, Miss H! Happy Valentine’s Day!”
A few seats away from me, Silas’ chair scrapes obnoxiously against the floor as he stands to his full height. Everyone turns to stare at him, including Mrs. Hurst, who watches as her student actually rips up his pop quiz. With that, everyone else follows and then it’s an uproar of students giggling in their seats while Mrs. Hurst shakes her head at us. The smile on her mouth speaks to the opposite of anger.
“Alright, girls,” Mrs. Hurst urges Chloe and her friend into the room. “Go spread love.”
The girls get right to it. Their skirts whip around the wind of their fast motions as they race around the classroom passing out roses, cards, and candy grams. The boys make an uproar every time one of them receives anything whilst the girls are deadly quiet, with some gossipping behind curved hands about who received the most flowers. In the end, Mehwish Odubi receives ten perfectly stemmed roses and a heart-shaped box of Ferrero Rocher chocolates.
Most of the girls congratulate her, including her best friends, but it’s obvious that not everyone is happy for her. It’s to be expected. Jealousy is a wretched thing. And so is envy.
I’m tearing my quiz in half when the second girl – who I now know is named Xinyi – runs back outside to grab something by the door. As soon as she comes back in, both the boys and the girls explode with questions and hollers. And as Xinyi starts to walk towards my desk smack in the middle of the classroom, the noise reaches an unbelievable level I’ve only heard before in concerts.
Xinyi grins as she hands me a bouquet of fresh daisies. “These are for you,” she says. “From a not-so-secret admirer.”
My classmates rush to encircle me, crowding my desk with their bodies and wide eyes and curious tongues. Emery leans into me, the strong scent of his cologne invading my nostrils, to peer openly at the bouquet in my arms.
“Who are these from?” He asks.
There is a card taped to the side of the bouquet but I don’t need to read it to know exactly whom these very specific flowers are from. The only mystery lies in how he got them to me in the first place. Not when he’s all the way in another state.
“Um,” I start, catching a few eyes, “these are from my boyfriend.”
“Daisies? On Valentine’s Day?” Emery tsks. “That’s weird as fuck.”
Mrs. Hurst chooses that moment to pipe in with, “Language, Emery.” Her heels sound off against the floor as she steps up to my desk. A few students scamper away with Xinyi and Chloe heading out of the room altogether. To me, my teacher says, “YN, these are delightful.”
“Thank you,” I smile, meaning it. I run my fingers along the tops of the flowers, my heart swaying and swelling and crying with love. I don’t know what strings he pulled to be able to get these to me, but I’m so happy.
As Mrs. Hurst starts to tell the class about a rescheduled pop quiz – much to Silas’ dismay – I find a moment to snap a photograph of the bouquet. I send Jeremiah the picture right away, with an ‘I love you,’ then I post the image to my Instagram feed with a caption I know my friends will clown me for later.
Jeremy: i’m the only guy in class who got cheeseburgers with his rose hehe
Jeremy: i love you too
Jeremy: forever and ever
. . .
MARCH
“Where’s Mom?”
My father raises his head from his Kindle to smile at me. His cup of steaming coffee sits idle next to him. He probably brewed a fresh pot. And knowing him, this is his third or fourth cup of the day. “Mom went out to visit Tanya,” he tells me. I try to remember who Tanya is and come up empty. My father seems to notice and chuckles to himself. “Her esthetician.”
“Oh,” I mumble, taking a seat at the dinner table. “Why aren’t you at work?”
“I’m taking a mental health day.”
My left brow rises in surprise “That’s a first.”
My father picks up his coffee and takes a sip. It’s pitch black. He never uses cream or milk. Whereas my mother cannot live without it. “It was needed.” He smiles over the rim of his cup. “So, senior year. How’s it going?”
I groan and lean back in my chair. “Do we have to talk about that?”
“As your father, it’s my responsibility to annoy you with these kinds of questions. So, yes.”
“Fine.” I stretch my palm out on the table. Our old, four-seat table we bought so many years ago and have had so many dinners on. I used to hate sitting here because it meant my mother would sit across from me and scrutinise every morsel of food I put in my mouth that wasn’t utterly vital to my health. Then after dinner was over, I would sneak snacks into my room and munch on them while binging Pretty Little Liars or The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. The memories embedded in the wood of this table are not all happy ones, and there is still so much crap my mother and I have to work through, but a part of me – a pretty big part – is glad I can still sit here with her because it means there is a chance for things to get better. “Dad… can I ask you a question?”
He sets his coffee back on the coaster. My father is the only man I know who uses an actual, honest to goodness coaster. Even when his wife isn’t around. “What about my question?”
I roll my eyes good-naturedly. “We’ll get to it.”
He chuckles and nods. “Alright. Shoot then, kiddo.”
I brace myself for the inquiry sitting on my tongue. It’s a question which has bugged me for months, even since the start of last summer when my mother dropped the bomb on me prior to my first day of work at the country club. My mother was the one I spoke to about it when I could, but when it came to my father, I seemed to avoid it. I don’t know why. Maybe because I was scared to know what it meant in his words. Because it may have felt more real. “Why did you ask Mom for a divorce last summer?”
Almost immediately, my father clams up. I watch it happen before my very eyes – the way the wrinkles around his eyes tighten, the shakiness of his pupils, and the deadset tone of his frown. He appears ten years older then. Ten years worse for wear.
“Dad…” I coax, levelling my voice so he doesn’t shut me out. That part of myself I get from him, so I’m well-acquainted with how it looks and how it perseveres. “I deserve to know. Mom just dropped that news on me one day and I spent the whole summer being confused about your relationship with her. You two love each other more than anybody. I always thought you did.”
“And we do,” my father sighs, his shoulders sinking. He chews on his bottom lip for a second before letting go. “I will always love your mother. She’s my best friend.”
“So then…?”
“We were struggling with conflicting ideas about our futures,” he explains, craning his neck to look out a window. “When your mother and I met, we were both new to America. She was from her country and I was from mine. My grandparents had already been living here for close to a decade. I would visit them for holidays every year so I was more familiar with places like Detroit and Chicago than your mother was with any part of this country. This didn’t make my family happy. They wanted me to be with someone from here, someone truly American who could help me establish myself in business. But your mother… she was who I truly wanted.
Because of that, a rift grew between my family and us. I tried to make space for her and they shut her out. Those were the times I wished more than anything that my parents were still around. I knew they would support my decisions the way my grandparents and my siblings didn’t. Eventually, I left my family and your mother and I moved to Portland. Things were a bit better then, when you girls were just kids. But then…”
“Esme got pregnant.”
My father nods. “Yes. Your mother was distraught. Not only about what Esmé was going to do, but with the way it would look to my family. They would blame her for being a bad mother. And then they did.”
“But you fought for her. I remember that. You told Grandpa to go to he–”
“We don’t need to rehash that,” my father chuckles, his eyes less stressed than before. “The point is, your mother became a verbal punching bag and that took a toll on her. I told her not to interact with my family but she did. She wanted you girls to know your great-grandparents and your aunts and uncles. But doing that led to her making choices I didn’t always agree with. Especially when it came to you.”
I swallow. The motion is a bit painful as the memories flood back in. “I’m fine, Dad.”
“But you weren’t always, and that wasn’t right. What your mother did… forcing you to be the perfect daughter… I got sick of seeing her treat you that way. I knew that the only way to wake her up from the madness was to go to an extreme. I told her that I would leave her if she didn’t make things right with you.”
The truth punches me right in the gut.
“Dad… I… I don’t know what to say.”
My father reaches out to pat the back of my hand. “I love you more than all the love in the universe, kid. And I love your mom and sister, too. I love our family. But sometimes, families have to give each other ultimatums. If only to wake someone up.”
“So you weren’t really going to…?”
He shakes his head and leans back. “No, not at all. I love your mother. I made a vow to stay by her side. I would never break it.”
My eyes water and I sniffle from the emotions built up in my chest. “Mom loves you, too.”
“I know,” he smiles. “The two of us are miserable without each other. Even when we fight.”
My father lets me return to my room at the conclusion of our conversation. But not before making me promise that he can take me out for ice cream tonight so we can talk about how my senior year is going. By the end of it, my heart feels so light that I’m looking forward to it. We still have our sports nights and the odd days when he decides to cook and makes me his sous-chef, but this can be a new tradition.
Back upstairs, I start to pick up my paint brushes so I can continue working on the art piece for Susannah’s birthday next weekend when my phone lights up with an incoming call on FaceTime. I answer it straight away when I see who’s calling.
“What’s up, blondie?”
Taylor scrunches up her face whilst Belly barks out a laugh. “I told you to stop calling me that.”
“But, why? You are blonde again.” I smirk at her, teasing just to see her irritation fly in three-fold. “Is it permanent?”
“She was talking about going auburn yesterday,” Belly explains.
“Ooh,” I say, “with your freckles that would be so cute!”
“That’s what I said, too,” Belly agrees, nodding along.
“I’m not going auburn anymore, FYI. Mommy said it wouldn’t suit me,” Taylor adds in. “Plus, blonde is always popular. I’ll fit right in with all the girls in my sorority when I go to Finch.”
“Speaking of sororities,” I sing, falling back on my bed and holding the phone over my face. “Why do you wanna join one anyway? The pledge process alone kills people.”
“Not my sorority. They’re all about caring for animals and the environment. The worst thing I would have to do as a pledge is feed goats or something.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
Taylor flicks stray hair off her face. “I read about it on Facebook.”
I turn to Belly. “Bells, are you joining this sorority?”
Belly shakes her head. “No way! When I go to college, I’ll be in a dorm with a roommate.” She bows her head. “There’s still so much time before college. I don’t know why Taylor’s thinking about it now.”
Taylor jumps to her own defence. “I need to be prepared, Belly. Sororities don’t just accept anyone, you know? They have standards.” There’s a momentary pause when I think Belly will respond but then Taylor is asking me a question. “YN, you should think about joining a sorority. Fraiser Mont has a really good one. Most of the girls from there go on to marry super rich guys. Like, Wall-Street guys. The ones who wear designer suits to work.”
I shake my head, too. “Nope. Not for me.”
“Why?”
“It’s not my thing. I don’t want to pledge my allegiance or whatever to some girls club. I’d prefer being in a dorm on campus and having a roommate, like Belly.”
“Won’t Jere join a frat, though?”
Taylor has me there.
Jeremiah has his heart set on joining Kappa Tau – an exclusive hockey-based fraternity ten minutes off campus. He learned about it from a few guys who were also gunning to join the hockey team at Fraiser Mont.
None of them were on scholarships, but they wanted to try anyway. Including my boyfriend who was giving after school practices his absolute best every week. So much so that I hardly spoke to him these days and we mostly texted, which wasn’t like us but in the grand scheme of things, it is a small sacrifice.
I lick my lips. “He wants to, yeah. I don’t know if he will.”
“Well, he should. Jeremy’s the kinda guy who’d do well in a frat.”
In a way, I know Taylor is right but it still irks me. Everything I know about fraternities – even the few good things – eventually circles around to all the horrors. The lives lost. The students and families scarred. My father’s friend’s son had to leave his university because his frat scared him so terribly that he couldn’t bear the thought of staying. So I worry for Jeremiah, and I feel bad for hoping he will change his mind and just get a dorm when I know that isn’t what he wants.
We talk for a bit longer then I’m back to hanging out on my phone alone. I answer a few texts about a party tonight, reply to Esme who has sent me a Dropbox link to pictures of Anya at her first ballet recital, and then, as I’m about to head into TikTok, an incoming call barges in.
Jeremiah’s face lights up the screen and I smile giddily as I go to answer it with equally cheerful fingers tapping along.
“Hey–”
“I’m so fucking mad,” Jeremiah interjects, his voice thundering through the speaker. I tighten my grip on my phone. “Fuck, I wanna punch something.”
That grabs my attention. “Jere, what’s wrong?”
“Better question is, what isn’t wrong.”
“Is it your mom? What hap–”
Jeremiah seems to fall back against something and it doesn't take me long to ascertain that it must be the beanbag chair he keeps in the corner of his bedroom. I’ve spent so many nights curled up on it, pretending to read but sneaking glances at him as he sat on the floor playing video games. “I was running drills when I got a call from my mom’s nurse,” he explains, frustration evident in each decibel of his voice. “Apparently, my dad couldn't get out of a last minute meeting to pick her up from the hospital. How fucked is that?”
“Wait, Susannah was in the hospital again? Why?” Deep down, I know why and I hate myself for asking why but when the question flows out of me, I can’t take it back.
Jeremiah sighs. “They’re monitoring her. She’s… weak. So now she has appointments twice a week.” He grumbles under his breath. “They didn’t even call my dad first. They called me. Because I’m her emergency contact. That’s how much she trusts him. Can you believe it?”
The ache in my chest threatens to rise up and choke me. I curl my toes in, and inhale slowly. “No. That’s so messed up. I’m sorry.” I swallow down the new pain in my throat. “How’s Susannah now?”
“She’s resting. Or sleeping, I guess. Said she was exhausted.” Jeremiah grows quiet for a minute and when he speaks again, my heart shatters. “Mom told me she’s sorry for being a burden.” He chokes on a sob, and the way it makes me feel is the worst kind of sadness there could ever be. “How can she think that she’s a burden? She’s my mom. I would do anything to keep her with me.”
“I know you would.”
“And she… she said she wants a caretaker. A hospice nurse. Laurel’s helping her look for one.”
A hospice nurse? I don’t know much about them but one quick Google search tells me everything I need to know.
Hospice nurses are special nurses who take care of people who have six months or less to live. They provide information, take care of the patient, and help the grieving family through a difficult time of loss. I’ve known Susannah doesn’t have much time left but hearing this, the reality of it and what it means about now and the future, it hurts. It’s the most depressing thing in the world.
I wipe my eyes and hope Jeremiah cannot hear my cries through the phone. The last thing he needs is to worry about my sorrow when he has enough of his own.
For a few seconds, I hone in on his breathing, listening to it intently. Jeremiah and I are always talkative, always the type of people who have something to say, but right now, I know silence is better. So I wait. And I wait and wait until I think it’s enough.
Then, ever so gently, I murmur, “Jere?”
He seems to breathe in through his nose. And he doesn’t hold back his tears at all. “I can barely recognize her some days. And sometimes… it’s scary to look at her. At her face. She doesn’t look like herself… like Mom…”
I reach down to pinch my thigh, to ground myself. “She’ll always be Susannah. The cancer can’t take that from her. She won’t let it.”
He sniffles. “I wish you were here.”
I don’t hesitate when I go, “Okay,” then stand to my feet and grab my overnight bag from my closet. The one I put together for moments like these when time would be scarce.
“Huh?”
I grab my phone charger and stuff it in my bag. Then I grab my jacket and scarf and walk out of my bedroom. I can hear the television playing downstairs, a comedy channel, and my dad’s telltale laughter. “I’ll drive down,” I tell Jeremiah. “And I’ll pick up pizza and wings along the way. From Anderson’s.”
“YN…”
“Don’t worry. I’ll explain it to my dad. It’ll be fine.”
“But don’t you have that big chem test on Monday?”
My heart swarms with love for him. I had mentioned it in passing. Jeremiah doesn’t usually remember stuff I tell him, especially not dates, but he remembered this. “I’ll find time to study when I’m there. See you soon, okay?”
He sighs, but it’s a relieved kind of sigh. I can imagine him smiling. “Okay.” I start to say goodbye when a thought occurs to him and he adds on, “Don’t forget: honey garlic and sweet chilli wings.”
Playfully, I let out an uncharming scoff of disbelief. “Who do you think I am? Like I’d forget your favourite.”
He giggles, and that lights me up from the inside. “Love you.”
“The feeling’s always mutual, Jeremiah Fisher.”
. . .
APRIL
“Mom,” I groan as she hands me yet another red-toned dress. “Please. I can’t put on another dress. I’m tired!”
My mother shakes her head at me as she deposits another two dresses in my arms. In utter frustration, I pout at her like a child, and she gives me the old ‘do as I say’ look she has perfected over the years. I grumble under my breath then shut the door to the dressing room.
I wouldn’t mind putting on another few dresses if it didn’t mean that I had to stand and wait for my mother and sister to discuss it over the phone before we could make a decision. Esmé had work and even though she was supposed to drive up this weekend, she couldn’t so now I’m stuck with my family spinning me around like a doll.
I don’t know how to tell my mother I have a dress picked out already. It was the first one I saw when I walked into this shop. The very last mannequin in the window was wearing it. It's very light, almost baby blue in colour. The bodice is extravagant with 3D flowers littered across; and the skirt is long, sparkly, and made of a soft tulle. It’s also off-the-shoulder, too, which I know Jeremiah loves to see me in.
After everything we have been through since last summer, I want to be able to tell my mother what I want without worry or fear. But I can’t. Not because I don’t want to, but because I hate making her think I don’t love what she loves for me. Esmé never gave our mother the chance to see her attend prom. This great, big, flashy all-American high school event she had watched in the movies growing up. She always told Esmé that she wanted to take her dress shopping someday, stand behind a camera on prom night snapping photographs, then staying up late wondering if her daughter was having fun with her friends.
If I say ‘no’ to her now, I’d be just like my sister.
With a sigh, I open the door to find my mother on the phone with Esmé. She turns around as I make my way towards the grand mirror in the hallway between the rows of dressing rooms. I stare at myself through the glass, wondering why no shade of red seems to suit me. Or maybe it’s the fact that my emotions hate all these dresses besides the one I’m hung up on.
“Esmé, what do you think?” My mother holds up her phone to show my sister the dress I’ve adorned.
Esmé’s voice comes out a bit crackly, but I can tell from her tone alone that she isn’t exactly fond of it. “I’m sure you can find something better.”
While my mother and sister converse, the dress calls out to me again, and for some reason, I don’t hold back and let the silent voice pull me in. A store clerk follows me, supposedly to ask me if I need any assistance, and when I tell her I want to try the dress on the mannequin, she happily obliges. Then it’s in my arms and I’m debating if walking back to my mother with it is worth the conversation we will have.
I’m surprised when my mother comes to me.
“Oh, that’s beautiful!” My mother gushes, her fingers gently caressing the fabric. Her eyes find mine. “Let’s have you try it on.”
I hold my breath the whole time I’m in the dressing room, then I struggle to breathe as I walk out. My mother isn’t on the phone with Esmé anymore and it seems to get quieter around us despite the moving bodies of other girls searching for the perfect prom dress.
My mother lays her eyes on me and I’m taken back to that time in the fifth grade when my whole class performed Christmas songs in the school gymnasium and my mother couldn’t stop smiling at me, grinning from ear-to-ear as if she had never been happier in her life.
“YN, this dress…” her words seem to leave her as she stares at me.
Nervously, I pat the skirt, trying to straighten out the fabric. “Is it okay?”
“Better than okay. It’s perfect, sweetheart. You’re beautiful.” My mother touches the top of my head and smiles warmly. “Let’s get it wrapped up, hm?”
I’m buzzing with newfound excitement as my mother swipes her card at the register. I want to hug her so bad, though I’ve done it twice already. If I do it one more time, I think I might just latch onto her like a koala.
“Okay, done,” my mother says, turning on her feet to smile at me. “Let's put this in the car then drive to that Viet place you love.”
My eyes widen. I’m probably happier now than I was when I saw the dress. Food can do startling things to the human mind. “Roxanne’s?! Really?!” I haven’t eaten at Roxanne’s in years. Probably since I started high school. It’s the best Vietnamese restaurant in the whole state. The restaurant isn’t even called ‘Roxanne’s,’ but that’s what our family calls it since the owner – Roxanne Bui – became friends with us since we visited the place so much. After my mother became obsessed with my weight, we stopped going altogether.
My mother nods, her excitement seemingly equal to my own. “Yes, really. Let’s go.”
We start to head for the door. In my head, I’m dreaming of all the dishes I want to order, especially bahn koht. I reach for the long, golden handle belonging to the door when the opposite side opens and reveals someone I wasn’t expecting to see. Or rather, I was hoping I wouldn’t see.
Even though Ashlyn and I share two classes this term and one last term, the last thing we do is talk. After returning from Cousins, and still not receiving a response from my supposed best friend, I gave up hoping that we could figure us out. I don’t know what happened with us, whether I said or did something to push her away or if her wanting Jeremiah for herself more than she wanted a friendship with me became too difficult to ignore. Regardless, our friendship is gone, and I don’t think either of us wants to find it again.
Still, when her eyes catch mine, I smile and she gives me a smile back, and then I leave the boutique feeling freed.
. . .
MAY
Nona, Susannah’s hospice nurse, is exceptionally talented at painting fingernails. So much so that when I show up at the Fisher residence at 11 AM on the Saturday morning before prom, ready to spend the next few hours hopping from one place to the next with Susannah, Nona lets me know that she will do our nails from home. The night before, Susannah had thrown up multiple times and that had left her visibly weak.
The effects of the cancer are evident in every part of Susannah’s body. Despite the number of times I have seen her since the summer, even the times I was too scared to, seeing her now is the worst of all.
Her hair, once so bright, is a tangle of blonde strings barely sticking to her head. I only see it when she doesn’t wear her wig, which she has grown accustomed to doing a lot more often. Her face is sunken in, too, and her skin has lost most of its colour. Nona is constantly placing blankets and shawls around Susannah’s shoulders to keep her warm and somehow, it’s never enough.
It’s only her smile that’s the same. The one thing which never changes. The cancer will never take that from her. I see it in everything, in all the ways she tries so hard for Conrad who is quieter now than he was in the summer, for Jeremiah who smiles back at her as if nothing has changed at all, and for me, too, who ends up crying in the bathroom whenever the emotions catch up to me.
“Nona, do you know how to do a blow-out?”
Nona perks up at Susannah’s question. Her legs, smaller than both mine and Susannah’s, rush over to my side to inspect my hair which I’m still drying using one of Jeremiah’s old t-shirts. I smile at Susannah. I can’t believe she remembered how much I wanted a blow-out for prom. We used to talk about it all the time.
Susannah loves to talk about anything feminine, and growing up, Belly and I took full advantage of this fact. Whenever our own mothers didn’t want to talk about the girly stuff, we would race to Susannah, plopping down on the sofa bed in her room while she got ready for a night out. Laurel would already be dressed whilst Susannah would still be figuring out which earrings best went with her dress. Often, she would give Belly and I a turn choosing her jewellery. I always liked picking her necklaces best because she had so many pretty ones.
One time, Belly was with the boys at the mall when I had broken my ankle, so all I could do was sit around and talk with Susannah while she peeled tangerines for me at the dinner table. I was colouring in a picture of Cousins Beach which I had spent so long drawing, and Susannah was telling me about prom.
“I was very popular in high school,” Susannah had said. I believed it. I could see Susannah being the most popular girl at school. The one all the girls wanted to be and all the boys wanted to be with. Susannah had that thing about her that made you want to be in her presence as much as possible because her goodness was so good that some of it spilled onto you eventually. “I had many offers for prom.”
I grinned at her as I held my red brick pencil crayon. I was going to use it to colour in the mailbox at the end of my house. “Really? Who did you go with?”
Susannah beamed at me as she popped a slice of orange into my mouth. “Thomas Capaldi. He was the most beautiful boy in school.”
Susannah was always doing that, calling boys ‘beautiful’ instead of handsome. She said that some boys were like that. The word ‘handsome’ couldn’t encompass the breadth of their appearance. Thomas Capaldi was beautiful the same way she thought her husband was, and Conrad was, and Jeremiah was, and Steven was. Susannah said that if you loved someone, they became beautiful to you because you saw them as a whole instead of just in parts.
“Did he bring you a corsage?”
Susannah nodded. “A pink rose. I think I have pictures somewhere.” Then she got up to grab her laptop where she kept all her old pictures, but I was already back to colouring. When she came back, I had a question for her.
“Susannah… do you think a beautiful boy will take me to prom even if I’m not beautiful?”
“Oh, honey,” Susannah said, gently running her fingers through my short hair. My mother had made me cut it short, just under my chin, a week before. She was tired of cutting bubblegum out of it since that summer I grew obsessed with the candy and almost always dragged it into my long strands. “The best kind of beauty is in a person’s heart, and beautiful people always find each other. And you know what? You’re so beautiful inside and out.”
I smiled at her. Whenever Susannah said anything, it felt like fact. Like the best kind of truth. I believed her so quickly that I forgot about the sadness that led me to my question in the first place. “Really?”
“Really, really.”
We spent the rest of the afternoon colouring so many pictures that we had to throw some of them away in the end. Susannah kept my first one, though, the one of Cousins Beach and the next weekend, she had it hanging up in a frame in the family room.
“I can definitely try my hardest, hon,” Nona says, turning to Susannah who gives her instructions on where her hair tools are kept.
When she’s gone, I ask Susannah a question that has been playing on my tongue ever since I arrived at her house. “Did you eat today, Susannah?”
Her smile is hesitant. She nods, slow and quiet. “I did. I had a blueberry muffin.”
“Do you want me to make you something?” I ask quickly, thinking about how a blueberry muffin isn’t nearly enough for her. I bite my bottom lip to keep my tears at bay. I wonder how many meals she has skipped or hasn’t been able to keep down. “I can order in, too.”
“Jere’s bringing food later,” she explains, giving me another smile which doesn't reach her eyes. “He’ll end up eating too much before tonight, that boy.”
I let out a breath. “Okay.”
Susannah reaches out to touch my hands. I shuffle closer to her so she can hold me any way she wants. Her fingers are frail, but her palms are warm. Her eyes full of hope as she brings them to mine. “Take lots of pictures at your big dance. I want to see them all when you get back.”
“I will. I’ll take so many pictures, you’ll get sick of seeing them.” Susannah laughs and I laugh, too. “I’m a little nervous.”
“What about?”
“I… I don’t know. I just am.”
I don’t know how to tell her that if I don’t do prom perfectly, I might end up hurting her. Belly had had her junior prom last weekend and Conrad had messed it all up. Jeremiah told me about it, whilst Belly couldn’t talk about it for more than a minute before clamping up. Even Taylor couldn’t get her to open up about it. All any of us knew was that Susannah had basically pushed Conrad into taking Belly then he had hardly made an effort to make her happy when they got to her prom. He tried to blame it on being tired from college classes, but we all know how Conrad has been ever since Susannah got sick again.
Susannah squeezes my hand. I feel some of the tension leave my shoulders as a result. “It will be the best night ever.”
I nod because believing her is the most natural thing in the world. I believe her when she says I’m beautiful, when she says Jeremiah loves me most, and when she says will get better. Because believing her is the only way I can still hold onto any hope that she’s right.
. . .
Jeremiah and I are in the back of the limousine he and his friends ordered a few weeks ago, and he won’t stop sniffing my neck. I keep pushing him off but he’s like a puppy. The other girls in the limo are busy with their own dates and their own friends, and I’m the kind-of-sort-of outsider with a boyfriend who’s latched onto her for eternity.
I open my Instagram to see a bunch of new posts from friends. The uppermost post is from Aiden. He has an arm around a gorgeous girl in a purple dress and he’s kissing her cheek while her eyes squeeze shut. The caption reads, we’ll be @ mcdonald’s later.
Quickly, I double-tap on the post then type out a short comment expressing my excitement for both of them. I only met his girlfriend briefly before I left Cousins, but from what I knew of her, she’s sweet and exactly his type.
I turn my phone towards my boyfriend. Jeremiah lifts his head to look at what I’m showing him. “Aiden’s having his prom tonight, too.”
Jeremiah makes a disgruntled sound in the back of his throat. “Why’s he on your Insta?”
“Because we’re friends,” I respond, pulling my phone back so I can slide it into my purse. “And you should be thanking him. He knew I was in love with you and pushed me in your direction instead of keeping me for himself.”
This seems to strike a chord with my previously lazy boyfriend. His mother had been right–all that Pakistani food had made him lethargic, but suddenly, he has enough energy to bring me closer to him until I’m practically in his lap. He places his lips on the top of my ear, soft and gentle, though his words speak to the opposite. “There’s no way in hell he could’ve had you. You’ve always been mine.”
“Not always…” I tease, giggling as he takes a bit of my ear in his teeth and pulls. Then he starts kissing down the back of the same ear, hitting all the spots which make me sigh out for him deliriously. I scrunch up the fabric of his pants, trying not to moan out loud. “Jere, we’re–”
He sinks his teeth into a patch of skin just below my jaw. Then, his whisper flows right over it. “Always.”
. . .
JUNE
The call arrives early in the morning. Too early. Early enough for the sun to be missing from the sky. Enough for my heart to beat so wildly in my chest that my mother refuses to let me drive when I try to rush out of the house shaking and sniffling in the driveway in just a big t-shirt and shorts.
My mother never speeds. Not ever. Even if she’s late for an appointment. But this morning, she does. She speeds and she crosses two red lights without a care. All the while, I’m glued to my phone with Steven on the other line keeping the speaker on.
I don’t call Jeremiah even though it’s the only thing I want to do. I hear his frantic voice in the background, trying to make Conrad tell him what’s going on, but his older brother is quiet as ever.
At the hospital, the nurse upfront doesn’t let me go to Susannah’s room. I try to explain that I’m a family friend but she isn’t having it. It isn’t until Steven comes down to sneak me in that I finally make my way to the third floor where Susannah is. The moment I see her, I find myself freezing at the doorstep.
There is barely anything left of her, of Susannah Beck, the most beautiful person there ever was. All I can do is stare at her, from where she can’t really see me, between all the people she’s surrounded by.
Steven walks up to his mother and Laurel immediately brings me into the group, settling me next to Jeremiah who is holding Susannah’s hand so tight that I’m afraid it may break.
“Susannah…” I whimper, trying my best not to cry but when Belly lets out a sob from behind me, my own tears rain down my reddened cheeks. “Please…”
Jeremiah falls to the ground, sobbing into their intertwined hands, while Mr. Fisher sits with his own hands on his face on the sofa chair closeby. Conrad is staring out the window, his shoulders tight and worn down from the anguish of so many months of this.
It hurts so much. It hurts more than anything ever has before. I try to think of a pain worse than this, of a broken bone or a cut lip, and nothing, absolutely nothing compares to the pain of watching the person you love most take their final breaths.
Susannah smiles, and it’s so bright that the rising sun behind her pales in comparison. Her hand squeezes Jeremiah’s, and her soft, blue eyes cast over all of us one by one. At this point, my mother is standing by Laurel as she trembles with sadness. “I’m so happy I got to live a life where I was so loved,” she says, trying to smile some more so we all feel it, know it, the way she wants us to know it and know it forever.
All year, I dreamed about us – the mothers and the kids – being together again – like we were in Cousins. But not like this. Never like this. And I know Susannah feels bad about that, too, even in her last moments, she wishes she could have done better by all of us.
A tear slips out of her right eye and melts against her pillow. Conrad is by her side now and he wipes it away for her. Susannah holds his gaze for a moment, telling him something the rest of us cannot decipher. Then she turns to us again.
“Always love each other and don’t forget me,” she says. “Promise me.”
“I promise,” we all murmur, so many whispers in a room so quiet that they sound like screams. But if they’re anything, they’re the promises we will keep forever.
Susannah takes a breath, satisfied. Then she gives us another smile. “I think I want to sleep now,” she says, and the words are so weak, they hardly make it out of her parched lips.
“Mom,” Jeremiah cries, somehow knowing, somehow hoping against, the last words his mother ever speaks. Conrad comes around to grab him by the shoulders, and I move away to give the brothers space to mourn their loss. “P-Please… Mom…”
—a the summer i turned pretty fic starring my first and favourite book boyfriend, jeremiah fisher ♡
「epilogue — jeremiah, reader insert」
JEREMIAH
. . .
SEPTEMBER
“Jere, come on. I’m gonna be late for school and it’s only the first day!”
A sense of euphoria washes over me. All these years together, being friends and now something more, not a moment goes by when I’m bored with her, bored seeing her. In a lot of ways, her face or her voice or even the shape of her smile makes my head all loopy and I’m reminded of the fact that I’ll be in love with her all my life.
My best friend, my girlfriend, and someday – my wife.
Contentedly, I sit back against the sofa and smile at my phone screen. The FaceTime video call has been going on for the last almost hour. We even left it on when we both hopped in the shower twenty minutes ago. My hair’s still a little wet but I don’t care half as much as I should.
“Give me a minute more,” I ask – beg – in the sweetest voice I can muster. I’ve always been told I have a nice voice, by more than one member of the opposite gender. YN most of all. “I just wanna start my day right.”
YN rolls her eyes as she sets her phone up in the car. As she snaps on her seatbelt, she mumbles, “And seeing me will do that?”
“Uh huh.”
A grin spreads YN’s lips wide, and for the umpteenth time, I mourn the fact that I can’t just grab her by the chin and kiss her for hours and hours until our lips become one. Or something cheesy like that.
The two of us have been apart since a few days ago.
On our last day in Cousins, Laurel was in lieutenant mode and made all of us clean the house – from top to bottom. We weren’t allowed to go to the beach in case we dragged more sand in and we had to sit and eat every meal together, all leftovers except for breakfast. Those were the rules.
The YLNs came over for dinner, too, and they brought the only fresh food we ate that night – carne guisada, which YN jokingly told me her mother slaved over. I had three servings because it was so good. Then I caught Conrad cleaning the glass pan out with his finger before it got placed in the dishwasher and the scene shouldn’t have been as funny as it was when I chuckled to myself about it before sneaking out of the house to go to YN’s for one last night.
Being back in Boston feels strange. More strange than all the other summers, probably because without really saying it, all of us knew, in one way or another, that that summer was the last. The last one we would all share together. Mom says the doctors have told her she has less than a year.
I shake off the thought as I continue staring at YN as she drives forward.
“Don’t you have to get to school, too?”
Quickly, I scan the time hanging on the top of my phone. “Yeah, in like, fifteen.”
“Then get a move on, Fishie. Don’t be late on your first day.”
I salute her and hop to my feet. YN laughs and continues driving. I place my phone on the kitchen counter then dig through the refrigerator for the lunch Mom packed for me last night. I told her she didn’t have to, especially since she and Dad spent the weekend helping Conrad move into his dorm room, but she was insistent, said she wanted things to be normal even though they weren’t, when they would never be again.
“Guess what my mom packed me for lunch?”
“What?”
I lift the tupperware high above me and check. “Two slices of pizza from last night’s dinner and a pasta salad.”
“Fantastico!”
Her terrible Italian accent makes me laugh as I grab my backpack and shove my lunch inside. Then I grab my phone again as I go to the door to put on my shoes.
“Jere, I’m almost at school so I’m gonna go, okay?”
I nod, then realize she can’t see me. I pick up the phone and smile at her. “Okay. Talk to you later?”
“Yeah. I’ll text you.” YN seems to stop at a red light and gives me her full attention for a moment. “Tell Susannah I love her.”
My heart burns. I take a breath. I need to joke my way out of this before I start crying on my way to the first day of school. “What about me?”
“Well, you already know it.”
“Know what?”
YN, again, rolls her eyes good-naturedly but then she smiles, too. The smile I love most. “I love you, Jeremiah Fisher, and I always will. Now have a good first day of senior year.”
“The last school year I’m spending without you, by the way.”
YN smirks, and it’s fond, sweet in a way which promises something even sweeter. “We’ll see.”
After she clicks off, I text Mom to let her know I’m going to school. I know she won’t see it until noon, since she needs the sleep, but the less I make her worry, the more there is a chance to keep her with me just a little while longer.
. . .
OCTOBER
True to my word, I fork over more than a hundred dollars on clothing and makeup for my Halloween costume to make it the best one I have ever worn. When YN first lays eyes on me, she is elated and jumps into my arms to kiss me so hard that we very nearly topple over. Everyone at the bus stop stares at us, but we don’t really care. We never have.
After YN finds out the lengths I went to make her nerdy Star Wars dream come true, she gets a little quiet and tells me I didn’t have to. Except when I look at her own costume, I know she put in the effort, too. She even has a gun that looks more real than plastic. We don’t say it, but we know it, we know why we put in the effort and that’s enough.
We end up going to a party my friend, Tag, is throwing at his house. His parents let him host and left him the house and their car then dipped to hang out with their own friends. Tag says he promised them no more than ten people maximum but when YN and I show up to a house full of teenagers and possible college students, we know that to be a lie.
Almost everyone from school is here – from freshmen to seniors. We fill up the whole house. There is a massive stereo in the backyard and everyone is dancing to the mixes our school DJ, Andy, puts together. He has a dream of touring the world someday. He’s been chasing it since middle school. When we apply to colleges next month, I know he won’t be participating.
We throw back a few drinks first. I introduce YN to everyone who doesn’t know her, and re-introduce her to others as my girlfriend. We get the typical ‘ooo’s’ and ‘I knew it’s’ and though it makes YN blush, the last thing she does is put space between us when I keep her close to my side. If anything, her hold on me is as tight as mine on hers, as if some part of us is terrified of letting the other go.
Andy gets everyone dancing with an old-school mix and it’s fun being in the circle with everyone cheering and laughing. We take a lot of pictures, too, with a few going up on the ‘gram the moment we take them. YN hides her face in my neck for most of them but I don’t mind. Being camera shy is something that I find cute about her. The only time she isn’t is when I’m behind the camera.
YN has a tipsy smile on her face as she listens to one of the football guys tell a – in his words – hilarious story about the time he slept with three different college girls all within the same month.
I tickle my fingers on her side and teasingly ask, “Hey, wanna see my light saber?” As her brows rise cartoonishly, I laugh and pull her away to show her the addition to my Anakin Skywalker costume. I swing it around in the air while YN turns beet red. “Cool, huh?”
“I-I thought–”
“Get your mind out of the gutter, Daisy,” I tease, then wink just to see her blush deepen. I love when she blushes, especially when it’s for me.
Slowly, an expression I’ve never seen before passes over her features, crawls into the crevices of her skin, then lays there ready for me to contemplate it. Then, in an opposite fashion, YN grabs my hand and drags me away, through the crowds of high schoolers and possibly some college kids, until we’re on the first few steps of the basement. There’s a light flickering periodically below but no one is present.
I look at her quizzically. “What’s up?”
Her eyes darken, and she peers back at me seemingly in a trance. On the step, YN takes a step closer, her familiar perfume clouding my senses. Her gaze flickers down to my lips, impatient and hungry. “I want you.”
“W-Wait… right now?” She nods then tilts her head towards the small living room set-up on the basement floor. A flash of excitement burns through me. I grab her hand. “Okay, let’s go.”
Despite the fact that neither of us bothered to lock the door before we tore into one another, YN doesn’t hold back her sounds at all. A few times, I have to clamp my hand down on her mouth out of fear. The way she is now, only a few months after the first time we did this, is different, in the sexiest way imaginable. If we weren’t at a party full of people talking and dancing just a floor above us, I wouldn’t make her hold back any noise at all.
Back upstairs a short while later, YN stands by the basement door running her fingers through her hair to get the knots out. Even though we tried our hardest not to make any noise, I didn’t hold back on messing up her hair. To me, she looked hot as fuck this way, but I knew she was a little embarrassed by what people might think.
Penny, from my algebra class, walks past us. She takes one look at YN and me and asks, “What happened to you?”
YN doesn’t miss a beat. “My boyfriend brought his light saber.”
I choke on a laugh, hiding it behind my hand as Penny hoots with laughter, nodding as she walks off, probably to gossip. I throw my arm around YN’s waist and hug her to myself, laying a kiss on her cheek.
“Wanna ditch and go trick-or-treating?”
The first few houses are awesome. We get so much candy that it fills up three quarters of our bags. YN claims it’s enough and maybe we should turn back and go home, watch that new horror movie with my mom, but I convince her to hit one more house before we do.
It’s a ginormous place, bigger than my house, and has a Lexus and Porsche in the driveway. The lawn decorations are out of this world, too, with a huge lit-up skeleton which beckons us closer with a robotic finger and about a thousand mini pumpkins. It’s, without a doubt, the best decorated place on the street.
We walk up the doorway with giggles, avoiding the fog machine and the little kids running past us. When we get to the door, there is a man there. He has black hair, round eyes, and glasses from another millennia, except, he doesn’t look older than thirty-five. He has a bowl of candy in his arms – all full-size bars.
“Oh my God, jackpot!” YN squeals, grabbing my forearm and rushing us up to him. As soon as we get close enough, she cheers, “Hi! Happy Halloween!”
The man stares her up and down, and it pisses me off. He’s staring, scrutinising, and being completely apparent about it. Mom always taught me that staring at people was wrong because it could make them uncomfortable. Seeing this guy do it and watching YN’s beautiful smile slowly fade away, I understand that.
Finally, he comments, “Aren’t you two a little old to be trick-or-treating?”
YN looks the man dead in the eye, undeterred despite the loss of her smile. “Aren’t you a little young to be so cranky?” Then she smacks on her sweetest smile, brighter than the one before, and nods to his bowl of candy. “I’ll take the Skittles, please.” Warily, he hands it to her, seemingly confused by her retaliation. “And for my boyfriend, a Mars bar.” He hands it to me just as uneasily. We’re about to leave when YN reaches out and grabs a Kit-Kat, too, right from the bowl. The man is shaken but YN is the complete opposite. She shoots him another smile. “For compensation.”
The adrenaline rush that seems to course through YN’s system passes into me and we race down the steps, running towards my car parked on the end of the road. As soon as we’re close enough, I push her up against the passenger door, dropping my bag of candy without a care as the urge to kiss her forever takes over. YN giggles, murmuring something about how “absolutely anything turns you on,” and I have half a mind to tell her it’s her, just her, which does so.
We drive home with the heater on blast, our teeth chattering from the intensity of October rolling into November. YN has her feet tucked under her, and periodically feeds me red, orange, and yellow Skittles. As we’re turning into my street, I bite down on the pad of her index finger and she curses me out as I bark out a genuine laugh.
Mom throws open the door and smiles at us from the porch while we’re still lugging our candy bags and YN’s backpack out of the backseat. Though, as soon as the two most important women in my life catch sight of each other, I’m left to bring everything in myself as YN launches herself at my mother in a hug even bigger than the one she gave me.
“Where’s Con?”
The question spills out of me as soon as I’m inside. Mom brings her attention away from YN to give me a small smile. It doesn’t reach her eyes, and it instantly makes me regret asking.
Conrad promised he would come down for the weekend. His midterm exams aren’t until November 4th, so Mom was really excited to see him for a bit before he locked himself in his dorm and studied away for hours and days.
“He couldn’t make it,” Mom replies.
YN finds my eyes but I try in earnest not to reveal even a drop of the ire pumping in my veins. I pull out my phone and text my brother, asking him where he is. Of course, it goes unread, which isn’t surprising, but it ticks me off all the same. I think about calling him but Mom catches my attention with a suggestion.
“Who’s joining me for Carrie?”
. . .
NOVEMBER
“Yeah, Mom, I know. I know. I’ll get it done. Chill.”
All week, Mom has been hounding my ass about college applications. The deadlines for the colleges we decided on are due between tomorrow and next week. There are approximately five I’m applying to. I thought three would be enough, but Mom and Dad took that to mean that I wasn’t nearly as interested in getting into a post-secondary institution as they hoped, so now I’m stuck with five options and the only one I truly care about is Fraiser Mont – the college YN has her heart set on.
I’ve been researching it since September when YN mentioned it for the first time. They have a variety of different programs which are interesting enough, a hockey team, and the campus is less than an hour away from my house. I’d be a shoo-in if not for the fact that my GPA is less than stellar. So I’m stuck with two options: either go to a different school or convince the admissions department that I’m worth attending their school despite my lack of intelligence.
Dad said he can speak to the admissions coordinator on my behalf, see if there’s any other monetary way of getting in, but I turned him down because YN would hate me if she knew I pulled strings to get in. Even though she herself was worried about if she would or not, I knew she would, in the end. I read her admissions essay – I suck at English but I knew that what I was reading was a work of art. And with her GPA, there’s no way they’d pass her up.
So, I have to get in. I just have to. I meant it when I told her this year would be the last one I would spend without her. Sometimes, I feel like I need her like water or air. Like I can’t live without her. We’ve gone all these years without each other during the school months, but I don’t want to imagine more time apart. I can’t bear it. Not anymore. Maybe my Mom dying from cancer, my father being scarce as possible at home, and my brother going days without replying to my texts has something to do with it, but I don’t want to think about that.
I’m at my desk, staring out the window, hoping that I can finish this essay today and get it edited by Dad’s co-worker’s daughter who’s an English teacher, when my phone buzzes with an incoming text.
Daisy: hey, jere-bear
Daisy: whatcha doin
I smile, picking up my phone, and for a little while, I forget the stress on my shoulders and clawing erratically at my heart.
. . .
DECEMBER
The cold air is frigid on my skin as YN and I skate around and around downtown. We’ve been here for more than an hour now with the sun dipping away behind us.
I love being on the ice. More than I have ever enjoyed being on the field. There is just something about it that makes me want to throw on my skates and spend as much time as possible skating around, the ice beneath my feet.
I haven’t told Dad yet, but Mom and I went to Fraiser Mont last weekend to talk to the varsity hockey coach about letting me play for the school team next September. He said that because I was a late addition, I would have to come out to practices starting in July before the official try-outs in September. I told him I was willing to put in the work if there was any possibility that I could finally play hockey.
“Hey,” YN asks, alerting me to her voice and the fact that I’m not alone in my bedroom with my thoughts, “what are you thinking about?”
I take her gloved hand in mine and bring her into me. I move some hair out of her eyes then fix her green hat before I answer. “I need to talk to my dad about hockey.”
“You haven’t told him yet?”
“No.” I look away for a second. “He’s not gonna like it.”
YN pinches my cheek. “He’ll just have to deal. You’re doing this for you. Not him.”
“Still… Fisher men play football. Not hockey.”
“Doesn’t mean you can’t change tradition.” YN wraps her arms around me in a hug then brings us face-to-face. Her face that I’m obsessed with has the telltale signs of a smile about to blossom upon it. “I have a surprise for you.”
“Another one?”
“I’m not a boring girlfriend, Fishie,” she teases, pecking the tip of my nose. “Especially not on your birthday.” With that, she untangles herself from me and skates towards the edge where our bag is. “Come on!”
On the road, YN stays utterly mum about where we’re going. Her hands on the steering wheel are determined, though, so at least I know we’re on a time constraint.
Being downtown, especially on a Saturday night, YN rolls her eyes and mumbles curses towards a number of other drivers from the comfort of my car. There’s just so many of them, and quite a few seem to be heading in the same direction as us. When we pass by McLaughry Road, I start making guesses about where we’re headed.
“Are we going to the art gallery?”
“Nope.”
“The science centre?”
“Nah.”
“The…” What else is there? “Wait… the concert hall?”
YN giggles. “Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner!”
I lay back against my seat and grin. I know without even asking what this is about. Though, I find myself asking anyway. “Who’s concert?”
YN nods towards the glove box. I pull it open to see she’s placed a small box in there – the exact same box I used to give her Jonas Brothers’ concert tickets when we were thirteen. Excitedly, I throw it open to see two black and red tickets. I pick them up and scan the title.
The Pentoglome Theatre Presents: Chase Atlantic - Live in Concert
“No way,” I start laughing, glancing at her in the driver’s seat in awe. “How’d you get these?”
“By using three different devices – all at the same time.”
I lean across the middle console to kiss her cheek. I’d kiss her mouth if she wasn’t crossing a green light. A slow, easy grin spreads across her mouth, lifting her cheeks cheerfully. A part of me thinks we – and everyone else on the road – are lucky she’s in the driver’s seat and not me because I know we wouldn’t be crossing another streetlight right now if we were.
The theatre is alight with a thunderous crowd, buttery popcorn, the scent of beer, and a buzz of excitement. YN tucks her hand into mine and lets me drag us through the hundreds of bodies until we find a spot we like. I wrap my arms around her from the back as the show starts, kissing her cheek relentlessly just to see her giggle. I’ll never tell her but her laugh alone is better than the performance we’re about to see.
When the band comes out, we throw our arms up in the air and scream along with everyone else in the venue. The moment the first few chords of Into It start, the crowd goes wild. We all sing-along, word for word, with so much enthusiasm that the ground shakes beneath our feet. I don’t even notice when I lose myself to the music, not even when YN pulls out her phone to record me with bright eyes and red cheeks.
Halfway through the show, as the band is performing Falling, I remember our summer, and how much I wanted to kiss her when we were driving home one night. Back then, I had to hold back. We both did. Because we were hiding, lying to ourselves that we didn’t love each other the way we did – the way we do, and always will. And even though I can’t change the past, I know I have every power imaginable to pick my present.
I set my hand on YN’s waist and tug her into me. Although she’s a little startled, her eyes are full of that same fondness I adore. Her hands fall against my chest, and she says, “Hey.”
“Hi,” I say back just before I dip my head down and bring her lips into a kiss I’ll never get tired of giving. And when she smiles into it, I know she shares the same feeling.
And you keep on falling, baby, figure it out.
. . .
JANUARY
“Jeremiah!” My Mom’s booming voice raises the hair on my arms as I’m laying in bed killing zombies. I sit up and run to my door, worried that she’s fallen sick or needs an ambulance. I checked on her an hour ago and she was fine, on the phone with a friend with her book half-finished next to a cup of oolong tea. Dad’s been pushing her to drink it, multiple cups a day, ever since he read an article about how it’s good for breast cancer patients. Mom smiles and drinks it for him, to appease him even though they’re hardly married anymore. “Jeremiah, come down here!”
I take the steps two at a time, bounding down the staircase in a flurry of emotions and intrigue. At the bottom, I find my mother by the bannister holding up a giant, red and white envelope with Fraiser Mont’s emblem encrusted on the front. I tear my eyes away from it for a second to stare at her. Mom grins, and even though her eyes are more sunken in and her skin is losing its radiance, she still looks like Mom and she’s so happy that I know, even without looking, that whatever’s in there is a positive thing.
I pull my phone out of my pocket and call YN, following Mom to the breakfast table where she and I take our seats. YN picks up the call and easily, her face falls into view. She’s wearing a face mask, one of those jelly ones she loves, and asks me what happened.
Mom holds up the envelope to the camera. I grin as YN rips off her mask and cramps closer to the screen. Her big, brown eyes take up the whole thing, which makes Mom chuckle while my nerves start ringing. YN received her acceptance a few days ago and we celebrated over FaceTime. I wonder if we can go for round two now.
Mom pushes the envelope towards me. My hands shake as I rip off the circular sticker. Inside, the contents provided are a single, folded letter printed on thick, white paper, a program brochure, and a small packet of stickers with the university’s name and mascot – an otter – on them.
I start to open the letter then stop. I look at Mom then at my girlfriend. I’ve never felt more stressed than right at this moment. “If I don’t get in…”
“You will,” Mom cuts in, patting my hand lovingly. Her touch is warm despite the fragility of her skin and the bones peeking out. It hurts to look at her sometimes, the way she is now. Her weight is nearly half of what it was in the summer. “You have to believe you will, Jere.”
I swallow then nod. I snatch a glance at YN who smiles back at me like she believes it, too. With newfound courage, I flip the letter open and begin to read out loud.
“Dear Mr. Jeremiah Fisher,” I breathe out, slow and forcing myself not to read ahead, lest the disappointment come too early, “on behalf of our esteemed institution, Fraiser Mont is delighted to–” YN lets out a squeal of delight before I finish reading whilst my mother throws her arms around me in a tight hug. I start shaking but with Mom holding me the way she is, I know I won’t be falling off this chair. I swallow twice before continuing. “– offer you admission to the Class of 2016. It is our pleasure to invite you to join our illustrious college which will set you firm on the path to future success. Congratulations!”
Mom kisses the top of my head repeatedly. “Oh, my darling boy! I’m so proud of you! So proud!”
I hug her back with equal enthusiasm while YN pretends she isn’t wiping her tears away on FaceTime. I grab my phone and grin at her.
“Can’t get rid of me now, Daisy.”
YN mirrors my grin, and just like all the other moments I've spent with her, I see my whole life ahead of me by her side. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
—a the summer i turned pretty fic starring my first and favourite book boyfriend, jeremiah fisher ♡
「part forty, reader insert」
JEREMIAH
It’s quiet.
All around me, it’s quiet. No hum of the television, chirps of a bird, or the tune of a favourite song to signal an incoming phone call. Everything is quiet except the inside of my head.
For the last two days, quiet has been the general story of the atmosphere my body is stuffed in. Everyone in the house moves around like a ghost. We don’t say much of anything to each other except the common ‘dinner is in five minutes’ or ‘I’m going out.’
Belly cries nonstop. Usually, she does it behind the door of her bedroom, but because mine is right next to hers, I hear it through the walls, especially when I don’t want to. Because of that, I’ve taken to abusing my headphones and Spotify account. I play awful rock music or shitty rap to filter out other noises I don’t want to hear. I do it so much that my ears ring throughout the day.
Mom is the only person who smiles anymore. She smiles at breakfast, at lunch, and at dinner. She smiles when she paints or when she gardens. She smiles when Conrad tells her he doesn’t want to eat dinner and she smiles even more when Laurel tells her not to. I think the two of them are fighting, but I’m not too keen on figuring out if that’s true or not.
Today, my eyes are bound to the ceiling. I can’t look away even if I want to.
All my summers have been spent in this house. Mom inherited it from my grandparents who bought it back in the early seventies. Mom spent all of her summers here, too, with her parents and her friends, then eventually, with Laurel and with Dad and the rest of us. This house has all her love in it and it’s everywhere, inside every nook and cranny, splattered on every wall and floorboard.
I don’t wipe the fresh tears which begin to stream from the corner of my eyes. I’ve cried so much lately. It feels like it’s half of the only things I do at all now. I’ve gotten so good at it, too. I know when it’s okay to cry and when I should hide my tears away.
There is a knock at my door. Instead of telling the person to come in, I pull my blanket over my head and pretend no one is there at all. Maybe if I pretend enough, I can pretend away reality.
Someone comes in anyway.
Her presence is muted, though her steps are solid and precise. Although her figure is petite, her strides are long and in seconds flat, she is taking a seat on the corner of my bed. I hear her take in a short breath, preparing herself for what she wants to say to me.
“It’s almost noon,” she tries gently. “Aren’t you hungry?”
I count to five in my mind prior to answering her. I’m not sure why I do it. I just know that I need to. I need those few seconds to keep myself from exploding whenever anyone speaks to me.
“No.”
Her fingers latch onto the hem of my blanket and pull downwards. I don’t bother to struggle. If this is a war, she will find a way to win. She always does.
“Jere, you haven’t eaten since yesterday. You have to be hungry.”
I lick my lips and turn my body away from her. “Well, I’m not.”
“The Jeremiah I know can eat six times a day if he wants to, so how am I supposed to believe you when you say you’re not hungry?”
“Laurel…”
Her smile is infectious when she teases, “Yes, Jere-Bear?”
“Please go away.”
Although I’m not expecting her to listen to me, her hand on my face is startling. Laurel brushes my hair back, her smile dimming. Her eyes fill with tears but she doesn’t cry. “You kids grew up too fast,” she murmurs. Her hand is soft on my skin.
I rub my eye with the back of my hand. “What does that mean?”
“It means…” The shake of her head tells me she wants to keep the answer to herself. “Come down and eat, okay? Even if it’s just a chocolate bar.” Laurel hates sugary foods most of all because she claims it rots our teeth, so her willingly saying I can have some is a massive deal.
After she leaves, I sit up in bed a little then reach for my phone. It’s holding onto ten percent battery life because I haven’t charged it since yesterday morning. When the screen clicks on, text messages fill the area and so do missed calls. All from the one person I hate and miss, at the same time.
I click away the notifications without looking at them. I already know what they say. What I’m left with then is a picture. A picture I took of her in the driver’s seat of my car smiling at me like she was both a little bit annoyed and over the moon with happiness.
My thumb flows over the part of her cheek which shines under the sun. That’s when I notice she’s wearing my t-shirt, too. An old one I hadn’t even known was missing. There are probably a crazy number of my clothes in her closet which neither of us knows about.
I used to leave a shirt or a crewneck in her bedroom as a kid on purpose, just to see what she would do with it. At first, she didn’t do anything but give them back. But around the time we were thirteen, she stopped. And then she started wearing them and pretending like they weren’t mine even though we both knew they were. I did a lot of stuff back then to get her to swing her gaze on me. I guess she was doing the same.
I enter my phone and head for my messages. There are more than a hundred from her from today alone. They seem to go on forever as I scroll through them, more or less saying – begging – for the same thing.
YN: please talk to me
YN: i’m so sorry, fishie
YN: please
YN: you have every right to be mad
YN: i know that
YN: i’m so so sorry
YN: i just want to know if you’re okay
YN: did you eat?
YN: you have to eat
YN: please eat
YN: i know you don’t want to see me or hear from me
YN: but just tell me once that you’re okay
YN: please
YN: i love you
YN: you can hate me all you want but just know that
YN: i love you and i’ll never stop
There were so many times this summer when I wanted to hear those three words from her so bad that I thought it would drive me crazy–both the want and the receiving. I had spent so many of my years of my childhood the exact same way, hoping and hoping she would feel the way about me that I felt about her.
Mom says me and YN are inevitable. From the moment we met, we were meant to be together. Even when I cried in her arms last night and told her how angry I was with YN, my mom said the same thing.
“You two you will find your way back to each other. I know it.”
And I believe her, too. I don’t want to, but I do. I’m just so mad. I feel so cheated. I never thought YN would lie to me. Not about anything. That isn’t how our friendship operated. But if I look back on this summer, I can see all the lies we did tell each other–the big and the small ones.
Is this who we are?
Liars?
My finger hovers above the text box. So much of me wants to text her back, to yell at her digitally like I can’t physically. But I don’t. I can’t. I put my phone in my pocket.
Exhausted despite having only just woken up, I slip out of bed wearing the shorts I never changed out of yesterday and pad my way to the door. When I open it, I’m greeted by the familiar scent of cheeseburgers and their presence in the doorway. I pick up a slightly greasy, brown paper bag and scoff, ripping off the note stapled to the top. I crumple it up and shove it in my pocket without reading it. It probably says the same thing as the one from yesterday.
I’m sorry. I love you.
A bedroom door down the hall cracks open. Steven walks out with his head bent over his phone. When he notices me, he starts to say something but then his gaze falls on the McDonald’s bag in my arms.
“You let her in again?”
His expression gives away his guilt, though he says nothing. I push the paper bag into his chest and tell him, “You eat that,” then I head downstairs with a pain akin to flashes of thunder in my chest.
Mom is in her garden. Her plants surround her as if she is in a forest of her own, and there is an easel set up in front of her. Her white overalls are covered in old paint marks, splashes of reds and blues and purples. Her hair is loose and every time the wind blows a little too hard, strands fall into her eyes and she pushes them away with the back of her hands. And she’s smiling. Happily. As if life is just so perfect.
Conrad walks in from the side with his boogie board. He stops by our Mom and she smiles even more. She reaches up to caress his face and he lets her even though Conrad usually hates it when people touch him. When we were kids, he told me I’m not allowed to hug him unless it’s for something really important. I didn’t care. I hugged him anyway.
I turn away from the scene. The middle of my chest burns with an oppressive weight. I busy myself with the kitchen cabinets so I don’t have to think about it. I search through two before I locate my old, blue tumbler. I need something to drink, preferably with ice and lots of sugar.
Conrad waddles in from the back door. He has a little smile on his face and it makes me sick. He drags murky water and wet sand inside and for once, he seems not to care about it so much. I would consider it a win that he’s not picking up a mop except I know why he isn’t, and the knowledge makes me even angrier.
“You’re tracking dirt into the house,” I tell him pointedly. “Who’s gonna clean it?”
Conrad raises a brow at me, and he looks a bit bemused. “Since when do you care about that?”
“Since now.”
He opens the storage closet and grabs a mop. He starts in on the mess then stops. Hesitation paints his features. He thinks for what feels like a whole minute before he finally speaks up again. “Can we talk?”
No.
“What’s there to talk about? The fact that you knew Mom was sick this whole time or that you fucking lied about it to my face for months?” I swig a big gulp of my lemon water for show. Mentally, I cringe from the taste. I don’t know why I expected mine to taste like hers. It’s missing her touch. “Take your pick, big brother.”
“Jere,” he sighs. He rubs his eyebrow frantically. “I had to.”
“No, you didn’t have to. You just did. Just like you always do, you did what you wanted and left me out.”
Conrad stares at me for a second. He looks at me like he pities me, feels sorry for me, and that makes me even more irate. He has no right. None. He’s known since fucking April. He had all this time to get used to it, to know it, to look at our mom and think about the future without her.
Dad says he’s my older brother so he’s responsible for taking care of me, and when our parents aren’t around, he has to give me everything I need. But what about everything he’s taken?
I start to walk past him when he says, “I was just trying to protect you.”
I flip around to growl at him. “From knowing something about our mom? I think you forget that she belongs to both of us.”
He doesn’t look at me when he whispers, “I never said she doesn’t.”
“You say a lot of stupid shit without saying it.”
My aggression seems not to phase him. Conrad goes back to cleaning up his mess then making more of it as he shuffles around. For some ridiculous reason, I don’t go back upstairs. I want to but I don’t. Whatever keeps me here, watching my brother with narrowed eyes, is the same thing which escalates the pressure in my chest.
I don’t know what comes over me when I blurt, “You still like her. Don’t you?”
The her in question is obvious. Conrad stops mopping to look at me. The two of us become encased in a room of silent explosives, and I’m buzzing to load one up for a massive show.
His pitiful expression returns and I step forward, ready to smack it off his face, when he tries, “Jere… come on, man. You know I don’t.” He swallows and looks away for half a second. Then he rubs his eyes. “Even if I did, it wouldn’t matter.”
I hate it. I hate when he gets like this. Like just because he’s older, he’s smarter and more mature and everything he says is better than anything I could ever say. When I’m mad, it ticks me off even more. He has no fucking right. Mom raised us as equals. He just thinks he’s better than me. He’s always thought that.
“Of course it fucking matters. You two kept Mom’s secret to yourselves all summer. Who knows what else you did behind my back.”
The hidden accusation in my words makes me cringe. I hate myself a little bit for suspecting anything romantic happened between them when I know, in my heart of hearts, that nothing did. That nothing will. YN wouldn’t do that to me.
…right?
Conrad sets the mop against a wall. He frowns at me. “You know what, Jere?
Maybe I could’ve been enough of an asshole to make a move on her. But her? You know she never would.”
“I don’t know anything since you two seem to keep everything from me.”
My brother rolls his eyes. “No one can talk to you when you’re being childish.”
This time, I don’t hold myself back. I let my innate desire push me into tackling him to the ground, like we used to when Dad made us wrestle each other after dinner. I hated wrestling Conrad because it was never about having fun. It was about showing Dad who was the best. Conrad always won. But not this time. Not ever again.
I throw my arms around his middle and drop us both to the ground in a whirlwind of body weight, flying limbs, and heavy breathing. He instantly responds, exactly like I knew he would–by shielding himself when I go to punch him. He tries to move out of the way but I’m relentless. I want this. I need this.
“We could have done something!” I shout, shoving him back with all the force I can muster. His head hits a wall and he groans. I go in for another punch. “All fucking summer, Conrad! You kept it to yourself! We could have done something to save her!” He pushes me in the chest but I hardly move an inch. He forgets that I still play football even if he doesn’t.
“Jere–”
I hit his jaw. “Shut the fuck up!”
Conrad groans again when I cram him up against the wall. I grab him by the neck of his shirt to force him to look at me. I get ready to say something, something to make him feel as shitty as I’m feeling, when I notice the small tears beginning to drip down his cheeks. I freeze. His eyes land on mine. “It’s aggressive,” he whispers, and I notice a thick bruise starting to form along his jawline. He looks like the fourteen year old he was when he got tackled in football for the first time. Dad told him he couldn’t cry and we spent the whole ride home in silence. “It’s spread to her liver. There’s nothing we can do.”
I stumble back, flinching as if he just punched me. My lips wobble as he cries. Conrad Fisher, my older brother who never cries. I think about how I don’t want to cry. I can’t. Not in front of him. “N-No. That’s not t-true. Mom isn’t–”
“Jere…” His voice chips off at the ends, then softens. He puts his hand on my shoulder and squeezes. There’s no strength to it. None at all. “I’m sorry.”
I push him away and start to stand, only to end up on the floor again. I don’t look at him when I grumble, “You’re just like Dad.” Conrad makes a noise from the bottom of his throat. It rings heavily through the kitchen, leaving its mark upon the walls and on our skin. I look at him angrily. “All he does is take and take and you took this from me, you know that? You and YN.” I put all the pressure I can manage on my knees and stand up. My whole body trembles with pain. Everything around me spins, rings, and then blurs. It feels like sensory overload. My mouth twists in a snarl as I grouch, “Both of you can go to hell.”
The moment I turn on my heels to stalk away, Mom steps in from the backyard. The screen door is halfway open, a light breeze flowing in as summer welcomes the end of August. Mom has her arms full of paint supplies. When she looks at us, every part of her being seems to fall apart in front of me.
I suck in a breath, hating myself for letting her see us like this. I always promised her that I’d be good to my brother, that I wouldn’t fight with him about anything. But what am I supposed to do about this? This big, fat, ugly mess in our lives? This horrible thing I can’t fix?
I try to hold in the tears. I try and try but in the end, it doesn’t work. Not when Mom puts her things aside and quietly walks up to us, her paint speckled left hand finding my heated cheek. “I’m sorry,” she whispers, breaking at the seams.
Her arms fan out and I fall right in, covering her frail body with all my skin and bones. I’m so much bigger than she is but in her arms, I feel small. I feel like I’m eight years old, hiding behind her cotton housedress when I thought there were monsters under my bed because Conrad and Steven told me there were. Mom helped me look under there and showed me there was nothing, nothing except old plastic wrappers because I had a habit of sneaking candy into my room when I wasn’t supposed to. Mom didn’t even scold me for that. She scolded Conrad and Steven for scaring me instead. All my life, I knew I could count on her. All my life, I’ve known her love better than anything else.
“Mom,” I cry into her shoulder as she runs her hand down my back. “Please… tell me there’s something… something w-we can do. Please.”
“Oh, Jeremiah,” she whispers, her voice teetering on the edge of a sob. “Oh, my love. I wish there was. I wish for it everyday.” Her fingers sift through my hair. Then she urges me to lift my head so our eyes can meet. “I don’t want to leave my boys.” This time, she really does cry. Big, whimpery sobs which take me and Conrad by surprise. Mom isn’t a crier. Conrad gets that from her. Her eyes tear up all the time, but she never cries. Never like this.
From behind us, Conrad stumbles in. He wipes the blood from the corner of his lip where it split then slowly drops his own forehead on our Mom’s other shoulder. We encase her this way, as if shielding her from the inevitable, and then we just cry. Not one of us stops to think about how it looks or how Laurel, Steven, or Belly might see us, hear us. We don’t care about any of it.
After a while, the motion of Mom’s breathing slows, and reluctantly, me and Conrad pull away to give her space. Her eyes are bloodshot, the skin on her cheeks wet with teardrops. Conrad wipes them away as I sniffle.
Mom reaches out to hold both of us by one hand each. Her arms are so thin. I can’t believe I spent the whole summer without noticing how much the cancer has changed her.
Her gaze flows over our faces languidly, as if she is taking her time to sketch us to memory. She did that so much when we were kids, especially when she first got diagnosed. Whenever any of us was doing anything, anything at all, Mom would sit and tilt her head a little and just watch us with the fondest smile on her face, like what was happening in front of her – even if it was just a bunch of kids building a pillow fort in the living room – was the single greatest event to ever take place. Mom always says the small moments matter just as much as the big ones, and sometimes, you remember them more after time has passed.
“I’m sorry,” she says again, squeezing our hands. “I didn’t want you to know. Either of you. I wanted this summer to be perfect, just like all the ones before. I couldn’t forgive myself if my sickness took away your happy smiles.” Mom peers at Conrad, and something even gentler transforms her expression. “Connie, I should’ve known that you knew. I think…” Her tears start falling again. She takes a deep, albeit shaky breath. “I think I was scared to believe it. I thought I was hiding it well. I just wanted you both to be so h-happy. I’m so s-sorry.”
Conrad, who had previously been drilling holes into the ground with his intense stare, brings his eyes up to our mother. His lips wobble, too. “Mom, if there’s a way–”
Her lips dive inwards and she nods. “I don’t… if there was a way… God… if there was a way, I would do anything. I would do anything to stay with you both.” Her hand shakes in mine so I hold on tighter. Mom sets her eyes on me. “Forgive your mother this once for not knowing what to do.”
I take everyone by surprise when my incoming sob transforms into a hiccup. I feel every bit as childish as Conrad said I was.
Mom hugs me to her, and I let it happen. Then for the first time in my life, I whisper an honest prayer.
. . .
The next day leaves two more before the end of our summer in Cousins.
When I wake up, it’s to the sound of muffled voices outside my bedroom door. All night, I sat on the sofa with Mom and Laurel watching musicals. From Moulin Rouge to The Sound of Music.
Mom was so excited when I offered to watch them with her. Back at home, I actively avoided being roped into musical nights, pretending I had homework or that I was sleepy. Now, I want to do everything I can to make her happy. Even if that means sitting through God-awful music films that make my ears pop (although, admittedly, Bugsy Malone wasn’t so bad).
Tiredly, I sit up in my bed and use a pillow to keep myself propped up. I can see two pairs of feet under the thick strip of space under my door. It doesn’t take much guessing to comprehend who they belong to, and once I understand, I am up on my own feet and shuffling to open the door.
Mom’s lips part as she takes me in, apparently not expecting me to be there, while the girl beside her stares at me with shocked, watery eyes. I barely glance at her even though all I want to do is stare. I haven’t seen her in days. I didn’t know missing her and hating her at the same time could hurt so much.
“Why are you here?” I spit, adding as much rage as I can to my voice. I notice a familiar McDonald’s bag in her arms and a packet of Skittles. I swallow the lump in my throat. “Get out of my house.”
Mom snaps her head towards me and gasps. “Jeremiah!”
“Mom, make her leave. I don’t want to see her face.”
But I miss it.
I miss her.
I look at her again. I don’t want to, but I do. And then I wish I hadn’t.
Her face is wrought with emotion. Every sad, pathetic, pleading emotion under the sun, and when I look at her, I feel them. I feel all of them, as if everything in her heart races to find mine.
Body frozen, lips timidly parted, and splotchy skinned, YN appears every bit as grieved as the rest of us are. The colour of her dark brown eyes is veiled by the misery of my mother’s situation with old and fresh tears springing to the surface. Each time a tear threatens to spill out, she sharply inhales through her nose. I take it to mean exactly what she wants it to–this isn’t about me.
Her body language tells me wretched stories of days past when all she did was cry. Half of me thinks good, she deserves it while the other vehemently scorns the part of me that is okay with hurting her in any capacity.
Even when I hate her, I love her.
Mom slides her arm around YN’s shoulders determinedly. YN stifles a cry while she seems to hold her up. And it kills me.
“That is no way to speak to your girlfriend, Jeremiah Fisher,” my mother argues, enunciating my full name with particular fervency. “Apologize to YN right now.”
YN cranes her head to shoot her down but I beat her to it. “I’m not apologizing to someone who lied to me all summer.”
Mom sighs and drops her arms to her sides. She looks at me the same way Conrad did yesterday–with pity and shades of remorse. “Your brother and I asked her to keep it a secret. YN did nothing wrong.”
The truth hits me square in the chest. It wraps its arms around the pain there, the pain which has bled my heart dry for days, and forces me to acknowledge it, to sit with it in my head and figure this out.
I clench my fist and shake my head. Then I push down the new lump in my throat. “That doesn’t change anything.”
Except it should. It should.
So why doesn’t it? Why am I still so hurt?
I don’t wait for either of them to respond, to add something new to the mix. I walk past them, down the stairs, and out the front door. I run down the porch steps then sprint as fast as I possibly can towards the beach. All the while, hot tears drip down my cheeks, and I don’t bother wiping them away. What was the point–of doing that or anything else when my Mom is dying and there is nothing I can do to stop it from happening.
The moment I drop down on the stretch of land that had belonged to our family forever, the sky begins to crackle and hefty, grey clouds float in. It takes all of twenty seconds for the first few raindrops to make their descent downwards, meeting my bare skin as I stretch my head back towards the gloomy weather.
All around me, sand grains bead up and roll off, the ocean roars with furor as it laps against the shore, reaching for me and I think about it, I think about letting it take me away.
The rain on my skin soaks me from top to bottom as I sit out there. A few times, I think I hear someone calling my name, asking me to come back. But then it goes silent and all I hear is the Earth and my own heart.
It doesn’t last long, the rain, and by the time it leaves, so much of me is begging for it to come back. When it rains, I don’t have to think. I don’t have to worry or stress or wonder. I can just be.
I push my hair back, sniffling to myself and start to draw shapes in the sand–squares, triangles, hearts, flowers. Everything which comes to mind in this moment, I draw into the wet sand beneath my feet.
A few minutes later, the presence of someone else joins me. He says nothing, does nothing except stare out at the waves, and we sit there, in cloves of silence. And it’s silence I’m not good with, which is what pushes me to lure his thoughts out with a long inhale.
“I don’t need babysitting.”
“I’m not here to babysit,” he explains, chucking a little. Every little thing makes him laugh, even the hard stuff. Whenever the moms scolded him as a kid, he would laugh about it way before he cried. Like a nervous habit to shield his feelings. “Even though you are acting like a big, dumb baby.”
I roll my eyes with a quiet scoff. “Whatever.”
He crosses his legs beneath him then swings forward to draw a cat in the sand. Like YN, he has always been exceptionally good at art. He ignores that part of him, but it’s there; an innate talent. “How long are you gonna stay mad at her?”
“Forever.” He stops drawing to stare at my side profile. It becomes suffocating after he doesn’t say anything for a short while. I look at him. “What, Steven?”
He shrugs and goes back to his drawing. He gives the cat a bushy tail. “I don’t know, man. I don’t get why you’re mad at her. Not anymore, anyway.”
“What the hell do you know?”
Again, he shrugs. This time, he stops drawing altogether. He stares out at the ocean again. “I think you’re dumb as fuck.”
“Bro, you don’t–”
“Don’t ‘bro,’ me,” he instantly argues back. “She was just trying to protect you. You’re gonna throw away being happy with her because she made a mistake?”
“She lied to me.”
“To protect you. Jere, it’s YN. She’s not just some girl you hooked up with this summer. She’s…” Steven folds his lips in. He seems to lose himself in a myriad of thoughts for a second. “Don’t do what I did and fuck this up. There’s no guarantee you can take it back.”
For a moment, I let his words wash over me. I try to make sense of them in my head, but my heart is unrelenting. It wants to scream and shout and beg for things to be different even though I know they can’t be anything other than what they are.
Steven keeps talking. His voice is softer now, less harsh. “And you’re gonna need her.” He pauses to swallow and I know he’s close to crying. “We’re all gonna need each other.” He sets a firm but comforting hand on my back. “I know you’re pissed, and that’s your right. But don’t shut her out. What you have with YN… that’s once in a lifetime. And you got damn lucky to have it in this lifetime. No one loves you like she does. All the stuff she kept from you was to protect you. No matter what, she didn’t do it for any other reason. You gotta know that.”
We spend a good portion of the morning there, me and my oldest friend in the world. We sit there and look out over the horizon, making silent wishes until it’s time to go back into the house.
On the way back, I see her in the backyard with my Mom. Mom has her easel set up again, rain droplets all around, and she’s laughing, painting an image of YN with daisies in her hair. And for the first time in days, I smile.
. . .
YN
Toward the end of the morning, Susannah finally finishes her portrait of me. She refuses to let me see it because she wants to do a big unveiling on our last day in Cousins. Then she says she will hang them all up in the family room amongst her other prized art pieces, like the original photography by Cindy Sherman of 1950s America.
Jeremiah is playing video games with Steven and Conrad in the living room when I walk back into the house. I stand by the entryway to the living room for a while, pretending like I am interested in what Laurel and Susannah start to talk about, just so I can sneak glances at him. Belly notices and shakes her head at me.
She is furious with me, too, but she is better about it than anyone else. She says she can understand why I kept everything a secret because it’s hard to say “no” to Susannah when she asks something of you.
When Jeremiah turns around to look at me, finally noticing my presence, I hurriedly walk towards the front door. I shout, “I’m gonna head home!” to anyone who is listening then hightail it out of there. I race home as quickly as possible, my lungs on fire as I reach my porch. When I get to my bedroom, I fall face first into my bed and allow the mattress to pull me into its arms.
I stay like that all day. Hours pass and I don’t do anything except stay in bed and cry and cry until there are no tears left. Even though more still come. It feels like I could cry for an eternity and not run out of tears to shed.
My mother comes by twice to check on me. The third time, she forces herself into my bedroom and tuts at me for letting my dinner go cold. When I tell her I don’t want food even though she has cooked my favourite, my mother sits down beside me and pushes my hair back with her palm. Her smile is sweet, albeit a little pensive.
“He’ll come around,” she promises. “He loves you.”
I breathe in slowly, avoiding more tears, but they keep coming. “I don’t think love is enough to fix this.”
My mother shakes her head and smiles a little brighter and says, with all the hope I lack, “Love is always enough.”
Close to midnight, when the space inside my room is so quiet you could tell it every secret in the world, the legs of my bedside table begin to shake as a result of the crude vibrations exiting my phone. I try to ignore it at first because the last thing I want to do is talk to Shayla or Steven or Belly or even Conrad. I don’t want to talk to anyone I know besides the one person who refuses to speak to me. Though, eventually, ignoring my phone becomes almost impossible.
I sniffle as I go to pick up my phone. When the screen clicks on, it shines too bright and in the darkness encasing me, I very nearly blind myself. I dim the screen before attending to the incoming notifications. A few of them are from TikTok, a few from Instagram, two texts from Shayla saying goodbye because she’s leaving Cousins earlier than planned, a text from Belly wondering if I’ll go into town with her for muffins tomorrow, and finally, a single text from Jeremiah.
I leap out of bed to read it.
Jeremy: don’t fall asleep
The beat of my heart gains new purpose as it wistfully springs back to life. It feels as though someone has brought me back into the world after I spent days lost and lonely in space.
I rush to the balcony and push the doors open inward. Gerald’s trunk shakes bluntly. I hold my breath. I count to five in my head. I pinch my thigh. And when he finally falls into my view, I take a nervous step back.
All I wanted ever since the night of the debutante ball was to see him again. For it to be just us two with no distance in between. I wanted to hold him and explain myself and tell him he means the universe and more to me over and over until he knew it. And I wanted him to understand, above everything else, that I would never leave him, I would never stop loving him with every part of me.
Jeremiah crosses into my room and shakes his hair out before he turns back to shut the balcony door. Then he makes a joke and it feels like everything is fine when it isn’t. When it will never truly be again. Not when Susannah is sick.
“I think Gerald’s getting old. He shakes like a leaf when I climb him.”
I hesitate, and then, “Jeremiah…”
The boy in front of me closes his eyes for a second, and then tardidly and gorgeous, his mouth rises up in a smile. “I missed that,” he says, opening his eyes again, “hearing you say my name.”
My lips tremble. I try again and fail at holding my tears back. The emotions pour out of me in dense, broken sobs. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
He takes a step towards me. I stay rooted where I am. His scent wafts into my house and I try so hard not to let it affect me even though it does so easily. He licks his lips. His eyes are a chaos; the blues of them as lost and lonely as me. “Do you know how impossible it is not to love you?” His eyes start to shimmer, and I really think he might cry. “Even when I was so pissed off at you… I still missed you.”
“I’m sorry–”
He shakes his head and takes another step closer. We are almost chest-to-chest now. “I don’t want to hear that anymore. I don’t want you to be sorry.”
“Then…?”
He bites his bottom lip then pulls it into his mouth. Tears loosen from his eyes and cascade down, leaving a moistened trail of his woe upon the red pudginess of his cheek. His Adam’s apple bobs, up and down, while he swallows then looks away. And I recognize it. After all our years together, I know him.
I take back the steps I took away from him and reach for his hand. I interlace our fingers, mine wrapped with his, and bring it between our chests. I hold us here, in this imperfect space in time, watching him take tiny breaths, little gasps almost, as he cries.
“I’m here,” I whisper, my thumb settling over his as it gently moves back and forth. I peck the back of his hand. “I won’t ever leave.”
He breathes out, so slow and laboured that it seems to go on forever and ever. Then he falls into me, his tall, heavier frame over mine and I hold him to my chest with all the love I carry for him inside me. His body seems to go limp, and I keep holding him up.
On my shoulder, he whispers, “I don’t wanna think about life without her.” I wind both arms around him and hold on tighter. He brings himself higher and fixes his face into the space between my neck and shoulder. I pile my fingers in his hair, tangling them with his curly, blond locks.
I kiss the side of his face, stumbling over my own tears, “I love you.”
His own arms wrap around me, our hearts and souls grim with thoughts of the future. I take him to my bed, depositing him on his favourite side, then sliding in, too. I let my fingers rest in his hair again, pushing strands back and forth until the slow, dreamy motion sends us to sleep.
. . .
author's note: oh my god. i cannot believe this is real and we're at the end of you and me. thank you for taking this journey through yn and jeremiah's love story with me. i had the time of my life writing this fic for myself, for you, and for these beautiful characters. thank you times infinity 💘 i’ll see you in the epilogues next! 🤟
a thousand thank-yous to @things-that-make-sa-happy for going on the sims to make share & jere for me (since i still can't look at screens much) — you're the best AND THEY LOOK BEYOND ADORABLE!!!! 😭😭😭😭🤍🤍🤍🤍
i'm ridiculously happy about it and wanted to share — THE BEARS ARE JUST SO CUTE!
—a the summer i turned pretty fic starring my first and favourite book boyfriend, jeremiah fisher ♡
「part thirty-nine, reader insert」
Whispers of morning air tangle with the glass on the living room window. Outside, the sun has only just peeked out to say hello and the flowers are extending their necks to the sky, their colours brightening up everything around them.
I’m sitting on the porch with my legs crossed beneath me and a glass of lemon balm iced tea in between my hands. Ten minutes ago, I told myself that as soon as I finish this, I will grab my swimsuit and head down to the beach. Yesterday, Jeremiah and I went surfing, and one day later, I’m itching to be back in the water.
There is something about it, something about the ocean, which brings me back to it again and again. Cousins is this way, too. Something about this place makes me want to stay here forever, build a home here, and be happy.
I take a big sip of the iced tea then set my chin on my knee. I don’t know what the future holds, but I hope some part of it means that I will be able to come back here over and over.
The sun is violent on my back as I trek it down to the beach. My feet are hot with the grains of sand colliding with my skin. I take long strides towards the ocean’s edge, only to find a familiar figure standing with his head hunched nearby.
His tall build, broad shoulders, and wispy strands of hair give him away. I call out his name but he seems not to hear me. I make my way towards him, a little bit nervous, though I know I have zero reason to be. What’s passed is past. We will be what we have always been.
“Hey,” I greet, keeping my voice levelled to not arouse suspicion. Belly’s words from two days ago are still ringing in my head. He liked you when he was fourteen. “Out for a swim?”
Conrad cranes his head slightly to peer at me. He smiles, in a way which tells me his morning was pleasant. “Hey, yourself.” He reaches out to ruffle my hair. “What’s up?”
I roll my eyes and swat his hand away. Nerves get replaced with subtle irritation. “Didn’t anyone ever teach you not to mess with a girl’s hair?”
“Not when that girl is you.”
This gets a guffaw out of me. I take a seat on the sandy floor and he takes one beside me. For a long moment, neither of us says anything. Then, with all the courage I have, I go, “Thanks.”
His brows pinch together. “What for?”
My gaze catches on his face. The whole of it, every little bit. Unlike Jeremiah, whom I have to stare at in parts sometimes because his beauty often overwhelms me, when I look at his brother, a familiar innocence and devotion spins through my heart.
Conrad is beautiful. There is no doubt. His hair is modestly long, dense, and the colour of fresh almonds. After almost two months here, any trace of a haircut prior to the summer is gone. He appears every bit as boyish as I remember him. And still, when I take my time to truly look at him, I am overwhelmed by all the changes. The subtle growth of thin nose, the new freckles spread sporadically across his cheeks, so featherlight that you could miss them, and the hints of anguish splattered throughout.
I take a breath before I speak again. “For when you were fourteen.”
He smiles, finally understanding. He trains his focus on the ocean beyond us. The waves crash softly against the shore, unlike the enthusiastic race of my heart. “That was forever ago. How’d you find out?”
“A… source.” He gives me a look, but says nothing. I add on, “I didn’t know. I really, really didn’t.”
Conrad runs a hand through his hair then smirks. “Even if you did, would you have given me a chance?” Teasingly, he bumps his shoulder against mine. “When you were so obsessed with my brother?”
“I’m not obsessed with him.”
“Right,” the older boy laughs, not believing me in the least. After a blink, he explains, “It was naive of me to like you. I knew we couldn’t be together. Jere liked you so much, and you liked him back. There was no space for me.”
I push my legs out in front of me. It feels hard to breathe right now, like I have to think through each expansion of my lungs. In and out. “I think… I think I would have been okay with you telling me. Like, confessing.”
“That would have confused you.”
“I wouldn’t have been confused.” I lick my lips. They feel dry despite the SPF-lip balm I coated them with earlier. “I’m indecisive about a lot of things, but not Jeremiah.”
Conrad chuckles, like this is exactly what he expected to hear, and somehow, it makes him happy. “He’s lucky to have you, YN.” He bumps my shoulder again. “We all are.” He falls back against the sand, his chest to the sky. He smiles something wicked. “We’re all one big, happy family.”
I slide down next to him. Out of respect for myself and for him, I remember to keep a few inches’ distance between our bodies. “Susannah knows that I know.”
“I know.”
I swallow. “Did she talk to you?”
“Yup.”
“What did you guys talk about?”
He sighs. “We decided to keep it to ourselves, just like before. Mom still wants this summer to be perfect. She said Laurel was the only one who was supposed to know. She planned on telling me and Jere when we got back to Boston. She was surprised I knew at all.”
“How did you find out?”
He bites his lip then lets go, contemplative. “She stopped going to her weekly appointments. Then she started spending a lot of time downtown. I found out she was seeing a therapist. She talked about me and Jere a lot. She wanted to know how to help us understand what was happening. Then she and dad had this big fight, when they thought I wasn’t home. Dad told mom that she was a bad mother for lying to us and for giving up on treatments when we needed her. Mom called him a bastard.” Conrad laughs with his whole chest. “Is it bad…?”
“What is?”
“Sometimes…” He seems to pick his words carefully. “I wish it wasn’t my mom.” I feel like I have been punched in the gut when the insinuation of what he is saying hits me. I wish it was my dad. “Maybe I’m the bastard for thinking that.”
“Your dad loves you, Con.”
“Yeah. He’s definitely father of the year.”
Despite myself, I reach out and squeeze his hand. It seems to surprise him. “We’re all going to be there for each other. We’ll get through this.” I squeeze his hand again, and then, Conrad cries.
. . .
Late Wednesday afternoon, Susannah calls me while Jeremiah and I are cruising along the backroads of the country club following a mundane day at work.
Her personalised ringtone is set to Can’t Fight This Feeling by REO Speedwagon. When we were younger, maybe when I was eleven, Susannah and Mr. Fisher sang it together one night during an impromptu karaoke session after dinner.
I remember it delighted everyone, especially my parents, who then gathered up the courage to sing their own duet afterwards. Last year, Laurel put the video tapings of that dinner on the TV for all of us to watch and make fun of. I wonder if the VCR cassettes are still sitting in the basement movie theatre somewhere.
Jeremiah glances at me quickly, his curls bouncing. He keeps one steady hand on the steering wheel and asks with his eyes, ‘Is that my mom?’ I nod and press the big, red answer button on my aging iPhone.
“Hi, Susannah.”
Her simple voice filters in through the speaker. “YN! How was work, honey?”
“It was good. Boring, but we got through it. They served those buttermilk chicken sandwiches you love today.” I reach down in between my feet and pull out a paper bag. Jeremiah makes a strangled noise beside me. “I brought you one.” Really, I bought a couple. For all the parents.
Jeremiah snarkily argues, “I thought you said they ran out when I wanted one!”
I muffle the microphone with the base of my palm and tell him, “I lied.” To his mother, I go, “You’re going to love it.”
“I’m sure I will,” she chuckles. “Listen, honey, I know you must be tired from work, but tell Jere to drop you off at the boutique. We’re shopping for Belly’s ball gown, and I would love to have you here with us.”
I bite my bottom lip. “I don’t know, Susannah. Would Belly be okay with me there?”
“Without a doubt.” For a second, she pauses, then quietly, almost tenderly, says, “I know you girls were so busy this summer doing your own things, but to me, you’re sisters. And sometimes, sisters fight.” I don’t know how Susannah knows about the little spat me and Belly had less than a week ago, but it’s not unsurprising. Susannah seems to know nearly everything that happens to us kids, no matter how far we go.
“I’ll be there,” I reply, crushing the awful feeling in my chest. No part of me is ready to see Belly again, not for however long we will be in the boutique, but for Susannah, I would move mountains. I will.
I can sense her smile from the phone when she clicks off with, “See you soon, YN.”
Jeremiah makes a left, seemingly in the direction of home, then settles comfortably with his back against the driver’s seat. The plush leather moulds perfectly with his body, accustomed to all the shapes and ridges. Whenever I sit there, in a weird way, it feels as though I’m being hugged by him, which isn’t a wonder of the world but definitely should be. “What’s up with my mom?”
“She, uh, wants me to meet her at the boutique.” I struggle to find my voice. “Laurel and Belly are there, too.”
My boyfriend’s eyes are gentle as they cooly cast their gaze on me for the briefest of moments. In a soft, flowery voice, he offers, “I know you always wanna do the right thing, but if being around Belly bothers you, just tell my mom no.”
“No, it’s–it’s fine. I’m fine. Me and Belly… we’re not even fighting. It’s just awkward between us right now.” Or has it always been this way? I try to think back to all the years of knowing her, as long as I have known Jeremiah, Conrad, Susannah, Laurel, and her brother. What sort of friends were we? Apart from the few times we hung out alone, like at my birthday sleepover and the days we would sit on her bedroom floor making bracelets out of colourful beads and doing fruity face masks, what precious time did Belly Conklin and I truly spend together? If I look at things fairly, Belly and I are friends by association at best. And is that my fault or hers? “Jere, I have to tell you something. Something Belly told me.” And Conrad confirmed.
“What is it?”
“Conrad liked me when we were thirteen.”
The confession does little to modify the emotions stringing my best friend’s face together. If anything, he looks a bit pleased, which is the very last thing I expected him to be. The entire silent commotion sets me off my axis. The car suddenly feels too big and too small, all at once.
“That was a really long time ago,” he finally responds.
I blink, astounded. “So you knew about it?”
“Yeah. Con told me.” He says it lightly, as if it means nothing, and maybe, it doesn’t. I wish I could understand why it seems to mean something to me that he knew and never told me. “It was just a dumb crush. He sees you as a sister.”
To the rest of the world, I have to lie whenever necessary. I have to filter truths and throw soil over my feelings for the sake of everybody around me. As a young girl, my mother taught me that that was the correct way of doing things as a woman. Not every thought requires a stage. But to Jeremiah, the person who knows me best, I can open my heart knowing he would never misuse it. That he would try to understand me even if what I said made no sense at all.
“Did you tell him not to tell me?”
This question seems to peak his emotions. A flicker of irritation flies onto his face, which turns his cheeks a little reddish. “No. He decided that himself.” He takes a trembling breath, a clear indication of a lie being expressed. I notice he misses the next turn and keeps moving straight. We’re definitely heading towards the boutique downtown now. “Are you mad about it?”
“No, that’s not it. I just…” I try to place strict bouts of empathy on my tongue, lining my words with it carefully. I don’t want to fight with Jeremiah. We spent so much of this summer doing that already. Time is something you can never get back, but wasted time is worse. “I feel like I was left in the dark about all of it. It doesn’t seem fair.”
We reach the end of the street with a red light to stop us from going any further. Jeremiah leans back again and sighs. His chest rises and falls painstakingly, like every breath is hard to push out.
“He wanted to tell you,” he finally admits. His voice sounds stifled with old afflictions. “And he was going to. But then we talked about it and I-I gave him an ultimatum.” Jeremiah brings his eyes to mine. For a moment, he seems both embarrassed and pissed off. “I told him that if he confessed, he wouldn’t be my brother anymore. That he’d be dead to me.”
“Jere…” The street light flashes green. We move forward. I choose my words extra cautiously. This feels like a turning point in our relationship. I’m terrified of saying the wrong thing, of accidentally throwing us off our idyllic trajectory. “You know it wouldn’t have mattered. I only saw you.”
Jeremiah shakes his head. “I didn’t know that. Not for sure.”
“Still.”
“Still, what?” He breathes out. His hold on the steering wheel turns his knuckles white. “I didn’t wanna risk it. If you guys got together, even for a little while, I’d never be able to get over it.”
“That’s so dumb. You got over every other guy. Ashlyn’s cousin. Those guys from the parties. Aiden. What’s so different about Conrad?”
He shakes his head again, leaning into fury. “You don’t get it, YN.”
“Then explain it to me.”
He huffs, that Jeremiah Fisher wrath bubbling to the surface. “Conrad’s my brother. Isn’t that enough?” He stops at another red light. “If you guys got together, I would’ve had to see you with him. I’d have to listen to him talking to you, calling you his girl. He’d buy you flowers and take you on dates and I’d have to sit there and pretend like I didn’t want to punch him in the face.” He swallows. The motion seems to drag his Adam’s apple up and down for an eternity. “All my life, I’ve competed with him. For everything. Grades, football, our parents. He says mom likes me best, but I know that’s not true. She tells him things she doesn’t tell me. She trusts him more.”
A flash of grief strikes the chords of my heart, setting me off rhythm. My breath comes quickly, and I brace myself for a panic attack. It’s been ages since I have had one, and they usually happened when I was alone. But here and now, with Jeremiah next to me and the ocean of secrets I am being obligated to keep from him, I think my heart may truly cave in on itself.
Jeremiah seems to notice, and despite his own agony, he manages to pull onto the side of the road for me. He easily takes me into his arms, up and over the middle console, hugging me to his firm body, and cradling me as though I am something worthy of being adored as fondly as he does.
“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” he tries, his long fingers in my hair, pushing the strands back and soothing my scalp. He places a hand on my face and urges me to look at him, warm and every bit as perfect as he always has been. “I’m right here. I’m right here with you.”
I collapse against him, not caring for how desperate I appear. I can be who I am with him. Best friend or girlfriend, this has never changed. In his neck which exudes his scent, I inhale him, diving forth for everything he is, holding onto the dangly rope that is us, and I murmur, “I only see you.”
He runs his hands down my back. Up and down, up and down. Finally, he whispers back, “I know. Me, too.”
. . .
Jeremiah stops the car in front of the boutique. Its lofty glass windows are filled with a long display of sturdy mannequins wearing the most luscious ball gowns and bridal wear I have ever seen.
Back when Esme married Dylan, her pregnancy had kept us from doing things the traditional way: proposal, engagement, wedding planning, and dress shopping. One weekend, a few weeks away from the small wedding we had at a convention centre in the town over, our mother took Esme to a bridal shop and came back four hours later with a gown reminiscent of our family’s measly combined salaries. Esme loved it still because she was getting married and that was all that mattered.
I promised myself it would be different for me. If I ever marry, it will be the right way. The way I read about in books and saw on television. I wanted every little bit of romance and excitement. I dreamed about it for years and years.
As I go to place my hand on the door handle, Jeremiah catches my arm. He makes me turn to look at him. And when I do, his eyes roam everywhere, searching my face for something. His worry outweighs me. My love for him twists with the guilt inside my chest. “Are you gonna be okay?”
I lean back and put my hand on the back of his neck, bringing him in for a short kiss. It’s nothing like our other kisses, the wild ones we snuck in at work this morning when Zara wasn’t around, and the one Jeremiah purposely showed off to Grayson who rolled his eyes at us as he picked up musty pool towels.
This kiss is softer, meaningful in the same way his fingers on my wrist are–serene, delicate, conveying the words, I’ll always be here for you.
When we part, he gives me a slow, boyish smile which sends my heart into a frenzy. “Send me pictures.”
“Of what? Me sitting around while the moms get tipsy and Belly tries on a bajillion dresses?”
He pecks my lips. His sweet taste lingers on my mouth with a promise for more later. “Yeah. I wanna see you.”
“You’re seeing me right now.”
“It’s not enough.” He presses a delicate kiss to the vein pulsing in my neck. It bursts at the seams for him, for his touch. “I want more.”
I laugh, the sound echoing within the perimeters of his Jeep. I tease, “You love me. You want to marry me.” Each time I think back to the night of my birthday, when we first slept together, I happily recall what he said afterwards. About marrying me. About being with me forever. It’s a joy I cannot shake off, nor would I ever want to.
I half expect Jeremiah to roll his eyes or at least, play it off like any other guy would, but he surprises me by pulling me closer. He tucks my hair behind my ear. “Yeah, I do. I wish I could marry you right now.”
My heart flutters. “I’m sure you could, in like, Boston or something.”
“That’s where I’m from.”
“I know.” This time, I peck his lips. I’m addicted, happily so. “I can imagine myself living there, you know, in Boston.”
“Oh, yeah? Why?”
I lift one shoulder in a nonchalant shrug, although my nerve endings are all abuzz. “I’ve heard they have really hot guys up there.”
His mouth twists into a smirk. “Do they?”
“Absolutely. The hottest one is with me right now. Lucky me.” With that, I give him one more big kiss, then three more tiny ones, before I push open the car door and walk out onto the sidewalk. Jeremiah waves at me from the window and I send him an air kiss. He makes a big show of catching it and putting it in his pocket, and I think about how we have to be the cheesiest pair of teenagers in the world and I genuinely would not have it any other way.
Upon entering the boutique, I am embraced by thick gusts of frigid, air conditioner ventilation. It mixes seamlessly with the spritzes of luxury air freshener exiting the mouth of tiny, automatic machines placed expertly along the edges of glass-top shelves decorated with one of a kind gold and silver jewellery and unique bridal pieces, from belts to tiaras.
Nothing sits with a price tag.
At first, I find it strange. How is a person meant to know the cost of the item if there is no tag? But the more I think about it, it starts to make sense. People who come into these sorts of shops can afford any price at all, and it would be an insult to their name to show off the cost of anything.
When Susannah notices me walking in, she sets her champagne flute on a golden speckled tray and rushes over to greet me with a giant, motherly hug. I drown myself in it, in the hug and in her, and let myself believe, even for a few minutes, that everything is okay. Everything is perfect. This summer is like all the others. In two weeks, we will be packing up to go home for the school year, but in no time at all, we will be counting down the days until June, until we can all be together again in Cousins. And Susannah will be there, in the summer house, with her sun kissed skin and cheerful voice, ready to welcome us back.
Her arm slips through mine and she walks us over to a small area with a sheepskin rug on the floor and plush, milky toned sofas on top. Laurel is there, with an identical champagne flute in her hand and she smiles warmly at me as I say hello.
“How was work, YN?” Laurel asks.
I shrug. “Same old, same old.” I take a look around. “What’s happening here? Where’s our Belly of the Ball?” This makes Laurel snort, which Susannah easily shuts down. The two of them are vastly unalike and their friendship has never made any sense to me, but if someone were to ask me what platonic love is, I would point at the two of them first. These women would do anything for each other.
The door to the grand dressing room opens outward to reveal Belly. Her long, brown hair is thrown prettily over her shoulders and back, and on her body is a lavish white dress with sparkles along the hem and a sweetheart neckline. When our eyes meet, she seems to retract almost. I smile, offering her a peace treaty.
“Hey, Bells,” I call out. “You look beautiful. That dress is gorgeous.”
Belly pats down the front of the dress. “It doesn’t feel like me.”
“What do you mean, sweetheart?” Susannah pipes in. “You look like Cinderella!”
“Oh, Belly hates Cinderella,” Laurel chimes. She takes a big sip of her drink. “All the princesses, actually.”
Susannah’s expression morphs into a deep frown. It’s like someone has punched her, leaving her with a black eye, then proceeded to tell her she looks better that way. “But we used to watch the princess movies together when you were little.”
“I just,” Belly tries to smile but it looks every bit as difficult as rocket science. “I grew out of it, I guess.”
My brain works overtime to find a way out of this. I jump into action hastily. “Why don’t we take pictures of you in all the dresses and compare them after?”
Laurel raises her glass to my suggestion and Susannah meekly does the same. The friends sit down on the sofa again and I snap two photographs of Belly in her dress. I send them to her, her mother, and Susannah. For the next half hour, we keep going like that. Belly tries on ten or eleven dresses before she finally has enough. By then, even Susannah is ready to call it quits.
“I still think the first dress was beautiful on you, Belly,” she says, using that characteristic voice of hers which she brings out every time she wants things to go her way. Jeremiah has a similar one. “Why don’t you try it on again and give it another look in the mirror?”
“I don’t know, Susannah…” Belly sighs. Her eyes melt on a mannequin behind the mothers. This dress is simple, something you could call a staple of the fifties. For everything that it is, it is also exactly Belly’s style. I notice the desire in her eyes and step away for a second to go pick it up. When I return, I hand it to her.
“Try this on.”
Susannah says, “I think that’s a little too simple for a debutante ball.”
“It’s more Belly than the other dresses,” Laurel nods. “Belly, go try it on. See if you like it.”
Once Belly is behind the door of the dressing room again, I take a seat on the floor in between the mothers. I sit there for all of ten seconds before Susannah hops to her feet like she is an overly ecstatic gymnast.
“YN! You have to try something on, too!”
My eyes widen, and I back away from her despite the way she pulls on my arm. “N-No. That’s okay, Susannah, really. I don’t need to try anything on. I’m not even a deb!”
“Nonsense! You don’t need to be a deb to put on a beautiful dress.” Susannah hops over to a rack of dresses and picks out two. Then she asks the assistant to grab the one off a mannequin, too. She lays it flat on top, making it obvious which one she wants me to try on first. “Try these on, sweetheart. I’m sure you’ll love one of them.”
Without listening to a single rebellion more, Susannah sticks me inside the opposite dressing room to Belly. In the enclosed space, I set the dresses on the hangers provided and take a seat on the chair next to the lit-up mirror. There is a fresh scent of roses in here, which tickles my nose as I try to think.
I don’t want to put on a dress. The colossal mess I endured at the deb tea early last month is still vivid in my mind. I don’t know if putting on dresses this sparkly will make me wish for things which are not meant to be mine. Again.
There is a knock at the door. Two raps in perfect succession. It’s peculiar how the human mind memorises knocks and footsteps and breaths belonging to the people they love.
“Come out once you’ve got it on, YN,” Susannah instructs sprightly. There is a musical quality to her voice which makes it extremely difficult to disappoint her. Jeremiah used to say his mother could make him fight a shark with her gaze alone. Not only would he move mountains for her–he would build them. “I want to take some pictures.”
Reluctantly, I reach out for a dress. The one my hand touches happens to be the one from the mannequin. I pull it off the fabric hanger the assistant must have slid it into and hold it up against my body in the mirror.
This dress is magnificent. It doesn’t belong on a body like mine.
My fingers shake as I run them along the material. The sleeves end at my elbow and are puffier than a French pastry. The gown is bigger than I am, and pure white in colour. Against my tanner skin, it makes me feel a bit out of place. Girls like me don’t attend debutante balls. We don’t put on dresses like these. As American as I am at heart, I still wonder about my place in this country from time to time.
Can I wear something as beautiful as this?
Belly will.
And so will Shayla.
And Nicole.
With my friends on my mind, I pull off my country club uniform and set it aside on the chair. Then, with a little bit of shaking and turning, I slide into the gown. It fits me well; hugs me just right. At the bust, the tops of my chest fall into view. I blush, never having worn something this revealing before. My mother always scolded me when I tried, claiming it was immodest and wrong. This dress doesn’t feel wrong. It feels more right than anything.
On the chair, my phone crackles against the wooden furniture. It plays to the tune of Into It by Chase Atlantic then vibrates, signifying Jeremiah’s incoming message. I pick it up and notice the screen alight with a new text.
Jeremy: liam’s having a rager at his house. stevie’s begging to go
YN: the world could be ending and steven would still find a way to party smh
Jeremy: it’s in his blood, baby
Jeremy: plus, i think his ex is gonna be there. he says he’s going for shayla but he’s an asshole like that
Not quite sure what seems to come over me, but the next thing I know, I am opening up my camera app and snapping a photograph of myself in the mirror. I don’t even hold up a peace sign like I normally do for mirror selfies. In this one, all I do is smile. Then, I send it to Jeremiah who opens it right away. I don’t have to wait long for his reply at all.
Jeremy: nvm. fuck the party. we’ll have our own with that dress on my floor
YN: dork
Jeremy: you’re gorgeous, daisy.
Jeremy: fucking gorgeous
Jeremy: prettiest girl in the world
YN: god… you want me so bad huh
Jeremy: all the damn time
YN: do you really think it looks okay?
Jeremy: that dress could be ugly as shit and you’d make it look like art
His response drags a snort out of me. I cover up my mouth quickly, hoping no one heard me.
YN: what are you even saying
Jeremy: idk i’m just in love with you
The door behind me jiggles, alerting me to someone’s presence. I turn a smidge to see Susannah popping her head in. The moment her gaze lands on my attire, a gigantic grin overtakes her whole face. She rushes in immediately, holding my arms out to inspect me.
“Oh, my darling, you’re so lovely,” she coos. “Look at you!”
I laugh, feeling so happy I don’t know what to do with myself. I feel my skin heat up from the warmth of her love. “Thank you.”
“We have to get it. Let’s go.”
I panic. Even without a price tag, I know I cannot afford a dress like this. Not today nor tomorrow. “Susannah, no, I can’t–”
“Yes, you can. I’m getting it for you.”
“But–”
From the back, Laurel says, “It’s best to let her sugar mama you, YN, or none of us will know peace.”
Belly gasps. “Mom! How do you know those words?!”
“I have Instagram.”
Susannah slides a hand over my cheek. Her eyes are beginning to fill with fresh tears. “With hair and some makeup, you’ll shine.”
“Susannah, where will I even wear this to?”
A twinkle in her eye catches me by surprise. “Leave that to me.”
. . .
That evening, I twirl around in the gown several times before finally hanging it up far in the back of my closet. The last thing I need after a really good day is for my mother to see it, demand where I got it, get upset that I let someone else pay for something so expensive, then drag me to the Fisher house and make Susannah take it back.
I don’t want to lie to my mother anymore nor hide things from her, not when she and I are on track to mending our broken relationship, but some things are special. I want this to be for just me and Susannah. I don’t want my mother’s ego to ruin it.
Around nine, I jump in the shower and wash the day away. When I finish, I stand in front of the mirror and lather my somewhat moist body with apricot scented lotion and check my face for any hair I need to tweeze out. It is the worst nuisance in the world but one I regularly administer into my weekly self-care routine. Freshman year was the first and very last time someone made a joke about my having a moustache.
With a fluffy, orange towel wrapped around my body, I exit the bathroom feeling refreshed and ready for tonight’s party. Liam is one of the richest kids in Cousins. His parties are huge and spectacular and he always has the best booze. Although I don’t want to get plastered, I know I’ll be throwing back a few shots at least.
Out in my bedroom, I nearly screech for my life when I notice a body on the floor. When a familiar mop of golden curls falls into my line of sight, I let out a breath of relief. No matter how many times he does it, I never quite get used to my boyfriend being on my floor when I don’t expect him to be.
“What are you doing, Fisher?”
Jeremiah looks up at me and grins. Then wiggles his brows like a pervert. “Fancy seeing you here.”
“In my own room?”
“And in nothing but a towel.”
I roll my eyes then head for my vanity. I pick up my face cream and begin to dab some onto my cheeks and forehead. “I was gonna swing by yours after I got ready.”
“I got bored waiting,” he hums. He rests both arms under his head and stares up at my ceiling with a quizzical look. “There’s still an imprint of your Anakin poster up there.”
I follow his eyes. “Maybe I should put it back up. The spot feels too empty without my first boyfriend up there.”
Jeremiah springs to his feet faster than lightning. His blue eyes narrow on me. “Hell no! No more posters of other guys!”
“But it’s Anakin Skywalker.”
“I really hate that guy.”
“He doesn’t even exist,” I giggle. I point a foundation brush at him. “For Halloween, we should dress up as Anakin and Padme.”
Jeremiah grins and flops down on my bed this time, seemingly elated even though a second ago, he was anything but. “That’s a good idea. I’d look hot in an Anakin costume.”
“Wouldn’t you?” I laugh, but I’m thinking about it, picturing it, and he really does look every bit as attractive as he thinks he is. Then suddenly, I feel a hand fist my heart, squeezing it tight. “We should do Halloween in Boston this year.”
His brows furrow. “Really? Why? We always do Halloween at yours.”
Because you should be close to your mother. In case anything happens, you should be by her side.
I shrug. “Just… I think I’d rather be in Boston. I’m so bored of my town, you know? The same old people.”
“Your town’s not so bad.” He walks over and picks up a tube of lip tint. It’s pinker than the others, a more subdued colour. “Wear this.”
“Why?”
“Because if you wear any of the others…” he pulls me in by the waist, securing me against his chest. I’m keenly aware that my towel is the only thing separating us. “I won’t be able to keep my hands off you all night.”
“Red really gets you going, huh?”
“Only on you.”
By the time I finish getting ready and Jeremiah has climbed out of my window, I have a fresh hickey on my neck which I don’t bother to hide with concealer and an outfit which makes me feel radiant. That’s the word Jeremiah used to describe me anyway, and I love it.
At the party, Liam is doing shots with a bunch of people and the entire house is lit purple, with a hundred disco lights shining all around. Jeremiah keeps me by his side as we walk in, almost showing me off with the way he introduces me to everyone even though we have known most of these people our whole lives. He uses the word ‘girlfriend’ so much that I even roll my eyes a few times.
The party starts out pretty much the same way all parties do–Jeremiah and I go around chatting with our friends, we throw back drinks, we dance to pop songs, and then we all end up at the beach, settled next to each other around a crackling bonfire.
Gordon, a guy who’s been coming to Cousins for a few years now, pulls out his guitar and everyone starts dumping requests at him. It’s not until Steven asks for Glimpse of Us by Joji that Gordan agrees. He tells us it’s a song he’s never played on guitar before but he’ll try his best. Turns out, his ‘best’ is better than any of us could have expected. We all start singing together, a collective heap of teenagers losing themselves to one of the saddest songs in music history.
Near the end of the song, Jeremiah begins to thumb the hickey he left on my neck. It’s softened by now, less apparent than a few hours prior. He whispers, “Does it hurt?”
“No.”
“It looks like it hurts.”
Quietly, I lean into him and press my mouth upon a similar spot on his neck. His breath hitches, and when I feel it, the excitement for what I’m doing doubles. I suck on his neck for a few seconds, less than a minute, and when I let go, his skin is already forming a small bruise.
“Decide for yourself then,” I tell him before moving away.
He catches my wrist. His eyes are dark, and a little bit hazy. “Wanna go home?”
“Mine’s or yours?”
“Mine.”
I stand up right away and hold out a hand for him. A few people turn to look at us, but I don’t pay them any mind. “Let’s go, boyfriend.”
Jeremiah grins and lets me hoist him up. As soon as he’s up, he throws an arm over my shoulder and pulls me into his side. We walk away from everyone, heading towards the road. We call a taxi and one arrives fairly fast. The driver takes us home quickly, too, which I’m thankful for since neither me nor my boyfriend could keep our hands off each other.
Inside his house, we are giggling to ourselves when Jeremiah spots his mother on the living room sofa with the television still on. Little Fires Everywhere is playing, and a scene with Reese Witherspoon reminds me of the time I saw my own mother watching the drama a few months ago. Suddenly, I begin to miss her and pull out my phone. I text her a picture of myself smiling, letting her know I’m at Jeremiah’s and I’ll be home soon. Her instantaneous reply with two heart emojis and a ‘make good choices, yn.’
Jeremiah walks past me as I’m slipping my phone back into the pocket of my jeans. He has a hefty blanket in his arms. I follow him into the living room where he deposits it over Susannah’s body, careful to wrap her with it well so none of the night’s chill reaches her. It’s when he checks his tuck around her neck twice then kisses her forehead that I choke back a sob. I whisper I’m going to the bathroom and practically run away to do so.
The downstairs powder room is brightly lit and I wish it wasn’t. I wish it was dim and missing a lightbulb, like the one in my house that my father keeps promising to deal with one of these days. All the light around me makes me acutely aware of the lies and betrayal haunting my very being.
Despite the mascara on my lashes and the concealer on my skin, which my mother taught me I need proper tools to remove or else my skin would suffer, I plough through the handsoap sitting on the corner of the sink then roughly rub my face with it. I rub and rub so hard that my skin transforms into something which resembles a tomato. My face feels raw and not any less heavy than before. When the tears come, I let them flow then cover my face with both hands.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper to myself, my words colliding against my skin and dancing with the tears which won’t stop falling. “I’m so, so sorry.”
Back outside again, Jeremiah meets me by the staircase. He has a frown on his face, a lot deeper than his usual ‘I don’t like this’ ones, which he wears often when things aren’t going his way. This frown seems to be bound by confusion, too, and hints of frustration. All of which stems from a very obvious source.
“Your mom must be tired,” I go to say, trying to explain away why she seems to have fallen asleep on the sofa when she loves her bed so much.
When we were around eleven, Susannah ordered the world’s most expensive mattress and had it delivered to the house one early morning. Three men dressed in blue uniforms came and delivered it to the house, and they even set it up for her. Susannah told us that good sleep was the most important thing in the world and without it, people could turn into cranky little monsters. Whenever there were no parents around, me and Jeremiah would jump around on it as though it were a bouncy castle. Jeremiah even broke his wrist after falling off of it once, which got both of us into a lot of trouble.
“She’s been sleeping a lot lately,” he answers. He lets out a sigh. “Con told me not to worry about it because that’s what Mom always does on vacation, but something’s wrong with her. I can tell.”
I hesitate with my hand on the bannister. His expression is shattered, and I want to fix it so badly. But won’t telling him the truth make it worse? “Susannah’s been doing a lot with Belly lately, Jere. And with Laurel, too. It’s almost the end of the summer. Maybe she’s sleeping it off.”
“Still…”
A thought occurs to me. The only activity apart from partying that Jeremiah Fisher loves best. The only fun that might erase his sadness and concern.
With all the strength I can muster, I slap on a big smile and ask, “Wanna go night fishing?”
. . .
At the end of the week, I’m at work again and suffering through mindless hours of chopping lemons, making lemonade, serving lemonade, and watching several of my co-workers set up the country club for the debutante ball in a few days’ time. They bring in gold painted chairs, tons and tons of fake flowers, gorgeous vases, water pitchers shaped like various swans, and table cloths made from the finest materials.
Everything about the event screams stunningly beautiful and for the umpteenth time, a part of me wishes I could have been a part of it. As a waiter, I would be, but not in the way I truly want. I try to imagine myself in the dress from the boutique, dancing at the ball with Jeremiah, and it makes me smile even though it also makes me sad.
Steven is nowhere to be seen in the cafe as I’m rinsing a batch of twenty or so lemons and placing them in a giant, white bowl. I think about texting him to ask for his whereabouts because if Harry catches him away from his post again, like he did a few times this week already, he might just lose his job.
Once I’m done with my last lemon, I put it aside then wipe my hands on a towel, drying them before I pull out my phone. There is a text from Steven on top.
Stevie: i had to go so cover for me pls???
I roll my eyes then go to respond when an incoming call steals my focus away. It’s from Conrad. I pick up the call immediately, my heart thundering. What could he possibly be calling me about?
“Hey, what’s–”
“YN,” he breathes, his voice splintered and low, “I need you t-to–fuck.”
I hold my phone tighter against my ear. “Con, Con, what’s wrong? Why do you sound like that?”
“My mom’s in the hospital,” he says, and my heart falls to my stomach. “She was painting me and then she–she just–she fainted. Right in front of me. I-I didn’t know what to do. I called an a-ambulance and they brought her here–”
I reach under the counter for my bag, pulling out my wallet. “Tell me what hospital.”
Conrad says he will drop his location then clicks off. In a rush, I throw up the counter and start heading for the door, calling for a taxi as I go.
For a split second, I think about what I’m doing. I’m leaving the cafe empty. Without me or Steven manning it. Harry will blow a gasket when he finds out, but what choice do I have? I guess we might both lose our jobs soon.
On the way there, all I think about is Susannah, about Conrad, about Jeremiah. Jeremiah, who doesn’t know about his mother. Jeremiah, who is still at work. Jeremiah, who should be with me right now.
I end up crying in the back of the taxi cab, brushing away my tears each time they flow out. I’m thankful the driver doesn’t ask me about it. I know if he did, I would lay out everything a stranger doesn’t need to know.
The Cousins General Hospital is daunting and smells like everything you would expect a hospital to smell like, with a hint of beach mixed in. In some corners, you can see grains of sand on the floor, which probably has nothing to do with the janitors not doing their job right and everything to do with surfers and swimmers getting hurt in the water and trekking it in.
Conrad finds me by the check-in counter with my lips moving rapidly as I beg the nurses to tell me which room Susannah Fisher is in. When they tell me only family is allowed inside, the older boy rushes up to my side and pulls me along, telling them I am family.
Susannah is in room 307. Conrad opens the door for me as Susannah is struggling to sit up in her bed. He runs to her, like a trackstar, and holds her back and arms for support.
“Thank you, sweetie,” she says, her eyes turning up in half-moons. When she notices me, those same eyes turn anxious. “Oh, YN. Is… Is Jeremiah with you?”
“N-No, he isn’t, but Susannah–”
“Oh, good. Good. I was worried you brought him.” Her eyes move down to the floor where her shoes are resting. As she starts to place her feet inside them, Conrad dives in to do it for her. Lovingly, she pats his head. “My Connie. What would I do without you?”
All of a sudden, a blurring rage swirls around inside me, invading every crevice of my mind and heart. Thoughts and questions begin to build on top of one another, each more persistent than the one before.
Why are you doing this to Jeremiah?
Why can Conrad know but his brother cannot?
Why doesn’t Jeremiah get to spend this precious time with you?
Why have we all left him in the dark?
Do you know how much this will break him when he finds out?
Almost stammering, I tiredly tell them both, “Jere deserves to be here just as much as Con. This isn’t fair.”
Susannah finds my gaze. Hers is unfalteringly kind. “I know you’re worried, YN,” she starts as Conrad stands up again. He busies himself with gathering his mother’s things from the side table. “As soon as we go back to Boston, I will sit with Jeremiah and tell him everything. There’s no need to worry. Everything is going to be okay.”
Despite the situation, I find myself asking, “Is it?” I reach down and pinch my thigh. “Susannah, you’re–you’re sick. And your son doesn’t know. He’s spent this entire summer not knowing. How do you think he’s going to feel when he finds out all of us were hiding this from him?”
Susannah waits a beat before answering me. “YN, do you remember what happened the last time Jeremiah saw me in a hospital bed?” Her question is pointed and largely spoken in a rigid voice, a voice she almost never uses on anyone. “When I was in the hospital the first time, Jeremiah cried so much that it filled the entire room. His beautiful heart was so broken. He stopped talking to everyone but you. He stopped seeing his friends and even playing video games. He wouldn’t look away from me for even a second because he thought I might disappear. When my cancer came back in April, I promised myself that I wouldn’t let my boys go through the pain of seeing me deteriorate over the summer which means so much to all of us. I… I need this last summer to be perfect. I only want to leave you kids with good memories.”
Susannah takes me into her arms as I cry yet again, and I let her hold me even though I’m not the one in pain. Not like her. And I realize something.
At the end, her reason for keeping the truth from Jeremiah is the same as mine.
. . .
With a little over a week left before the debutante ball, Susannah finally admits why she insisted on purchasing the gown I had worn at the boutique. Turns out, the last time I had seen Susannah at the country club with Laurel in tow, she had wrangled me a last minute invite to be a debutante. The news has me seeing stars, and not the good kind.
We are in my living room, my mother is standing next to Susannah Fisher as if the two of them are best friends. When I was younger, that’s what I wished they were. Like the way Susannah and Laurel are. I feel as though I’m being ganged up on.
“Susannah, I can’t just be a deb! I didn’t participate in any of the activities this summer! I didn’t raise any money for charity! I don’t even know the dance!”
My mother steps in before Susannah can get a word in. “YN, listen to what Suze has to say before you shout, please.” Suze? Well, that’s a development.
I flip my gaze to her. “Since when are the two of you besties?”
“Since always,” Susannah smiles, not the least bit deterred by my outburst of emotion. “Who do you think your mother spends time with when she’s here?”
“I don’t know? My dad?”
“YN, your father has his own friends. I can’t be with him all the time.”
“But…”
“I think she didn’t notice because she was with Jeremiah all summer,” Susannah nods. “Which is a good thing, honey, I’m thankful.” Again, she presents me with the invitation to be a debutante. “Paige is more than happy to go over the details of the event with you and the dance instructor has set aside time to teach you and Jeremiah the steps over the next few days.”
I take a breath. “I… why do you want me to do this? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“It will,” my mother answers, and it surprises me. Her voice is the gentlest I have ever heard it. “For now, all you have to do is say yes.”
For a long moment, I stare at the two of them. Two women who have meant so much to me my whole entire life; two women whom I would do anything for, including this.
I guess I take too long to reply because then, Susannah is saying, “Please, YN. For me?”
I nod and take the invitation from her, earning myself giant smiles from both of them and a half-happy, half-sad feeling in my heart.
. . .
Jeremiah is ecstatic when I ask him to be my escort the next day. He even does his little happy dance right on the beach, in front of everyone. All of us – me, Jere, Conrad, Belly, and Steven – are out together today. We planned on going swimming then going sailing with one of the boats from Conrad’s job. For now, all we have done is swim and Steven tells us he needs to go.
“He keeps ditching us,” Belly scoffs, throwing sand in the direction her brother left. “What’s he going off to do anyway? Hang out with Shayla?”
Jeremiah and I share a look but stay quiet. It’s not our place to say anything, not when Steven is still figuring everything out himself. Conrad stands up and offers Belly a hand, then Jeremiah does the same to me.
“Let’s go sailing, guys.”
We spend the whole morning on the boat. It’s some of the most fun I have had all summer. When we get back to the beach, I decide to put last night’s plan into action.
After Susannah left, I researched charities I could donate to. The one which stuck out was called The Cousins Sea Turtle Foundation. As kids, I adored sea turtles. Many of them would leave their eggs on the beach all the time and Jeremiah and I would spend hours and hours following them around. There are so many pictures of us with them on our mothers’ digital cameras, some of which Susannah had printed and hung up in the house.
In order to come even a tiny bit close to achieving anything worth being a debutante for, I know I need to raise money and fast. I wrack my brain for ideas and after an hour, all my brain gives me are lemons.
“When life gives you lemons…”
I jump off my bed and rush downstairs. There are only two lemons in the fridge, not nearly enough for what I want to do, but I grab them anyway and set them on the counter. Then I grab my mother’s car keys and drive to Trader Joe’s. I throw in bags of lemons then fork over enough bills to cover the cost.
When I reach home, I get straight to work, my hands knowing what to do after all my life at the country club. Less than an hour later, I have enough lemonade to make about a hundred glasses.
I take my pitchers down to the beach, set up a table, then play some music on my mini speaker. Everyone is out–families with little kids and friends throwing frisbees. No one notices me at first, so I play my music a little louder and start shouting ‘Get your lemonade! Fresh lemonade for sale!’ It’s so childish, something a ten year old would do to make pocket money, but it’s my only avenue of success if I don’t want a free ticket to the ball. The fact that I will be participating in it still has yet to fully hit me.
Jeremiah finds me a little while into the afternoon after I have sold a total of twenty glasses. He tries smiling at me lopsidedly, but I can tell he is unimpressed by what I’m doing. I skipped out on basketball and ice-cream today after our dance lesson to do this, which he does not understand why I’m doing at all.
“YN, it’s so hot out,” he complains, taking a seat on the sand next to me. He’s wearing his Cousins Beach t-shirt, the one you can get at the gift shop. His hair is a bit messy, like he had just woken up from a nap.
“I know. That’s why I’m selling lemonade.” I offer him a glass. “Here. Drink up.”
Jeremiah takes it then reaches into his pocket for money. He drops a twenty on my table and take a big enough swig to finish the lemonade in nearly one gulp. “It’s delicious.”
“Not enough for you to pay twenty dollars for it,” I mumble, trying to give him nineteen back. He shakes his head. “Jere, I wanna do this the right way. Even if I don’t make as much money as the other debs.”
“The other debs had so much time to raise the money. You can’t compare yourself to them.”
“I’ll just have to deal.”
I turn back to my lemonade stand and keep going. Eventually, more people come and I add plenty of dollar bills to my makeshift register, alongside tips. Jeremiah ends up helping, manning the stand each time I run back to the house to make more lemonade. Eventually, we get enough customers that I have to start making the lemonade on the spot.
By the time the sun sets, I have made over two hundred dollars including tips. Me and Jeremiah are packing up when my father strolls by. He gives me two hundred more, which ends up making me cry.
The whole week passes by this way: work, dance lessons, and selling lemonade. Tourists and locals start calling me ‘lemonade girl’ and I don’t mind it. Jeremiah even gets t-shirts made for us with those words and I laugh about it so much that he thinks he’s on top of the world. In my world, he is.
. . .
On the day of the ball, I wake up to my mother carefully pushing my hair off my face. Her nimble fingers are soft against my skin and I can smell her hand cream, the kind that reminds me that everything will be okay.
“Good morning,” she says, and she looks teary eyed. “How did you sleep?”
“Good.” I sit up and rub sleep out of my eyes. “Today’s going to be weird.”
“Why would it be weird?”
I fold my lips in and shrug. “The other debs… they had this whole summer to learn about… being a deb. I just worked.” And partied. And finally got into a relationship with my best friend. Not bad things at all, but there is still a hole in my chest. “What if I mess up today?”
“Then, you mess up,” my mother says. Her voice is featherlight, and she sounds nothing like herself. At all. “There are worse things.”
“I don’t want to embarrass you and dad.”
My mother cups the side of my face. “You never have and you never will. Not even for a moment.” She pats my cheek. “Come, let's start getting you ready for a wonderful night.”
For the entire morning, my mother and I do spa treatments. We do face masks and put leave-in conditioner in our hair and then we watch a movie together–a rom-com. My mother surprises me by laughing at all the right parts, too, and telling me she hopes my love will be even better than what’s on TV. I cuddle closer to her then, wishing for life to always be this way for us.
Esme calls me as I’m heading to Jeremiah’s house to finish getting ready with Belly. We’re taking Laurel’s car to the country club before everyone else so we can get ready with the other girls in the green room. More so than the actual ball, I’m nervous about that. Apart from Shayla and Nicole, I don’t really know those girls. I didn’t spend this summer with them the way Belly did.
“Hey,” my older sister says. “Good luck tonight.”
“Thanks.” I walk a little faster when I see Jeremiah waving at me from his front porch. “How’re the kids?”
“They’re fine. Playing. I have to get stuff sorted with the divorce, so I’ve been leaving them with a sitter this week.” Her voice grows a little more cheerful. “I’m proud of you, you know? For putting up with everything. I’m sorry I wasn’t always there for you like I should have been.”
I swallow so I don’t cry. “Maybe after the summer… could I come stay with you for a bit?”
“I’d like that, YN.”
Jeremiah engulfs me in a tight hug as soon as I reach his side. Then he kisses me, long and hard, as if we didn’t see each other last night when he snuck into my room for the umpteenth time. I’m still a little sore from it, too, which makes me more shy than mad.
“I can’t wait to dance with you tonight,” he says, smiling from ear-to-ear. He twirls me around by the hand until I’m falling into him, falling for him. “We’re gonna blow everyone away by how hot we are. The best waltzers the country club has ever seen!”
I laugh, smiling back at him. “And if we totally suck?”
“Then we’ll just…” he holds me by the waist and moves us side-to-side. “...dance away from everybody.”
We laugh as we walk into the house. Then Jeremiah goes to his room to hang out with Steven, telling me they’ll be going to the driving range for a bit before the ball, and I make my way to the kitchen. Belly is at the breakfast table chewing on a granola bar. She throws me one as I take a seat next to her. We don’t say anything for a long minute, but then I can’t take the silence anymore so I speak up.
“We’re… we’re good, right?”
Belly finishes chewing then replies, “Did you think I was mad at you?”
“I thought you were, you know… after that talk we had before the tourney.”
“It was so stupid. It doesn’t matter.” She finishes off her snack. “I guess I’m just annoyed. It’s been like that ever since Jere met you.”
A sinking feeling explodes in the middle of my chest. I think I stop breathing for a second. “What does that mean?” Belly looks at me and I read the hesitation lining her irises. It looks like she wants to take it back. “Belly, come on. What do you mean by that?”
“I… I guess everything became different after.”
“Different how?”
“I wasn’t the only girl anymore.” Belly licks her lips. “And Jere liked you better. He used to spend so much time with me but then he just stopped. Do you know how many times he promised to teach me how to drive stick this summer and then bailed at the last minute?” Her eyes seem to water. “He was my best friend first and it feels like you stole him.”
I begin to feel my palms sweat. I rest them on my knees under the counter. “Why didn’t you ever tell me you felt that way?”
“Would you have cared if I did? The guys had each other and you had Jere, all the time. No one cared if I was left out.”
“That’s not true, Belly. I cared.”
“Then why didn’t we hang out?”
“We… we did hang out.”
“Not all the time. Not like you did with Jere. Or my brother.”
I look at the granola bar I haven’t touched. The guilt chips away at me. “I’m sorry, Belly. I was selfish. I was so into my own thing that I didn’t think about you.”
Belly sighs. “Sometimes… I think you and Taylor are my only friends in the world, but when we’re back at home, you don’t even call me.”
“You don’t call me either.”
“I did. Or, I tried. I’d leave messages but you’d never call me back.”
I think about it for a minute and realize she is right. Back at home, between extra-curriculars, helping out at my dad’s shop, school work, and spending weekends with Jeremiah, I would go months without speaking to Belly.
I sneak a peek at her, feeling awful. “I’m really, really sorry, Belly.” I sit up straighter, lengthening my shoulders before I fully face her. I take her hand and squeeze it. “I’m gonna do better from now on, I swear.” And I mean it. For what it’s worth, a part of me knows I did–even if unknowingly–steal Jeremiah from her. They were friends first. No matter how you look at things, I came into his life later. A whole ten years later after the Fishers and the Conklins had already built a family together. I should have been more careful about the way I stepped into it. “I’ll be a better friend to you.”
Belly seems to not believe me but I tell myself that it doesn’t matter. I’ll do my hardest to make her believe me. I’ll fix this for the both of us. Because she’s my friend, too. Just like Jeremiah, and Steven, and Conrad. We’re the summer kids. Cousins, the beach, our parents… these things would always keep us together. Forever and ever.
. . .
On the way to the country club, with our dresses hanging in the backseat, I sit in the passenger seat of Laurel’s car teaching Belly how to drive. Even though she makes a few mistakes, for the most part, she’s pretty decent and we make it to the venue in one piece.
The Green Room is alight with laughter and music as the two of us walk in. Shayla rushes up to us with a big smile, sending Belly towards a seat next to Nicole and me next to Gigi. I almost snarl at her for it because Shayla knows I don’t like her, but the younger girl seems determined to help everyone make amends today.
Gigi is fine and we end up sharing a liquid blush. Then she makes a joke about how her dad will end her life if he finds out her escort is really in college and not a senior in high school, and we topple over laughing. It’s funny. I always thought confrontation would kill me, but here I am, after a whole summer of doing it, and I’m one hundred and ten percent alright.
Once all of us are ready, we put on our dresses and take loads and loads of pictures. In the mirror, by the curtains, on our chairs. Paige comes by twice to tell us the time but none of us are listening. We’re having too much fun. When it’s two minutes to curtain call, Nicole rounds up all of us and begins sending us out. Though, she keeps me back for a minute.
“What’s up?”
Nicole smiles. “Conrad’s mom wanted me to give you this.” She hands me a folded note. “I’m really glad you’re doing this with us. It wouldn’t have been right without you.”
I smile and hug her in gratitude. After she’s gone, I open up the note and begin to read it.
My dearest YN,
I know you were hesitant to do this today, but I’m so glad you are. I’m picturing you in your dress, looking every bit as beautiful as you have always been, the prettiest girl in the world. I know you don’t think that about yourself sometimes, but you are. To everyone around you who loves you, you are. Thank you for giving me the chance to see you in a white dress.
I look at you and see the daughter I always dreamed to have. My YN, my sweet girl. I’ve been so lucky to watch you grow up, from then until now.
My girl who loves bigger than her heart, and who makes the best jokes. Watching you and Jeremiah find each other was one of the great joys of my life. I’m happy knowing you both will love one another the best that two people can.
If love is anything, it is the two of you, together.
All of my love always,
Susannah
It is almost asinine, the manner in which I lean against the closest chair, struggling to keep myself standing while at the same time, keeping my tears at bay. I push them back as much as I possibly can, afraid to ruin the makeup Gigi helped me with. No one can see me like this or they will know. I won’t be able to hold it back anymore.
With a wet wipe, I mop up the remnants of the mess then stuff the note in my bra where it cannot be seen. Now that I have read her letter, I never want to be away from it. I wish I could tattoo it on my beating heart.
Nicole asks me if I’m done and ready to go a minute or so later, and I know I have no more time to dwell. I pick up the bottom of my dress and walk out, taking my spot behind Shayla who is deathly quiet. It’s peculiar until I see the girl in front of her and suddenly, everything makes sense. The girl catches me staring at her for a second too long it seems because she turns her head to look at me.
Caught in the headlights, I stammer, “G-Good luck.”
“Thanks,” she returns, cool and collected. Shayla is still hard as stone. Though when her turn arrives, she fixes herself up and walks out with all the poise of a princess.
With her and Steven gone, me and Jeremiah are the last ones on the list. I am counting backwards from ten inside my head when he starts gawking at me from across the stage. I giggle into my flowers and he sobers up pretty quickly after that. I throw him a flying kiss which seems to make him blush.
Then, just like with all the other girls, Paige announces my name and we walk out together. I slip my arm through his. “YN YLN, daughter of Aaron YLN and Wendy YLN,” Paige says into the microphone.. “YN is a student at Helmshire High School, where she is the lead illustrator of the school newspaper and a member of the varsity basketball team. She raised four thousand dollars for the Cousins Sea Turtle Conservation.”
Alarmed by the number, my eyes pop over to Susannah who is grinning at me. Jeremiah follows my line of sight and whispers, “My mom got my dad’s bank to match your pledges.”
“That’s…” Incredible. Amazing. Am I even deserving? “Thank you.”
“What for?”
“Just… for everything. For becoming my friend that day. For being with me now.”
Jeremiah smiles straight ahead for the camera snapping nonstop photographs of us but still manages to say, “I love you, YN. Always.”
As Paige finishes with, “It is my honour to introduce this year’s Cousins Beach Country Club debutantes,” me and all the other girls reach out to hand our mothers our rose bouquets. My mother takes mine and tells me ‘thank you’ while my father tries in earnest to hold back his tears. It’s a little bit funny and Jeremiah giggles about it with me.
From the next table over, Laurel abruptly stands up and heads out of the room, her ex-husband chasing after her. Jeremiah and I share a look and so do Belly and Conrad. We all look at each other, wondering what’s going on. We don’t get much time to think about it before we all curtsy and Paige announces the escort dance, which, hilariously enough, is the event I’m looking most forward to tonight. If there’s anything I love more than Jeremiah, it’s Jeremiah dancing in a tux. While he steps out for a minute to use the washroom, I sit with my mother and she fawns over my dress. I tell myself I’ll come clean about it later.
Then, I go to Susannah, who welcomes me with a big hug and I tell her I loved her letter. I notice her holding her tears back this time and I feel a surge of adoration for her. This woman is the glue which holds all of us together. The one who loves all of us so much more than we know.
Jeremiah’s return a few minutes later is marked by pinched brows and a barely there smile. As he passes by me, he kisses my cheek then gets into position with the other escorts. I notice him talking to Steven who looks as lost as a foreigner in a new country. I almost stand up and go to the two of them, worried about whatever is going on inside my boyfriend’s head, but then the music comes on and everyone starts cheering.
For the whole choreography, Jeremiah is half present. Although his steps are not a second off beat, the remainder of him burns with the knowledge of something fearful, painful. He smiles but it’s not real.
Still, I pretend not to notice for the sake of everyone around us. I will talk to him about it after, away from prying eyes and listening ears. Belly and I sit together and cheer the loudest for our guys, hooting and hollering and when I stick my fingers in my mouth to whistle, it’s the first time I notice Jeremiah truly smile.
He falls into the chair beside me when he’s done, his hairline a little sweaty. I card my fingers through his hair and tell him, “You looked so hot up there, Fishie.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes! I couldn’t take my eyes off you.” I pull on the lapels of his tuxedo. “If I could kiss you right now, I would.”
“And why can’t you?”
“Parents at nine o’clock, babe.”
Jeremiah sneaks a peek at our parents, who are all engrossed in a conversation at the table next to us. He leans his head closer. “Just a quick peck.” And then he gives me just that.
For a while afterwards, Jeremiah and I are on different sides of the ballroom. I sit and mingle with the debs, meeting new girls and somehow making friends fast enough to add them on Instagram. Nicole winks at me, saying, ‘I told you so,’ and I realize I’m the most thankful for her friendship this summer. Last year, I hardly knew her. She was just the girl who was popular, who I knew about only through other people. This year, she’s more. Maybe Belly isn’t the only friend I’ll be calling when I leave Cousins at the end of the summer.
While I’m contemplating this, through the speakers, Paige announces that the official ball dance will begin in three minutes. All the girls and their escorts begin heading to the middle of the room, settling into their proper positions for the dance. I’m supposed to be behind Shayla, but when I get there, Steven is in his spot but Jeremiah is nowhere to be found.
I cup my mouth with my hands and shout, “Steven, where’s Jere?!”
The black haired boy shrugs. “I don’t know! He said he had to go do something.”
Emotions of every kind, mostly bleak and dark, build in towers inside my chest. He keeps leaving the ballroom, without telling anyone, and he looks so much angstier when he comes back. With the sickening feeling raging havoc in both my heart and brain, I pick up my dress and run out. My mother calls my name but I tell her I’ll be right back, not knowing if that’s true.
I look for Jeremiah everywhere. The hallways, by the coat check, and when Liam is leaving the washrooms, I ask him to double check and see if my boyfriend is in there. Left with no other choice, I head to the back doors and into the night.
The air outside is cool, settling atop my bare arms aggressively. I shiver, but work my way through it in order to find the boy on my mind. He is nowhere to be seen. Not by the cafeteria or the cafe or front desk. It’s not until I reach the pool area that I finally see him sitting on the edge of a pool chair with his head bent over a phone. Not his phone, but someone else’s.
I don’t call out to him. With only the two of us here, I know he can hear the clicks of my heels as I creep closer. And when I do, I almost wish I didn’t. Because the face of the boy I see is nothing like I expected.
“Jere…”
Jeremiah rubs his hand down his face, globs of tears rolling in tidal waves down his cheeks. They moisten his neck and his tuxedo and he seems not to care for any of it as he shakes from distress.
I don’t think twice and drop down at his knees in my big dress, not caring for how it pools around me on the ground. Slowly, I bring my hands up to his cheeks, my fingers trembling and frightened. I hope against hope that he is not crying because of the only reason he could be.
“What… what happened?”
Jeremiah licks his lips, over and over until he manages to croak out a few words. “M-My m-mom… YN… my m-mom… she–she… oh, God.” His chest heaves with fresh sobs. “I-I didn’t know. She was–I t-think she’s s-sick… a-again… she’s sick a-again.”
What happens to me then can only be described as being hit by a bullet train despite knowing almost precisely when it would arrive. His words flow over my head, down my face, and bind themselves to my skin. The solid beat of my heart picks up and somewhere in the middle of my chest, I ache. I break apart and I ache in brutal torment.
“Jere, Jere, look at me, please,” I beg, struggling to find my lost voice. I lick my lips, over and over until they are more saliva than muscle. My hands are still shaky but I try to hold him, try to get him to pin his eyes on me. I’m not even thinking as I speak. “Susannah needs you, o-okay? She wanted to tell you, but she was worried that you might lose yourself again and she–”
“Wait,” he interjects. His voice lowers to a whisper as he brings his teary eyes on mine. “You… you knew?” I bite my lip until I’m almost certain I’ve drawn blood. I don’t say anything, not for a long time. His impatience catches up fast. “YN, I’m talking to you. Did you know?”
The same lip wobbles, suspended off the bridge of remorse. I did this all wrong. Right from the very beginning. “Not at first.”
He looks at me, stares really, as if his eyes are searching for some hidden truth in mine. A snippet of humour, something to say this is a prank. I wish it was, even if it were the worst prank in the history of the world.
“When?”
“Huh?”
“When did you find out that my mom’s cancer came back, YN?” Each word feels like a punch to the chest, and each one punctures like it, too.
I close my eyes. I try to think of the ocean, I think about the sea turtles and the sandcastles. I think about Susannah giggling with me and Belly on baking day. I think about Jeremiah telling me he loves me. Which of these things do I still deserve for what I’ve done?
“At the end of June.”
Even though I’m expecting it, nothing sincerely prepares me for the way Jeremiah suddenly stands to his feet. I fall back a bit, catching myself with my palm hitting the ground. He looks back for only a second, his eyes vicious.
“Out of everyone in the world, you were never the person I thought I’d hate someday.” He bites his lip, folds it then, then let's go. “How could you do this to me, YN?”
I whimper as he goes, calling his name as if it will change anything. As if doing so will bring him back and undo this mess. I feel the world ending all around me and I don’t care to fight it.
By the time I make it back to the ballroom, the dance has ended and I hear shouts of both Conrad and Jeremiah’s names. I rush past a few people until I’m by Shayla’s side–Shayla, who looks on the verge of tears and with Steven nowhere to be seen.
“What happened?”
Shayla sniffles. “Jere punched Conrad. I don’t know why.”
Susannah is yelling at them now, her voice booming over the sounds of people’s chatter. People stop and stare and some are even recording the mess on their phones. I wish I could throw them all in the sea.
My mother and father find me crying as Susannah and Laurel take the boys and Belly away. Belly tries to talk to me but I shake my head at her, whispering, “Later.” I don’t know what I’ll do if she finds out I kept the truth from her all summer, too.
I don’t talk at all on the ride home. Not to my mother who asks if I’m okay nor to my father who asks what’s going on. He has so many questions. My mother gets sick of him asking them after the third one and shuts him down, telling him she will talk to him later, that right now, I just need some peace.
At home, I go to my room and change. I do it so slowly you would think I had all the time in the world. In all honesty, I’m terrified about what comes after. What will come after. All the conversations, all the tears. I’ve shed so many of them in the past hour that they may be enough to fill an industrial tank.
For a long while, I lay in bed and cry. I cry and cry and cry. I hurt so much, in so many places, that I feel more hurt than human. The sadness hangs in my heart and in my mind, never letting go.
I tell myself not to think about anyone. It’s not my place. I was the one who lied. I kept lying to everyone all summer when I didn’t share what I knew. I said to myself that it was for Conrad, it was Susannah, it was Jeremiah, but really–what was I doing? I was protecting myself. I was petrified. I didn’t know how to tell anyone the truth. Not when it was the scariest truth in the world.
From the end of my bed, my phone buzzes with a text. I launch myself at it, knowing it won’t be Jeremiah but still hoping it might be.
It’s Steven.
Stevie: what the fuck yn
I call him immediately. He picks up in seconds.
“Why are you calling me? What the fuck is wrong with you?” He growls, pissed off beyond belief.
“I know you’re mad,” I reply, grabbing my–Jeremiah’s–Patriots hoodie and cautiously opening my bedroom door. My parents are asleep but I need to sneak out. I have to. I must. I take the stairs slowly so they won’t make a sound. “But please let me into the house. I need to see Jere.”
Steven throws out some expletives before answering me. “And why the fuck do you think you deserve that?”
“I-I don’t, but please, Steven. Please. I’ll do anything.”
“What you should’ve done was tell us what you knew all summer. Who the hell does that?!”
“I’m sorry, I’m just–” I’m on the porch when I murmur. “I’m sorry. I messed up big time.”
He scoffs. “Yeah, big time.” He seems to shuffle around on the other end before mumbling, “Text me when you’re here and I’ll let you in.”
“Thanks, Stevie.”
I make it to the Fisher house in record time. I think I run so fast that I might need new shoes. I’m huffing and struggling for oxygen on their porch, my hand on the door to help with the breathing. I text Steven, ‘I’m here,’ then wait for him to open the door. He arrives less than a minute later wearing the dirtiest look he has ever given me.
I skirt past him after whispering “I’m sorry,” and take the stairs two at a time until I reach the bedrooms. Then I head straight for Jeremiah’s, the one next to Belly’s. Belly, who I can hear sobbing in her room while Laurel soothes her. The ache in my chest tightens again.
I don’t knock when I get to his room. I just walk right in. Like always, it’s unlocked. The lights are off but I know this room like the back of my hand. It takes me no time at all to find his bed and slip into it. The mattress dips with the weight of my body, and I hear the way Jeremiah’s breath hitches when he realizes someone is next to him.
“Go away,” he grumbles, his voice coated with tears.
I lick my lips and lay down beside him. “How did you know it was me?”
“I can smell you. Watermelons from your hair.”
I choke back my own sob at that. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m telling you to go, YN.”
“I’m sorry, Jeremiah. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for it to happen this way. I just–”
He breathes in fast. “I hate you. I really hate you.”
“I-I know. I deserve that.”
“You don’t know what you deserve.”
I close my eyes and nod my head, despite knowing he cannot see me in the dark. “I know.”
“And somehow, I hate myself more,” he continues, his words crackly like a fire, like he wants to burn me with each one. “I spent this whole summer trying to make you fall in love with me when I should have been spending time with my mom.”
This time, when he cries and I break apart, I forge through the selfishness of my very being and wrap my arms around him from the back. There are stars in the night sky tonight which I’m thankful to when he does not push me away. On his neck, on his shoulders, and in his hair, I spend the whole night whispering, “I love you, I’m sorry,” praying he hears even one.
