Chapter Text
Chapter 1- Coffee
For some reason, maybe out of loneliness, maybe out of nostalgia, or maybe because I just missed him, I decided to reach out. He rarely ever posts. Like, consider it a miracle if you get one post a year out of him. But that day, he shared something in his stories about the latest project he was working on. Some research thing. It was quick, blink-and-you-miss-it, but I saw it. And against all logic, against every voice in my head saying don’t do it, Belly, I sent it anyway:
Hey! Just curious, will Dr. Fisher, Bioethicist, be gracing us with his presence this year at the annual Fisher Fourth Party? I’m thinking of going down a few days early to celebrate my birthday. A late gift to myself.
I hit send before I could second-guess myself, then immediately had the urge to throw my phone into the ocean. Because what was I even doing? We hadn’t talked in months. Actually, probably years. And yet there I was, fishing for a response like it was one of those summers again. Like I was sixteen, and he was still the one boy who made everything feel both possible and impossible all at once.
He saw it almost right away. That little seen under my message appeared like a tease. And then… nothing. I told myself I didn’t care. That I was just being friendly. That it didn’t mean anything. But of course it did. It always did when it came to him.
I checked again a few minutes later, against my better judgment, and there they were–the heavily anticipated little dots, bouncing across the screen.
Bounce. Gone.
Bounce. Gone.
Then finally, they found a steady rhythm.
Hey, Belly. Yeah, actually, I’ll be there. I’ve got a conference on the East Coast after the Fourth, so I already booked my flight. I’ll land on the first. How about coffee and good muffins at The Brightest Bean? Friday at noon?
I couldn’t help it. I started typing immediately. Who cares anyway. This is Conrad. The guy I’ve known since forever.(The guy you’ve loved since forever.) I pushed the thought back down where it belonged and finished typing.
Yep! Works for me. See ya then :)
The week came and went, but somehow it managed to drag and fly by all at once. The anticipation of seeing Conrad again made the days crawl at an unbearable pace, while the rest of my life—grading about a million essays and reminding teenagers in summer classes that French literature still matters—sped by in a rushed blur.
And then Thursday night came, and I was standing in front of my closet, trying to pack, but completely freaking out. My choices were embarrassingly boring. I hadn’t really noticed it until that moment, until I started planning to see him again. The things I used to love when I was with him—florals, eyelets, all those summer crochets—were long gone, replaced by sleek neutrals and drab professional pieces. Somewhere along the way, between the “You’re seriously wearing that?” and “You look like a highlighter.” comments, I’d swapped being myself for being practical. Blend in. Shrink. Fit.
So I settled on a black knit t-shirt dress with a boatneck that tied at the waist. It wasn’t anything special, but it worked. The boatneck framed my short bob just right, and the tie cinched in a little, giving me the best waistline I’d seen since high school.
The Brightest Bean looked exactly like it always had. The quirkiest little coffee shop tucked inside the base of the old lighthouse. The paint on the shutters were still just as chipped as ever, and the string lights still hung just as proud. As I stepped inside, the smell of dirtbomb muffins sent me right back to all those summers with the boys, fighting over the last “good muffin”. For a second, I could almost see it again: Conrad catching the one Steven had thrown him across the kitchen, handing it to me with that soft smile.
My heart felt like it was doing somersaults in my chest. It was ridiculous, really. I wasn’t sixteen anymore. I wasn’t waiting for Conrad Fisher to notice me in a sundress at the summer house, or hoping he’d loan me his hoodie at one of our late night lit mag meetings. I was a grown woman, a teacher, someone who had an actual retirement account and matching dishware. Someone with a wedding band on her left hand. But somehow, none of that mattered right now.
Every time the bell over the door chimed, I looked up too fast. I tried to act casual, like I wasn’t totally unraveling, like I hadn’t spent half the morning debating whether my eyeliner was too much.
And then I started to wonder…what if he didn’t come? What if he’d changed his mind? What if he disappeared just when I’d finally let myself believe he’d show up. But I knew that wasn’t true. When I was younger, I used to believe in magic, at least just a little. I used to think he would appear out of thin air whenever I was thinking about him. I didn’t know if it was coincidence, or fate, I just knew he was always there when I needed him. Somehow, he always was.
And maybe that’s what made this feeling even more intense. This nervous energy. It was a whole different kind though. One I hadn’t felt in so long. This gut feeling… It kind of feels like a hole in the center of my core. When I ignore it, when I go against what I know deep down…there’s this buzzing there…but not the good kind. It’s more like the game Operation, where one wrong move makes everything buzz in the worst way.
But when I’m close to what’s right, the buzzing lightens into something completely opposite. The buzzing changes frequencies. It’s still electric, but in a way that doesn’t feel fatal.
It feels alive.
The hole fills with something real and whole and warm. Like warm tea spilling in while butterflies release from their cage, rushing through every inch of me. Right down to my fingertips.
And the truth is, there have only been a few times in my life I’ve ever felt that, whether it was one way or the other. And most of the time… I talked myself out of it either way.
Like that feeling when I was standing in front of Jeremiah, listening to him say the words I knew all along. We shouldn’t get married. But I was still so dead set on it. Like I needed to prove something to everyone else, and mostly myself.
And then there was my actual wedding day. The day I married Corey Wheeler. Why did I say yes? Why did I make it that far? Because Corey was safe, at first. He was the exact opposite of Conrad Beck Fisher. There was nothing between us so intense it scared me to lose it. But there was everything there that told me it didn’t fit. He didn’t see me. Didn’t accept me. No matter what I did, I was still too bright. Too loud. Too passionate. Too much. I never questioned where I stood with him, because he didn’t mind using his words to tell me exactly how he feels. And when that didn’t work, well, he found other ways.
I had this intense gut instinct to run. To tell my dad everything. To say, I can’t do this. He’s not the one. But... sunk cost. Too much time. Too many people. Too far in. And in the back of my mind, if I was being honest with myself, I had this fantasy—that someone would come and save me by whisking me away. That Conrad would come, just one more time and say, “Don’t do it. Don’t marry him. Be with me. Marry me.”
And then there was the day at the coffee shop. Except on that day, there was no instinct telling me to run. There was no low, sickening buzz in my stomach. There was only this insane knowing that whatever was about to happen would be both inevitable and would absolutely change my life forever. It made me feel alive again.
I traced a fingertip around the top of my chai latte forcing a deep breath. It’s just coffee. Just Conrad.
Except, when a dark gray rental car pulled into an empty parking spot out front, and I saw him get out, somehow even taller, broader, with traces of sun still on his skin, I realized there was no such thing as just Conrad. Not for me. Not ever.
I thought my heart would beat right out of my chest. I knew he wouldn't see me tucked behind the wall of the booths, so I got up, smoothed my plain black t-shirt dress down and tugged at the bow tied around my waist before I took a deep breath, and started for the door. I turned the corner, making my way around the line of booths just as the bell on the door started to chime.
And then, he walked in.
I couldn't move. It felt like time stopped. Like everything going on around us was just a mirage, and we were the only real things there in that moment. My breath caught the second I saw him through the glass door as the bell echoed into the empty coffee shop.
Time had changed us both, sure, but the second his eyes met mine, I realized it hadn’t changed the way I felt about him at all. Just one look from those seaglass green-blue eyes, and suddenly I was that girl again—heart racing for the boy who had once held it like it was fragile and precious, and somehow never broke it the way he could have.
Conrad’s hair was the same thick, messy wave it had always been, falling just enough into his eyes to make you want to push it back for him. The brown was rich, but more golden now, bleached from the California sun. Just like always, every time I thought about it I wanted to run my fingers through it.
His skin was the same as I remembered, bronzed in that effortless way he always seemed to tan. But despite all the golden sun-kissed hues, he still felt like a shadow you couldn’t quite reach. There was always a part of him that felt like the dark side of the moon you wished you could see. That quiet intensity of his could seem as cold as ice. Distant. Locked. To most. But deep down all I remember thinking is I wonder if it would be possible to take someone’s pain away with a kiss.
It’s always a little surreal how memories can come flooding back, like walking through a door you thought had been locked forever, but now you have the key, and you realize it’s open again, and how does this feel exactly as it was? Exactly as you remembered? It was his eyes. That look in his eyes—the one that could always see right through me—that was exactly the same. Time hadn’t dulled it. If anything, it had only sharpened it, pulling everything I thought I’d built around my heart tumbling down. His eyes weren’t the kind of blue that felt shallow or vacant. They were like the ocean, deep and always shifting, but catching the light in ways that let me see what’s behind them. There was something there that I hadn’t found anywhere else. It was almost painful, how much he could say with just his eyes. That’s what I remember more than anything. When my mind was spinning a hundred miles per hour, all it took was one look from him and everything melted away. His eyes told me everything without a single word. I could always count on that.
I see it now, the way he looked at me. Like I was something worthy of being marveled at. Like he was trying his hardest to cherish every moment in my presence. The way his eyes traced roadmaps over the curves, straight to my heart. The way they lingered on mine. Took all of me in. They weren’t studying me, sizing me up, or looking for any cracks to use for ammunition later when he needed it. They were soaking me in. They saw me.
Our eyes locked, and just like that, I was her again.
He smiled, a real, genuine smile, and my stomach did that one showstopper gymnastics routine it only ever did for him. His smile somehow slowed everything down, made the world shrink until there was nothing else but us. Had I forgotten how devastating it was? How every time he smiled like that, the butterflies swarmed back in, making me feel like I might actually float away? I didn’t think so, but that moment made me question it.
And then he did the last thing I expected. There was no pause at the door, no invisible fortress between us. His arms opened wide immediately as he walked straight over and wrapped them around me, scooping me up next to him tightly.
I felt my insecurities creep up. I knew he saw how much I’d changed. He had to. All the weight I’d gained, the lines I’d earned. I was certain he saw the miserable mess of me, but he looked at me like nothing had changed, like I was still exactly the girl he had always known. Like I was still her.
Belly Age 15,
Chesterbrook High, PA
It was one of those cold November days that made you think twice about living in a place like Chesterbrook, Pennsylvania. But I was wearing my favorite Rory Gilmore–ish sweater, and the leaves crunched under my suede Birkenstocks on the way to class that day, so at least there was that.
I was sitting in my elective class during third period—Lit Mag—when someone knocked on the door. Ms. Dunning waltzed over, just as dramatically as ever to greet the office aide. I went back to doodling in my notebook before she opened the door. Probably writing something along the lines of Isabel Susannah Fisher over and over again with my purple glitter gel pen, and filling the margins with little hearts everywhere with the dedication of a medieval monk scribing scriptures.
Because, as much as I didn’t want to be that girl, I was. I had been her since I was ten years old, and I didn’t see that changing anytime soon. That girl always wanted to know what the Winter Conrad was like. The Conrad with cold lips warmed by hot cocoa, the one who thawed his hands by the furnace in the hall, or the one who might have cuddled up next to a girl by a bonfire.
Suddenly I was jealous of all the Boston girls who went to his school. The ones who selfishly got to live that life for the whole school year, when I just had him three months in the summer. The summer Conrad was all I knew. And I would never get to be that girl.
I didn’t look up when I heard footsteps shuffling into the classroom, or even when Ms. Dunning’s high-pitched theater voice rang out into the dry air.
“Class, we have a new student.”
“Hi.”
My heart stopped. I didn’t have to look up to know who it was. I had played that voice over and over in my head hundreds—probably millions—of times over the years. There was no doubt about it. Conrad Fisher.
Could it really be?
“Class, this is Mr. Conrad Fisher, and he’s joining us from—Oh my— Boston Latin School! Make sure to help him feel welcome.” She smiled as she gestured for Conrad to take a seat.
“You can sit anywhere you’d like. Class, I want you to break into groups or partners and review this week’s submissions together. Make sure to take ample notes on what you select and why it would be a good choice for our magazine.”
Conrad’s eyes locked with mine, and I couldn’t blink. Couldn’t move. I just watched helplessly as he walked toward me, all cool and sat down right behind me.
I could kill my mom. Why didn’t she tell me something like this? If I had known I was going to see Conrad, of course I would’ve actually washed my hair instead of throwing it into a loose side braid. I would’ve worn a little more makeup, or put on that perfume I never wear—the vanilla and lemon one my dad brought back from his trip to Paris.
Instead, I swallowed down all the frustration I had towards my mother and tried to smile in a way that didn’t look completely like I was a deer caught in headlights.
He sat down, putting his binder down first before meeting my gaze, looking at me like it was the most normal thing in the world for him to be sitting in class next to me. At my school. In lit mag.
“What?” He said with a feigned look of… annoyance? Indifference?
“What? Are you kidding me, Conrad? What are you doing here?”
“Laurel didn’t tell you?”
“No. She doesn’t tell me anything, apparently. What the hell is going on? Why are you here? In Lit mag?”
“....Because Adam Fisher is a dick and it’s the exact opposite of signing up for football.”
I looked at him expectantly. “And?”
“....And I’m pissed at my dad so…”
“No, Conrad. I mean yes… why Lit Mag, sure—but more importantly—WHY ARE YOU AT CHESTERBROOK HIGH?” I hissed under my breath.
“She really didn’t say… anything to you guys about it?”
“No. My Mother. LAUREL PARK did not tell us anything. Are you joking? She’s just as hermetic as you are.”
Heads turned. A few whispers floated across the room. I could feel the other girls in the class stealing glances, clearly shocked, while Conrad just looked at me like nothing had changed. It was both thrilling and terrifying.
“Hermetic. Gold star for little Belly Button, using big words now, huh?”
How did he always do that? Make me feel like I was trying way too hard, and he was cool as a cucumber? “Shut up.” I spat out under my breath.
“Do you want me to be hermetic, Isabel, or is there another fancy word I should try out instead?”
I swallowed a little too loudly, cheeks starting to burn. “You can try out whatever words you want. Doesn’t affect me.”
His eyebrows flicked up, the tiniest movement I almost missed. And then I thought I heard him mutter under his breath, “You sure about that?” before he grinned and rifled through the lit submissions Ms. Dunning had laid on our desks.
“So… what’s going on, Con?” I asked, trying to sound casual, though my stomach dropped.
“Just… family shit,” he said, voice low, detached, eyes scanning the room before meeting mine for a moment.
“What kind of family stuff could be going on that moved you here?”
He met my eyes steadily; all that intensity I was used to channeled and concentrated almost painfully, and shook his head slightly. “Belly—can we not—we’ll talk tonight, okay?” He returned to the submissions, perfectly composed, like nothing had distracted him.
“Okay,” I breathed.
Ms. Dunning walked by and Conrad slid one of the submissions my way before spilling out:
“Read this one and tell me what you thought about it. Honestly I think its themes of using allegory to express neoliberalism and how many people have abdicated any responsibility or connection to the world highlight the emptiness of modern society.”
I almost rolled my eyes—OF COURSE Conrad somehow decoded all of that between our silent spaces in the last five minutes. Why was I even surprised?
I guess I was going to have to get used to this Conrad. The one who didn’t play football anymore, the one who wore sweaters and had rosy cheeks in winter, the one who sat next to me in Lit Mag and talked about things like allegories for neoliberalism. The one who quietly dismantled every essay, and somehow knew just how to dismantle me too, making me feel small but not insignificant, and awake all at the same time. And I was elated to get to know Winter Conrad.