Chapter Text
Belly eyes her text thread to Conrad with trepidation, a sinking feeling in her stomach as she types out a new message. It hasn’t been touched in six months. Their last exchange had been a stiff well wishes for his 31st birthday, to which he had simply replied “Thanks.”
Belly (11:43am)
Hey, the car rental won’t let me take the vehicle because it’s under your card and they want proof I’m not stealing. Could you call them, please?
She smiles tightly at the car rental attendant—Joshua, according to his crooked name tag—who looks unimpressed at her off-kilter fumbling. “I’ll just...” Belly gestures at the uncomfortable looking chairs off to the side, and Joshua sniffs in response. Belly sighs, taking a seat. Her message is acknowledged as delivered, but there’s no confirmation that it’s been read yet. Belly wonders if Conrad’s finally turned his read receipts off all these years later; she certainly teased him enough about it back in the day that it’s possible he’s finally listened to her all these years later.
When her phone rings, Belly is greeted by a picture of a smiling Conrad looking up at her. She hadn’t realized she still had this contact photo for him, and it makes her heart pang to see the softness in his face that she knows isn’t as present anymore with age. The Conrad looking at her has to be about 18 or 19, which feels weird to be so unsure about. It’s odd to realize that her memory of him has faded enough that she can’t place the month it was taken in anymore.
“Hey,” she says, picking up the phone and wondering when the last time Conrad Fisher graced her call history is. Honestly, she can’t even remember the last time she really spoke to him for longer than a few seconds across a blurry screen. During the holidays, he sometimes makes an appearance on FaceTime, but Belly always busies herself with an excuse—washing dishes, a bathroom break, feeding her niece—to avoid getting Laurel’s phone passed to her. “Did you get my text? Can you call the—”
“You didn’t give me their number,” Conrad interrupts flatly. His voice is a little rough, like maybe he’s just woken up. Belly wonders if maybe he has; she has no reason to know his schedule at the hospital. She closes her eyes briefly, trying not to remember what it’s like to wake up next to him. She really doesn’t need that trip down memory lane right now.
“Right,” she says, wincing when it comes out a little awkwardly. It’s hard to believe that she once thought he was the easiest person in the world to talk to. “Okay, let me hand you over.” Belly walks over to the rental counter, where Joshua looks away from his computer to meet her gaze with a judgmental stare. On the other end of the line, she hears Conrad breathing quietly. “I have him on the line,” she says. “Do you mind?”
Joshua sighs, holding out his hand, and Belly passes the phone over. “Hi, Dr. Fisher,” Joshua says, referencing his documents. “I have Isabel Fisher here waiting for her vehicle, but she can’t seem to verify that she knows you.” There’s a short pause during which Belly strains to hear what Conrad's response. “Yes, I can see that she has the same last name as you, but seeing as the address on her ID doesn’t match the one we have for you on file, I just need you to confirm that your wife can take the vehicle you’ve reserved.”
Belly’s stomach immediately does this funny thing it’s only ever done for Conrad where it feels like it’s fallen out of her body. Every time something like this happens, it feels like her insides are suddenly laid bare for the world to see—like a mere glance at her would reveal the truth, which is that her body has sort of never stopped responding to him in this way. She’s just been very, very good at putting enough distance between them to forget that she does.
Belly starts sweating, and for a moment, there’s only silence on the other end of the line. Conrad sounds like he’s clearing his throat, and when he starts talking again, it’s in an unintelligible, low murmur. Listening attentively, Joshua has gotten a little red in the face.
“Your—right, sorry, Dr. Fisher. Your sister-in-law, I understand. The address difference makes a lot more sense now. Alright, so if you could just confirm your date of birth for me, I can hand over the car to Mrs. Fisher and we can have her on her way.”
There’s a few more minutes of back and forth, but Belly hears none of it, her heart pounding in her ears in an embarrassingly distracting way. Your wife, your wife, your wife, her brain keeps replaying over and over, which makes her feel so immensely guilty at her inability to stop internally chanting it that she starts pacing for a distraction. Her right knee sends a warning signal to her brain when she stomps on her leg a little too hard, but she ignores it. It isn’t masochism if she deserves it, right? Besides, the pain helps a little, yanking her out of her current predicament and back into her body. Her insides have been all scooped up, tucked tightly back inside of her—a broken Belly, sewn back together so well that no one can tell that she’s held together with the sheer grit of a single, tightly woven seam.
She wishes she could text Jeremiah. More accurately, she wishes she could text her husband, but Joshua the rude car rental attendant has her phone, on which he is talking to Conrad, her brother-in-law, and Belly is realizing that she might also have a phone addiction with the way that she can’t keep her hands still without it. It’s a lot to take in all at once.
Finally, Joshua is saying, “Thanks, Dr. Fisher. Have a great day. Yes, you too, sir.” Belly breathes a sigh of relief, waiting for Conrad to be handed back to her, but Joshua hangs up the phone instead.
“He…didn’t want to talk to me?” she asks before she can help herself. It’s so pathetic that she can’t even be mad when Joshua raises a judgmental eyebrow at her. He knows, she thinks desperately, which is stupid. Of course he doesn’t. Very likely, he doesn’t even care. Very likely, she shouldn’t care either.
“Welcome to California, Mrs. Fisher,” Joshua says, ignoring her question, as if it doesn’t even deign a response. Fair enough, Belly thinks. “Here are your keys. I hope you enjoy your stay.”
Almost eight months before arriving on the west coast, Belly submits her abstract to AASP with 11 minutes to spare before the conference submission deadline and her husband hovering distractingly over her shoulder. Neither of them bother to comment on the large, glaring banner at the top of the webpage that reads “39th Annual Conference: October 6–8, San Francisco.” Besides, Belly bargains with herself, why should she have to say anything? Her brother left California two years ago to expand his company back out east. It’s Jeremiah’s brother who lives a 16-minute drive from the conference hall, a fact that she is probably not supposed to know, but has catalogued semi-obsessively nonetheless.
“There’s no fucking way your conference is called ‘ass,’” Jeremiah cackles, for some reason chewing a cracker directly in her ear. She can always tell when he’s using humour to diffuse tension, an avoidant mechanism that used to make her smile and now just makes her grind her teeth.
Belly sighs. “It's ah-sp,” she enunciates. “The Association for Applied Sport Psychology. I applied last year, too, remember?”
“I'm just bugging you,” Jeremiah grins, and her heart does melt a bit. “Sorry, Bells. You know I’m proud of you. I am. They've got to take your work this year. You got this, okay?”
Six months before arriving on the west coast, Belly receives an email that her talk has been accepted as a part of a symposium on stress management in professional athletes. She’s over the moon, as is her husband.
"You, me, California. We can experience it like locals!" Jeremiah says enthusiastically, which immediately makes it difficult to remind him that this trip is meant for work when he won’t stop rambling about taking her to all his favourite west coast haunts.
There’s still no talk of the conference destination being Conrad’s home city, which isn't entirely odd. Belly knows that the Fisher brothers have an unspoken ‘don’t talk about Belly to each other and don’t talk about each other to Belly’ rule that’s in everyone’s best interests; any time Jeremiah goes to California on his own, he comes back talking only about where he ate and all the waves he surfed on. It’s as if his brother is a mere afterthought to a pleasant, solitary vacation. Still, it’s a no-brainer trip for a couple who hadn’t gone anywhere together in two years. Belly’s program covers the cost of one hotel room, so she confirms her name in the conference’s limited discount block, and Jeremiah begins to book restaurant reservations he’s excited for.
But that’s before the budget cuts. That’s before, four months before she arrives on the west coast, Belly receives the email from her program that starts, “Dear Isabel, we regret to inform you…” and her supervisor sympathetically tells her that he can still cover the flight and conference fees, but room and board are out of the question. That’s before she learns that Jeremiah’s savings account was depleted on his Vegas trip a few months prior when he did a reunion trip with his frat, and that neither of them will, in fact, be able to scrounge up the money to stay in a conference hotel that costs over $400 per night.
They fight about it for weeks, until three months before Belly arrives on the west coast, when Jeremiah suggests Conrad’s place as an alternative. It shocks Belly so deeply that she can’t even bring herself to respond. Instead, she stares at her husband for a while, looking, she presumes, like a gape-mouthed fish. Jeremiah takes it as a positive affirmation. After that, he makes all the arrangements, which she is grateful for, even if he probably only does it out of guilt after the loud, explosive fight they have about credit card debt, savings, and all the stupid money-related things that Belly thought Jeremiah would learn responsibility for after college and never did.
She hears only the tail-end of her husband’s initial phone conversation with Conrad, in which the phrases I’m your brother and she’s your sister-in-law, man and all these fucking years later and you don’t even care about us, do you? get thrown around. Belly gets in the shower so that she can use the sound of the water to drown out miserable conversation, and also, pathetically, she uses the shower head to get herself off to the thought that Conrad can hear what’s happening in her house, even if he can’t hear what’s happening upstairs to her right now. It’s all a fantasy, so it’s fine. At least, this is what she tells herself as the ache between her legs gives way to an orgasm that makes her toes curl. Afterward, she runs the water cold until she’s shivering so badly it’s the only thing she can think about. The temperature makes her knee ache the way it always does.
When she gets back downstairs, Jeremiah is smiling at her like there was never any fight—hers and his, nor his and Conrad’s—in the first place. Somehow, Conrad has agreed to his demands, the way he’s always caved to his younger brother’s demands, just because he loves him. Give me your soda, Conrad. Give me the Xbox controller. Give me the last good muffin. Give me your girlfriend while you’re at it.
“I’ve also booked us a car so we can go sight-seeing and you can get to the conference without having to use public transit,” Jeremiah tells her as an added apology for all the stress in their household, kissing her wet hair. “And Con will be…fine. He said he’s excited to have us.”
Belly assumes that the latter of his statements is a lie, but the details surrounding the car also being a lie takes her by surprise. She only finds out when she gets the confirmation email for their car, the bill under Conrad’s name and the visible four digits of the credit card number not belonging to her husband. Belly accepts it anyway, too tired to fight again, and she and her husband pretend very successfully like seeing Conrad together for the first time in years wasn’t going to be weird. She and Jeremiah have gotten good at that in the last few years of marriage—the pretending.
That’s why, a week before Belly arrives on the west coast, when Jeremiah comes home almost in tears because the contract he’s in charge of at Breaker is in sudden turmoil and there are a string of absolutely mandatory meetings he has to attend for the next three days, Belly simply sighs and turns on her computer to cancel his flight. Bleary-eyed and slumped over, Jeremiah doesn’t even seem that shocked at her reaction. He doesn’t even try to tell her that she can’t go on her own, which is maybe the kindest, real gesture he’s shown in years. She hums softly, and hits the ‘request refund’ button.
It’s only a day before Belly arrives on the west coast that reality finally sets in. She’s in the middle of packing her suitcase, and Jeremiah is watching her with a twisted frown on his face. His lips keep parting, like he’s going to ask her something, but he never does, and she doesn’t press him. Mostly, she’s thinking about how she is going to see Conrad Beck Fisher for the first time in years. She’s going to stay in his house, eat his food, judge how clean he keeps his bathroom, and run her finger down the spine of the books he keeps on his shelves.
Importantly, she reminds herself, she is not going to think about the last time they stayed in a house together, the summer of her wedding. She’s different now, as is he. Time may not heal all wounds, but it sure bandages them well enough that what's left is no longer a gash, but a scar. (I love you, Belly can still hear the echo of Conrad's voice say sometimes. I will never not love you.) In the end, she had married Jeremiah. The things that Conrad had said back then—the things she had said—are water under the bridge. He's family now, a fact that she has been very carefully telling everyone who’s asking where she’s staying for her trip, like acknowledging it will force her not to forget it when she arrives.
"I'm going to miss you while you're away," Jeremiah says while she carefully folds her blazer, and Belly tries not to think about how it sounds more like something he's supposed to say than something he feels.
"Yeah," she agrees easily, because she knows this script intimately by now. "Me, too."
Belly pulls her sleek rental car in front of Conrad’s townhouse with a shaky breath. She turns off the car, and when the hum of the engine quiets, the silence that follows is deafening. She can’t really bring herself to move, the idea of opening the car door—and the din of the street that will follow—paralyzing her. Frozen to her leather seat, the slanted front window of the car feels like a shield against the home in front of her, which she’s just now seeing for the first time, despite the fact that Conrad moved in three years ago.
Belly’s thought about looking up his house on Google Maps many times since then, but she’s always stopped herself. It’s always been easier not knowing. Still, she’s not perfect. She’s imagined things, even when she isn’t supposed to. She’s imagined a sleek, modern condo with gray bricks she could make fun of. She’s imagined minimalist flooring and empty walls, because Conrad likes to keep things tidy, and she’s imagined teasing him about his lack of throw pillows. What she’s never imagined is a gorgeous, mid-20th century home with a blue-curtained bay window that immediately makes her want to build a book nook into it to curl up into in the evenings while she sits with a blanket over her feet. Belly has certainly never imagined fourteen steep steps leading up to a black door with a muted, stain-glass window, nor has she ever pictured the plant pots that line the edge of the staircase, each with a different type of flower growing out of them. Somehow, the mismatched petals look neat and orderly; it’s as endearing as it is frustrating.
In another universe, she might tease him about this. You garden, now? she imagines herself asking. Imaginary Conrad would roll his eyes and tousle her hair. His ears would get a little red at the tips when he would say, Yes, Belly, and what’s it to you? Her name would sound reverent in his mouth, and then maybe, just maybe, she would lean up to kiss him until something new and beautiful flowered between them, shaped—much like his garden—by Conrad’s capable hands.
A knock on her car door startles Belly out of her reverie, and she jumps, reflexively grabbing her chest. When she looks up, a slightly older woman in a hijab is looking at her with an oddly bright smile on her face. She looks to be around Belly’s mother’s age, and she points at the button on Belly’s door, miming for her to manually unrolling the window. Ignoring every lesson Laurel Park ever instilled into her about stranger danger and getting scammed in cities she is unfamiliar with, Belly listens.
“Are you Isabel?” the woman asks excitedly before Belly even has the change to open her mouth. The quiet whir of the window finally settles, fully open.
“I—yes?”
“Oh!” The woman in front of Belly claps her hands together with a smile. “I swear I was not watching you. I was just out for a walk when I spotted a beautiful, unfamiliar woman out front, and I knew you were coming. I’ve seen pictures, you know. Your brother-in-law is always telling me I am nosy, but I know he does not really mean it. I’m Maryam.”
Belly can’t help but like her immediately. “You know Conrad?” she asks, intrigued. She doesn’t know the last time she’s spoken with someone who knows Conrad but who doesn’t know her, and here she is with a woman who is presumably his neighbour.
“Do I know Conrad?” Maryam snorts. “That man is at my house twice a week eating my food and fattening me up with those muffins he loves to bake. My youngest has started calling him Uncle. He blushes so red every time. Has he always been so charming?”
Belly blushes, too. “That’s Conrad,” she says breezily, doing her best imitation of a vaguely detached sister-in-law. “He always says that my, uh, husband is the charmer, but well, you know Conrad.”
This time, it’s Maryam who blushes. “Your Jeremiah is a good boy. You’re very lucky to have him,” she says, and Belly snorts quietly.
“He’s lucky to have me,” she jokes in return, which has been her go-to line every time someone says something like this to her. Sometimes when she says it in front of Jeremiah, he reacts by holding her hand a little too tightly, like he’s being reminded of how easily she could have been his someone else’s instead. Belly doesn’t know why she can’t stop saying it. Maybe it’s the fact that Jeremiah has refused to ever speak up about it. Maybe it’s the way she wonders if one day she’ll say it enough times that it will all blow up in her face without her having to do anything about it.
She can imagine Jeremiah play-flirting with this woman so clearly, teasing her about how pretty her red dress is (and, Belly notices, it really is a gorgeous outfit). For a moment, it hurts—not the idea of Jeremiah charming Maryam, but that he clearly knows her and has never told Belly about her after one of his trips to see Conrad. How many other things have they kept from each other over the years just to pretend that the cracks in their foundation aren’t there?
Maryam laughs at her words the way people always do, and opens the door to the car. “Come on, Isabel,” she says, gesturing for her to get out of the car. “Let me use you as an excuse to see your brother-in-law. He’s been keeping too many of my containers hostage and I am running out of things to store my leftovers in.” Suddenly, Belly’s nerves are back. She’s sure that she’s got a pinched expression on her face, because Maryam frowns. “Are you alright?” she asks gently.
Belly forces a smile onto her face, fumbling for an excuse. “I’m fine, thank you. I, uh, had a knee injury a few years back. Stairs are a bit hard for me now, and I didn’t realize I was going to lug my suitcase up so many of them.” It isn’t untrue, but it doesn’t mean she hadn’t planned on doing it anyway.
“Oh!” Maryam says, emphatically nodding her head. “Don’t you worry, dear. We can make the men carry the bags. I’ll grab your brother for you.”
“Wait,” Belly tries to say, but Maryam is already hurrying away toward the front door. Belly sighs, undoing her seatbelt and stepping out of the vehicle. She can’t help but feel slightly nauseated—at Maryam’s shortening of Conrad’s role to her brother, at the idea of seeing said brother for the first time in years, and at the fact that the first thing she’s going to do in front of him is appear weak. If Maryam hadn’t shown up, Belly would have carried her luggage upstairs without a single complaint, but she’s accidentally laid her cards on the table, and it seems that there’s no going back.
She busies herself with opening the trunk of the vehicle and pretending like everything is normal. All things considered, Belly thinks she’s doing wonderfully. To her left, she can hear Conrad’s front door open, and then the quiet sound of his voice is in her ears. Painfully, she closes her eyes and very deliberately does not listen to the actual content of his words; she will not have a repeat incident of innards-on-the-ground Belly who made an appearance at the car rental. Instead, she counts backward from 10, willing the exercise to ground her. When she opens her eyes, Conrad is walking toward her with Maryam at his side. He’s grinning a little bit—not at her, but clearly at some joke the older woman just told him. Belly plasters a polite smile on her face, and wills it not to crack.
For a second, Conrad takes her breath away. He looks so at ease here, in this state she’s ever seen him in. He’s taller than she remembers, and more tan, too. His hair still lays so effortlessly across his forehead, but there are differences that Belly knows are new—the starting of lines in his face that weren’t there in his youth, a small scar on his left arm that she’s never seen, a relaxed stance that juxtaposes her own greatly. He murmurs something low and quiet, and Maryam smacks him on the arm. Belly feels her eyebrow twitch, but her smile doesn’t drop. The fact that she’s feeling some low-level sort of jealousy over a woman 20 years their senior is mortifying.
“Hi!” Belly says brightly, like seeing Conrad is a regular occurrence in her life, and not something she’s been deeply committed to avoiding since she got married. “I, um, met Maryam while I was waiting outside. She’s lovely.” Then, in an attempt at normalcy, she goes for the joke. “Too lovely to be hanging with the likes of you, anyway.” She can tell immediately that it doesn’t land, because Conrad’s brow furrows. Thankfully, Maryam laughs loudly enough for both of them.
“While you were waiting?” Conrad asks, one eyebrow raised, and Belly sort of hates him for it. All these years later, he still doesn’t miss anything.
“That’s not—” she starts to snap, before taking a breath and collecting herself. Her affection for him is gone as quickly as it came. She hates that he’s always like this. That he can’t just let her have this one thing. She smiles tightly again, wondering what Conrad thinks of it: her smile. Whether he’s looking at the faint lines of age that have started to form around her mouth, and whether he can tell how much she’s straining to keep her lips curved upward. Finally, she sighs in defeat. “I was having some trouble with my bags,” Belly says quietly, unable to look him in the eye when she says it. “That’s all.”
“Don’t harass the poor girl,” Maryam scolds, slapping Conrad’s arm again. “I know your mother raised you to be more of a gentleman than this.”
“Ow!” Conrad protests, rubbing the spot where she hit him, but he shakes his head fondly. “Maryam, you cannot use my dead mother against me every time you want me to do something.”
Belly gasps, and both he and Maryam turn to look at her. “Sorry,” she says, her heart beating wildly. “Something in my throat.” In reality, she's just shocked. The Conrad she once knew could never speak about Susannah so light-heartedly. Back then, his jaw would always flex when her name was brought up, his eyes gaining this sort of haunted quality at the mere mention that he had once had a mother, which was a fact he tried to keep from anyone and everyone new that he met. The fact that he’s speaking about Susannah so openly now makes Belly’s heart ache. He really has changed over the years.
“You’re good,” Conrad says quietly. Belly isn’t, but she nods anyway. “Sorry,” he offers, which feels more loaded than it needs to be. “I didn’t mean to push you on the bag thing. Really, that’s on me. I knew about your knee thing. I should’ve said something about the house.”
Belly sighs quietly. There he is: the Conrad she knows, all beautifully self-sacrificing and shouldering the blame for everything. “I should have asked,” she says, which would have required her to not be a coward in the first place—to have contacted him beforehand, instead of letting her husband arrange everything for her. “It’s my knee, not yours. I need to manage it, and I—”
“Belly,” Conrad interrupts, and her name in his mouth, all stupidly beautiful and right, undoes her completely. She's quiet for a moment, thinking he might say something more, but he doesn’t. Instead, he wordlessly takes her—ridiculously large for a week-long trip—suitcase from her and heads toward his house. For a second, Belly has a flashback to being 21 and lonely, watching Conrad put her bike in the back of his Range Rover despite her protests. Back then, she had more fight in her. Now, she simply follows.
“He’s in a mood, isn’t he?” Maryam whisper-shouts, which Conrad definitely hears, based on the way that his broad shoulders tense.
Belly shrugs helplessly, afraid to pull at the taut string of tension that’s clearly forming between her and Conrad. “It was really great to meet you, Maryam,” she says, and she means it. “I’m sure I’ll be seeing you around.”
Maryam smiles, her expression much more genuine than the smile Belly’s been holding on her face. “Of course, dear. Come over for dinner tomorrow if you want. We always have dinner together on Wednesdays.”
Conrad’s guestroom is predictably and immaculately clean, which is the first thing Belly notices when she crosses its threshold. The rest of the home is a bit of a blur; Conrad has long, long legs that are very used to stairs, and Belly has just climbed 24 of them (14 outside and 10 inside to get up to her room), which is more than she’s used to, so she’s a bit preoccupied as she follows Conrad through the house. She and Jeremiah had very purposefully chosen to live in a condo building with an elevator to avoid these problems. Belly’s knee is throbbing from the exertion, which signals to her that she is not keeping up with her physio exercises properly. Thankfully, Conrad isn’t looking at her for long enough to notice it happening. Instead, he deposits her suitcase on the floor of the room, muttering something about letting her settle in, and then lingers in the doorway for a beat too long to be casual. He leans up against the doorframe, crossing his arms, and Belly ignores the swoop in her stomach when she sees him looking at her in a way that she can only describe as sizing her up.
“There’s lunch downstairs when you want it,” he says finally. There’s something in his eyes that Belly can’t quite decipher, and the house suddenly feels horrifically small with just her and Conrad in it. The thought that they’re standing in a bedroom together for the first time in years, looking at each other with the same type of healthy fear that you might lend to a particularly rambunctious horse (the unsaid part, of course, being that such a beast might also be tamed under the hand of the right rider), seems to occur to them simultaneously.
“So, I need to..." Belly starts, trailing off when Conrad’s eyes widen, his lips parting perceptibly. She knows that expression, and it culls her speech immediately. The last time she saw that look was over Christmas many moons ago, when he had offered to light a fire for her and they had both been vaulted back into remembering the first time they had made love. “I need to freshen up,” she attempts again desperately, trying to pretend like it’s something she says regularly. She’s only ever heard women use such a stupid phrase on TV.
“Right,” Conrad says, and a sort of weird, bitter laugh comes out of her mouth instinctively. Conrad Fisher, a man of few words. Not much has changed, when Belly really thinks about it. Politely, he ignores her outburst. “I’ll leave you to it, then.”
After he closes the door quietly behind him, Belly collapses face-first onto the perfectly made bedspread and ignores the urge to scream into one of the beautifully fluffed pillows. She rolls over onto her back, hitting a set of grey, fluffy set of towels: two body towels, two face cloths, and two hand towels. For a moment, Belly lets herself imagine Conrad folding them carefully just for her. Then, she shakes her head out of her ridiculous daydream, and thinks about the probable reality: that Conrad had hastily pulled them out of his linen closet upon her arrival.
This entire thing is ridiculous. The fact that Conrad even has a guest room in the first place is ridiculous. Belly knows what housing prices are like in San Francisco from when Steven used to live here, so she can only assume how much money Conrad had to put down for a home with an extra bedroom in it. She thinks about how sparingly it’s been used over the years, and her heart softens a little bit, realizing that simply having an available room has been his way of keeping the door open for everyone. Laurel visits one or twice a year, as does Jeremiah, but if Belly had to guess, she would say that Conrad’s spare room sits empty for at least 11 months out of an entire calendar year. He’s always been more sentimental than anyone gives him credit for, and more like Susannah than anyone ever wants to acknowledge; she can so frustratingly see it now in the way this room is kept waiting for someone to sleep in it. She sees it in the bowl of mints on the bedside table. In the framed painting on the wall without a single spec of dust on its glass. In the tiny, glass vase of freshly cut hydrangeas beside the bed, trimmed neatly at the stems.
Belly thinks of her guest room back home, with its mismatched patchwork quilt and sheet set, because Jeremiah keeps saying that it’s silly to buy new things when they don’t need to and that none of their guests really care, anyway. She thinks of Laurel’s guest room growing up, and the way that—despite their hideousness—there were always fake flowers on the bedside table. She thinks—briefly, so briefly—of the last time she and Conrad navigated a guest bedroom situation, and by that, she means the last time Conrad had pressed her into a mattress, her face hidden in a pillow to muffle her moans so that her mom couldn’t hear. Everything is fine. This situation—God and Belly willing—will not end the same.
In an attempt to ignore the hurricane in her brain, Belly opens her suitcase, rummaging around for a bottle of Advil. She takes two and dry swallows them, unreasonably terrified at the thought of asking Conrad for a glass of water, before sending an email to her physio asking for his available appointment times the following week. Then, she sits on the edge of the bed and wonders how long it might be acceptable to shut herself away in Conrad’s bedroom and, also, whether it might be a sign of a larger issue that she really wants to sniff the sheets to see if he still uses the same laundry detergent as he did a decade ago.
Her plans are disrupted by a loud growling sound: her stomach. She frowns, but doesn’t resist. “Fine,” she mutters out loud to herself, only feeling slightly crazy. “Fine, I’m going. I’m going, okay? Shut up.”
Very aware that she’s been talking to her own stomach (Belly’s been talking to her belly! her brain supplies, half-hysterically), Belly opens the door to the bedroom to head to the kitchen. Juxtaposed with the carpet of the bedroom, the hardwood is cold beneath her feet. Her sandals are sitting at Conrad’s door because he—thank God for White people with sensibilities—does not allow shoes in the house, but it’s left her feeling oddly vulnerable. There’s something about being barefoot in someone else’s home that always feels oddly intimate.
Placing the weight on her left leg as she takes the stairs, Belly takes the last step to find herself in a narrow, short hallway off the kitchen. Lining its walls are a collection of Susannah’s paintings, and the beams of light shining through Conrad’s windows makes the sunlight in them come alive. To her left, she spots a portrait of the entire Fisher family, their faces made into abstract swirls instead of facial features. On her right, an aerial view of a deep blue ocean covers an entire canvas, its waves tumultuous but predictable. A smaller work hanging below it features two women holding hands in the distance and a sunset rendering the entire painting in a soft, pink glow. Her heart aches, remembering her own painting of Susannah’s at home. She and Jeremiah have just one: it’s of the two of them when they were younger, hunting for sand crabs on the beach together. It had been a wedding gift from Conrad. Belly doesn’t like to look at it too often.
In the kitchen, Belly finds Conrad standing over a steaming pot on the stove and shuffling thick slices of bread on a plate. They’re a little golden around the edges, like they’ve already been in the toaster.
“Hey!” she says, voice too bright for the tension in the room. “Thanks so much again for letting me stay here. Your place is so nice. Jere never told me how beautiful the windows were. And the paintings in the hallway are amazing. It's so nice to see her work appreciated.”
“Belly,” Conrad replies tiredly. “Stop. I just mean…come on. You don’t have to do that.”
It stops her in her tracks. “What?” She sort of feels like she might cry.
“The fucking”—he waves his hand in her general direction, exasperatedly—“cheery act. The fake gratitude. I know you don’t want to be here. It’s okay.”
Belly’s eyes widen. “What?” she repeats, before realizing that she’s asked the same question twice. “Conrad, that’s not—” She stops, inhaling sharply when he opens the lid on his steaming pot and a deep, hearty scent fills her nose. “Hang on, what is that?” Her stomach growls.
Despite everything, Conrad laughs a little. “Soup,” he says. “I didn’t make it, I promise. I’m still pretty fucking useless in the kitchen, if you can remember. I had my friend Agnes over a few days ago and she cooked it up for me. She makes a pretty good beef barley. I told her I didn’t want to poison, uh, a family member, but that it would be mortifying to have to serve you takeout the whole time you were here. So, soup.”
The rest of Belly’s uncertainty thaws immediately. Conrad’s coolness since she’s walked in has terrified her, and even now, he’s still refusing to look at her. But then, this: he’s prepared for her arrival. He’s made sure she’s fed. He wants her cared for. She looks at the way he stands over the stove, biting his lip the way he does when he’s nervous, and she thinks wildly for a moment: so he did fold those towels just for me.
“It smells delicious, Conrad.” An olive branch; a peace offering; an outstretched hand. Whatever label a person wants to put on it, Belly extends it. “And I know it’s unexpected that I’m here without Jere. I’m sorry for intruding, but I want to be here. I really appreciate you housing me, honestly. I’m not lying when I say it’s nice. I’d kill for that bay window.”
Conrad smiles ruefully, and she decides that means he’s accepted her silent plea for a truce. “Thanks, Belly,” he says, and it sounds so genuine that it makes her heart stutter. “You’re not intruding. I’m, uh, glad you’re here.” Before she has a chance to respond, he clears his throat a little too loudly, like he can tell they’re veering into too-friendly territory. “I did bake the bread myself, though. I made it after I got home from work this morning, so it should be pretty fresh.”
He grabs two bowls from the cupboard with one hand and a butter dish and knife with the other. Pointedly, Belly does not think about how enormous his hands are to be able to balance all of it so easily. She suddenly feels slightly light-headed, realizing that Conrad Fisher worked a night shift at the hospital and then came home and made bread for her. She glances surreptitiously around the kitchen’s open shelving and doesn’t spot a stand mixer. Okay, scratch that. Conrad Fisher worked a night shift at the hospital and then came home and made bread for her by hand.
Belly breathes deeply, reminding herself that this is her brother-in-law. She has a husband back home who was supposed to be here. The man in front of her is her husband’s brother. It’s not him, really. She’s probably just hungry.
Belly raises one eyebrow at him. “You bake and garden, now? I saw those plants out front. Who are you, and what have you done with Conrad Fisher?”
“Eat, Belly, and stop making fun of me,” he laughs, passing her a steaming hot bowl. She hates that laugh so much, a little unfiltered and silly, turning breathy at the end so that the sound floats through the air and curls around the nape of her neck. It’s a laugh that she only ever hears when they’re alone—the one that always makes her brain turn a little bit into mush—and it’s been so many long years since he’s laughed with her like this that she has to momentarily close her eyes to stop herself from reacting. “I’ve gotten pretty good at both things,” Conrad adds seriously, running his fingers through his hair. “I like having something to do with my hands.”
From anyone else, it might sound arrogant. From the wrong person, it might sound like an innuendo. From Conrad, it just sounds beautifully—attractively, Belly’s brain says unhelpfully—self-assured, like he’s finally grown into himself.
“Well, I killed our aloe plant last month,” Belly offers with a mournful smile, “so there’s that.”
Conrad barks out a quick laugh. “Aloe?” he asks. “How did you manage that one? Aren’t those, like, unkillable?”
“In case you haven’t noticed,” Belly says somewhat shakily, “I’m sort of good at ruining unruinable things.”
The look that passes through Conrad’s eyes is pained. “Belly,” he begins to say, and she can see him reaching for her hesitantly. If he touches her right now with that pitiful look in his eyes, she thinks she might burst into tears.
So, Belly does the only thing she can think to do. She shoves a ginormous spoonful of near-boiling soup in her mouth and starts coughing violently when it burns.
Conrad quickly slides her a glass of water, her comment entirely forgotten. “Oh my God,” he says, shaking his head. He’s laughing a little bit, but he’s trying to hide it, like he knows he should be more sympathetic. She sort of likes that he isn’t—that even now, he can tease her for her antics. “I forgot that you always eat like this. You’d shove your entire face in that bowl if you could, wouldn’t you? Slow down, Belly. Have some bread. There’s no fire. You can take your time. There you go.”