Chapter Text
Chapter One
Belly - Present
The rain starts somewhere around Bleecker.
I don't notice until it's already soaked through my tote bag and ruined the bottom of my coffee cup, the cardboard going soft where I'm holding it. I adjust my grip. Pull my headphones down around my neck. Look up at the sky the way you do when it's already too late.
7pm. I've been in the library since seven this morning.
My brain is still running through the same loop: attachment theory, Bowlby, the Still Face Paradigm, like a playlist I can't get off shuffle. I read the same paragraph four times before I gave up, packed my bag, and decided that what I actually need is my own bed and eight hours of not thinking about infant emotional development.
I duck under the awning of the bodega on my corner and check my phone.
Ruby: are you dead or just studying?
Ruby: chelsea wants to go out friday after your last exam. say yes. you need to be a person again
Taylor: [voice note 1:47]
Taylor: [voice note 2:03]
Taylor: [voice note 0:12]
Josh: hey, made a reservation at that place on 5th for tomorrow. 8pm work?
I send Josh a thumbs up and keep walking.
I can hear Ruby's music through the front door before I've got my key out.
I'm greeted as I walk into workout clothes on the floor, three empty water bottles, takeout containers, a laptop open to something I choose not to investigate. Ruby is in the middle of it all, sitting cross-legged, eating pad thai directly from the container.
"You're wet," she says.
"It's raining, Sherlock."
"It's been raining since four. I texted you an umbrella emoji. Twice."
"I had my phone on do not disturb."
"You had your life on do not disturb." She looks at me properly, the way she does, head tilted, reading me in about a second and a half, the way she's been doing since we got assigned the same freshman hall.
"How's the brain?"
"Overcooked."
"Sit down before you fall down. Want some of this?"
"Yes, please."
She throws me a fork without being asked, then nudges the better half of the container toward me, the part with more chicken in it, also without being asked. This is just how Ruby loves people. In forks and the better half of the takeout and umbrella emojis you don't read in time.
We eat without talking for a bit. Rain against the window. This is one of the things I didn't expect about living with someone. The way silence with the right person doesn't need filling. Ruby figured me out fast, freshman year. She said once that I watch people the way other people watch television. I argued for about thirty seconds before I conceded the point.
"Steven came by earlier, by the way. Said you stole his sweatshirt after the Knicks game."
"What? He said I could keep it."
"That's what I told him. I also told him he's not getting it back, so you're welcome." She points her fork at me. "I think he was checking on you, though, Iz. Said you hadn't replied to his texts."
"I'll reply after Friday."
I reach for more pad thai. "I'm out tomorrow evening, by the way. Josh booked somewhere for dinner."
"Mm."
"That place on Fifth he's been wanting to try."
"Nice."
She says it pleasantly, the way she does everything Josh related. I choose to eat another forkful and don't say anything else about it.
My phone lights up while I'm getting changed.
It's Nancy. The contact photo is a selfie she took on my phone two years ago without asking. She still had missing front teeth in it and I've never changed it since.
I pick up.
"BELLY."
"Hi, Nance." I can't help smiling. "How are you?"
"You're tired."
"It's a voice call. You can't see me."
"I can tell from your voice. Are you sleeping?"
"I'm sleeping fine. What's going on?" I say, and sit down on the edge of my bed.
"Mum found this dress, it has a Peter Pan collar and I need you to tell her it's not cool enough for me."
"Like, Grandma uncool, or just kind of embarrassing?"
"Belly. It has a Peter Pan collar."
"Okay, okay. I hear you."
"Thank you. Hold on, I'm sending you something."
My phone buzzes.
Nancy 🐚: look at this [image]
"Oh, Nance," I say, laughing. "It's not that bad."
"Mum said it's cute but I'm not cute, I'm ten years old!"
"You'll always be a little bit cute to me. You can't help it."
"Belly! I'm ten! Anyway, Connie called Mum and apparently he has to like practice on real dead people now. For school. She told me over dinner. I nearly choked."
"That is gross. But I guess that's kind of what med school is."
"I know, but still. Oh my God, also his new friend Agnes told him that the heart can still beat outside the body during surgery even after they stop it. Isn't that CRAZY?"
I go still.
"Wild," I say.
"Like it just keeps going. Even when everything else stops."
She's already moved on, I can tell, her voice bright, probably doing three other things simultaneously.
"Anyway. Will you actually talk to Mum about the dress?"
"Your Mum likes dressing you while she still can. Be nice to her."
"Whatever, Belly. You're my friend first, remember that."
I laugh, properly this time.
"Sleep on it, Nance. You might like it tomorrow. Get to bed now, you crazy girl."
"Night, Belly. Love you."
"Love you too. Night."
My phone buzzes again.
Nancy 🐚: Keith is judging the dress too.
I laugh straight away. Keith is Nancy’s new puppy who is , I’ve learnt through regular pupdates, a menace. He is super cute though and is definitely also judging the dress.
Me: Keith judges everything
Nancy 🐚: He knows what he likes Belly
Agnes. Conrad has a new friend called Agnes. California, med school, a whole life assembled on the other side of the country.
I stop trying to picture it and finish getting changed.
Josh calls while I'm brushing my teeth. I answer on speaker.
"Hey." Warm, easy. "How was studying?"
"Long."
"You need to take breaks. Your brain can only hold so much at once."
"I know."
"Eight tomorrow still good? I can push it if you need more time."
"Eight is fine."
"The reviews on this place are incredible. They do this thing with scallops -"
"Sounds great."
"Okay, I get it, you're tired. Get some sleep. See you tomorrow."
"Yeah," I say. "See you tomorrow."
I rinse, spit, go get a glass of water.
The envelope is on the kitchen counter.
Cream, letter-sized, sitting slightly apart from the rest of the mail: a credit card offer, a takeout menu, something for the previous tenant. Ruby must have brought it up earlier.
I see the return address before anything else.
Cousins Beach.
I set down my glass.
I pick the envelope up. The paper is thick. My name is handwritten on the front in ink that's bled slightly at the edges, the way good paper holds it. A calligrapher, probably. Very Sarah.
Inside is a cream card, gold foil. Jeremiah Fisher and Sarah Harlington. The date. The venue is the country club at Cousins, which is so Susannah that something in my chest loosens before I can stop it. A smaller card, pale blue, with details I don't fully read yet.
My name is on the inner envelope. Isabel Conklin. And guest.
I haven't told Josh the date yet. I'm not sure why. We’ve been dating for four months and I haven’t told him the date of a wedding I’m invited to. Whatever that means.
I put it down on the counter.
My first feeling is anxiety. Clean, specific, located just below my sternum.
My second feeling, arriving almost immediately after, is something warmer and entirely genuine: happiness for Jeremiah. For Sarah. For the two of them, who found something good and chose each other clearly and are doing the thing that people who love each other without complication get to do. I mean it. I'm glad for them.
Both things are true at once.
I had been expecting this for a while, but seeing it in print is different.
I turn the invitation over. A small details card, accommodation information, shuttle times. And at the bottom, in smaller print, a note about the wedding party schedule.
Conrad Fisher, Best Man
Nicole Houghton, Maid of Honour
I put the invitation back in the envelope and leave it on the counter and go to bed.
I can't sleep.
I lie in the dark and listen to the rain and try to think about Bowlby. About the Still Face Paradigm. The experiment where a caregiver goes suddenly neutral, stops responding, stops reflecting, and the infant becomes distressed because they interpret the absence as something gone wrong. I've written six pages about it this week.
I look at my bedside table and look at the photo in the frame. The photo I probably should have taken down around two years ago.
Thanksgiving, after the summer I was Nancy’s nanny. The Fisher kitchen. Conrad in his Brown sweatshirt, laughing at something Nancy said, not looking at the camera. Jeremiah next to them with an apron deep in thought over the stuffing and Susannah smiling at them. I took it without any of them noticing. I remember the light through the kitchen window, the particular angle of it. I look at Mr Bun the Second who is settled on the shelf opposite my bed judging me for hanging on to old memories.
Outside the rain has softened. Still there, but quieter. The city underneath it, muffled, like something heard through water.