Two people can change

“I loved you so hard for a time. I’ve tried to ration it all my life. We could go yellow to black overnight. I take you for granted because you are mine.”

One month had slipped away. One month since I last saw Conrad Fisher. It still feels like I’m waiting for him to walk through that motel door, back into my last summer. June went by like a ticking time bomb, ending as quickly as it had come. Every moment, every uttered word, every interaction with Conrad remained etched in my memory since the morning he left me standing in that motel room. He told me none of it meant anything— what he’d said in the 3 a.m. darkness. But I knew it was a lie. The infinity necklace, now slightly dulled, continued to sparkle as if reminiscing the past. It shined differently from its hidden place in my dresser drawer. But it wasn’t the same. Nothing was.

I had lost Conrad Fisher, my first love, the first boy I ever slow danced with, the first boy I ever dreamed about in a blink of an eye. He was gone, and it was all my fault.

Seeing him that last time on the 4th of July in Cousins made it real. It made saying goodbye in the motel room final. Really, truly over. The return of Susannah's cherished holiday seemingly made what had felt like a dream for most of June reality.

When volleyball camp ended, I visited my Dad in his sad little apartment in northern Pennsylvania. When I was little, Steven and I would go to my dad’s apartment on most weekends, even though it smelled musty and my father lit incense, which my mother and I hated. His apartment consisted of his first edition Hemingways, a chess set, and Billy Joel CD’s— all of which he took with him to his new “pad,” as he called it after my parents split. My father slept in the master bedroom, I stayed in the Twin-sized bed, and Steven slept on the couch. My parents were good at pretending, at hiding behind each other’s shadows long enough to come out into the light when I needed to. They still smiled around each other, but they weren't the same. They never truly fell back into their old patterns, but they cared about us, so they put on a brave front. He did try, though, for us, for my mother. In his own way, he tried. 

When Susannah died in the spring, my parents drifted further apart. My father always said that Susannah was the only person my mother could ever genuinely love— her special soulmate. As time passed, I went to my father’s place less and less. Before I followed Jeremiah to Cousins, I saw my father at the funeral and once more, but he refused to talk about Susannah. It was as if she had become a ghost to him. It’s not like I tried to avoid him, only his apartment. My father’s apartment reeked of old-aged cigars and mold. It was depressing, yet I didn’t have the heart to tell him. I missed my father so much, I just wished I could see him at our house. Our real house.

Susannah’s death left an immense void within all of us, and even when we were away from Cousins or the boys, the emptiness lingered. We all felt it. Even as I sat at my father's dining table, eating one of the few meals he could cook on a Friday evening, I felt it. This overbearing, unavoidable silence that was hard to ignore. Even in my father’s depressing apartment, everything weighed a little heavier on all of us.

My father couldn’t make this year’s 4th of July in Cousins. He said he had to work, but I knew he was lying. He didn’t want to see the house, now devoid of Susannah’s presence. I couldn’t entirely blame him, really, because I missed her, too. But I held a trace of resentment toward him for not being there— for me, for Steven, for Susannah, for my mother.

The interior of the house was adorned in red, white, and blue, just as Susannah would’ve wanted. Conrad and Jeremiah launched fireworks from a distance, while my mother prepared steamed clams. This marked the first 4th of July without Susannah, and it felt wrong— as if we were doing something forbidden, and we could get into trouble. This had been Susannah’s favorite holiday, and she wasn’t here to celebrate with us.

This air was thick and heavy— with memory and smoke. I stood at the edge of the porch, watching as fireworks split the sky into moments of color, of stillness. It brought me back to two summers ago. To our final summer with Susannah in Cousins. The colors ignited like an almost intoxicating passion.

Jeremiah tried to lighten the mood, the daze in all of our eyes haunted me as he set off Roman candles and sparkles like it was just any old summer at the beach house. But it wasn’t. There was a hollowness, a forced excitement that didn’t quite make any sense. I watched from the dock, my fingers tracing the open soda can I’d get to open.

Conrad stood there, quiet and with his arms crossed. He didn’t say anything. We hadn’t spoken since that morning he left the motel room last summer. We just went about our lives, as if they were never intertwined.

The warm, summer night sky erupted in red and blue behind him. He didn’t flinch. He looked the same, but I didn’t recognize him. Everything about him felt foreign. This was the Conrad I knew two summers ago— this stoic, pulled back Conrad. He wasn’t the boy I fell in love with. The boy I fell in love with used to smile at fireworks, used to sneak glances at me when he thought I wasn’t looking. Now, he looked at everything but me.

When the sky darkened that night, the fire pit crackled low. I found myself walking the beach alone, the long strip and water felt like a warm hug. The sand was cool beneath my feet, and the ocean breathed softly in the distance. I thought about Susannah— making sparklers in the night, swimming in the beach. I remembered her warm smile like it was yesterday, and I could hear her laugh in the wind.

I sat down in the bare sand, the warmth touching my skin as the breeze cooled me down. At that moment, I heard footsteps. I didn’t turn around. I already knew who it was.

“You always did like the water at night," Conrad said quietly.

I nodded, swallowing the lump stuck in my throat. I still didn’t look at him. “You used to like it too.”

He didn’t answer right away, maybe it was the weight of the wind or the pull of the ocean breeze. “I still do,” he finally said.

I turned to look at him, his hair was slightly damp, his eyes heavy with exhaustion. I couldn’t help but wonder how long it had been since he last slept.

There was a pause then— he sat beside me in the warm sand. We were close, and our knees almost touched. We started out into the ocean, both quiet. The waves rolled in, and neither of us looked at each other. There was a hollowness, a stillness that washed over us.

“I miss her,” I said without even thinking, the last of the fireworks exploded in the distance. This summer wasn’t what I wanted. It was the summer I had to let go of because of the weight it held.

“Me too,” he said. And just then, he looked like a little boy again. He looked like the boy who begged his mother to let him stay up just a little longer, who tried to sneak a second dessert before dinner, who’d once run to me with a bright smile.
But that boy was gone. For the first time in what felt like forever, there was no anger, no bitterness in his expression, just… pain. Regret. A loss that pained me so much for the last two years that my chest ached.

I thought I had let go of Conrad, too, though I had moved on from last summer. From the boy who you used to smile at the fireworks, teach me geometry, and kiss me like he was gasping for air.

Maybe now, for the first time, I was finally ready to let Conrad go completely. And maybe, just maybe, that was the hardest thing I’d ever have to do.