Our Beloved Summer | A TSITP Story

Chapter 2

CONRAD POV

𖠳

After Belly had pulled me into the pool, I didn't feel like doing much of anything, which wasn't exactly out of the norm as of lately. I could hear Mom and Laurel downstairs talking about what wine to drink with dinner. Laurel was acting like normal so it made me think she didn't know. Maybe that was a good thing.

That was probably the only good thing about this summer. Everything else was so... arduous. I couldn't even enjoy my second family being here after finding out. Everything had gone the same as last summer's start, but it was still different.

Mom was different, Belly was different; grown, Dani was different... somehow. I couldn't pinpoint it but she just looked different. Like the air around her moved differently than around us.

No, I can't keep thinking about her. 

But it was so hard. Especially when my own mother was her biggest fan, always bringing her up somehow, someway. I couldn't escape Dani Conklin even if I tried.

"Conrad, can you bring one of these to Dani? She's on the beach," Mom said, holding out a Humphry's sandwich. Those were Dani's favorite first day of summer tradition.

"You know she doesn't eat food on the beach, Beck. 'Cause then her sandwich would be a 'sandwich with extra sand'," said Laurel from behind Mom, who only gave her a sharp look.

"I know that, Laur. Just take it to her," she pushed the sandwich further into my unopened hands.

"Mom-" I didn't want to take it to her.

"Fine, then just ask her, please. It's just Dani, she's not going to bite you." Mom joked so easily about her. Even after three years of her watching the two of us not be friends, she still held on to the dream of us being together forever.

Every year, Dani would take something to draw on to the beach. I used to go with her but not anymore. Now I just watch her, sitting there, singing and drawing.

She looked so free, so her. I knew she wasn't completely, though. She'd told me too many things for me to believe that this Dani in front of me, was her all the time. When she wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary but I could just see the sadness in her eyes. I think it was the same sadness my Mom saw in me at times.

Seeing her this way, in her space, doing what she does... it made me miss her. I never really missed much, but I think I missed her even if she was right next to me. My chest tightened every time I saw her freckles, her overalls, her chipped nail polish. Dani was always affecting me. 

I first recognized it when I was sixteen. I recognized it and I hated myself for it. She was Dani, my best friend and my other best friend's twin sister. She felt so right to me, but it was so wrong.

We were never the same and it was my fault. I could never be the same with her.

So I walked away, like I always do. I walked away from Dani. I walked until I was back in the kitchen, my mother looking at me expectantly.

"She said she wasn't hungry." I lied. I was a coward who lied about stupid sandwiches and everything else to do with anything.

----

(this pov hurt me to write because communication is such a problem for Conrad and his relationships with people, like if you just said this to Dani?? things would be perfect, but then we wouldn't have a story would we...)