betty ↳ conrad fisher

thirteen.

"Get that one." Betty Graham said with a smile, her finger pointing towards the tomato that her fathers hand was hovering over. He moved his hand to the left of the tomato she had pointed at, grabbing another one and holding it up.

"This one?" The girl rolled her eyes, reaching out and grabbing the right one, dropping it into the basket her father was carrying . Their trip to the farmers market was such a tradition that he kept the woven basket in the trunk of his car, so that when he returned from work he could have it on hand. The two of them turned from the tomato's, Betty looking towards a stand that had cookies and other baked goods from some locals. She looked back at her father, the man eyeing the onions. He looked like he was pondering something, Betty realizing as he opened his mouth that he was going to ask her something about the Fishers. "Well is he even going to college? Do you know that much?"

The relationship between Conrad Fisher and the Graham family patriarch was healthier than the one between Betty and the Fisher boy. From the moment Betty reintroduced a 15 year old Conrad to her father, it was like love at first sight. Her father adored Conrad, the fact that he loved football. The fact that he was a good kid, and he treated his daughter right. He appreciated Conrad for the happiness he could see from his daughter. They connected through other things. Betty's dad was a big sailor, Conrad was too...this fact resulting in Adam Fisher and Jared Graham taking their boys out on the water quite a few times.  He was respectful, and he was kind, and even when the two of them had split, he still took the opportunity to check in and continue his tradition with Adam Fisher. And deep down he assumed that Betty and Conrad would at least give it one more go...at least once more.

"No...I haven't asked." She said, not looking at her dad. She hadn't asked, and she didn't really want to know. She knew he wasn't going to Brown, so there was no reason to care where he was going to college. Most of the time she didn't even want to talk to him, and although they were on shakily good terms,  there was strange condescension in the way he addressed her. "You know we really haven't talked that much."

"You said you were over there at Conrad's so I figured you were over there hanging out with him."

"No I spent the night with Belly. She went on her first date last night." Betty smiled at the memory of the sleepover with Belly, her father nodding as he took in the information. He didn't know Belly that well, Laurel being the one he usually interacted with.  "How's work been?"

"Aw I don't want to talk about work...I don't want to bore you honey." Her father mused, reaching for an onion. However Betty wanted to talk about anything other than Conrad, her memories of their late night conversation resurfacing and irritating her again.  "What have you done so far this summer? Anything fun?"

"I went to a few parties...got into a fight. Well I didn't get into the fight but I caused the fight."

"You got boys fighting over you Betty?" Her dad looked back at her with a teasing smile and she nodded, the man chuckling to himself at her confirmation. He thought it was funny that she had answered so nonchalantly, the older man wrapping his arm around her shoulders and pulling her to his side. "Who am I kidding? Of course you do."

"It's not as exciting as it sounds...it's actually quite embarrassing to witness." She laughed, holding the basket now as they walked. Her dad laughed at her comment, shaking his head slowly before completely changing the subject.

"How are you...how's the prepping for school going? You excited about Brown?" It was weird talking to her father like he was some distant relative, a cousin or uncle she didn't see very often. She loved him more than anyone she knew, but it was the questions like these that maybe her harbor an undeniable resentment towards him. She wanted him there, she wanted him there all the time...the spring to fall season was the worst for her. And unfortunately for her , once fall hit this year...she would be gone, and she wouldn't get to see her father until the holidays. She didn't want to talk about school.

"It's going good dad." She said in a defeated tone, the older man catching it but deciding not to pry. College was a hard adjustment for most kids, moving away from everything they knew, their first real experience with independence, it was a tough pill to swallow. But he never assumed she was upset because of him, he didn't ever really seem to understand the effect his job and lifestyle had on his daughter. "We should get back home soon...we don't want to eat dinner too late."

Jared Graham watched as that big wall shot up around his daughter, the one he was all too familiar with. She hadn't been the same since she had spent the summer away, and he had thought that her being back would have made things better. He wasn't all that convinced as of this conversation that spending the summer home was helping, and he just wished that he could understand what was going on inside her head.

:::

Betty Graham had her headphones closed over her ears, the music blasting into them and blocking out the outside world. It was an overwhelmingly womanly experience to stare at a ceiling and get lost in the music, letting all of your mistakes, regrets, guilt, and shame replay in your head on an endless loop while you considered what being human was even about. She had been at it for about an hour, the sun having gone down not long after they had enjoyed dinner, and the family dispersing from their time together to do their nightly routines.

She had changed for bed, a tank top and shorts being her outfit of choice tonight. It was nights like these when her routine had been interrupted, the interruption having been her fathers return, that she had managed to dig very deep into her existential reasoning to try and figure out why she was the way that she was. And in all of that theorizing she had been led back to the night before...the sleepover with Belly. The encounter she had had in the hallway with Conrad. The way her chest had burned when he spoke and her knees had weakened. The way she recognized the way he was speaking to her, the way he used to. How she could see the old him still hidden beneath the version she was getting. It was a difficult thing to come to terms with, the fact that people change.

In the dark recesses of her mind she got an urge to turn her head, and she assumed it was the universe telling her to do so, because in the most cosmically fucked up turn of events, Conrad Fisher was sitting in his window, his eyes turned towards the stars. It was picturesque, the image of him burning into her mind so that she might never forget it. It was pathetically romantic, just the thought of it, the boy staring up at the stars on a beautiful night, and thinking about whatever tortured and troubled his mind. It was his version of what she had been doing for the last hour, but he looked so much better doing it.

She knew she had to make herself known to him, this was a moment right out of her memory, and she had the opportunity to replay it in real time. They had both been here before...when they were a little younger, when they had liked each other a little more. When there was no existential dread hanging over their heads and all they had in life was each other to worry about.

She swallowed her doubts and headed to her window, taking a seat by it and pushing it open. His window wasn't open but she felt like it wouldn't matter, the girl feeling closer to him when there was less glass between them. Fortunately for her, the action of her opening the window had pulled his attention from his peripheral, his heart dropping when he saw her in the window. She sat and he watched her, the girl lifting her hand to wave at him, a tight smile on her lips. For a moment he was transported back to a couple of summers ago, when they would wait for each other in the window every night. It was a tradition of theirs, and it didn't feel wrong now either. At least not until her tight lipped smile turned into a real one, and he remembered that feeling of being on the beach alone.

There was a dinging noise and he realized it was his phone, the boy looking to his bed where he had left it. He knew it was her, Conrad fighting against himself to leave it but caving within seconds and going to grab it. His eyes read hungrily across the screen and he made his way back to the window, looking up at her when he finished it.

Fancy seeing you here

He considered what to say back, wondering if he should say anything at all. His mind stumbled over multiple different answers but in the end he just gave her a defeated look, standing from where he had been sitting and walking off into the house. Betty watched after him with a frown, the girl closing her window after a cold breeze struck her, unsure if it was from the wind or from him.