Our Beloved Summer | A TSITP Story

Chapter 27

It's only been one month since the funeral. Each morning I've had to wake up from that nightmare. For a moment I'm glad I don't have to be in that time again, but then I remember I have to continue living in a world without Susannah and without Conrad. I couldn't escape the dread and loss. Not even on what was supposed to be one of the best days of my life. My high school graduation.

I stood there in my room, looking at my reflection, wondering how time seemed to have dragged on for the last eighteen years, but suddenly I wished I could do them all again. There were so many things I would do and wouldn't do. Like, I would've told more people I cared about them and I wouldn't let the people closest to me go. Like the people in the photo on my mirror.

It was all of us kids from five summers ago. Belly and Jere looked so much smaller but me, Conrad and Steven looked the same - grown. I was standing between my brother and Conrad with the widest smile. We all had one. Looking at it now, it felt so foreign to see that look on our faces. We'd all been so torn the last month and I didn't have to see them to know that those smiles in the photo didn't exist today.

The day that those smiles could come back and summer felt like it was light years away. Intangible.

Especially last summer. In the pool, on that last night, we said we'd always come back. It's funny how fast things can change - how promises can be broken.

The minute I stepped back into my own house last summer, I waited. I waited for Conrad to make the first move like always. He was five hours away so we could only be with each other over the phone. But I didn't call him first. I think I was trying to test him and see if he actually wanted to have something with me.

I was never not thinking about him - what it all meant, what we were to each other now. It was impossible to go back. I knew I couldn't and I didn't want to. What happened between me and him changed everything.

And so with August finishing without a single phone call, all I had to do was wallow in my own pool of hopeless romance. But, still, I held on. I still had hope.

According to my mother, Conrad was all moved into his dorm room, he had an annoying roommate, and Susannah worried he wasn't getting enough to eat. My mother told me these things casually since she knew he hadn't called yet. I never pressed her for more information though. The thing is, I knew he'd call. I knew it. All I had to do was wait.

The call came the last week of August, two weeks since the last time I'd seen him. Belly and I were sitting in the dining room doing homework, and I'd left my phone in the kitchen to charge. It was a Monday, late at night, so when the ringtone sounded,

You've got that James Dean daydream

Look in your eyes

And I got that red lip classic thing that you like

Belly rushed from the table. It all happened in slow motion, hearing that ringtone I reserved for him and him only, Belly running to grab the phone and her answering it.

"Oh, hey, Conrad. Dani's been waiting for you to call her. She's been miserable." Belly said with a conniving smile on her face, then a wink.

Hearing her say his name I pushed up from my chair at the table and ran up to her. She laughed as she held the phone above her head. We were the same height so I would have reached it just as easily, but she kept weaving in and out of my grasp around the kitchen.

"Give me the phone, you little shit!" I screamed from across the house as she managed to run away to the front door.

Belly was so casual about walking back over to the dining room table. She sat down and the smirk on her lips never left. I walked over to her slowly, afraid she would just try to dip away again. But she didn't and I pushed my fingers against her forehead harshly as I grabbed my phone back from her.