Description
My name is Isabel Conklin, but everyone calls me Belly. For as long as I can remember, my summers have been the most important part of my life. Every year, my mom and I, along with my brother Steven, would pack our bags and drive to Cousins Beach — to Susannah Fisher’s house. Susannah was like a second mom to me, and her two boys, Conrad and Jeremiah, were like family. At least, that’s what everyone thought. But the truth is, Conrad was never just family to me. He was everything. Childhood Summers From the time I was a little girl, I loved him. Every summer, I would count down the days until I could see him again. But to Conrad, I was just Steven’s little sister — the tagalong kid with braces and glasses, who wasn’t old enough to keep up. I used to dream of the day when he would finally see me differently. Then came the summer I turned pretty. I didn’t feel like the same awkward girl anymore, and suddenly, people noticed. Jeremiah teased me, boys at the pool asked for my number, and even Conrad — in his quiet, unreadable way — started to look at me differently. That was the summer everything began to change. Conrad & Jeremiah Conrad was complicated. He had this quiet sadness in his eyes, this heaviness he carried that no one else seemed to understand. He pulled away from everyone, even me, even when I was trying so hard to get close. Jeremiah was the opposite — warm, funny, and always ready with a smile. He noticed me when Conrad didn’t, and for a while, I wondered if maybe Jeremiah could be the one. But my heart… it always belonged to Conrad. Even when he broke it, even when I tried to move on, even when I told myself I should choose Jeremiah — I couldn’t. The Heartbreak Years The truth is, loving Conrad was never easy. He was moody, distant, and so good at hiding his feelings that sometimes I thought he didn’t care at all. There were moments when he pushed me away so hard, I swore I would never forgive him. And yet, there were also moments — small, fleeting moments — when he let his walls down. A glance, a touch, a whispered word. Those moments were enough to keep me holding on. When Susannah got sick, everything fell apart. She was the glue that held all of us together, and without her, Conrad seemed to shut down completely. I tried to be there for him, but he didn’t know how to let me in. And so, I drifted toward Jeremiah. He made me laugh, made me feel wanted. For a while, I thought maybe I could love him the way I loved Conrad. I even said yes when Jeremiah asked me to marry him. I wanted so badly to believe I could build a life with someone who was sure about me, who didn’t make me question everything. But deep down, I knew the truth — you can’t force your heart to choose. The Ending — Choosing Forever In the end, it was always Conrad. It had always been him, from the very beginning. He finally told me what I had been waiting to hear my whole life: that he loved me. That he had always loved me, even when he didn’t know how to show it. We had to grow up, to hurt each other, to lose each other, before we could finally find our way back. But when we did, it wasn’t just about summer anymore. It was about forever. Years later, when I walked down the aisle, it wasn’t Jeremiah waiting for me. It was Conrad — the boy who stole my heart when I was twelve years old, the boy who broke it a hundred times, and the man who finally put it back together. Closing Looking back, my story isn’t just about one summer. It’s about all of them. It’s about first love and heartbreak, about growing up and letting go, about learning that the hardest love is sometimes the truest. My name is Belly, and this is the story of the summers that made me, the love that changed me, and the boy who was always meant to be mine. 🌊✨