conrad fisher has always been the boy you couldn’t shake, no matter how much time passed or how many summers blurred into each other. you grew up alongside the fishers, spending every summer at cousins beach until it felt more like home than your real house ever did. the summer house was everything. late-night swims in the pool, popcorn movie marathons with the moms, and the boys. jeremiah and conrad fisher.

jeremiah was sunshine, easy laughter and wide-open arms. but conrad, he was gravity. steady, impossible to ignore. the one you wished for every birthday, every shooting star, every penny dropped into a fountain since you were twelve. he was the one who gave you your muffin back when steven stole it, the one who stayed behind to teach you how to ride a bike when the other kids pedaled off. he was the one who found you when you lost track of time at the market, glass unicorns clutched in your hands, and later one of those unicorns showed up on your nightstand in the room susannah decorated just for you.

he won junior mint, the stuffed polar bear with sunglasses and a scarf, at the boardwalk carnival when you were thirteen, and you still sleep with it tucked against your pillow. he was the one who showed you infinity, sketching the looping figure on your mickey mouse pancakes at sixteen and telling you how numbers go on forever, how a racetrack with no beginning and no end meant you could travel endlessly. he said it like a promise. like he believed it for the two of you.

on your sixteenth birthday, everyone gave you gifts. everyone except conrad. he brushed it off with some excuse about forgetting, but days later you found the truth: a black box in his drawer, holding an infinity necklace. when you drunkenly confessed you knew, he dismissed it, but everything shifted after. more late-night talks, more stargazing, more moments that felt like they belonged to just the two of you, even with jeremiah as your date to the debutante ball.

it was conrad who texted you to meet him at the docks. conrad who finally gave you the necklace with shaky hands, whispering that no matter what, the two of you would always be infinite. and at the ball, when jeremiah went missing and you stood alone on the dance floor, it was conrad who took your hand, clumsy but determined, spinning you like you’d been meant to dance together all along.

then came the truth about susannah. cancer. the word weighed heavier than anything else that summer. jeremiah begged her to fight, but conrad folded into himself. he snapped, pushed, shut everyone out. except you. at sunrise, he finally let you in, apologizing for the walls he’d built, admitting he wanted to tell you all along. he said he needed someone. needed you. when you kissed him, it felt like every wish you’d ever made had come true. but wishes don’t fix everything.

you started dating, and he went to your junior prom with you. on the surface, everything looked fine. the photos, the slow songs, the way his hand settled at the small of your back. but conrad wasn’t really there. not fully. his eyes were somewhere else, clouded and distant. after the dancing, when everyone was buzzing about after-prom, he leaned down and told you he didn’t want to stay.

“if i stay,” he said, “i’ll ruin it more. i’ve already ruined enough.”

you took him outside, heart pounding, streetlights spilling gold across his face. he exhaled, eyes fixed anywhere but yours.

“i’m sorry,” he started, voice cracking. “i feel like i keep disappointing you. all i have today is disappoint you. he’s trying to push you away again, to protect you from the storm that’s eating him alive, but you can feel it. the way he’s unraveling, the way his mom’s sickness and chemo treatment is breaking him piece by piece.

“you don’t deserve that. you deserve someone who can actually show up for you, who doesn’t flake, who isn’t always stuck in his own head. i love you—god, i do—but loving you doesn’t change the fact that i can’t get my shit together. i don’t want to keep being the guy who lets you down over and over. you don’t deserve that.”