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C.F

act one ━ chapter nine

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━ CONRAD FISHER ━
july seventeenth, 2022

          CONRAD RETURNED TO THE PANCAKE HOUSE MORE REGULARLY AFTER THAT DAY. As if that was totally normal and to be expected. After returning for more blueberry pancakes three times, August wasn't even surprised by him showing up anymore.

          But someone she was surprised to see show up at the pancake house for the first time was Finn Granger.

          And August was just the girl he was looking for.

          Evan made sure to keep herself busy with other tables when Finn nervously stepped into the cafe.

          "Hey," he said, taking off his cap like an old-fashioned gentleman. "I asked around and found out you worked here."

          Fuck, this town was tiny.

          August's smile wavered, but then she remembered who she was talking to and realised that Finn wouldn't even hurt a fly (even when his job was to hurt fish).

          "Well, you found me," she laughed.

          Now what? She really didn't understand the protocol here.

          Finn approached the till, cautiously at first, and it calmed her nerves to think that both of them were a little bit anxious.

          "I just came over to ask if you would want to hang out sometime this week?"

          August could hear Evan clearing her throat somewhere behind her. Sawyer had made himself scarce. And she felt very much alone. August had sworn herself off of dating since the whole Conrad thing and she was a bit rusty.

          What should she do? Did she smile? Blush? Thank him?

          But she couldn't let herself fall that easily. Jeremiah had already made her blush and Conrad was worming his way back into her life so August wasn't going to jump into anything too quickly. Her heart was guarded after that fateful summer three years ago and she wasn't about to give it away to the first boy who flashed her a smile and asked her out.

          So instead of suggesting that they hang out one-on-one, August asked, "Why don't you come to my mom's fiftieth birthday party next week? It's at my house, and she's making it this whole big thing."

          Finn's confidence faltered for just a split second but after a moment where he came to the realisation that he wasn't being rejected, he stood up a little straighter. And he flashed her his teeth.

          "That would be great," he said. "Could we exchange numbers, and then you could send me the details?"

          August felt a weight be lifted off her shoulders. She was so very grateful he didn't pull a face or tell her that would be weird. But of course he didn't, this was Finn Granger we were talking about ─ the nicest boy ever.

          "Of course," she said sweetly.

          August didn't even have Conrad's number. But that wasn't relevant because he wasn't the one coming into her work and asking her out. He was doing the first part, but the second one made even more of a statement.

          Once Finn had been and gone, August's coworkers cornered her.

          "You invited him to your mom's birthday party? August, that is so sad."

         Evan's voice was very high-pitched, and August was pretty sure it travelled to the other side of the restaurant.

          August shrugged sheepishly. "I didn't know what else to do," she said honestly. "It felt right."

          It was going to be a big party, with lots of kids their age. Louise had been planning it since they set foot in Cousins. And the guest list was very long from what August had seen so far, most people being friends of friends. Anyone to fill out the house apparently.

          Evan started to rub circles on the small of August's back. "Oh, honey, way to knock a guy's confidence."

          "What? He's fine!" August was flabbergasted. Finn seemed perfectly okay without a one-on-one date, and she didn't say anything about that being off the table. She was just testing the waters, per se.

          "Ignore her," Sawyer interrupted. "Can I just say, though, that I didn't even get an invite to this party?"

          August scoffed. "I assure you, you did."

          Louise Jacobs' guest list was probably the size of Cousins. August was unsure how her mother could have a connection to her coworker, but she was sure Louise would find one if it meant another guest in her house on her 50th birthday.

          Evan was not dropping the topic of August and Finn, however hard Sawyer tried to intervene.

          "Is there a reason you didn't just suggest going out for coffee or something?" She asked. "He did the hard work just by showing up here. All you had to do was sit still and look pretty."

          August sighed. She couldn't well tell Evan all of her reasoning because that was far too complicated and would reveal too much.

          Before she could come up with an answer, Evan gasped scandalously. "Oh my God, is there someone else?"

          Sawyer just shook his head in disapproval. August felt squashed all of a sudden, like she didn't have enough room to breathe.

          But she didn't owe anyone an explanation, good friend or not. She was going to take Sawyer's advice and ignore Evan.

          "Something like that."

❀°。🌺 .ೃ࿐

          A POST-WORK SURF FOR AUGUST WAS ALWAYS NECESSARY. What wasn't necessary was for her to zip up her chest wet-suit, grab her board, and descend the steps to the beach just to see Conrad waxing his board in front of his house.

          The beach wasn't quiet but there weren't enough people to conceal her presence with a massive surfboard that was double the size of her.

          August wondered that if she was in any other coastal town in the whole of the United States, that she would be significantly happier. Surfing was her thing. It was just about the only thing that she could rely on. Her life was constantly being uprooted, but she had always had her lucky board.

          And now, it seemed, she could not go out for a paddle without being interrupted.

          She pretended that she didn't notice him. She bent over in the sand, waxing her board in small adjacent circles, so intensely that, of course, she was too distracted to see the boy doing exactly the same thing.

          But, naturally, board tucked under his arm, Conrad jogged over to her side of the beach. He blocked the sun when he came to stand in front of her, his face haloed in the bright glow of the rays from above. 

          August didn't stop waxing her board when he said, "Perfect day for a surf, right? Great minds think alike."

          August surfed no matter the weather ─ they were not the same.

          Trying to conceal her huff, August straightened up. At full height, both boards and Conrad towered over her. She felt small, trapped. In this feeling of isolation, she stabbed her board harshly into the sand so it stood on its own.

          She scowled up at him. "Right."

          "So let's go together," he said with that adorably wonky grin of his. "It'll be fun."

          Sure, it will.

          She fought off the urge to roll her eyes. "Hm mhm."

          He had practically cornered her on the beach ─ this was happening whether she protested or not. And her board was freshly waxed, and she hated the feeling of taking off her upper-body wetsuit. She was in the mood for a surf, and she was not going to let Conrad ruin that for her.

          Conrad then took a moment to study her, like she was the most confusing person he had ever had the pleasure to meet. Like her existence contradicted everything he thought he knew about humans.

          In his survey of her person, Conrad's eyes became fixated on her board. He knew this board. He had become very familiar with it three summers ago. He had even surfed on it.

          His initials were carved into the deck of it.

          Because apparently he wanted to make her as uncomfortable as possible, Conrad gestured to the C.F. engraved on the edge of the board standing beside her.

          "You didn't try to get rid of that then?" He asked playfully.

          August did not feel playful at all. In fact, she had made it her mission to pretend that it wasn't there. A difficult feat considering she had looked at this board every day for the past three years, the memory of her long-gone summer romance permanently etched into her heart.

          In a rage, she had almost burned her board when she saw his mark staring back at her. But this board was too precious to part with. Her father had given her this board before he walked out of her life.

          She knew she wasn't going to get rid of it, so she tried everything she could think of to erase Conrad's memory from her favourite possession. Permanent marker. Trying to transform the CF into something else. But nothing had worked.

          Conrad was forever inscribed on her surfboard.

          But because she wanted to keep some semblance of her pride, August just shrugged and said flatly, "Lucky board."

          Conrad nodded slowly, taking a moment to digest the fact that his initials were still visible on his ex-girlfriend's surfboard.

          August hated how silent they had become, giving him the time to run his eyes over her bare legs and the bright pink bikini poking out of her wetsuit. He wasn't wearing a wetsuit but just swimming trunks and nothing else. She didn't recognise the red surfboard he was using.

          Desperate for the ground to swallow her whole, August plied her board from the sand and said to him, "Let's see how bad you've gotten then."

          Conrad's smirk was immediate. It was like he had the old August back. And he followed her out to the sea without hesitation.

          And in those moments, the pair of them side by side, jogging in sync and diving for the water at exactly the same time, she could have sworn she was fifteen again. In love with the very boy beside her, his hair dripping at the ends and sagging in front of his face, grinning and doing the thing they both loved. The thing that had brought them together.

          August waited for the perfect wave before she looked over to him on her right, a challenging gleam in her eyes. He had always loved how competitive she was, even in front of people she had no desire to impress. She came alive in the water, no thoughts or complications ─ just her, the board, and the miles and miles of the Atlantic stretching out before her.

          She surfed the wave effortlessly, her posture hardly wavering. Conrad watched in awe as she tipped her feet and her body in time with the white-tipped breaker. The water curved over her head, her body perfectly matching the rhythm of the water-laced trail behind her. There was no point in his following on with the next wave because she had already asserted her dominance.

          Conrad waited for the sea to settle slightly before he paddled over to where she had ended up. He was grinning, unable to contain how amazed he was that she had gotten better and better since he last saw her catch a wave.

          Just when he thought she couldn't get much better, she did a full three-sixty on the face of the wave, spinning down it. And right at the end, she even had the balance and stamina to brush the fallen hair out of her face, just as she skated across the surface, right to where he was still stationary.

          "Where did you learn how to do that last trick?" Conrad smirked with a jerk of his chin.

           August swatted the water on her board casually. "Oh, just some guy I met at surf camp a couple of years ago."

          Conrad may be a little rusty out on the waves now, but he used to give even August a run for her money. Clearly, she had since had a little more practice than him.

          "Sounds like a right loser."

          "Believe me," August said with a sigh, "he was."

          Despite the obvious dig right in front of his face, Conrad chuckled. It was the first time he had laughed like that in months. Since before summer, before Nicole, before August showed up right at his door.

          It was this mention of their past and the relaxed breeze that fell around them that prompted Conrad to suggest what he had wanted to the second he saw how distraught she was to be reunited with him.

          "I have a proposal."

          "Oh god, here we go."

          Conrad ignored her protest and went straight in with it: "Let's start over."

          August couldn't help but scoff. "Start over?"

          "Yeah," he nodded, and it became clear that, even while he was smiling softly, he was dead-serious.

          But what did that even mean? They had already been pretending that nothing had ever happened between the two of them, so now what? August's mind naturally went to how the reasons Conrad gave for ending things between them three summers ago were because of how different their lives were. Upon reflection, the distance was a big thing that would make a relationship very hard, but now that they literally couldn't live any closer, would he ever want her back? Did she even want him to want her back?

          August knew that if it ever came to that, she wouldn't give him the time of day. Just because their relationship might just be convenient now, he couldn't just worm his way back into her life, no questions asked. If August really wanted to heal from the wounds he inflicted three summers ago, she knew she would have to keep him at a safe distance.

          Friends. New friends.

          "Okay," she said slowly, eyeing him skeptically.

          Conrad then cut the water with his hands and pulled his board closer to hers so that they overlapped. He then held his hand out to her. Sea dripped off his fingers.

          "I'm Conrad," he said. "It's nice to meet you."

          August then gave him a look that said oh, we're really doing this? and when he responded with a faux grave expression, she slapped her hand into his and gave it a shake.

          "Good to meet you, Conrad. I'm August."

          August Jacobs had met a lot of new people since her move to Cousins in Massachusetts ─ Conrad Fisher was not one of those new people she had expected a formal meeting with. And now she had received two since her arrival at the seaside town.

          Their hands lingered a little while longer in each other's embrace, their fingers pressed up against each other. Until August realised their handshake was longer than socially acceptable, and she pulled her palm from his. She tucked her fingers under her armpits, hugging herself.

          Conrad then cleared his throat, trying to hide the laugh that wanted to come out of him. A laugh at the fact that she seemed so nervous any time they got close to each other. And at what he was about to say.

          "So Finn's cute."

          "What the fuck."

          "I'm kidding," he cackled, using his body weight to sway her board. Her body sagged in an attempt to seem fed up about all the questions regarding her love life, but in actual fact, August was fighting off a smile. Because of the mention of Finn or because Conrad Fisher was teasing her, she didn't know.

          "You're very easy to wind up," Conrad told her.

          August just rolled her eyes. He could tease her all she wanted; she was not about to indulge him in all the information he so clearly wanted.

          But Conrad wasn't giving in, and so he probed, "So how is he?"

          "He's fine, I think," August sighed, just to give Conrad what he wanted, even if that was a breadcrumb of her blossoming friendship with Finn Granger. "I actually invited him to my mom's fiftieth birthday party."

          August thought this was a sad attempt at an Aha! I'm so over you, Conrad Fisher! ─ if she did admit herself. But it was too late now.

          "Oh, cool," Conrad replied, his head bobbing in time with the waves. There was an air of unbotheredness about him as he said, "I haven't spoken to him in a while, so that'll be nice."

          "What does that mean?" She quickly asked. A slow smirk began to form on his face. She instantly knew he was teasing her yet again (and she was now giving him further evidence that she was easy to wind up), but that didn't stop her from asking again: "Conrad, what does that mean?"

          "Didn't I tell you?" Conrad feigned confusion, running a hand up and down the back of his head. "Yeah, your mom invited our entire house to your party."

          A scoff. "Of course she did."

          August should have known that in her mother's feat to invite the entirety of Cousins Beach to their house for her 50th birthday celebrations, she would eventually make it to the Fisher household.

          Conrad flicked a splash of water in her direction. She flinched, trying her best not to seem frustrated because it really didn't need to be this easy for him to wind her up.

          "I'll see you there then," he said.

          August smiled sarcastically. "Can't wait."

          They dived right back into the water after that and, from the outside, it might just seem that they were really just two new friends making the most of the good surf. 

          When a breather was needed, they found respite on the shore. The sand was soggy, seeping into the gaps between their fingers and their toes were licked by the passing waves.

          "What's surfing been like with you moving around all the time?" Conrad asked her.

          "I never stopped," she told him, angling her head so that their eyes could meet but so that she wouldn't be blinded by the sun beating down on the back of his head. "My mom always did her best to make sure we moved somewhere close to the water. I even surfed in Lake Erie when we lived in Ohio."

          It was too precious to give up.

          "What about you?" August asked him after briefly reporting on the states she had once resided in and how easy it was to surf there.

          "Oh, I'm not that committed to it," he brushed her off, swirling his fingers in the puddle of water forming on his board where it was still half wedged in the ocean. His head bowed, Conrad continued, "I surf all summer when we're in Cousins, but when I'm back in Boston, I guess I just don't think about it much."

          What Conrad meant was that he tried not to think about it. In actual fact, in the other three seasons, he yearned for the water, desperately wanting to get as far away from land as he possibly could. But that was only possible in Cousins.

          They caught a few more waves until the sea settled, almost like it was readying itself for a night's rest. It was when August took a second to watch as the sun started its descent into the horizon, painting the sky in an ombre of delightful pastels, that she realised just how normal this felt.

          Since she and Conrad had made their truce, it felt genuinely possible for them to just be friends, as if they had just met a month ago. Just two friends with a shared love for surfing, casually talking about each other's love lives.

          But in the back of her mind, she had not forgotten. She had not forgotten how it felt to return home from surfing camp, a shell of a person, grieving a love that had never truly been hers. She painfully remembered every detail of what it had been like for her to live for the hope of it all, the potential of a love that was going to live on forever. And to have that come crashing down right in front of her, blindsiding her.

          And she knew she was never going to truly forget how Conrad had once made her feel. She might forgive him, but forgetting him was a completely different ask.

          In Cousins, she was surrounded by things that reminded her of that summer three years ago. So even if she and Conrad may have made amends, this summer was never going to be easy.

          That proved particularly true when Jeremiah met them by the shore, board in hand, just as the two of them were finishing up their surfing.

          Jeremiah didn't question his brother and neighbour surfing for a single second, but one thing he did question was August's board. Which she carelessly let him see in its full form, from where Jeremiah stood on the dry sand and August and Conrad waited in the soggy ground, the ocean lapping over their toes.

          "I didn't notice that before," he said with a smile, an unsure finger pointing at the tip of August's board. "Who's CF?"

          August's face reddened. She felt like a deer in the headlights. Conrad coughed awkwardly beside her, but when she glanced to her side, he wasn't sharing her concern, but rather trying to hide his growing grin with his fist.

          Understanding that Conrad was not on her side here, August swallowed down her anger and turned to Jeremiah, her jaw clenched from how difficult it was to form a smile.

          "My dog," she said. Because that was the only thing that made any sense. Not the very boy standing beside her right now.

          Jeremiah's brow twitched, but his smile didn't waver. "Your dog?"

          August nodded. Conrad was running a hand through his wet hair, his smirk on full display. "Hm mhm," she hummed, her brain working overtime as she tried to come up with a plausible explanation. "His name was . . . Chicken Finger." That works. She then feigned disappointment. Conrad snorted by her side. "He died. Very suddenly."

          August was acutely aware of the boy smothering his mouth with his hand and of the one standing stock still in front of her, sympathy pinching at his brows.

          "I'm sorry, August," Jeremiah said.

           August had been so desperate to cover up the lie in front of Jeremiah that she hadn't properly realised what this lie meant to an outside perspective.

          She hurried to shut down Jeremiah's concerns. "Oh, it's okay," she brushed him off. "It was a while ago."

          Jeremiah nodded his head slowly. He looked highly intrigued by August's fake story and genuinely compassionate about what he thought she was going through.

          Conrad, on the other hand, was beside himself with laughter. And wasn't doing a great job of showing it.

          August knew then that he would be of no help in this scenario.

          "Well, we better go," she said to Jeremiah, laying a hand on his arm, a perfectly believable smile on her face.

          Jeremiah didn't ask any more questions ─ not about Conrad's amused behaviour nor about their surfing session. He was probably scared off by the fake grief story. But at least it gave August and Conrad the time to escape up to their adjacent homes, just as Jeremiah headed for the waves.

          "I didn't know you were going through that," Conrad said to her from where she stood a step above him. He wore an expression of mock sensitivity, a hand held to his chest. "I'm so sorry. Rest in peace, Chicken Finger."

          August picked up on his bit and carried it out. "It's been rough," she pouted. "I appreciate your condolences."

          The pair laughed, August towering over him, and Conrad hovering on the sand below. Neither of them knew how to end this day; it wasn't something they were used to.

          But they had only just met, right?

          August sucked in a breath when Conrad lightly tapped his knuckle against her arm. She could feel every strand of hair stand up on its legs, even with the sun spilling its heat onto her bronzed skin.

          "Hey, I'm glad we did this," he said, looking through his brows, grinning up at her.

          The surfing, or the pretending that we never even dated?

          August appreciated the sentiment, but she didn't appreciate the thought that he could just act as though they could go back to being friends after everything that had happened. Or worse yet, forget it ever happened

          Did it really mean nothing to him?

          But August didn't say any of that. How could she when he looked up at her like she hung the moon?

          So instead, she just smiled sadly back and said, "Me too."

          August was on the fence about how much she believed her own words. On the one hand, it was nice to be around Conrad like old times. But on the other hand, she knew she couldn't let herself get used to it. It was almost too good to be true. It was dangerous to want to like Conrad so badly, to put aside everything. She knew if she did that, she'd just fall in love with him all over again.

          It was only a matter of time before he got caught up in another summer romance with a new girl, before disappearing to Boston when fall rolled round again . . .

❀。🐠 ⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ 🌊 ❀°。🌺 .ೃ࿐