this love- conrad fisher

prologue

prologue. a few months before that summer

"do something babe, say something"

One November morning, everything had started well. The sky was blue, the air was fresh, the world was peaceful and Conrad Fisher was still in love with Katherine Conklin.

She didn't notice it fall apart, the hollowness in his voice, the quiet nod instead of a radiant smile. The silence instead of "I love you." She thought he was just tired, of practice and school and everything that wasn't her.

It made her feel a bit blue but she knew it would be okay, after the gloom cloud Conrad had found himself under passed away. She would wait for him to be okay.

"Hey Bells," the older Conklin girl addressed her cousin, her spirits low, hoping that the younger brunette would help cheer her up. "What are you up to?"

"Hey Kathy!" Isabelle Conklin grinned at the sight of the girl who was like her older sister, "I am on a call with Conrad... Do you want to say hi?"

Emotions ran through the girl's mind. Conrad was on a call with her? But he had football practice all afternoon today—

He lied, Katherine, the voice in her head laughed at her stupidity, what did you expect? It's Saturday. He just doesn't want you anymore.

Katherine stared at the phone that Belly turned around, showing Conrad in all his glory... clearly not playing football. Sitting idly, an apologetic expression on his face.

"Hey, Kathy," he said, as if he hadn't texted her a few hours earlier, can't talk rn, football practice till 5... miss you xx

"Hey Conrad," she gritted, hoping that her voice didn't give away how heartbroken she really felt that he had lied to her. Had she been too clingy and demanding of his time that he had to lie to her?

She left the room as fast as she came. Maybe practise got cancelled and he texted you, a part of her mind tried to reason.

She unlocked her phone— zero texts from Conrad Fisher.

He was avoiding her.

She should have seen it coming really. The fights had grown more constant over the weeks about where their relationship was going. The moments they used to spend in the night, just talking about everything and anything for hours had turned into moments where they stared at each other in silence, despite Katherine's attempts at being closer to him.

A few minutes later, the phone finally rings. The heart next to Conrad's name is really a stab at her own and she wonders what she could have possibly done for it to get this bad.

She knew what was about to happen, enough people in her life had left her for her to now learn the lesson.

Conrad clears his throat awkwardly. "I was going to call you."

"When?" She questions. As if that will change anything.

"I was."

"Really?" She demands. "And what were you going to say?"

"I was going to call you." he insists again.

"Conrad," She swallows. She doesn't want to ask this, she has to. For her own sanity. "What would you have said?"

Conrad shakes his head suddenly, perhaps tired of the charade he played, the puppet master becoming a puppet of fate. "Honestly, Katherine, I was never going to call you."

Her heart drops. She finds herself at a loss for words. "But you just said..."

Do something, she wishes she could say, Why are you giving up on me, on us?

"I know." The boy says gently and if Katherine didn't know him as well as she did, she would say it was a face of a nonchalant person. But she did know him. This was the face of regret and giving up. "But I wasn't going to call you. I was just going to text you."

The gravity of the situation starts to sink in; he does not want her, he does not need this, her love is not and might not ever be enough for him; and the tears start to leak out of her eyes.

"What were you going to text me, Conrad?" She doesn't want to ask. She has to.

"That we should put a full stop on this. On us." His face is expressionless, the laughing boy who was talking to Belly a few minutes prior gone. A shell remained, unbreakable, never going to be understood.

Katherine let out a stifled laugh. This wasn't funny. This was stupid and reckless and painful and fucking stupid. But this wasn't funny. At all.

"Are you fucking breaking up with me—" she closed her eyes in anger, to keep her tears in so she doesn't break down in front of him. "—over a fucking call, Conrad?"

"I'm sorry," he looked down and shook his head. "It's for the best—"

"Are you going to say something cliché like 'it's me, not you?'" She interrupted him. Every promise he made, every moment they had ran like a broken record in her mind.

It's over. It was the best thing ever and it made you so happy. And now it's over.

"It is me and not you, Katherine." He said. "And anyways, it was a summer fling. It was bound to get over."

Bit by bit, with every word he uttered to her, Conrad Fisher kept breaking the girl's heart. Million pieces scattered and if she hadn't been able to hear her heart thumping in her chest, she would have believed Conrad had managed to actually break it.

The best thing, the only greatest thing in her life... was a summer fling. A meaningless summer of nothing.

"Did— Did you ever even love me?" She asked, using the sleeves of her grey sweatshirt to wipe off the tears that had escaped the prison of her red eyes.

His sweatshirt. He gave it to her last summer. She hated that sweatshirt suddenly.

"No," he answered. Simple as that. A no. A simple word with two letters created a lie out of summer they had when she said she loved him and he said he loved her back.

"Fuck you, Conrad," she cut the call. Letting the tears fall from her eyes, Katherine fell onto her bed, feeling stupid for ever thinking it would work out.

She was stupid to ever love him (because she did—oh, how she loved him).

One November evening, the light became dark, the right became wrong, her mind was polluted with memories and Conrad Fisher was no longer in love with her.

But summer always changes everything; for better or worse.