It's Not Summer Without You

“If I forgot Conrad, if I evicted him from my heart, pretended like he was never there, it would be like doing those things to Susannah. And that, I couldn’t do.”

Belly rationalizes her inability to let go of her lifelong crush on Conrad Fisher because of how her relationship with him is wrapped up in her relationship with Susannah, Conrad’s mother. Despite their traumatic breakup and Conrad’s unintentional manipulation of her emotions, Belly cannot let go of him because she associates him with Susannah, and she is afraid to lose Susannah’s memory.

“Maybe letting myself forget how good it used to be will make things easier. But when I slept that night, I dreamed of Susannah and the summer house, and even in my sleep I knew exactly how good it used to be. How right it was. And no matter what you do or how hard you try, you can’t stop yourself from dreaming.”

After Taylor suggests that Belly move on from the events of the past few months, Belly tries to envision doing this and wonders if it might actually be better for her in the long run. Belly’s subconscious, however, refuses to let her forget about the Fishers and their summers at Cousins Beach, indicating that they are too intricately woven into the fabric of Belly’s life for her to move on from them. Her dreams keep her nostalgia for the past alive.

“It’s all relative, I suppose. You think you know love, you think you know real pain, but you don’t. You don’t know anything.”

Belly recalls the moment she learned of Susannah’s death. She tries to express how deeply she feels this pain and how it affects her more than any other heartbreak. Belly often describes her feelings about her relationship with Conrad as heartbreak, but when she learns of Susannah’s death, she realizes that no pain she has ever felt in her life even compares to the pain of loss.

“There are moments in life that you wish with all your heart you could take back. Like, just erase from existence. Like, if you could, you’d erase yourself right out of existence too, just to make that moment not exist.”

Shocked and hurt when she finds Conrad with his ex-girlfriend after the funeral, Belly lashes out at him, telling him that she hates him and that she never wants to see him again. Acting out of pain from their breakup and her unrequited love, Belly displays emotional immaturity in her attempt to hurt Conrad, but this quote indicates that she understands her actions were harmful and inappropriate for the setting. Her deep shame lingers for months, to the point that she embarks on the quest to get Conrad back in school with Jeremiah as a penance.

“I hated him more than anything. I loved him more than anything. Because, he was everything. And I hated that, too.”

Belly articulates her complicated feelings toward Conrad. She has the capacity to feel real anger and resentment toward him, but at the same time she cannot quite let herself dismiss him or forget about him. To Belly, Conrad is everything, both good and bad, which makes a complicated path for Belly to navigate throughout the text.

“Why did I do it? Why did I put it on? Why didn’t I just put in my pocket, or leave it in the box? I can’t even explain it. All I knew was, I just really, really wanted to wear it. It felt like it belonged to me.”

Belly finds an infinity-symbol necklace among Conrad’s things in his abandoned dorm room. Belly knows that the necklace is a symbol of his love and affection for her, although he has never expressed this to her and did not give her the necklace before they broke up. Belly instinctively feels that the necklace belongs to her, and therefore wears it underneath her shirt for much of the text, another indication of how deeply connected she feels to Conrad regardless of how much he tries to push her away.

“It felt like nothing else existed outside of that word, that moment. There was just us. Everything that had happened that summer, and every summer before it, had all led up to this. To now.”

Belly recalls one of the final scenes from the first book in the Summer series, when Conrad drove from college to Belly’s house to take her on a secret winter trip to Cousins Beach. Leading up to this, Belly and Conrad have shared their first kiss, although they have not defined the parameters of their relationship. Despite this, Belly cannot help but feel that their whole lives have been leading them to this moment, when they finally decide to be together. Her inability to separate the figure of Conrad from the arc of her own life keeps her from getting any perspective on their actual relationship.

“But I didn’t regret it. I never regretted it, not for one second. How do you regret one of the best nights of your entire life? You don’t. You remember every word, every look. Even when it hurts, you still remember.” 

Laurel grounds Belly for a long time after her clandestine trip to Cousins Beach with Conrad. Despite her mother’s anger, Belly does not regret her decision to go for one moment, citing it as one of the best nights of her life. Even now, after she and Conrad have broken up, she still categorizes it as such, despite the hurt that comes later. This speaks to Belly’s deep investment in Conrad, regardless of the status of their relationship to one another.

“Not thinking about Susannah, consciously not thinking about her, made it easier. Because then she wasn’t really gone. She was just off someplace else. That was what I’d been doing since she died. Not thinking about her. It was easier to do at home. But here, at the summer house, she was everywhere.”

Jeremiah and Belly arrive at the summer house looking for Conrad, Belly’s first time in the house since Susannah’s death. Belly realizes how much she has been trying to ignore or forget Susannah’s death—and the futility of that now that she is actually back at the Cousins Beach house. The house is a symbol of Susannah: Her touch is on everything, her things are still there, and the memories Belly has of growing up in that house with the Fishers are indelible. This quote illustrates how the house enables Susannah to live on although she is no longer physically present.

“I didn’t want to make the same mistakes my parents made. I didn’t want my love to fade away one day like an old scar. I wanted it to burn forever.”

Although her parents have an amicable divorce, Belly nonetheless resents them for the lack of passion they displayed in their relationship and its dissolution. Belly views their emotionless divorce as a fault or a sign that they never loved each other at all. In contrast, Belly hopes to not repeat what she views as their “mistake” and vows to never settle for a relationship that fades.

 “Here’s to…here’s to everybody that isn’t here tonight. To my mom, and to Steven, and to Susannah most of all.”

Conrad, Jeremiah, and Belly throw a party at Cousins Beach to memorialize the house before it is potentially taken from them. Before the party starts, Belly proposes a toast to all the people that have inhabited the Cousins Beach house with them every summer since childhood. It is one of the first times any of them directly mention Susannah by name, although her life and death loom large over the entirety of the house and their desire to save it from being sold.

 “Just like that, the moment was over. It was an almost moment, where almost anything could have happened. But he had made it be over.”

Belly finally can apologize to Conrad for the way she acted at Susannah’s funeral. In one of the first times they are alone together since their argument, Belly senses that they could kiss at any moment, the weight of everything unspoken hanging heavy between them. Conrad chooses to end the moment, going back inside and leaving Belly on the beach, feeling once again abandoned and rejected by the person she loves most.

“If he said yes, it was over. If he said yes, I would give her up. I could live with that. If it were anyone but Conrad, I’d have tried anyway. I’d have given it one last shot.”

Jeremiah decides to ask his brother about his feelings for Belly, something the two of them have never discussed. Knowing how deep Belly’s love for Conrad runs, he knows that if Conrad is even remotely interested in Belly that there would be no chance for anyone else to be with her, including him.

“He was full of shit. He liked her. He more than liked her. But he couldn’t admit it, wouldn't man up. Conrad would never be that guy, the kind of guy Belly needed, someone who would be there for her, someone she could count on [...] But maybe now that Conrad wasn’t standing in the way, she’d see me there too.”

Conrad tells Jeremiah that he does not have feelings for Belly, but Jeremiah can tell that he is lying. This angers Jeremiah, not only because of his own feelings for Belly, but because Conrad’s denial shows Jeremiah that Conrad will never be someone whom Belly can count on. Although he knows Conrad does in fact love Belly, Jeremiah nonetheless feels a sense of hope, thinking that perhaps if Conrad gives up his chance to be with Belly, she may begin to see Jeremiah as the embodiment of the type of partner she needs.

“You’re right, I’ve been absent. I’ve been so consumed with my own grief, I haven’t reached out to you. I’m sorry for that.”

Belly’s mother, Laurel, is normally an impenetrable wall when it comes to expressing emotion, something Belly deeply resents. After their heated argument at the Cousins Beach house, Laurel smacks Belly across the face, which shocks Belly but indicates that Laurel does, in fact, have emotions. When Laurel and Belly reconcile, Laurel apologizes to Belly for retreating into her own grief, leaving Belly to fend for herself and process her own grief alone.

“This house meant everything to Beck. Can’t you get past your own grief and see what it means to the boys? They need this [...] This house is hers. It’s not yours. Don’t make me stop you, Adam. Because I will. I’ll do everything in my power to keep this house for Beck’s boys.”

Laurel’s forceful argument that Mr. Fisher should keep the house causes him to finally break down and admit that Susannah’s presence in the house is too overpowering, that he wants to sell it to soothe his own grief. Laurel enables him to see the inherent selfishness in such an act. He comes to accept that the house belongs to Susannah’s sons and therefore should remain with them, even if it is a painful reminder that Susannah is no longer there. Here Laurel exhibits her undying devotion to her best friend—and the lengths she will go to honor and protect Susannah’s memory and sons.

“Then we washed the dishes in silence, and my mother had that sad look on her face and I knew she was thinking of Susannah. And I wished there was something I could say to take that look away, but sometimes there just weren’t words.”

After Laurel convinces Mr. Fisher not to sell the house, Belly can see that the weight of Susannah’s death continues to press down on her mother. Belly also has learned that oftentimes nothing can soothe grief, least of all words, and that sometimes one just needs to sit with grief in order to move through it. After spending so much of the text trying to ignore their grief over Susannah’s loss, Belly and Laurel allow themselves to be present with it and acknowledge it.

“I’d only been back at the summer house for a couple of days, and just like always, I’d already forgotten about Taylor and everything back home. What mattered to me was here. It had always been that way.”

After only two days at the Cousins Beach house, Belly realizes how easily she has fallen back into the familiar pattern of forgetting about everything away from Cousins. This speaks to how Belly views summers at Cousins Beach as her “real life,” something she expresses in the first book in the series as well. To Belly, nothing will ever be as important to her as the place and people she has in Cousins Beach, even if the traditions have changed.

“He’d loved her. Once upon a time, he’d been crazy about her. He had never been that way with me. Never. But I had loved him. I loved him longer and truer than I had anyone in my whole life and I would probably never love anyone that way again. Which, to be honest, was almost a relief.”

Belly thinks about how the disparity in how she feels about Conrad versus how he felt about his ex-girlfriend, Aubrey. Conrad’s actions have convinced Belly that he never loved her or felt particularly strongly about her, but Belly knows how much she loved and continues to love Conrad despite everything that has happened between them. Resigning herself to the fact that she and Conrad will never be together in the way that she hoped, Belly feels a sense of relief that the great love of her life—and all the pain that accompanied it—is behind her.

 “But I loved that house, and I hated to say good-bye. Because, it was more than just a house. It was every summer, every boat ride, every sunset. It was Susannah.”

Before they leave to take Conrad back to school, Belly reflects on her feelings about Cousins. Now that the house will remain in the Fisher family, Belly feels confident that she will see it again someday but also acknowledges that her life is changing as she gets older and prepares to go to college next year. She experiences the familiar feeling of hating to leave the house because of what it has always represented to her, with the added meaning it has to her now that Susannah is gone.

“It was passionate, and desperate, and like nothing I had ever experienced before. This was what people meant when they said the earth stopped turning. It felt like a world outside of that car [...] didn’t exist. It was just us.”

Though this is not the first time Jeremiah and Belly have kissed, it ignites a passion Belly did not think she could experience with anyone but Conrad. In fact, this is a feeling she has never experienced even when kissing Conrad, because there has always been a lingering insecurity in her relationship with him. Belly’s kiss with Jeremiah is free of anxiety and insecurity because she feels safe and wanted with him.

“It wasn’t the thought that counted. It was the actual execution that mattered, the showing up for somebody. The intent behind it wasn’t enough. Not for me. Not anymore. It wasn’t enough to know that deep down, he loved me. You had to actually say it to somebody, show them that you cared. And he just didn’t. Not enough.”

Although Conrad does not explicitly say so, he confirms for Belly that the necklace was a gift for her and that it symbolizes his love for her. For Belly, however, this is no longer enough: She thinks about how many times Conrad has failed to show up for her or express his feelings for her, forcing her to speculate and second-guess herself. Now that she has witnessed active love through Jeremiah’s actions and the way her mother showed up to help save the house, Belly realizes that actions and words are necessary for communicating feelings and making loved ones feel secure. She realizes that she will never have that with Conrad and therefore feels it necessary to let him go.

“We stood there, looking at each other, saying nothing. But it was the kind of nothing that meant everything. In his eyes, there was no trace of what had happened between us earlier, and I could feel something inside me break. So that was that. We were finally, finally over.”

Belly says goodbye to Conrad both literally and figuratively. Even though Conrad finally told her the night before, in the dark, that he didn’t mean it when he told her he never cared about her, Belly knows that she has to give up her dream of being with him. After making this choice, Belly feels a deep sense of sadness knowing that their relationship is over, especially seeing Conrad once again put on a steely facade to mask his true emotions.