isn't she surprised to learn that Conrad asked Jer for his blessing to be with Belly and at that moment she realised how much she meant to Conrad, so she goes to the beach, she is crying, Conrad comes and Belly asks him why he never told her and he was like " I thought you knew " ( referring to how much she meant to him ).

So i'm a bit confused then why Belly and Conrad didn't restart things in that episode ?

First of all, I want to preface this by saying even though I was team jelly for seasons 1 and 2, I like Conrad and him and belly are cool together, this is just a question I’ve always had about their relationship!

I really do think that Conrad always had a soft spot for Belly, but what is kind of hard for me to see is if he actually liked her romantically before the summer she turned 16. The infinity necklace, dancing scene, and the gestures like junior mint and the glass unicorn were really sweet, but Conrad still dated other girls and never really had anything objectively romantic w belly, even though everyone including him knew she liked him. Obviously in the summer in season 1 he was distant because of his mom’s cancer which is very understandable, but why did nothing happen in the previous years? If he always liked her and she always liked him, I would assume they would form a much closer bond, but to me it just seemed like their connection only really started after belly glowed up. Maybe it was a maturity difference or could be for tons of reasons, this has just always been something unanswered to me.

Belly’s confession to Conrad in s3 e11 (can we still officially call it the finale lol? Like yes but also no?) that she was scared that Conrad only loved her because of Susannah puts all of s1 in a sharper, more intense light.

Specifically, in s1 ep6 (the volleyball tournament ep), Conrad asks Belly of his own free will (see what I did there) if she’d like him to be her escort. Sure, Susannah asked Conrad if he could take Belly. But he doesn’t do it for Susannah, he does it for himself (which is what he texts Belly in s1 ep6 and then later reconfirms for Belly in the season 1 finale).

She had already faced rejection by him post False God near kiss and had already run into the arms “more emotionally available” (Taylor’s words, not mine) Jere. But now she was hearing Conrad ask HER if he could take her. She’s so thrilled, albeit confused (because of his rejection of her) by the idea.

But then her dreams come crashing down when Susannah shares that she told Conrad to ask her. She tells Taylor that “I’ve waited my whole life for Conrad to ask me to go somewhere and to-to an actual ball and it was all because his mum asked”.

Belly here takes this as further rejection from Conrad that he’s never going to actually see her that way, despite him telling her just a week prior that he thinks about her. She can’t trust he actually means that when he’s only asking her to this ball because his mum told him to. From Belly’s perspective: What else has his mum planted in his brain if a simple task like asking her to the ball got planted?

Belly and Conrad’s relationship ends because he can’t handle his own grief (something that gets explained in great detail especially in s3 ep5 & 11) about Susannah.

And then as Belly tells Conrad in s3 ep11, she’s so worried that their relationship may have never even happened at all if Susannah hadn’t gotten sick again and died.

If from her perspective, Conrad could love her and then take his love away at prom (we see in s3 ep5 that he wanted so badly to protect her from his grief and the reality of Susannah’s cancer until he just couldn’t but she doesn’t understand that) and not even want to give it back so she can help him grieve (Susannah’s funeral episode), it only further proves the point in her head that their relationship only had to with Susannah being sick & dying. And now that she was dead, Conrad really was just throwing her away. Even though he confirms with her at the end of s1 that he wanted to ask her to the ball, how can she ever really believe that now given the timeline of their breakup and his “refusal” to let her help him (she of course finds him laying on Aubri’s lap at the funeral). Even though he explains to her later in s2 (the party episode) that he wished it had been her that had helped him, just two days (?) later, he again stomps on that thought further when he flip flops at the end of s2 on if he should tell her that he loves her and still does before walking in on her and Jere and even after (he of course instead tells her he doesn’t want her anymore instead, furthering the point she latched onto)

But the person not throwing her away anymore was Jeremiah. So she fell into that relationship with him (“I don’t know where u end and I begin” and “we put each other back together after your mum died” from s3 ep8) and spent four years in a relationship with someone who ACTIVELY made everything about Susannah and their shared grief over her (including during arguments).

So for her to come out of that knowing that she still loves Conrad but she didn’t exist in a relationship outside of his pre-grieving his mum and knowing that she didn’t exist in a relationship with Jere outside of them becoming codependent to manage their grief is so utterly traumatic.

She’s right in her mind based on what has happened to her. How IS she meant to know that what Conrad feels for her is real outside of his grief and because “that’s what Susannah would’ve wanted”?

Starting all the way from Susannah’s request of Conrad to take Belly to the ball (despite his own choice in it), her insecurity has been picked apart and damaged further from years with Jere so it’s no wonder that she can’t trust Conrad’s real true love for her. She cannot fathom it after the years of damage to her brain. And even still it takes months (August-December) for her to untangle officially (not bc of love but because of the trauma bond they’ve inflicted on one another) from Jeremiah when they agree on the phone to let each other go.

But Conrad loves her for her (and it’s as simple and as hard as that ;)) . Chris’ line delivery makes me fucking sob when Conrad tells her how deeply what she thinks is not the truth at all: “You have always been a precious person to me. I have always cared about you. And then at some point I started to see you differently and that scared me because I didn’t want things between us to change but the way that I feel about you, Belly, has nothing to do my mum.

It’s really eye opening to see the pokes and prods from Susannah and understand not only that it was terrible for everyone to lose her and lose themselves to their grief but what exactly that set forth in motion for our BABIES.

I've seen a lot of comments saying that Conrad waited four years just to confess his love to Belly a day before her wedding. While I'm not necessarily defending his timing, I do believe Conrad never actually intended to confess his feelings before that moment.

He didn’t even know Belly would show up at the beach. I truly think his only intention was to tell her about the cheating because he thought she didn’t know, and honestly, that was the right thing to do. The “I still love you” came out in the heat of the moment.

Finding out that Jeremiah had cheated was probably the last straw for Conrad. He had trusted Jere to treat Belly right, and realizing that trust was broken, overwhelmed him with emotion. It was like he hit his limit and just thought, enough is enough. This is why I wish the scene where Conrad tells Belly about the cheating had been given more time and weight. The moment on the lifeguard stand felt too rushed. More emphasis should have been placed on the cheating itself. I needed the camera to linger on Conrad’s face—to really capture his disgust and disappointment, especially in realizing that Belly knew about the cheating and still chose to stay with Jeremiah. That visual would have added so much depth, showing the full extent of Conrad’s frustration. It would’ve perfectly set the stage for the emotional confession that followed. I loved everything that happened after they got off the lifeguard stand—those moments were perfect. But the scene while they were still up there could have been directed with more intensity and emotional weight.

If Conrad had truly wanted to cause trouble, he wouldn't have spent the whole summer being so selfless, going out of his way to make Belly happy. He even avoided being alone with her for years because he knew he wouldn't be able to keep his feelings inside (as he told Agnes in the first episode). Learning Jere's secret just pushed him over the edge.

I am not blaming either of them for their reaction on the beach because both of them were high on emotions. Conrad's timing sucked, true, but it was not something he had planned to do.

So basically, Bellyjeres claim, Conrad and Belly had a terrible relationship. But that's not true. It was only towards the end, that things went bad.

We don't get that many flashbacks of them as a couple, but of the ones we do, only prom shows the bad part. Otherwise, they had a good relationship.

Thanksgiving and christmas, portrayed it very differently. On Christmas, Conrad drove from brown to her home, to take her to Cousins. There, they have genuinely fun together. They play Outside in the snow, drink coca, and the fireplace. And in the car, Conrad openly talk to Belly about his dreams and his mom.

And thanksgiving showed them being very happy.

The flashbacks of their relationship shows

Halloween - getting together.

Thanksgiving - them happy and holding hands..

Christmas - everything is good.

Guest bedroom - Susannah's meds stop working.

Prom - where things fall apart.

That doesn't suggest, they had a bad relationship. It suggest, that they were 2 people who loved eachother very much, but that the timing was all wrong.

And then we get to the funeral, where emotions run high. Conrad and Belly are already broken up. He has a panic attack, and Aubrey finds him. Belly finds them, and has the wrong image. She then makes a scene, and he says, it was a mistake to start something up with her. But it's not because he regrets her, but because he was in a bad place.

And then at supermarket in season 2, they have a chance to Talk things through, until Jeremiah interrupts them. If he hadn't interrupted them, then they could have had a chance to talk..

When we got to the love confession in ep 7, we were already 2 weeks away from watching Belly at her softest and kindest to Conrad all season. Watching the love confession in isolation after we, the audience, have spent all this time staring at Conrad’s reactions and inside Conrad’s head, makes Belly seem SO harsh (even though she’s obviously deeply in denial and she’s lashing out.) But what struck me in particular upon my “jammed together Bonrad scenes” rewatch is how JARRING of a difference it is between how she interacts in ep 5 with him vs ep 7. Watching the Bonrad scenes in ep 5 so close to ep 7 love confession makes it all the more apparent how much of a wall she put up. And how watching ep 7 in isolation two weeks after ep 5 IS a much harder watch when we as the audience have watched Conrad yearn the entire season but we’ve gotten zilch from Belly until this set of eps.

The only other time this season we see Belly act this softly, warmly, comfortably with Con is Christmas 2.0.

Ep 5 and Christmas 2.0 are linked because both instances we see Belly with her defences absolutely down because she thinks she’s safe and both times she’s absolutely wrong. She doesn’t even realize she needs to have defences up because she’s so deeply in denial.

Christmas 2.0 ends up hanging over her head as if she and Conrad had sex like rabbits and declared their undying love for each other while Jeremiah skied in, mind you of all places, France.

The events of ep 5 fuck her up so bad she hides away on an air mattress at Adam’s for two weeks.

Christmas 2.0 happening in the second ep means we as the audience have been SO far removed from those scenes and it’s even worse than the jump from just ep 5 to ep 7. This means we as the audience ended up so insular in the way we approached the love confession scene (in the similar way that Belly does, though hers is from denial and ours is simply that it was five weeks prior and not everyone is an extreme rewatcher LOL).

The way she acts with Con is ep 5 and Christmas 2.0 is the real way she is with him without any of trauma/drama. It is what their relationship will look like in the future.

Shoutout to u/mc2115 who has done some seriously insightful writing on this series that has really informed the way I watch and think about the show.

I’ve been doing a lot of rewatching, trying to figure out for myself how Belly is able to stay in a relationship with Jeremiah for the duration of the four year time jump, and why she is making some of the choices that she’s been making so far this season, particularly with regards to Conrad. I wanted to remind myself of how we got here, so I went back to look in (a self-indulgent amount of) depth at the final emotional beats of S2 in an attempt to better empathize with our impetuous protagonist. What are the things she sees, what is she unable to see, and where is her reliability as a narrator of her own story called into question?

S2E8: by the time Conrad catches Belly kissing Jeremiah at Brown, Belly thinks (or wants to think) she knows where she stands with him. At the beach, Conrad has implied that he loved her, past tense, and they’ve had a second conversation by the trash cans the following morning reconfirming the sentiment that their time has passed.

After the inciting kiss, we watch Belly confront Conrad in an echo of her behavior towards him at Susannah’s funeral when she misjudges him and presses the issue until he lashes out at her. They’re both victims of self-fulfilling prophecy, running on too little sleep and too much grief. She’s not trying to get him back, and he’s not offering. In an earlier flashback of those events, she tells us in V.O. that she has sworn to herself that she will never again let her connection to Conrad affect her “like that,” lest it destroy her.

In light of this oath and their interactions since, Belly seems to interpret Conrad’s hurt as diffidence towards her when he tells her to stop chasing after him and go be with Jere—”he’s the one who wants you, I don’t.” It’s a bad-faith interpretation of his words and actions, probably born of self-preservation and psychic injury. Belly should be able to recognize as well as Jere that Conrad pushes people away when he needs them the most, but she denies (or doesn’t allow herself to extend to) him that sympathy.

As a result, Belly seems to take Conrad’s words at face value. She tells Jeremiah that Conrad made it clear that he wanted nothing to do with them/her, and accused her of trying to provoke his jealousy. Jere’s reaction reinforces Belly’s guilt for her role in his pain and fuels her desire to reassure him of her feelings for him. Belly’s sympathies extend easily to Jere, who has made it abundantly clear that he, like her, is hurting. Convinced that she is powerless to influence Conrad, Belly suddenly finds herself with the power to do something about Jeremiah’s suffering. Is she not then obligated to act, to make it up to him for “not being there” for him, and perhaps even for being her second choice?

Later, when they arrive at the motel, Jeremiah tells Belly that he can see that Conrad still loves her. She denies it, saying she knows better, and that it’s over for both of them—whatever “over” means to her here is anyone’s guess. Jeremiah tells both Belly and his brother that they need to have a real conversation about their feelings, and neither of them heed his advice. Jeremiah has never been more right than when he tells Conrad, “she deserves to know how you feel.” Jeremiah also, however, unwittingly plants a seed, “if she picks you… if you’re what she needs, I won’t get in the way again” which becomes the metric by which Conrad judges his own worthiness. They both want her to be happy. It’s a noble thought, although asking Belly to choose between the brothers at this raw moment is deeply misguided, if narratively critical.

Conrad doesn’t manage to have a real conversation with her, but does at least confess that he still wants her, of course he does. He can agree with Jeremiah that she deserves that much, but even then he seems to be gathering the nerve to let her go—”I just wanted you to know”—mirroring his emotional state when he pushes Belly away at prom two weeks before his mother’s death. He’s going to try to force the outcome in Jeremiah’s favor as an act of love for them both. Unfortunately, with no way to read his mind, his intention is opaque to Belly.

If Belly’s confrontation with Conrad on the beach outside the goodbye-house party created a wound in her psyche, hearing Conrad say that he still wants her rips that scab wide open. She lies in bed, grieving the loss of both Susannah and her love, and Conrad and their connection. Susannah’s insistence from beyond the grave that Conrad still loves Belly echoes Jeremiah’s, but Belly has already decided not to believe the people she loves. After all, the truth of it feels like it will destroy her. Instead, she hangs onto her feelings of rejection. In her sorrow, the loss feels more real than the “dream” she’s been chasing her whole life of Conrad returning her feelings.

The hurt is all fresh when she wakes up (after two nights of getting almost no sleep) and symbolically dons her Finch sweatshirt. She’s decided to stop being reactive and to become proactive. It appears that regardless, whether she does or does not have feelings for Conrad, or whether Conrad does or does not have feelings for her, she’s choosing the same thing for herself that Conrad chooses for her: his brother. It is frustrating for us to watch Belly complete her journey into denial, because while we know she’s not seeing things clearly, she’s actively convincing herself that for the first time, she is. By assigning reality to her relationship with and feelings for Jeremiah, she creates an alternate universe to live in where she’s capable of just “getting over” her feelings for Conrad without ever addressing them.

Having made her choice, Belly doesn’t immediately get many chances to speak for herself. The brothers keep cutting her off, or interrupting her, or hardly letting her get a word in edgewise, and her V.O. is absent until her final confrontation with Conrad in the motel room. Conrad cooly plays into Belly’s narrative when he claims that the confession was a lie meant to confuse her. He was just pissed. They’re cool. They’re friends. We finally hear her thoughts, having entered into her enlightened, newly Conrad-less state of being.

>I can’t even be mad at him, because this is who he is. This is who he’s always been. He never lied about that. He gives, and then he takes away. So I release you, Conrad Fisher. I evict you from my heart.

Looking forward, in S3E5 Conrad’s POV reveals that in this moment, the factor that prompted him to be dishonest to Belly about his true feelings is the titanium-clad deathbed promise he made to Susannah to always “look out for” Jeremiah—interpreted by Conrad as putting his brother’s happiness before his own. Conrad loves Jeremiah, and can understand why Belly might, too. Conrad, who has no grace for his own grief, whose nature it is to take accountability, finds himself unworthy of loving Belly by comparison to Jere. Conrad decides that he isn’t what Belly needs or wants, and that he can make his two favorite people happiest by leaving them to be together, which is arrogant, poorly reasoned, and incredibly sympathetic.

Belly’s reaction is at last collected, cold, and controlled. In her own eyes, she is rising above Conrad and the games he’s playing with her heart. She is succeeding at deceiving both of them. At least, until the infinity necklace (symbolizing their eternal, lasting love) falls out of his backpack, and he tells her he can’t keep it for her anymore.

“We’ve done this before,” is her response. I believe she’s referring both to their break-up at prom, and to the night when Conrad’s ill-timed text left her stranded and naked and she let Jeremiah touch her boob. On that occasion, he apologized and tried to give her the necklace. He told her it was hers to do with as she wished, and he was, of course, talking about his heart. She refused it at the time, insisting that he was too late. She then proved herself wrong when they undeniably reconnected during the deb ball. She accepted his heart then. So this time how final does it truly feel to Belly, as she is preparing to drive off into the sunset with Jeremiah? She tries to refuse the necklace again, but this time when he insists, she relents and hides the necklace in her pocket when Jeremiah enters the motel room. Is this what letting each other go looks like?

As we know in S3, Conrad looks back at this moment years later and wonders if he had been honest, if he had been sincere—if he had been able to say the words, as he once claimed he physically ached to do—if it would have made a difference to her. And I wonder, too. I wonder at Belly, and her determination to be the master of her own thoughts by not letting herself think them. This becomes the foundation that she begins to build the rest of her life on—staying with Jeremiah, and later by accepting his proposal—with Conrad’s heart secretly tucked away in her pocket. Like Conrad on the beach, we’re all wondering how she still doesn’t know the truth of them.

I think I agree with the assessment that the depth of Belly’s denial reads as a deficiency of the self-awareness she once had. We are watching Belly make a choice that will lead to unhappiness for herself, for Conrad, and most certainly for Jeremiah. Maddening. I get the sense that if I were her friend and tried to talk her out of this course of action, I wouldn’t have a chance to sway her. But Belly doesn’t see it that way. Belly’s narrative for herself is that she is making up for her past deficiencies and mistakes, that she’s moving on from childish fantasy and self-absorption, growing up, and taking charge of her life instead of letting her emotions rule her. Jeremiah happily supports this new Belly, because her new outlook on life is intrinsically linked to her choice of him over his brother (look Conrad, who’s holding her hand now?) So what if it means that their relationship is being built upon the precarious linchpin of their mutual trust in that choice? The more immediate obstacle in their path has decided to transfer to Stanford.

I may be an outlier, but I still have sympathy for Belly. I may be waiting for her carefully constructed house of cards to collapse, but it’s from a hopeful place. I don’t think her choices have been easy to make, nor do I think she has to demonstrate perfect judgement in making them. We’ve all done selfish things and hurt people we’ve cared about, acted impulsively, been insensitive and dishonest. I can’t let myself dismiss her as simply stupid, unsympathetic, or unworthy for being human and flawed. Perhaps I am borrowing some of Belly’s self-delusion, but if I’m honest, I also find it hard to write her off purely because Conrad’s yearning for her makes her more sympathetic to me.

What I can acknowledge is that narratively, it is possible that Belly’s most compelling feature has become her capacity for self-deceit. The more she frustrates me, the more I want to see her have the long-awaited reckoning that will bring her home to herself. It’s just a little hard to swallow her willful blindness sometimes, given that the more we root for Conrad, the deeper the hole Belly needs to dig herself out of becomes. I don’t think we should let her off the hook. I don’t think she should escape from this situation blameless. I do think she deserves self-actualization, and it is my hope that out of that self-actualization comes a Belly who can finally own her shit. I hope we get to see that both in the resolution of her internal narrative, as well as within the context of her significant relationships.

It took them one day to go from being so awkward around one another to being able to banter with one another again. This is what we've been saying! If Conrad didn't stay away, Belly and Jeremiah's relationship would NOT have lasted as long as it did because Belly's connection with Conrad will always be stronger and more important to her.

Belly could never banter like this with Jeremiah because she always has to coddle his insecurities, whereas she is able to talk like this with Conrad and give him some tough love when needed because their connection is richer and less fragile, and they both know it.

Conrad was dealing with anticipatory grief when they were in their relationship, and that's mainly the reason why his side of the communication shut down. Belly was also too young and immature to give him the space and the grace he needed at the time. It was just a case of terrible timing, but someday when they're finally in the right space in their lives, they will always find their way back to each other, and that's what this whole thing has been about.

I didn’t really care for them in S1. Their interactions especially in the first two or three episodes were a little...Conrad was really bringing the "dark, broody" energy that I didn't particularly care for. He could be pretty rude to Belly at times and him trying to flirt with her felt weird sometimes. Besides their dance scene and kiss in the last episode, alot of their moments are honestly forgettable.

Them getting together should have been the easiest thing ever. She likes him, he likes her….one could argue that it’s because he believed he wasn’t ready for a relationship but it’s like….you still flirt with her and when she’s trying to move on, you make yourself known again. It’s just too much whiplash. He took Belly on an unnecessary, emotional rollercoaster ride. Anyways, I don’t have too much to say about them in S1. I can kind of see the appeal but it wasn’t enough to move me.

However, I like them a lot more in S2 even with the funeral and prom scene lol. Them actually becoming a couple and having history made some of their scenes make more sense. While in S1, they didn’t really have any history so I didn’t understand where all the angst was coming from. I think the tension was better this season and I can actually see why people would root for them. There is something appealing about 'first love' for a lot of people and them coming back together.

Overall, S2 made me dislike them less but I don't see where people feel they are soulmates or "meant to be". It was a cute first love but that's it. It's a forgettable but unforgettable relationship. Unforgettable in the sense that it was first love with the guy you had the biggest crush on who you thought you'd never get the chance to date. A interesting story to tell. Forgettable in the sense that she's not even 18 yet so she will most likely have way better relationships that'll make first love look like nothing.