This wasn’t anything out of the ordinary for the two of you. He’d get pissed off at something little and stupid you apparently did (and sometimes something you didn’t even do), but he claimed he still wanted to spend time with you. So, the two of you would stand in complete silence, while he practically ignored you and you would pretend that you didn’t notice.

It was just easier this way.

“It’s getting kind of late, my parents are gonna want me home soon,” you muttered under your breath to your boyfriend, not taking your eyes off of the frothing waves a couple feet in front of you. Rafe just grunted, his gaze focused on the same spot for a few more minutes, before he finally stood up and began to walk towards his car. It was assumed and understood by the two of you at this point that you would just follow him.

Once you got to the car and got into the passenger seat, you settled back into the seat that had been heated by the setting sun while he turned on the engine, barely waiting until everything was on as he pulled quickly out of the parking lot and down towards the other end of the Cut, where you lived.

It was always surprising to you, and probably everybody else, that Rafe was dating someone that didn’t live in Figure Eight and wasn’t… well, a kook - like him. He always spoke down on the Cut and the people that lived there, even after you two had started going out, but he always said he saw something special in you. Something different. You never questioned when he started dropping by your work more often, flirting with you back and forth across the hotel bar, and leaving tips that you would consider more than generous. Plenty of kooks had done that to you before, just trying to get brownie points and make themselves feel a little better and more charitable. You were, however, surprised when Rafe Cameron asked you out on a date almost a year ago, even offering to have his younger sister, Sarah, go along with you to get you a new dress for the occasion.

“You know he’s probably just going to use you, right?” your one coworker had warned you, as if he had had plenty of experience dealing with Rafe. You had already agreed to go on a date with him, but that comment felt as if it were even more of an incentive to go out with him. Once he had asked you to be his girlfriend after three dates, you almost always made a point to rub it in your coworker’s face that he wasn’t just using you.

Lately, though, you started to think he might have been right all along.

“You wanna tell me what that whole thing was back there at The Wreck?” he finally spoke up, breaking the silence that had been stretched out ever since he had paid for their dinner nearly an hour ago.

You furrowed your eyebrows at his question, not even sure what he was upset about this time. “What are you even talking about, Rafe?” you asked, your voice clearly noting how tired you had gotten of him and his shit over the course of your evening together.

“You know exactly what I mean,” he bit back, glancing over at you every few seconds as he drove. “You barely talked to me! You kept talking with Kiara when we were supposed to be on a date,” he huffed out, running his hand back through his hair that looked like it had just a bit too much gel in it.

You scoffed at how dramatic he was being, rolling your eyes a bit as you leaned back into the leather seat. “She was our waitress! And she’s my friend. I’m allowed to have friends besides you,” you muttered, shaking your head slightly.

Lately, Rafe had gotten more and more insufferable. It was like you were supposed to only spend time with him and maybe a few of his friends, if he was okay with it. He practically cut you off from the rest of your own friends, and you didn’t even notice until months went by without hearing a single word from your friends. Kiara was the only pogue who still talked to you out of her own choice. John B and Pope avoided you like the Plague, and JJ… you were lucky if you even saw JJ anymore.

Rafe just shook his head in response, chuckling as if he didn’t take a single word you had said seriously.

That was the last you had heard from him for the rest of the car ride. You were lucky if he spared you a glance when he made a right turn, but even then it was as if he did everything in his power to look around you.

Thankfully, it was a short drive back to your place. You lived in one of the nicer parts of the Cut, but it still wasn’t much compared to what Rafe was used to. He had once made a joke about how your house was about the size of his dad’s boat. You just laughed it off at the time, wanting the pretty boy from Figure Eight to think you had a sense of humor so he would like you more.

He parked his car on the street in front of your house, finally looking over to you. “I’ll see you tomorrow? Dad said he was gonna leave a little later, so I’ll probably come to get you to go out on the boat around noon instead,” he told you, acting as if nothing had happened, like he hadn’t gotten upset at all, like he hadn’t ignored you for half of your evening.

You just sighed but nodded, mustering up the most authentic smile that you could. “Yeah, that’s fine. I’ll just… be here,” you told him, nodding back towards your house. He nodded again, drumming his fingers against the steering wheel as he seemed to get lost within his own thoughts.

“Alright, I’ll pick you up then. Love you,” he said, his voice flat, the way you were sure you sounded on the phone with visitors and customers at the hotel.

You just smiled anyway, leaning over and pressing a quick kiss to his cheek. “Love you too,” you told him, before quickly getting out of the car. The second your feet hit the gravel of your driveway, you heard his car speeding off.

He wasn’t very subtle about not liking your neighborhood too much.

You began the slow, long walk up your driveway until you decided you wanted to sit by the beach for the while, quietly making your way around your house before heading down to the shore. You kicked off your sandals in the grass before you sunk your feet into the warm sand, running your hands back through your hair as you sat down. You didn’t want to admit how exhausting it was keeping up with Rafe and his mood swings, but you always felt so drained by the time he dropped you off or you left his house.

You weren’t too sure how much time had passed - fifteen minutes? An hour? - before you heard the sloshing of someone walking through the water. You glanced up to see a shirtless, soaking wet blond headed for you, a surfboard tucked under his arm as he flipped some of his damp hair out of his face.

“Have you been out here long?” he asked curiously, setting down the surfboard and sitting on top of it, resting his arms on his knees as he looked out onto the waves, though instead of looking angry and stoic, he looked thoughtful - much more calm than your date had seemed. It was different. A nice different.

You shrugged a little bit, pulling your hair out of your face as you looked over at him. “I don’t think so. An hour, tops,” you told him, leaning back so your hands dug into the warm sand behind you.

The blond boy just nodded, his fingers twisting the shark tooth hanging around his neck slowly as he kept his gaze on the rolling waves. You could practically see him thinking over the next thing to say, not wanting to make you any more upset than he assumed you already were.

JJ Maybank had found you in this same spot about a month earlier, probably around the same time. It was after a particularly terrible date with Rafe, one that had left you with tears running down your reddened face and your throat sore from yelling about whether or not you were flirting with Kelce earlier that day. You hadn’t even let him drive you home; you walked all the way from Tannyhill to the patch of beach behind your house. You were glad you walked, though, despite the fact that your legs were sore and your feet were cramping, because it gave you some time to blow off steam and calm down.

You sat down in the same spot behind your faded, small house compared to Rafe’s, the waves rather large for an early June evening. The sun had finally set and a few stars poked out across the darkening sky. It was relaxing and quiet, the opposite of what you had just left twenty minutes before.

Just like tonight, the blond-haired pogue came over to you, hollering something back to Pope as he made his way into his house about two blocks down from you. You assumed he didn’t see you at first, considering how startled he looked when he nearly tripped over you.

“Oh, hey, I didn’t… I didn’t think you’d be out here,” JJ said, running a hand back through his damp hair. The ocean water remaining on his body dripped slowly into the sand as he stood over you, waiting for a response.

You gave him a weakened smile, tucking some hair away from your face as you looked up at him. “My date ended a little earlier than it was supposed to,” you told him, your voice slightly coarse from yelling and crying.

He gave you a bit of a frown as he noticed that, probably as well as your puffy eyes and red cheeks, before sitting down on his surfboard next to you. He always seemed to be more distant, less emotional than the rest of his friends. Which is why he shocked you when he asked after a few moments of quiet, “Do you wanna talk about it?”

You raised your eyebrows a bit and looked over at him, unable to hold back a soft laugh. The big, bad JJ Maybank, the ultimate pogue stereotype, was asking you if you wanted to vent to him. It seemed comical. “Really? ‘Do you wanna talk about it’? Don’t you want to rub it in my face and say ‘I told you so’?” you asked, folding your arms over your chest.

His eyebrows knitted together at this, looking down into his lap for a brief moment. “Would you rather I tell you that? Because I have a lot I could say or do instead of letting you talk about it,” he said, though you could tell he was (mostly) joking.

You let out a huff, running your hands back through your hair before you explained the situation to him. From when you first noticed Rafe getting jealous and overly possessive when a touron managed their way into a Boneyard party and started talking to you about the island, all the way up until that night, when he got pissed at you just for being nice to his friend.

“I just can’t even tell what he wants from me anymore, you know? Like, I don’t want to spend our relationship feeling like I can only talk to him. What’s next, does he want me not to talk to his dad?” you complained to him, bringing your long, much needed rant to a close. JJ hadn’t taken his eyes off you, letting you know silently that he was listening to whatever you needed to say. He’d be stupid if he couldn’t realize how much you needed to get that out.

“If you’re so unhappy with him,” he started - a rather poor way to start off when talking about something like this, really - “Then why don’t you just… break up with him?” he asked once he realized you were done talking.

You shook your head gently, resting your hands on your knees as you looked up to the sky sparkling with stars here and there. “You don’t break up with people like Rafe Cameron. Especially if you’re someone… someone like me,” you said, hating the way it sounded that you were branding yourself. You expected some snide remark from him, probably call you a pussy and tell you to figure it out on your own.

Instead, he waited for a moment, before nodding gently, like he understood exactly what you were going through. “You’re worried he’s going to destroy your life.”

You just nodded, scratching at the back of your neck as you kept your anxious gaze focused on anywhere but him, like Rafe would find out you were even in the presence of him. “I know he would. I’d be lucky if I got to keep my job at the hotel and not have to go to the mainland to find a job. I wouldn’t be able to have a life in the Outer Banks unless he wanted me to. There’s no telling what he could do, since he gets so worked up just when I even talk to someone else and-”

JJ cut you off quickly by leaning over and pressing his mouth onto yours, his hand carefully cupping your cheek, his thumb brushing across your skin as if wiping away the tears you so desperately needed to let out. You didn’t know what to do at first, the taste of salt water and smoke overwhelming your senses with fireworks as you tried to put your head on straight. But then, as if something clicked in your brain, and you slowly began to kiss him back, your arms moving to wrap around his neck.

After a couple of moments, once you felt your heartbeat slow down and you didn’t feel like you were going to pass out from everything that was happening, JJ pulled back slowly, his hand still resting on your cheek. “Feel better?” he asked in a low voice - almost a whisper, as if someone was suddenly on the empty beach with them.

You just nodded, swallowing thickly as your eyes scanned over his features, from his pink and slightly puffed out lips to his gleaming blue irises to his tanned skin that seemed to glow even in the dead of night.

“Good,” he grinned, running his thumb across your skin before standing up. “If you, uh… if you need anything, you know where I live, and where the Chateau is,” he told you, giving you one last small smile as he picked up his surfboard. He turned to walk away, then looked back at you again.

“Do you want me to walk you back up?”

You smiled softly, pushing yourself up off of the sand and nodding quickly. “Yeah, sure.”

Now, he sat beside you, his feet making the same damp imprints they had weeks ago, knowing exactly how you felt but not wanting to make you upset by talking about it.

After a few long minutes in what felt like a painful silence, you let out a bitter laugh. “He got mad at me for talking to Kiara this time,” you finally told him, figuring his curiosity was bound to get the better of him soon enough anyway. You shook your head a little bit at the thought of it, realizing even more so now how ridiculous it had seemed.

He shook his head as well, his damp blond hair sticking to the sides of his face and head as he looked back out to the rumbling waves. “You know you don’t deserve that, right? To be treated like you’re some… some pet that bends to his will,” he said, toying with the shark tooth hanging around his neck.

You hesitated but slowly nodded, looking over at him properly for the first time that night. “I know. I just… I can’t exactly say anything without him going all ape shit on me. Or calling me crazy. Or whatever new shit he thinks of,” you sighed, scooting closer to the blond so you sat next to him on his surfboard, which was still damp from his hours out on the water.

JJ stayed quiet, not even knowing the proper way to comfort you. You had this talk probably ten times now, maybe more, considering this became your new spot to run to after a bad date or interaction with Rafe, your own little space of solitude that happened to include a blond pogue your boyfriend despised.

You eventually rested your head on his shoulder, and he wrapped one of his arms around you as you sat together, just the company being enough. It wasn’t a terrible and painful silence that made you feel like you were being punished and left you frustrated. It was a calm, almost beautiful silence, one that let you breathe but still feel like you were still with him, not like there was a mile of space between you.

“We’ll figure something out,” he said finally, his gaze fixing from the waves back down to you. His blue eyes glistened as the moonlight hit them just right over the ocean, his blond hair whipping back from his face to leave him on display for you and the stars to see.

You just gave him a small, sad smile, not even sure what you could say to him right now. You knew he was just trying to be helpful, but the longer you were with Rafe, it was like he was holding your head under water, and you knew that it would be worse if you tried to leave him. It was like being stuck under a current, and your foot was lodged between some rocks.

This time with JJ was the only time you felt you could poke your head out of the water, even for a few moments, and just breathe. It was like Rafe didn’t exist, like you didn’t have a responsibility to anyone but yourself. And you relished this time, whether it lasted twenty minutes or two hours. You started to look forward to dates with Rafe, only because you knew that you would eventually see JJ on the beach after, which made you feel slightly more calm. Even happier, sometimes.

“And what if we can’t figure anything out?” you finally asked him quietly, your voice barely audible over the crashing of the frothy waves ahead of you.

All he could do was shrug, not knowing the answer either but obviously doing his best to not make you upset. “Then, what Rafe doesn’t know can’t hurt him,” he told you with confidence, like he was more powerful than all of Figure Eight put together.

You couldn’t help but smile gently up at him, shaking your head softly. “You’re pretty confident in yourself, JJ Maybank,” you grinned, before leaning over slowly and pressing your lips to his, the bitter taste of salt and smoke nearly overwhelming you as you felt his arms wrapping around your waist and holding you closer.

You felt like you could stay there with him forever. Your lips moving with his, your hands on each other more affectionately than anything. It was slow and sweet, and you felt like you wanted to do this - not that you had to.

You eventually moved up onto your porch in your backyard, laying your head on his shoulder while the two of you talked about nothing but also everything. You stayed like that all night, at least until you fell asleep. It felt like the best sleep of your life - you felt at home and safe with JJ, one of your closest friends, and even something more. You wished your night would never end.

You thought the same thing when you woke up to the sound of someone banging on your front door and hollering your name, recognizing the insane and overprotective voice anywhere.

Rafe Cameron was on your front doorstep.

And JJ Maybank was asleep next to you.

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