OUT WITH THE TIDE — a JJ Maybank x Lex story
The Outer Banks had always smelled like brine and sun-baked docks, like motor oil from fishing boats and the sweet rot of marsh grass. JJ Maybank used to think that scent meant home. Used to.
But lately, every time he stepped outside the chipping blue door of the Chateau, the air felt like something squeezing him tight something reminding him of all the reasons people stayed here forever. And all the reasons he didn’t want to.
The night it finally broke him, the wind was whipping off the sound hard enough to shake the porch wind chimes, Kiara’s old ones, crooked from a hurricane seasons back. JJ leaned against the railing, blond hair wild, shadows under his eyes darker than usual. And Lex stood in the doorway, watching him.
Lex. The one person who could look at the most restless boy on the Cut and make him feel like he wasn’t about to run straight into the ocean just to see if it would let him float.
“Another fight with your dad?” she asked softly.
He huffed out a half-laugh. “Doesn’t matter. Same script, same ending.” He turned, and even in the dim porch light, Lex could see that something in his eyes was done. Not just tired, done.
“Let’s leave,” he said suddenly.
Her brow furrowed. “Leave where?”
“Doesn’t matter.” He swung his leg over the railing and sat on it, the whole image so effortlessly JJ chaos wrapped in sunshine. “Anywhere. Far. Like… I dunno. Hawaii . Or South Africa. Somewhere with palm trees and water that doesn’t feel like it’s swallowing you whole.”
Lex stepped closer. “JJ…”
“I’m serious.” He met her eyes, and she felt it like a rip current. “There’s nothing here for me anymore. Nothing but a bunch of people who think they already know how my life ends.” His voice dropped. “I want out before they’re right.”
Lex swallowed hard. “And what, you’d just go alone?”
“No.” He hesitated, JJ Maybank, fearless until now and said, “I want you to come with me.”
Her lungs forgot how to work.
He looked away fast, pretending he didn’t just drop the biggest truth of his life between them. “You’re the only person who makes this place actually feel…” he searched for the word, “…bearable.”
Lex stepped forward until she was standing right in front of him. “JJ,” she whispered, “I’d go anywhere with you.”
His head jerked up. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
The relief on his face nearly knocked her off her feet.
But JJ Maybank wasn’t JJ without dragging everyone he loved into his chaos and his freedom. By the time the porch light buzzed and flickered out, he’d declared a full-blown plan.
“We tell the Pogues,” he said. “First light. We take a boat,John B’s, obviously, he owes me like three favors and we just… go.”
Lex raised an eyebrow. “You really think they’ll come?”
JJ smirked. “They’re Pogues. Riding into bad ideas is literally our love language.”
⸻
They didn’t wait until morning to tell them, because JJ was wired, Lex was grinning like she’d swallowed a star, and the night was thick and warm and buzzing with the promise of something reckless.
John B found them first, sprawled on the couch at the Chateau, surf documentary flickering on mute.
“You wanna what?” John B asked, one eyebrow already in the judgmental stratosphere.
“Leave. Dawn. Full escape. No forwarding address,” JJ said. “Come on, man. Haven’t you ever wanted to blow this joint for real?”
John B’s face shifted, wistful, haunted for a moment, before he nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I have.”
Pope was next. He adjusted his glasses and tried so hard to be the logical one. “You know this is insane, right? Totally irresponsible. Completely irrational.”
JJ slung an arm around him. “So… you’re in.”
Pope sighed the sigh of a man accepting his fate. “Yeah, I’m in.”
And then Kiara, who stared at them like she’d known this was coming long before any of them did.
“About time,” she said.
JJ blinked. “You’re not even gonna argue?”
She shrugged. “The Cut’s been shrinking on us for a while. Maybe we’re supposed to outgrow it.” Then she smirked. “And besides, someone has to make sure you idiots don’t crash into a buoy on your way out.”
JJ threw his hands up. “Squad assembled!”
Lex couldn’t help laughing. He always made everything feel lighter.
But later, when the others drifted off to gather whatever they couldn’t bear to leave behind, JJ caught her by the arm.
“You sure?” he asked quietly. “Like… really sure. Because once we go, Lex, there’s no halfway.”
She looked at him, at the bruised knuckles, the salt-tangled hair, the softness he tried so hard to hide.
“I’m sure,” she said. “I want to see the world with you.”
Something cracked open in his smile.
⸻
The sunrise hit the water in streaks of coral and gold as they pushed the boat off the dock. The sound was calm, but it looked like it knew a secret like it knew they weren’t coming back.
Lex climbed into the boat last, turning for one last look at the marshes, the leaning oaks, the Cut waking up slow and sleepy. She expected sadness. But all she felt was weight lifting.
JJ took the wheel, glancing at her like she was the only landmark he needed.
“You ready?” he asked.
Lex stepped beside him, their shoulders brushing. “Yeah. Let’s go.”
The motor roared to life. The boat surged forward.
As the coastline of the Outer Banks shrank behind them, blue houses, rusted docks, wild dunes, the whole messy, beautiful place the wind whipped through JJ’s hair, and he laughed. Really laughed. Like he’d been holding his breath for years.
The world opened up in front of them, wide, endless, shimmering.
JJ leaned closer, voice barely audible over the wind. “Thanks for coming with me.”
Lex smiled, heart full. “There was never a universe where I wouldn’t.”
And as the bow cut through the bright morning water and the last traces of the Cut disappeared into the horizon, JJ reached out, hesitant, hopeful and intertwined his fingers with hers.
Leaving the Outer Banks didn’t feel like running anymore.
It felt like beginning.
