Chapter Text
Kiara feels the silence deep in her belly as she moves the same small, pink shrimp around her bowl. She dunks it beneath the rice, dips it in the thick sauce of her dad’s famous gumbo, and makes another attempt toward her mouth. She clamps her lips shut and lets the fork clang back into the bowl as another wave of nausea hits her at the smell.
Two pairs of eyes stare at her over their own forks. It’s hard to say which of her parents looks disappointed and which looks worried, their expressions shifting as they exchange a look. Whatever silent conversation they’re having passes between them quickly; Mike goes back to eating a little too casually, but Anna sets her fork down much quieter than Kiara had and studies her daughter openly.
Whatever she sees in Kiara softens her. She slides her hand across the table, but Kiara tucks her hands beneath her legs just before her mom can make contact. She sucks in air through a tiny gap in her lips and hopes it’s enough to bury the nausea deeper.
“Kiara, sweetheart, do you want to talk about whatever happened with Sar–”
“I’m not hungry,” Kiara rasps through the sudden lump crawling up her throat.
Her chair scrapes loudly on the hardwood, and the table shakes a little with how hard she pushes away from it. Their voices follow her up the stairs, but she doesn’t hear them as she slams her door shut and rushes into the attached bathroom.
Crashing to her knees, she tells herself it’s the party. That this twist in her belly is from the videos, the pictures, the busy Cameron Estate she and her parents had driven past on the way home from Kildare Prep. She tells herself that the sick feeling started when she reached the school parking lot to find no trace of Sarah and Kelce’s car already gone without her. That the bile burning its way up her throat is from the cold way Sarah had looked right through her the whole day.
As the few bites of gumbo and the half an apple she’d eaten at lunch splash into the toilet, she knows that the ache inside started sooner.
With a move across the island to a new house, a new club membership, and a new school uniform.
With a promise not to lose touch. With a frayed friendship bracelet she tucked into the back of her dresser. With brown, hazel, and blue eyes staring at her across a bonfire before she turned and laughed at some stupid, unfunny joke from Topper Thornton.
With a baggie of weed and blue eyes that refused to meet hers even as the cool metal of JJ’s rings brushed her hand. With the ticking muscle in his jaw as he thumbed through the too-thick wad of cash, pulled a few bills free, and dropped the rest at her feet with a sneered, “Guess you really are a kook now.” And an even colder, “I ain’t your fuckin’ charity case, Kiara. Buy off your guilt with someone else.”
Fingers gone white around the toilet seat as another wave crashes and burns and rushes up her throat, she knows – she fucking knows – this is different.
Finally empty, she flushes and sinks back onto her ass. The door is cool as she presses her back against it, but her knees are warm as she buries her face there and squeezes her eyes tight. It does nothing to stop the tears; they pour through anyway, choking her the harder she tries to stifle them.
She clenches her mouth shut so hard her jaw hurts at the sound of her parents out in the hall. She can’t quite make out the words, but she knows that tone. Knows it comes with ultimatums and choices made for her. Knows it usually comes with another piece of her identity stripped away.
Her home. Her school. Her boys.
Chin trembling at the click of her bedroom door opening, she flips the lock on the bathroom door and slides across the tile floor silently. Steam fills the room as her dad’s voice cuts through the running water, “Kiara?”
Mike’s knock is light, but Kiara flinches anyway. She wipes her cheek on her knee, eyes blurry behind her clumping eyelashes as she watches the knob. It doesn’t twist, though the door shakes with another knock, louder this time.
“Kiara? Your mom and I wan–”
“I’m in the bath!” She doesn’t bother to lift her head from her knees, her voice cracking midway through.
She hears a soft thump – his hand or his head resting against the door – and then his voice, resigned, “Okay, sweetheart.”
There’s another mumble, hushed voices that go silent a good fifteen seconds before her dad says, “Your mom and I have been talking about our trip next weekend to Charleston. We have those tickets your cousin sent us for that play. We were planning to stay a couple nights, but I think we should postpo–”
“I’m fine, Dad.”
Kiara presses her cheek harder into her knee and corrects, “I’ll be fine. You should go, have fun,” Kiara’s not sure she said it loud enough until she hears his sigh.
“We could stay.”
“Or you could come with us,” her mom’s voice cuts through the door. She sounds muffled, like maybe her mouth’s a little too close to the wood. Sounds eager too, like the idea of not going isn’t even an option, “We can make a whole family weekend of it. Get dressed up, eat at that tiny seafood place you love near the theater. It might be nice to get off the island for a few days.”
Kiara’s lips tremble as she lifts her eyes back to the door. She inches toward it, reaching for the knob.
“Come on, Kiara. You love the city. And hey,” Anna adds, voice hopeful, “maybe we can even go shopping. We can get our hair done and get you a new dress for this year’s Midsummers. You’ll be the belle of the ball at The Island Club.”
Kiara’s hand drops back to the floor, her stomach twisting. She wraps herself back into a tight ball and squeezes her eyes shut.
Wiping her nose with the back of her hand, Kiara eyes her bare wrist and then tucks her hand beneath her on the floor. She bites at the inside of her lip until it hurts and murmurs just loud enough to be heard, “You guys have fun.”
There’s a pause and then her father’s soft voice replaces her mom’s again at the door, “Just… think it over a few days, okay? We’re not leaving until Thursday,” he reminds her.
Kiara doesn’t bother to come up with a response. She just drags her nail back and forth over the smooth tile beneath her until she hears the floor outside the door creak.
“Whatever happened between you and Sarah, I’m sure you girls will work it out,” her mother adds with a sigh and the quiet click of Kiara’s bedroom door. “Best friends always do.”
Slipping out her window, crossing the roof, and climbing down the trellis before her parents have even gone to bed is the easy part.
It’s routine in a way she couldn’t have predicted back in the seventh grade when she and her parents were still cozy in their little house on the other side of the island. The house with the crooked doorframe, the light green shutters, and the kitchen that always smelled like spices and warmth. The house with the pretty garden her mom still had time for and her dad’s fresh herbs on the windowsills of the kitchen.
Now, there’s no more crooked doorframe. The shutters are pale blue instead of light green. And the kitchen smells like artificial flowers instead of warm spices. The garden that had once kept dirt beneath her mom’s fingernails and a smile on her face has been replaced by shrubs that get trimmed once a week by a gardener. And Kiara can’t remember the last time she smelled fresh herbs at home or saw her mother’s nails as anything but perfectly painted.
She can’t even remember the last time this place felt like home. But she still remembers the last time she felt at home.
It’s why, after all this time, sending a text to JJ Maybank is the part that makes her stomach flip all over again.
She types and deletes it four times before she’s even made it out of her yard. The night air is cool despite the heat of the day, but Kiara can’t feel it. Her limbs feel tight, her back tighter, there’s an ache in her chest, and a tremble to her fingers as she types the message again and hits send.
Meet me at Rixons? 20 minutes.
She makes it there in ten.
Her phone buzzes in her pocket as another of her friends posts a story from Sarah’s party, and she spends the next 20 minutes torturing herself with videos of Sarah having the time of her life. Her stomach twists as Sarah throws her arms around Scarlet – both of them wasted and happy and silly – and crows drunkenly to the camera, “I love her! I have the best friends! And I love them. I love you,” she adds to Scarlet as she squeezes her tighter.
“I love you too!” Scarlet cries as she drops a sloppy kiss onto Sarah’s cheek.
Kiara makes the call with one hand pressed to her belly and the other shielding her mouth to stall her nausea.
She’s watching an Instagram story of the cops busting the party when she hears quiet footsteps on the sand. She stands quickly from her log, fumbling with her phone before she manages to shove it into her shorts pocket. He pauses mid-step, his hands tucked into the pockets of a brown plaid jacket, and it takes her a minute to spot his scowl in the dark.
He’s a half hour late. A year ago, she’d be giving him hell. Calling him an ass. Shoving his shoulder.
But now, she smiles, watery and soft, “I didn’t think you’d come…”
JJ just blinks at her, that scowl still twisting his lips as he digs into his pocket and produces a baggy of weed. He holds it out, voice devoid of emotion, “It’s the usual rate. And if you want enough for the party, it’s gonna be extra.”
Now, it’s Kiara turn to blink at him. She looks from the baggy to his face and back again, “Oh, I– I didn’t bring any–”
“Yeahhhh, no,” he draws the words out slowly and jerks his hand back, the baggy disappearing into his pocket, “you gotta actually be a friend to get the friend discount, Kie– Kiara,” he corrects.
“That’s not why I– JJ, wait,” she reaches for his hand – instinct – but he jerks it back, tucks it into his pocket instead.
Kiara’s eyes fall to the sand between them as she sucks in a breath and presses a hand over her roiling stomach. She slows down, or tries to anyway, focusing on the feeling of pulling air in and out of her lungs.
When she looks back up at JJ, he’s already looking at her, a softer expression on his face that she isn’t sure can quite be called worry. But it shifts the second their eyes meet, goes unreadable as he crosses his arms over his chest.
Waiting.
“I um, I was hoping, um,” Kiara rubs at her eye, relieved to find it dry, and pushes the words out in a rush. “Could you maybe give me a ride somewhere?”
Unreadable shifts into incredulity as JJ scoffs and rolls his eyes heavenward, “I’m not a fuckin’ taxi, Kiara–”
“I know that!” Her voice cracks, “I know, but–”
“God, you really are a Kook,” he mutters it under his breath, but Kiara hears it anyway. Hears the disdain, the hurt, the anger.
Shooting her a two-finger salute, he steps back into the glow of the moon with a scoffed, “Yeah… I’m out.”
His hair is longer than the last time she saw him up close, lighter too from hours working out in the sun and surfing after school. She’s seen him from afar – shirt tucked in and bowtie crooked at The Island Club or hair wild and skin glowing in the sun as he takes wave after wave on his board – and each time, she just buries herself deeper into Sarah’s world when the temptation to go to him kicks in. Now though, there’s the remnants of a bruise that stretches from his right eye down to his jaw and a split in his lip on the same side.
He favors his left side when – true to his word – he turns to go. He takes a few shuffling steps through the sand, kicking it up every time he half-drags his right foot. And it’s that, that has her sinking back onto the log with that same twisting feeling deep in her belly. The one that makes her think she’s going to be sick all over again.
Only this time, it isn’t her meager dinner that comes spilling out. It’s his name, choked through a sob. Just –
“JJ…”
He doesn’t turn around, but his steps falter. She sees the hunch of his shoulders, the clench of his fingers like he’s itching to move, the way his head tilts and his jaw flexes.
The words spill in a rush of tears as the panic she’s been feeling rushes up her throat, “I’m late. Really, really late,” she presses her hands over her face, and the image of him in that light disappears behind her fingers.
“Late?” She hears his voice, then the shuffle of sand. He sounds confused, maybe angry, but that might just be the bite of his voice, the clip of his words when he asks, “What? Like, to the party?”
Lips trembling as she lets her hands fall from her face, her breath catches at how much closer JJ is now. There are feet still between them, and the narrow of his blue eyes makes her stutter over her words, “N-no, no, not– not the party.”
“What?” He barks as if he hasn’t heard her, but the shift of his eyes toward the ocean instead of her teary face tells her it’s at least partway an act, “None of your new friends could bring their fancy cars out this far? Too dirty for them?”
“JJ, please, it’s not–”
“Yeah, whatever, Kiara,” he scrubs a hand over his face, winces a little when he touches the darkest part of the bruise on his cheek, and then shoves his hand back into his pocket.
She listens to the flick, flick, click, of his lighter. Watches that pinprick of light from his lips as he sucks in a drag of cigarette smoke and blows it back out. He takes three long drags without even once looking in her direction, but he hasn’t left yet. Hasn’t crossed the patchy grass back to the gravel parking lot where he must have left his bike.
“I really don’t have time for this tonight,” he says as he flicks ash into the air and slides his eyes back toward her.
Whatever he finds there on her splotchy, wet cheeks, he quickly looks away, lips twisting and teeth gnawing at the inside of his cheek. He glances at his phone when it buzzes – the screen cracked from one corner to the other, she notes – and then shoves it into the pocket of his cargo shorts, “Look, I got shit to do so, if that’s all, then–”
“I think I’m pregnant,” she blurts. Her voice isn’t loud, but Kiara swears her words stick to the air itself.
The silence after is thick, hanging between them as JJ lifts his head. Now, there’s no avoidance, no eyes on the ground, no pretending she’s anyone but her. Instead, his blue eyes – wide in a way that makes him look younger – dart from her face to the arms wrapped around her stomach and back again. In his hand, the cigarette burns lower and lower as the silence lingers between them.
He opens his mouth. Closes it. Blinks. And, where earlier she’d wished for him to look her in the eye, now she just wishes he would look away.
JJ takes one shaky step toward her – still favoring his left side – and then jerks his hand with a sharp, “Fuck!”
He fumbles, tugging at his shirt with one hand and swiping at it with the other. The remnants of the cigarette hit the sand, smoldering out between them as he croaks out, “Like… with a baby?”
“No, with a fuckin’ puppy,” she bites out before she can stop herself. His brows twist down, forehead creasing in – confusion? hurt? annoyance? – and she hisses, “Yes, dumbass, a baby.”
JJ just blinks, tugs his hat off and slides a hand into his hair as he turns away from her. For a second, she thinks he’s going to take off and just leave her here on the beach alone, but then he turns back, still tugging at his roots, and asks, “How?”
Now Kiara’s the one whose brows furrow, “I don’t know– the usual way? JJ, what are you–”
Her voice cracks as she breathes, “How else would it happen?”
“I– I don’t know!” JJ’s eyes fall to her stomach again, his lips pressing into a tight line as his cheeks puff out a little. His eyes linger there, hands even shakier than the breath he blows out as he mutters, “I just need–”
“JJ, I’m freaking out, okay?” She hears him start to talk again, but their voices drown each other out as she tightens her arms around herself, “I don’t know what to do, I– this wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“Kie, just– just wait a second,” his voice overlaps with hers, shaky as he turns away again to wring his hat between his hands. He presses the one holding his hat to his chest, rubs at the center of it with his knuckles as he mutters something she only vaguely hears.
“Shit,” Kiara whispers, feet starting to pace the sand as she scrubs her hands down her face. With each step, another pang of worry slithers its way around her heart, “Shit, shit, shit. I wasn’t– I didn’t–”
She doesn’t even know if she’s talking to JJ anymore, her empty stomach churning as she kicks up sand with each step. She crosses the space quickly – back and forth, back and forth – not catching the blue eyes rapidly tracing her movements until she feels hands on her elbows and hears a sharp, “Kie, stop!”
She does, breath hitching in her throat as he jerks her to an abrupt stop in front of him. She’s unsteady, off balance, but JJ’s fingers are tight around her elbows as he draws her in, holds her upright.
It’s the first time he’s met her eyes this close up in months. The first time he hasn’t looked at her like she’s someone he doesn’t know, or worse… someone he wishes he never knew. It’s the first time she’s let herself look too.
It’s not just his hair that’s different or the fact that he’s a couple inches taller than her now. It’s everything. The way his shirt hugs him a little tighter, the way his cargo shorts fit a little better at his hips, the shape of his jaw where last summer his cheeks had been rounder. The way his hands hold her elbows now with a strength she didn’t know he possessed.
He’s different.
She is different.
Her chin wobbles.
She crashes into his chest – broader than the last time she’d hugged him – and lets go at the feeling of his arms curling around her. For a second, she thinks it was her, but then she feels it, the way he holds her a little too tight. The way his breath is shaky in her hair and his heart races beneath her cheek.
Fingers curling into the worn material of his favorite Pelican Marina shirt, she cries into his chest. Cries for her parents’ disappointment. For the best friend who ghosted her. For this last year without her boys, without him.
And cries because –
“JJ, I’m really scared,” she mumbles, her words muffling into the material of his shirt. He starts to pull back, but she presses herself closer and buries her face into his collarbone.
He smells like campfire, sunscreen, and weed. Like cheap detergent, saltwater, and that awful 3-in-1 shampoo, body wash, and conditioner John B keeps at the Chateau. Like coconut surf wax, motor oil, and that cologne he stole from a convenience store back in the sixth grade.
Something cracks in her chest at the feel of his breath in her hair. Because just eight months ago, she’d been taller than him. Just eight months ago, his voice had cracked on every other word. Just eight months ago, he’d blushed every time she ruffled his hair. Just eight months ago, he’d been her best friend.
And now, now…
“Hey, hey, hey,” her fingers curl harder into the back of his jacket at his soft exhale, clinging before he can do something devastating like pull back. Like walk away.
He lifts one hand anyway, her back suddenly cold from the lack of contact, but her shoulders relax as he sinks it into her hair and cradles the back of her head instead, murmuring, “It’s gonna be okay, Kiara.”
JJ’s voice is sweet when he says it, but ‘Kiara’ still stings a hell of a lot more than a first name should. Because ‘Kiara’ spends all her time on the other side of the island. ‘Kiara’ has the newest phone, a shiny new car, and a gold bracelet where the proof of their friendship used to be. ‘Kiara’ goes to parties with assholes like Kelce and Topper and the Camerons. And ‘Kiara’ is the one who stopped answering his texts when it got too hard being two different people.
Kiara shakes her head, the front of JJ’s shirt dampening with her tears, leftover makeup, and snot. She should be embarrassed, probably. Hell, she is embarrassed. But he’s warm and she can feel his heart beneath her cheek when she wipes her face on his shirt again. And, so, for this one second, it’s enough.
If JJ cares about, or notices, the mess she’s turned his shirt into, he doesn’t show it. He drops his chin onto the top of her head and huffs a quiet, “Have you taken a test?”
Her breath catches, stuttering on her ‘no,’ and the thumb on the back of her head strokes back and forth through her curls. His ring catches, pulling her hair a little, but Kiara just sinks into the touch.
“Okay,” JJ whispers. His hands slip down to her shoulders as he pulls back, and his fingers squeeze a little too tight when he meets her eye, “then we should go get one, right?”
“Jayj,” his entire body goes stiff at the nickname, and she’s reaching for him before she’s even realized that the contact between them is broken, “I don’t know–”
“Come on,” his voice is rough, tight, as he turns away from her.
She watches his back, sees him kick up sand with each shuffling step forward. He doesn’t look back until he’s near the small gravel parking lot just off the beach. But when he does, Kiara can’t help the way she hesitates to follow.
Jerking the hat from his head, JJ tugs at his messy hair. He runs his hands through it twice until it sticks up in way too many different directions and then flips his hat back onto his head. The long fringe of his bangs bathes his face in shadow as he glances in her direction. He doesn’t quite meet her eye though, just jerks his chin toward his bike.
When Kiara doesn’t move, he lifts his head enough for their eyes to meet and sighs, “Get on the bike, Kiara.”
For all her bravado that first day she walked the halls of Kildare Prep, for all the ways she kept her chin lifted high at her first Kook party while they called her names, and for every single time she proudly told the world she was a Pogue while dressed in new shoes and holding a new backpack, Kiara has never felt like more of a fraud than right this second.
She opens her mouth and finds that every word she’s wanted to say for months is trapped, stuck to her tongue and teeth like cheap candy. She wets her lips, but it does nothing to loosen the words from where they’re wedged deep inside.
It’s not until JJ looks away from her that she finds enough of them to say, “JJ, I’m– I’m sorry.”
Steely blue lands on her face again, and Kiara shrinks beneath it. She doesn’t let herself look away though, not when she can see so many things in every sweep of JJ’s eyes.
He’s always been like that to her – an open book. Not with his words; never with his words. But every shade of blue in his eyes, every tick of his jaw, and every curve of his brow has always told her everything she needs to know. And right now, though he’s trying to hold steady, she sees exactly one thing in his every expression – hurt.
Kiara tries – to take it, to accept it, to wear the guilt of that hurt – but her eyes fall anyway. To his old black boots, to the sand beneath them, to anything but that hurt look on his face.
“Kiara, come on,” he sounds tired, defeated even, as she hears him swing his leg over his bike.
She doesn’t move; she can’t. Her legs lock up where she stands, and she tells herself it’s the cold that has her wrapping her arms around her middle. Because that tone, that look – from JJ? – is reserved for Kooks.
Across the sand, there’s a sigh and the ruffle of material. She feels the flannel around her shoulders before she registers the black boots pressed against the toes of her shoes.
“Kie.”
Her head shoots up, eyes skipping his bare arms and damp shirt to stare into a stormy ocean. JJ doesn’t back down or step back when their eyes meet. He just brushes his knuckles over her bare arm and tugs on the front of the flannel to open the sleeve for her, “Just– Just put on the jacket and get on the bike, Kie.”
There’s a rough edge to his voice; it’s not gentle and it’s not pleading. But he holds the sleeves out so she can shrug into it and then pulls the zipper up. She disappears into his scent, the flannel hanging past her shorts, and she wiggles her arms between them to push the too-long sleeves up.
JJ huffs a breath through his nose like he’s bothered. But then his ring-clad fingers are there, deftly rolling the sleeves up over her wrists, and she swears she sees a smile before he takes off across the sand again with a, “You comin’?” tossed over his shoulder.