Archive of Our Own ^beta

He doesn’t know she’s back until he hears her voice coming from behind him. Even then, as he turns around, it’s hard to wrap his head around the fact that the person in front of him is more than a mere memory brought up by the June heat.

  Her name falls from his lips and, just like that, the Earth starts spinning again.

  For three years, JJ was the only Pogue on the island. Pope left for university and found himself a job there, staying over summer and only returning for a few days in winter to celebrate Christmas with his family. John B and Sarah decided to move to the Bahamas, permanently, away from the mess that the Outer Banks offered. Kiara decided that she wanted to see the world and then she decided to stay in it.

  Kildare wasn’t for any of them, but JJ was the only one without the option of leaving it. He settled down, instead, found work at a mechanic’s workshop and a part-time job as a bartender down at Figure Eight. Friends were scarce and fun was scarcer, yet JJ thought it to be the best turn of events – if he focused on getting money, someday he’d be able to escape, too.

  That was the plan, anyway. And now he’s at the Kook bar, reorganising the shelves because the shift is at its slowest point, and he hears the trembling voice he truthfully gave up on thinking he’d hear again.

  For all his charming mannerisms, they all seem to fall flat now. He’s just staring but his brain is unable to take in the image; a malfunction. A proper system shutdown.

  ‘I, uh... I’ll have a bit of that.’ She points at the bottle in JJ’s hands. He moves his finger a little, revealing the letters spelling out Jack Daniels: Fire. ‘Make it double.’

  All JJ manages is a meek nod and a: ‘Coming right up.’

  He turns his back to her and takes out a whiskey glass. His fingers are slippery enough it almost falls from his grip, but he holds onto it. He glances back and she’s got her eyes on him, her lips parted in a heavy sigh.

  ‘One for you, too,’ she says. There’s a ring on her finger she keeps fiddling with; it’s a new one. JJ tries not to stare at it. ‘If you’re allowed.’

  Without a word, JJ fetches another glass from the cupboard. He takes a small shot glass and lets the golden liquid trickle into it. It would be easier to have just taken the double-sized shot glass, but... he didn’t do it. He’s not stalling, it’s just more precise this way.

  JJ glances at her. ‘On the rocks or straight?’

  ‘On the rocks. It’s a hot day.’

  He turns around and opens the cupboard behind the bar, scooping up two ice cubes. Both of them go into a single glass that he hands over to her. The whiskey has a bitter smell and it just about burns his throat when he takes a sip of it.

  ‘So,’ he says, ‘you’re back.’

  Kiara Carrera’s lips relax into a smile that makes her eyes wrinkle a little. She lets out a chuckle, too, and JJ lets notes that her eyes look a little brighter now. Their colour is the same as it was when they first met as kids, but their owner is livelier. She looks a little taller, her face a little more defined, and it’s hard to believe it’s been merely three years since he’s last seen her.

  There’s still a band sitting on top of her hair, the tank top she’s wearing is in the same earthly tones he’s always known her in, and at the same time it feels as if no time has passed.

  She takes a big sip, shuts her eyes and shudders before letting out a big sigh, and chuckles.

  JJ feels the grin forming on his face. ‘You still can’t take whiskey?’

  ‘Nope. The true bane of my existence.’

  ‘Why order it, then?’

  ‘You know me,’ she says, offering a shrug. ‘I needed something strong. For the jitters.’

  ‘The jitters.’

  ‘Oh c’mon, JJ.’ Kie leans over the bar a little, just enough to give him a playful shove, smiling bright and wide. ‘I haven’t seen you in three years. It’s scary.’

  JJ quirks an eyebrow at her. The whiskey tastes a little more like cinnamon this time around and he rests his elbows on the bartop. ‘Do you find me scary, Ms Carrera?’

  She leans closer. ‘In your dreams.’

  They’re close enough that he can see her eyes aren’t fully a dark brown, but have lighter specks around the iris, looking almost like scattered golden dots. He’s seen this a million times before, but not in the last three years. It’s enough to draw a shaky chuckle out of him as he retreats, leaning his back against the wall underneath the shelves.

  ‘I’m glad to see you again, Kie,’ he admits. He can’t think of a world in which he isn’t, but he wants her to hear it, still. ‘The world looks good on you.’

  She flashes a smile, downing the last of her glass with a reaction equal to the first one. ‘You look good, too, JJ. I never would’ve thought that I’d find you here, of all places.’

  ‘In a Kook bar?’ His voice is quieter, as there’s people chatting away in some parts of the bar. If it were any quieter, he wouldn’t have risked saying it. ‘I have to assimilate so I can steal the money from the rich.’

  ‘I see you haven’t changed.’ It’s a light taunt, one that comes with a dose of admiration, and JJ happily takes it as a compliment.

  ‘They’ve got more than enough money. Put on a smile,’—he stretches his face into the kindest fake smile he can muster—‘listen to some of their troubles, and they’re at your feet.’

  ‘I’m glad that you’ve still got your charm.’

  ‘I’ve mastered it.’

  Kie rewards him with a genuine laugh, one that he hasn’t heard in too long, and he feels excitement bubbling in his chest. She hasn’t laughed quite so freely in... ever, probably. He doesn’t think the last time he’s seen her with her shoulders fully relaxed, a constant genuine smile on her face, and the ease with which she carries herself now.

  He meant it when he said that travelling the world suits her.

  ‘Anyway,’ she says. ‘I assume your customers are going to require your attention soon, and mine is required by my parents, who must be eager to see me back home.’

  ‘You haven’t been home yet?’

  ‘No.’ Her voice goes low again and her tongue runs over her bottom lip, her eyes wandering before settling back on JJ. ‘I needed a… whiskey.’

  For a moment, he thought she must’ve been as surprised as he was to find him here. If all she wanted was a whiskey and got a friend she hadn’t seen in years... But then he saw the nervousness in the gentle twitch of her lips, and the expectance of someone being in on an inside joke, and he clocked it.

  His chest heaves with a sigh, and he lets out the tension that managed to build up in the half a second his brain went into overdrive. ‘Just a whiskey.’

  ‘Just a whiskey.’

  We don’t talk about how we feel, he remembers one of Pogues saying once, when they were younger. We do things for each other and we say things that mean other things, but we’re never direct.

  It must’ve been Pope, because JJ remembers himself saying, It’s tough love, bub.

  What feels like a century later, they’re still behaving the very same way. It’s the Pogue thing. Except they’re adults now, all of them barely in contact with each other anymore, and maybe that behaviour is better left in the past.

  JJ reaches forward and covers Kie’s hand with his own, squeezing it lightly. ‘You’ve got this. If it doesn’t go well, give me a call.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Her thumb brushes the inside of his and she gives him a smile that makes him think that maybe nothing has changed, after all. ‘I’m definitely going to need a couple of drinks after that.’

  ‘My place is still back on the Cut, but I’ve got plenty of drinks for a night of catching up.’

  ‘Like the good old days,’ she says, and he echoes the words with a knowing smile on his face.

  He doesn’t care about the customers when Kie leaves. He doesn’t care about the old guy who always comes in and gives him shit for not giving him enough to drink, and always tries to get some for free – he doesn’t care about any of it. His phone is in his pocket and he only cares about when it’s going to buzz, when the second-hand watch on his wrist will show it’s 8 pm, when he’ll be able to get home and make it a little neater before she comes back.

  It’s one of his best and worst shifts. His mind keeps taking him back to her hand being in his, to their eyes locking, and he feels like he’s still sixteen, still hiding his feelings, still wishing the best for her and knowing he’s not it.

  Maybe things will be simpler now. They’re not kids anymore, and maybe that’s the one thing that will make it all more bearable.

She appears out of nowhere, unannounced, knocking on his door like she’s trying to break it down. JJ guesses it’s just her thing now.

  He opens the door and she scoots past him with a muttered thanks before her mouth starts working a mile a minute and her voice fills out the entirety of JJ’s modest apartment, and he’s a little overwhelmed.

  ‘Kie.’

  She turns on her feet, chest heaving as she catches her breath. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Calm down for a second.’ He closes the door and locks it, walks over to the living room (that is also the kitchen and the dining room and the guest bedroom) and plops down on the couch, waiting until she does the same. ‘What happened? And slow down this time so I can actually pay attention.’

  Kie nods, opens her mouth, then closes it. She throws a glance in the direction of the kitchen. ‘You want a beer?’

  ‘You’re asking me if I want a beer in my own house?’

  ‘Mhm.’ The next moment, she’s on her feet, and her head is in the fridge. She comes back to the couch with two beers, throwing one in his direction. ‘Needed one, figured you’d need one, too.’

  A sigh falls from JJ’s lips before he gets to stop it. ‘That bad?’

  ‘That bad.’

  He leans into the couch as the two open their beers and he doesn’t take his eyes off of his friend; she hasn’t started talking yet, which probably means she’s trying to think of what to say, and he likes to have a moment to prepare himself.

  When she came over for the first time, about three days ago, the two managed to mend most of what was broken by time and distance. It was a long night of catching up and he got to learn quite a bit about her adventures in Thailand and Bali, primarily, and she got to learn about what it feels like to work two jobs, one on the Cut and one in Figure Eight. Their experiences were vastly different, but they boiled to the same outcome – growing up. Understanding the world a little better.

  They’ve seen each other at least once every day since, and soon enough, it was like she never left. They went to the beach yesterday, did some surfing, then crashed a party at the Boneyard for a little bit before they ended up back at his place, both falling asleep on the stretched-out couch.

  It was like it had been before she left, but JJ knew it wouldn’t last. They aren’t teenagers anymore.

  This is why he waits for her to figure her things out, and then she spills the beans: her parents want her to stay on the island. With them.

  ‘It’s not like they don’t care about what I want,’ she says, not quite looking at JJ, but rather past him. He wonders if she’s looking at the derelict building right across the street, because that’s the only thing visible from the window. ‘They just don’t get it.’

  ‘Do you want to keep travelling?’

  Outside, a hawk chittered not far from the apartment.

  When Kie brings her eyes up to meet JJ’s, he sees the discomfort in them; the insecurity. ‘No,’ she says, quietly, ‘but I don’t know what I want. Just...’

  ‘Just not the island.’

  There’s a moment of silence. ‘Yeah.’

  JJ shuffles across the couch until his arm is over Kie’s shoulder and he pulls her into a half-hug. Her hair still smells like coconut, but also like something else, now. The same and different. ‘I get it, Kie. I really do. I would do the same if I could.’

  ‘You’re not mad?’ she asks, nestling her head in the crook of his neck; JJ tries not to shiver at the contact. ‘You will be alone again.’

  ‘I didn’t expect you to stay, Kie,’ he admits. ‘I thought you’d be around for a few days and then leave, because I know how much you hate this place. I’d never let you stay. I just— I couldn’t. It’s not right.’

  ‘I just hate it, you know. The idea of you here, all alone.’

  ‘I’m not all alone, though. I’ve got a life here. I belong here more than any of you do.’

  His hand gives her shoulder a gentle rub, and then he’s got the tips of her hair wrapped around his fingers, twirling them around. He’s not alone, he tells himself – there have been plenty of girls sharing the bed with him for the night. He talks to people at work, some people greet him on the street and he’s known them for the entirety of his life.

  He doesn’t like it here, but it’s where he’s meant to be.

  There always has to be a Maybank on the Cut.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Kie says.

  JJ doesn’t look at her, because he hears the way her voice got caught up in her throat, and he doesn’t want to risk seeing her crying. It’ll break him. ‘You don’t have anything to be sorry for,’ he tells her instead, because he has an inkling of what this could be about.

  ‘I do. We all— we all left and didn’t look back.’

  ‘Pope comes home,’ argues JJ. ‘I see him sometimes.’

  ‘Three times in three years.’

  He doesn’t say anything to that, because he doesn’t have anything to say that would make her feel better, and the last thing he wants is to make the situation worse.

  ‘It’s fine, Kie,’ he tells her. A group of people walks underneath the window and JJ feels the need to slam it shut, but then the heat would burn them alive. Even sitting so close to her is a sacrifice he’s making, because his body heat keeps going up, and he feels his fingers becoming sticky.

  It shouldn’t matter. They’ve always been gross around one another. It’s the Pogue way.

  ‘Look, I’m my own person, okay? I love the Pogues, I love our little group, but we don’t live for each other. You’ve got your life, I’ve got mine. That’s what happens when you grow up.’

  ‘You grow apart,’ she says, and the words send a lump into his throat.

  In that moment, JJ finds himself wishing he had more than Kie to hold on to. His head drops backwards, first, and he takes a deep breath as his eyes blink away the tears. He can be level-headed in tough situations. He had to learn that in the past couple of years.

  He feels Kie stiffen on his chest, her fingers tugging at one another in his lap. Usually, he’s the fidgety one. Usually, he’s the one fumbling with words. Usually, he’s the having to pull himself together.

  When he lets his eyes close and rests his chin atop of Kie’s head, it’s an instinct rather than a decision. His hand drops from her hair until he’s pulling her into himself, feeling her body wrapped up within him.

  If he could shield her from the world, he could. He can only shield her from himself.

  He damns the heat welling up in his throat and holds her close, still.

  ‘You’re always going to have a home with me,’ he tells her. His thumbs rub her skin and he feels her press into him, her body quivering ever so slightly. ‘No matter how long we don’t see each other for, or if we don’t talk in years. If we have a falling out or some other shit happens. None of that matters. If you need me, I’ll come. I’m not going anywhere. I’ll always be right where you can find me.’

  Kie doesn’t sob, but her body shakes and he bites his own lip. The lump in his throat let him say those words, but it’s choking him now.

  He meant every word he said, though. That’s the only thing that matters.

  (JJ isn’t quite the one for finding the words for how he feels. John B is the only Pogue who could manage that with ease, with his grandiose acts of love for Sarah and whatnot. But this is Kie – she’s been one of his best friends for years and she knows his way with words and avoiding the truth. There’s no hiding from that.

  Not like he meant to hide, anyway. He doesn’t need to tell her his heart has belonged to her for a long time now, but he can tell her she’s got a home in it.)

  Kie stirs against his chest; he sees the green shirt has turned several shades darker in tiny circles, where her head had been.

  ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  She pulls away from him, staring ahead, where the TV is propped up on a stool made from pieces of an old wooden chair that had broke when JJ first moved in. She seems transfixed on it – is this how she sees JJ, maybe? Something that was meant for a purpose it was no longer fit for, then repurposed to keep living, to keep surviving in a world that’s against him?

  Maybe that’s how she saw herself, too. JJ certainly does. She’s sturdier than most people he’s met and it’s one of the things he admires about her the most.

  JJ runs a hand along her back, rubbing gentle circles. He doesn’t think about anything other than she deserves someone to care for her. When she looks at him, there’s a smile in the corners of her lips, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

  ‘JJ?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  Kie gives him a long gaze, shaking her head to herself before she parts her lips again. ‘You know how when we were younger, I said that I’d always live every day like it was last?’

  He nods. It was shortly after the fiasco with the El Dorado – he couldn’t just forget that. ‘You said no regrets.’

  ‘And when I left, I thought I had none.’ She leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees. Her fingers are still pulling at the ring – she’d got it at a monastery in Nepal, allegedly a family heirloom from one of the monks she met there. She doesn’t look at him when she speaks. ‘It was great, at first. The freedom was like fresh air. It was all I ever wanted.’

  I know, he wants to say, you’ve told me this already. But he keeps quiet, still, because her tone wasn’t light.

  ‘I got bad, though. Sometimes I would just stay up, realising how far from home I was. I just felt like if something happened to me, it would take ages to get back to my family, to you. It wasn’t homesickness, it was kind of... I was aware of my mortality in a really weird way. I thought I was okay with that before I left, I thought I’d made peace with everything.’

  He catches her glance at him out of the corner of her eye and he tries offering her a smile, but it doesn’t really work.

  She tells him, then – she tells him all of it. The loneliness, the feeling of being completely lost and misguided, to the feeling of being fooled into believing that travelling the world could let her make sense of things that confused her at home. Some of it got cleared, but most of it got more clouded, instead. There were good days, but the bad days nearly outshined the good when she’d start thinking about things.

  Kie tells the story in a hushed voice, almost as if she’s scared that the passersby could hear her words through the window, when JJ could barely hear them himself. His hand never lets go of her back, but he stops moving it and just holds it there. More than anything, he wants to wrap his arms around her, but he can tell she needs the space.

  He knows this is headed somewhere, yet the more she talks about it, the less he understands.

  Until, that is, she finally looks at him and says, ‘When things were the hardest, you were the one who got me out of it.’

 How? he means to ask, but it isn’t his turn. Kie’s eyes are pointed and she’s not finished yet. ‘Before I left, you told me you believed in me, and the whole world’s waiting for me to explore it, and it was the only thing that I could think of and fall asleep after it. I kept wishing you’d come with me, instead, and I couldn’t stop wondering why I hadn’t asked you to come.’

  ‘Even if you had, it wouldn’t have been an option,’ he reminds her. ‘I was broke, had to stay here. I’m not the guy who goes backpacking around the world.’

  ‘What if you are?’ she asks and for the first time, JJ thinks he can really hear the lump in her throat, the stiffness of her voice. ‘What if we could’ve… I was an idiot when I left, JJ.’

  JJ aches to lean over and reach her, yet he keeps himself glued to the couch. What do you say to this? How do you act? His heart keeps beating in expectation and not even the chatter outside the window can do anything to help.

  ‘I was confused,’ she says. ‘I was a kid. I was dumb. I was running away from everything this place had to offer, and I didn’t realise that included you.’

  ‘You didn’t run away from me, Kie.’

  ‘What if I did?’ She looks at him and he sees determination in her eyes, in the tightness of her lips, in the way her neck tenses. ‘I kept feeling and thinking things I couldn’t explain and definitely shouldn’t have been feeling. Travelling the world sounded better than trying to confront all of it. Except that backfired, because I had to stop travelling because I couldn’t keep ignoring it.’

  Here’s the thing with the Pogues – they don’t say what they mean.

  JJ feels the weight of her words, but can’t quite piece them together to solve the puzzle. He stares at her in expectation, instead, waiting for something that doesn’t come. Her eyes are trained to his and her lips slightly parted, as if she’s waiting on him, too.

  JJ gets up and grabs himself a beer from the fridge, throwing her one, too. He walks a few steps to the left until he’s in the kitchen area of the room, and grabs a bag of heavy salted crisps from the cupboard. He hands it to her and she takes it without a word, no longer looking at him, but still expecting. Waiting.

  They’re waiting on each other. Oddly, JJ feels like they’ve been doing the dance far longer than he thinks.

  ‘I don’t know what you want me to say, Kie.’

  She pulls her lips into her mouth, before saying: ‘Anything.’

  And JJ feels a new weight on his shoulders.

  Kiara Carrera has always fit in his life. She has never been the central point herself, but the Pogues were his life for the majority of it, and she was one of them. A life without them, and without her, wasn’t much of an exciting life.

  He remembers when she first came and he kept calling her the Kook princess, until Sarah Cameron turned out to be everything they joked Kie was. He always thought it was odd how easily she fit with the three boys, with the Cut – if someone looked at her, with her little headband, cropped tops and tie-dyed everything, they’d never guess she grew up on Figure Eight.

  She fit in his apartment, too. Somehow. Another crop top, another pair of jean shorts, another headband keeping her hair out of her face. She’s changed but she hasn’t. And this is a place that is falling apart, costing just enough so he can call it a decent apartment and still get to save for something better, eventually.

  Not that there is anything remotely better on the Cut. JJ likes to dream, too.

  And she’s in a lot of those dreams.

  ‘Kie, I just— I don’t know what you want me to say. Or do,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘What do you want to do?’

  So much, is the answer, but so is nothing.

  He’s seen the look on her face before, more than once, in memories that kept him up at night. The replay of the curve of her Cupid’s Bow, of the way her lips are slightly pursed, in the tremor he can see from her baby hairs shaking.

  Kiara, looking at him like there’s nothing else worthy of looking at.

  JJ puts his beer on the counter and walks up to her, cups her face, and kisses her.

As a man stumbles his way out of the bar with one of JJ’s coworkers holding a firm hand on his back, JJ finds himself wondering why in the hell he’s decided to work in the one place that alcoholics frequent, and isn’t a casino. He’s thought about this before and the conclusion is always the same – it’s about seeing that people can get drunk, abuse alcohol, and still be semi-decent people.

  Even from his grave, Luke Maybank’s hold on his son never wavers.

  It’s what he thinks about when things are shit. When he’s shit. And without hearing from Kiara for nearly two whole days now, JJ’s legs shake with every step he takes.

  He thinks that seeing her would fix everything, but when she finally walks into the bar, his knees threaten to give in.

  She calls his name and he glances around, but his boss is elsewhere, so he tells her to sit down.

  ‘Whiskey again?’

  Kiara shakes her head.

  ‘A beer, then? I’ve got your favourite.’

  ‘I’m here for you, JJ.’

  He pours her some of her favourite beer, anyway. On the house. ‘My shift finishes in an hour. You can wait, or I can pick you up—’

  ‘I’ll wait.’ She takes the beer and puts a few bills on the counter. ‘I’ll be in the back.’

  Her steps are steady and precise, and she sits down in the far back booth as if that was her intention all along. JJ knows her well enough to know she’s terrified, because Kiara is never this precise unless she fears that one wrong movement will crumble her.

  He makes a note of not holding anything against her, whatever it is she’s here to talk about. He takes the bills she left, too, and slips them in his pocket, to return them to her later.

  ‘On the rocks,’ says a man to his right—a regular—and JJ’s back to being the bartender.

  Every so often, he feels Kiara’s eyes on his back. Even as he speaks to the customers, he thinks of last night, of the way her limbs felt tangled with his. He looks a man in the eye as he charges him and all sees is her eyes rolling in pleasure, her mouth full of little sighs, little gasps.

  His hands drop to the wooden bartop and he feels his palm flat against his wall, stabilising him as he thrusts. Kiara’s moans and wandering hands. Kiara’s mouth where he needed her most, his own making her feel good in return.

  ‘You’re two dollars short,’ says the customer.

  ‘Sorry.’ JJ reaches into the till and takes out two dollars. ‘It’s been a long day.’

  ‘Sure seems like it. Look after yourself, kid.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Yet all he can think about is how it’s the best night he’s had in years, if not ever.

  Kiara still sits in the back booth, killing time with her phone and occasional glances at JJ. There’s nothing on her face to show she’s going through the same, but JJ bets she is – he knows her well enough.

  Even though she rushed out in the morning with her hair still a mess from his hands running through it, he knows it was just as earth-shattering for her as it was for him.

  JJ bids his farewell to his coworkers. They’re good kids – even though JJ’s only a year or two older, he feels like there’s a decade between them. They’re Kook kids, somehow unaware of his past, and JJ envies their innocence.

  Kiara’s still on her phone when he approaches her. ‘Fancy getting out of here?’

  She slips her phone into her pocket and is leading him out of the joint before he wraps his head around it. ‘I want to go somewhere.’

  ‘Somewhere as in a specific place?’

  ‘Yeah. You got your bike?’

  JJ taps her shoulder, pointing at the employee car park. In the middle of it is his trusted dirt bike, one that’s gotten him out of shit more times than he’d like to admit.

  She lets out a breathy laugh. ‘I missed that thing.’

  ‘It missed you, too.’

  They hop on like they’ve done a million times before. Kiara wraps her arms around his waist with no hesitation and he feels her cheek pressed against his shoulderblade – if he wore a tank top, they’d be skin against skin.

  Again.

  JJ revs the engine. ‘Where to, Ma’am?’

  ‘The Chateau.’

  All JJ tries to focus on is her arms around him, but he shudders anyway.

  Nobody’s been to the Chateau since the fire all those years ago. JJ’s hardly even thought about it. With no one to look after the place, the wooden boards would’ve turned to ruin by now. All the Pogue memories they made would be turned to dust – does he even remember them, anymore?

  Kiara squeezes him a little harder – just enough to hold him together to the Chateau.

  As he thought, the place is a ruin.

  ‘It’s kind of beautiful,’ Kiara says.

  He looks at her as if she’s crazy—she must be—but then he sees the admiration, the longing, the nostalgia in her eyes, and tries to see it the way she does. Vines climb what’s left of the house and there’s moss where windows would’ve been. The ash has been washed away by rain and he can see traces of the original colour on the surviving base.

  Kiara takes a few steps forward until she’s standing on the ruin, balancing herself with a smile. ‘This is where the front porch was.’

  JJ just stares. She doesn’t stop, though – she walks to the left and says that’s where the swing used to be, and that was where the couch was, and suddenly JJ starts seeing all those things, as if someone were building the house from the ashes.

  He joins in on the game. ‘That’s where I used to sleep. That’s where Pope got hit in the head by a can that one time.’

  The Chateau came to life and the memories rushed back as if they were never gone. Within minutes, the two were laughing as if no time had passed. As if things hadn’t turned to ruin and as if they hadn’t grown older. Grown apart.

  It comes to an end, though. JJ offers her a hand to come down but she does it herself.

  ‘Oh,’ she says.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I forgot about this.’

  He walks up next to her and sees it: the tree with John B’s name carved into it. A memory from a bad time – when they thought they’d lost him. When it was just JJ, Kiara and Pope. Left to fend for themselves, not knowing whether their friend was alive or dead.

  JJ swallows the lump in his throat. His arm finds Kiara’s shoulder and he pulls her closer, and she wraps both arms around his waist.

  ‘I’m glad that wasn’t the end,’ he says. ‘But it was hell. Thinking he was lost.’

  ‘We nearly lost him,’ Kiara says in the softest voice.

  ‘But we didn’t. That’s all that matters.’

  He doesn’t want to say that in a way, they still lost him – to Sarah and the Bahamas, like they lost Pope to college.

  JJ laughs a dry laugh. ‘Never thought we’d be the last two Pogues.’

  ‘With a burnt-down Chateau behind our backs.’

  ‘Exactly. Funny how life turns out.’

  Her hands drop back to her pockets; the absence of her body against his feels like an unwanted breeze.

  She looks at him like she’s about to say something. JJ decides against interrupting, and instead looks towards the pier – there’s no light on it and it’s already getting dark, but he wants to go there. Get away from the Chateau and its scorched past.

  So his clammy hand takes hold of Kiara’s and they walk down the pier, listening as the wooden boards creak. Some things remain the same. Kiara squeezes his hand.

  She doesn’t let go of it when they reach the end, with nothing but marsh in front of them. Sun sets on the other side of the property and they’re watching the sky bask in shades of deep blue, and JJ sits down with Kiara following suit.

  Her fingers tap the wood. ‘I don’t want to live with regrets.’

  ‘Okay?’

  ‘Is it? What we did last night?’ she asks, facing him straight-on. ‘A regret?’

  ‘No.’ JJ doesn’t even hesitate. ‘It was the one thing that could never regret.’

  She smiles, ever so slightly, and he feels the tension in his shoulders ease. Carefully, he covers her hand with his own, and she lets him take it into his lap.

  ‘Kie.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  JJ takes a deep breath.

  He’s thought about this moment for a long time – over a decade, really. Almost two. He’s thought about what he’d say, given the chance, and there was a grandiose speech somewhere in the back of his mind… but this is different.

  He never accounted for sleeping with Kie before confessing his feelings.

  ‘You know when I said I’d be there when you came back? When you were leaving?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I meant every word,’ he says. He gives her hand a squeeze and musters up a tiny smile, but he still can’t look her in the eye. ‘I made the promise to wait for you. Hell, I would’ve waited for you till the world ended if I had to. And I still will. I always will.’

  His eyes finally meet hers and – she’s crying. Moonlight reflects off the tears and he’d call her beautiful if he wasn’t in the middle of this.

  Of them.

  ‘My home is with you, Kie. I can stay on the island for as long as I want, but if you’re not here, it’s not…’ He brings his hand to her cheek, wiping her tears with his thumb. ‘No matter how many times you leave, I’ll be there. Ready to take you back.

  He watches the shine in her eyes drop to his lips and then he’s got her own pressed against them, her hands holding his face. It’s gentle, unlike the passionate kiss they had the other night, and he feels her breath on his lips. She moves back, but her hands cradle his face, still.

  ‘How did it take us this long to get here?’

  JJ laughs. ‘I was just another guy, Kie. You had half the island trying to get with you.’

  ‘That’s not true!’

  ‘It is,’ JJ says. ‘I just didn’t want you to know because I didn’t want you to have the burden of rejecting me, because our friendship would’ve… I don’t think it would’ve lasted. And I’d rather have you as a friend than tell you have I feel you and lose you.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have lost me,’ she whispers. Her thumb glides across his cheek and he leans into her palm.

  ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘You never tried.’

  JJ sighs, then kisses the inside of her palm. ‘Even if I did, Kie, I was the guy from the wrong side of the island. A Maybank, at that. I wouldn’t have been good enough. You deserved better than whatever I could’ve been.’

  She shakes her head to the point he feels her whole body trembling with the movement. ‘I never thought that way, JJ.’

  ‘But I did,’ he says. ‘And even if you liked me back, I wouldn’t have been able to get over that. I wouldn’t have thought that something that good could happen to someone like me.’

  Her hands are gentle and he tries to relax, even though his own are gripping the back of her shirt.

  Somewhere in the distance, an owl hoots. The water is still, but he can hear movement – despite the death of the Chateau, life around it went on. JJ finds some comfort in that – their lives, too, went on.

  One of Kiara’s hands is dropped to his thigh, caressing it. ‘I wouldn’t have rejected you, you know.’

  JJ lets out a shaky breath. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  He laughs, dropping his head. ‘Well, I feel like a fool now.’

  Kiara laughs, too, and he wishes he could bottle the sound. Her hand reaches under his chin and pulls it up. ‘We got there in the end.’

  And then she’s kissing him again, with her arms wrapped around his neck.

  JJ’s finally getting to kiss Kiara with no fear, no holding back, no worries that they’d come to regret it, and the world doesn’t stop. The world keeps spinning, and somehow that’s even better.

  If you told JJ from a decade ago that he’d be making out with Kiara at the Chateau pier, he would’ve called you crazy. But she’s in his hands, her skin is on his fingertips as he slips his hand underneath the back of her top, and she tastes like her favourite beer. She’s warm and smells lovely and her teeth are grazing his lip and god, JJ feels like he’s won the lottery.

  He wants this. All of it. Everything.

  He doesn’t want to let go. He doesn’t want to stop kissing her and have to go back to his house, to his two jobs, to living the measly life he’s had for the past few years – how could he do that, after getting a taste of what he could’ve had? Of what could’ve been?

  So kisses her fervently, ferociously, like a starved man.

  He’s not letting her go this time. Not without knowing she’s coming back.

  His hands are firm as he pulls her even closer, his kisses shifting to her neck, her hands reaching under her shirt. His skin is on fire with her touch and he craves it, and he nearly pushes them over the pier as he tries to get her to lie down.

  ‘Kie,’ he breathes between the kisses to her stomach, making his way up her chest.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I fucking love you.’

  JJ kisses her before she gets a chance to respond, and he knows this is a drug he’s already addicted to.

The sun is long gone and JJ holds Kiara’s hand as they sit on the pier. They’ve both come back to their senses and the world is quiet now, patient. Falling asleep. Kiara’s head is leaned on JJ’s shoulder and his arm is wrapped around her waist, his thumb caressing the skin just underneath her waistband.

  For the past half-hour or so, they’ve been talking about all the times they missed the signs. Both of them did, even though JJ thought he’d made it obvious – from little comments to grand gestures that were misread, and it’s hilarious, now. It wouldn’t have been if things turned out differently, but neither of them goes there.

  They talk about their lives, too. JJ tells her more about her coworkers and his appreciation for them and she listens, not interrupting him once.

  JJ kisses the top of her head, still in disbelief that he can.  ‘What’s on your mind?’

  She doesn’t respond right away. She nuzzles into him, instead, and he spreads his palm to cover as much of her as he can.

  ‘I’m staying on the island,’ she says.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m staying here. On Kildare.’

  ‘Why? Kie—’

  ‘Listen.’ She moves away to look him in the eye – even in the darkness, JJ can see the determination. ‘I want to be with you. That’s all. But I’m not— I know how much the island means to you. I can’t take that away from you. I won’t. If that means staying here—’

  ‘No.’

  ‘JJ—’

  ‘I said no.’ He runs his hands through his hair, tugging it slightly at the ends. ‘Kie, this is not happening. You’re being ridiculous. I stayed behind because I never had a reason to leave. Because everyone else left, and someone had to stay behind, for when you’d come home. I promised to be here.’

  He cups her face and looks her straight-on, not caring about the wetness underneath his fingertips. ‘The island isn’t a home, Kie, not if you’re not here. You are.’

  All she manages is a whisper of his name. He kisses her forehead, her nose, her cheeks, her lips. She says his name again but he shakes his head, kissing her once more.

  ‘Wherever you go, I’ll follow.’ He kisses her again. ‘If you’ll let me. If you don’t go where I can’t follow.’

  ‘I would never,’ Kiara says, and he’s kissing the salt on her lips. ‘But your life—’

  ‘I’m tired of the island, anyway. I never had to reason to leave but now I do, and I’ve got money saved up, and I’m ready, Kie. I’m ready to do this.’

  She looks at him and she’s smiling again, even though her cheeks are glistening; he resists the urge to kiss them dry. ‘You’re ready?’

  ‘You took a leap of faith all those years ago and it led you here,’ he says, smiling right back. ‘This is my leap of faith.’

  Kiara wraps her arms around him and curls into him; JJ knows she can hear his heart trying to beat its way out of his chest and doesn’t care.

  This was his biggest leap of faith. He’d never in a million years he’d be here, so who’s to say anything else he’s believed in is certain, either? He’s got friends and a life on the island but he’d never be anything but a Maybank here, with scolding looks waiting for him at every corner. If he left—with Kiara—he’d get to be more. He’d get to choose.

  Kissing Kiara was the hardest thing he’d ever done. Anything else… It only seems natural to go where she goes. To never have to wait for her again but if he has to, he will. Forever, if that’s what it takes. He’s already done the scariest thing, so why not do this, too?

  ‘I love you, too, JayJ.’

  And just like that, JJ’s future rewrites itself.