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They were fourteen.
Big John was on some weekend trip, off chasing treasure leads as he often was. John B rolled his eyes about it as usual, then hit up the whole group that his place was open to hang 100% free of supervision.
JJ didn’t have to be told twice. He already spent every weekend at John B’s, or occasionally at Pope’s, and at least once a week he would find himself crashing on John B’s couch to dodge his dad. Big John never asked questions, but he sure didn’t have much to say about it either. It was always either,
“There’s food in the fridge,” or “Here’s five for a pizza, I’m off”. If the boys were begging for snacks, he’d tell them to go get the fishing rod, or else they knew where the blackberry thicket was.
So it wasn’t too uncommon a Friday night. Except this time, Kiara was fighting with her parents. That was usual enough too, but it was the first time she got fed up enough to say fuck it, I’m not going home. The boys exchanged glances at first.
“You sure your parents won’t come looking for you?” Pope asked warily.
“Texted them I’m at some girl from school’s house. Didn’t ask permission. But they’re pissed at me anyway, so they don’t wanna see me.”
“If they roll up at my place, we gotta Narc on you and say you just showed up and we were under the impression you had permission, you know.” John B warned.
“I’ll tell them I lied then. They’ll believe it.”
“Oh, what irony,” Pope interjected.
“Well looky here then,” JJ mused with a grin, “sounds like we got ourselves a full-blown Pogue-style sleepover!” He took her hands and began to dance, earning her award-winning half-annoyed smile. “Sleeepover, sleepover party!”
“I’m beginning to regret my decision already.”
“You guys know what that means!”
“Oh god, JJ, not again,” Pope wailed.
“Come on, John B,” JJ locked eyes with his number one partner in crime.
“Beers in the fridge, last one there’s a stuck-up loser Kook!”
It only took about two beers each to get them all pretty sloshed, seeing as they were a bunch of lanky fourteen-year-olds. They got into the average amount of shenanigans and stayed up late talking about future plans none of them expected to actually happen.
Eventually, though, they got tired.
“Sleep outside tonight?” John B suggested. “Weather’s nice, and sleeping on the floor isn’t.”
“Bet.”
“Sure.”
“Aye-aye.”
“But what about…uh…” Pope’s message was clear, his eyes guiltily flitting to Kiara and away. “Two hammocks so uh… we gotta bunk up.” Everyone turned to look at her now.
“Let’s not be weird about this, boys.”
“Draw straws?”
“We all make a run for the hammocks, and whoever gets there first can claim. Veto power on their bunkmate.”
“Get this, we all get blindfolds-“
“Already no.”
“Absolutely not.”
“- and then we walk over to the hammocks and whichever one we touch first we have to sleep in.”
“JJ, what if we all touch the same hammock?”
“Then it would be really funny. And no choice, we’d have to stack like jenga blocks.”
“All in favor of John B’s plan?”
John B, Kiara, and Pope voted in favor.
“Count of three-!”
Naturally, they all took off running before the countdown. Pope grabbed the first hammock, and John B jumped in the second.
“Who’s it gonna be, Kiara? Lady’s choice.”
“Don’t call me a lady. Also-“ she flipped the hammock nonchalantly, sending John B flying. “Who wants to try next?”
JJ hopped in. Kiara gave him a look.
“You just wanna get dumped like John B, don’t you?”
“It did look kinda fun.”
She obliged. He picked himself up off the ground laughing, dusting off the pain with a smile as usual. She hated how easy it was for him to ignore pain. It took a lot of practice. She climbed into the hammock and reached her hand down to him.
JJ blinked, shocked for a second. Honestly, he was the last person he thought she would have picked, but he guessed his display of wanton stupidity had won her over. Lucky for him, it was something that came naturally.
They staggered themselves to opposite sides, partially to balance the hammocks and partially to make it less weird.
“Fine, but you gotta keep your feet outta my face,” JJ warned her. “I am not one of those foot guys.”
Kiara kicked him, earning yet another of his easy laughs. Somehow, she couldn’t really imagine getting cozy with either of the other boys. Pope and John B were her best friends too but… every time they tried to touch her it was always a bit uncomfortable. JJ never made her feel like that, like he wanted something from her. Sometimes she wondered if he even noticed she was a girl.
JJ’s heart was hammering in his chest. He’d kissed girls but he’d never slept with one, and this was Kie. He wasn’t sure if that made a difference. And what if her parents showed up looking for her? Mike would probably set him on fire. Probably.
Nonetheless, they all settled in for the night. Pope and John B fell asleep easy and quick, like they always did. It was a little harder for JJ, because he was partial to nightmares and also because there was a pretty girl pressed up against him and he was suddenly a little self-conscious about snoring or doing something else stupid, like accidentally rolling over and sending them both careening out of the hammock in the middle of the night.
Kiara seemed to be having trouble too. She kept fidgeting, and more than once JJ had to employ sudden balance maneuvers to keep them both aloft.
“Sorry,” she muttered.
“What’s eating you?” He finally asked. “Worried about your folks?”
“No,” She grumbled. “I’m just pissed at them. But it’s just stupid and I’ll get grounded tomorrow and blah blah everything goes back to normal.”
“Yeah,” JJ agreed. “there’s worse.”
“Yeah,” she said quietly. “I know. But someday I’ll get out of this swamp hole and see the world and be able to whatever I want, whenever I want, right? No Kook bullshit.”
“Yep. We live in a real shithole, that’s for sure. But you’ll come back and visit, right?”
“Of course. What good’s the whole wide world without my Pogues?”
JJ smiled in the darkness. “Yeah, you’ll miss it. It might be blah blah evils of capitalism, but it’s awful pretty sometimes, too. The beach, the marsh.”
“The turtles, birds…that JJ wild grin that means a crime has definitely been committed.”
JJ felt his cheeks warm a bit at that, chewed his lip to keep from smiling.
“You don’t know shit about birds,” he taunted. “Bet you ain’t even know what birds making that god-awful racket right now.”
“Oh? Oh, I don’t know about birds?” Kiara snapped back playfully, taking the bait. “Bet!” She moved suddenly, taking him by surprise. In a moment she was plopped down directly beside him, hammock pressing her into his side.
“You hear that Maybank?” She pointed. “That right there is a Night Heron.”
“Night Heron,” he scoffed. “You just made that up. ‘It’s uh, a heron, but, like, at night’. My ass.”
“It’s real!”
“Is not.”
“Yes, it is! And that right there- that’s a common Nightingale.”
“Oh, that’s literally just a bird that everyone’s heard off. You’re makin’ shit up.”
She sat up slightly, and she was close enough that he could see her stubborn scowl even in the darkness. It pinched even more when she realized he was smiling. “Well how about this. That weird-ass one you just heard? That was an Eastern Whip-poor-will. You think I made that one up?”
“Daw well, I bet you don’t know nothin’ about them frogs.”
“You wanna bet, smartass?! There’s the American Bullfrog, the Marsh Mud Frog, the Great Horned-”
“Mmm, this is startin’ to sound good. We should go frog-giggin’ some time, Kie.”
“That’s barbaric!”
They stayed up bickering like that for ages, until eventually Kiara tired out and told him to sleep, so maybe his stupid-ass could see reason in the morning when he was no longer sleep-deprived. She didn’t move to flip back around to the other side of the hammock, though.
“It’s kinda chilly now,” she said with a yawn.
“I’m not so cold,” JJ replied.
“Yeah, you’re pretty warm…why are boys always so warm?”
“Don’t know,” he said with a shrug. “Guess we’re just hot-blooded.”
“Hm,” she attested, and gently rested her head on his shoulder, coiling against him. His throat and chest felt tight again, but he did his best to breathe so as not to concern her. In a matter of moments, she was fast asleep. Her soft form pressed against him like a pillow, and her steady breaths lulled him into his own slumber.
JJ awoke in the early hours of the morning. The sky was the light purple of pre-dawn, and the birds and bugs were kicking up a racket on the marsh. He looked down at Kiara, still nestled comfortably into him.
It hit him like a bolt of lightning.
Why had she even climbed into this hammock with him? She knew who his dad was. She knew how dangerous and shitty and criminal his family was. How could she even feel safe around him? Was it all a bid to piss off her parents, putting herself into situations like these? What if he’d hurt her?
I mean, what if he’d hurt her?
His heart was doing that squeezing thing again, like it always did when he thought about his dad or his future or what a magnificent piece of shit he was too much. He wanted to run like Hell, but he couldn’t without dumping on her ass unprompted.
Kiara stirred, shaking him from his thoughts.
“JJ…” she murmured, her hand grasping weakly at his shirt.
“Kie? You awake?” He whispered back. She didn’t answer, just continued to shuffle slightly and furrow her brows with her eyes closed.
“Jayj…” her hand bunched around the fabric of his shirt a little tighter. Maybe she was having a nightmare.
Well, he couldn’t dip, so he settled for making a promise to himself as he wrapped his arms around her like a hug. He couldn’t hurt her, no. He never would. He swore. Her features were borderline angelic in the morning light. Cherubic cheeks and sun-kissed skin and tight-coiled dark brown hair that bushed up in the humidity and fell like a halo around her beautiful face.
Everything crumbled in that moment. The world had ended. A silly little thought he’d long been fighting stood up and declared itself in his mind before he stop it ruining everything.
God, I fucking love her.
It was his own personal apocalypse. Not like a friend, not a little crush either. He loved her, like he wanted to spend every day with her. Like every minute without hearing her voice was boring and agony. Like he would follow her around the world saving turtles and going to protests he didn’t even understand for her. Like she was the goddamned sun, and he was just another planet in her orbit. Like for once in his miserable life he had the apathy to wish he was anyone else, just so maybe her parents would give him a chance.
But he wasn’t. He was JJ Maybank. A loser Pogue from a criminal legacy, with nothing whatsoever to give and nothing to lose. And she had it all.
He steadied his bottom lip. No Pogue-on-Pogue macking, he reminded himself. That was rule number one. And besides, what were the odds she actually wanted a dirtbag like him anyway? She just felt safe around him, and that was honor enough. He was lucky to know her. Lucky to have ever met her at all. He could settle for that, and then he’d never have to worry about screwing things up and losing her forever anyways. A double-win.
There was a car door slam.
“Shit,” he hissed, and abruptly shoved everyone awake as he jumped out of the hammock. “Kie, your parents!”
“Fuck!”
JJ yanked John B out of the hammock just before Mike and Anna came around the corner to the backyard.
“Kiara?” Her mom yelled.
Kiara slowly rose.
“Uh…hey…”
“Hey, Mr. and Mrs. Carrera,” JJ cut in. “How’s it goin’?”
“Kiara, did you sleep here with these boys?!” Anna was livid, that was clear from her tone of voice.
“Mom-“
“Of course not, Mrs. C. She and Pope slept out here in the hammocks- separately. Me and John B spooned the night away inside.”
John B rubbed his eyes sleepily. “Mhm.”
“We just came back out, you see. Thanks for coming by to pick her up-“ JJ turned to Kiara in the hammock and whispered urgently, “alright time to jump out of there now because your pops is making a beeline and I’m pretty sure if he gets here first he’s gonna use me as a step-stool to yank you down from there.”
He stepped back and opened his arms.
“You’re gonna catch me?”
“I’m sure gonna try.”
“Kiara Carrera!” Mike yelled. Kiara jumped, falling right into JJ’s outstretched arms. They stumbled backward but remained upright.
“Good luck with your folks,” JJ said.
“See you Monday when I’m out of Gitmo,” she replied with an easy smile.
“Kiar-!“
“I’m coming!” She shouted back, running off to meet them.
He tried not to let his heart sink as she walked away. It was a nice view at least.
“I really enjoyed cuddling last night,” John B said, slinging his arm around JJ.
“Yeah, it was almost lovely, if not for your three arms poking me all night.”
John B laughed. JJ painted on a smile, like always.
“Let’s get some breakfast.”