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cherrydreamer · 3 years ago

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April Prompts Combo! #2 Rainstorm and #8 Window

Ok so I am rocking up late late late with this April Prompt so I combined #2 Rainstorm and #8 Window into a double ficlet! (and yes I’m STILL late, I know I know!) Billy's been living in Hopper's old trailer for just over a month now. And he knows he should be grateful for it. And he is, he is.

Pathetically grateful, really, for the place and the way the kids all banded together and sorted the place out. For him. Got it all patched back up, cleaned and tidied and mostly ship-shape.

Cosy, even, especially after Mrs Byers came by to pick them up and handed Billy a whole damn laundry hamper filled with crocheted blankets and a stack of plump cushions and a pair of slightly frayed yellow curtains that, when he hung them at the kitchen window, gave the whole place a soft, sunshiney air.

And, at the time, Billy had really appreciated just how far away from town he is now. He likes the fact that he's kind of hidden away, out of sight out of mind. He really likes the view of the lake and the noise it makes, the wind on the water sounding almost like the waves on the beaches back home.

But sometimes, like tonight, he really fucking wishes he wasn't so alone.

Because there's been a storm threatening to rage since the mid afternoon, and Billy's been on edge the whole time just waiting. Been sitting tensed on the couch, hands balled into fists, feeling the crackle of static in the air, damn near smelling the electricity, and he's known it was coming, he knew it, but knowing did nothing to help prepare him for the first flash of lightning or the crack of thunder, and all of a sudden he's thrown right back to that night in the mall, the one with lights flickering and fireworks exploding and fear and pain and I don't know what's happening but I know I'm going to die and I'm so scared and I’m so sorry.

So Billy had hurled himself away from the windows on that first flash, shoved himself into a little gap between the fridge and the wall and he's still there now hours later, huddled with his head between his knees and his hands screwed up against his ears but he can still hear it.

Them. The screams. The cries. The begging. The voice in his head. Max's voice over and over again. Her sobs. The way she called for him. Over and over. "Billy! Billy!"

"Billy!"

Billy's head jolts up at that,

It's a voice. A real one. Not a scream of panic in his head, or his own cry of fear or desperation. Just a voice. Familiar. Comforting. A little frantic but without a single trace of anger, "C'mon, dude, lemme in!"

There's more banging. And it doesn't fit the pattern, doesn't fit the roll of thunder or the thumping of his heart or the bang of those fireworks that sound so so real.

Someone's outside knocking on his door. Steve. Steve is outside knocking on his door. Billy can't. Can't move. Can't talk. Can't believe it. Just…can't. It's in his head. All in his head. Has to be.

"Billy!" The handle of the door rattles, the chain of the bolt clanking against the wood, and something about the need in Steve's tone is enough to shake Billy out of his panic.

Because Steve's here. And it's not entirely unprecedented, Steve being here. Steve was there from the start, coming in at the tail end of the kids' DIY attempts and fumbling his way through fixing up some of the bigger jobs they'd attempted, and he's been there afterwards too, dropping round occasionally with items that he claimed his Mom was throwing out, but which just so happened to be the very things that Billy needed, a set of gleaming pots and pans after Billy found a whole mouse family nesting in his; a bedside lamp with a chintzy floral shade after Billy accidentally sent his old one flying across the room in the throes of a particularly violent nightmare; and, most recently, a chunky boombox with a whole box full of tapes, some so new that they still had the cellophane on but a couple that were clearly older. Well-played and well-loved, and the ones that Billy found himself coming back to them over and over.

He wishes he'd thought to stick one on before. Maybe he could've drowned out the storm with ELO or Queen or something.

The lightning flashes again, illuminating the room through the thin, yellow gingham and Billy wants to hide again, wants to press himself against the wall and hide from it all. But Steve's here. Steve's out there, in the worst of it. Steve came and he's here and all Billy needs to do is open the door, just open that fucking door that he locked tight and shut with a set of extra deadbolts. He just needs to open it up and let Steve in.

He can do that. For Steve, he can do that. So he does.

He forces himself to uncurl, standing on trembling legs and he holds it together long enough to walk the few steps to the door and wrench it open. And Steve's there. Not a figment. Not an illusion. The real Steve Harrington, his crest of hair falling wetly in his face, his brightly coloured windbreaker absolutely soaked through, his shoes squeaking on the slippery steps.

But he's smiling. And it's a full bright sunshine kind, big enough that Billy forgets about the storm outside and the fear churning in his gut and he even manages to smile back, a little watery, as he opens the door and asks,

"What the hell you even doing out here, Harrington?"

"I…I was just passing by," Steve tries, but there's a sheepish look on his face like he knows it's not gonna fly. No one's ever 'just passing by' this place, that's the whole point. So Billy fixes him with as stern a look as he can muster with his snotty face and red-rimmed eyes, and Steve's expression turns serious as he says, "El."

It's enough of an explanation. Since whatever the hell happened between him and Max's psychic little best friend, the two of them have had some kind of connection. He's not surprised that she sensed his freakout from wherever she was. Part of him is relieved that someone was looking out for him. That's he's not as isolated out here as he thought. Most of him, though? Most of him is burning with shame. He can picture it now, El seeing him at his most broken and relaying it all to Steve, then Steve grumbling and grousing as he peels himself out of his bed and trudges into the torrential rain to come play babysitter while Billy cries like a pussy in the corner over a little bit of thunder.

It's enough to have him damn near slamming the door right in Steve's face.

"I'm fine-" Billy starts, but then there's another flash and, within a split second of it, a crack of thunder so loud that it seems to rattle the walls of the trailer. and whatever embarrassment Billy was feeling, that nauseating swirl of humiliation and the desire to stay strong in front of Steve, it all fades in the face of his fear as his stomach drops, and his knees give way and he falls to the floor, arms wrapping around his head, trying desperately to muffle the pathetic keening noise he knows he's letting out.

There's a moment where there's nothing but his whimpers in the quiet of the trailer, and then Billy hears the sound of footsteps moving away. And he doesn't blame Steve for leaving, he'll he's glad that he did. He is. OK, so it hurts and he wishes like hell he could've been better, could've been less fucked up so maybe Steve would've stuck around a little longer. But he's glad. Because this is the best way. Out of sight, out of mind. He doesn't need Steve fussing over him. So Billy squeezes his eyes shut. Swallows down past the ache in his throat and the gnawing emptiness in his heart. Because this is better.

But then there's a sound. A click and a whirr and then the trailer fills with a familiar song, already part way through playing,

I get a strange magic, Oh, what a strange magic

Just as Billy tunes in enough to recognise it, there's a warm, reassuring weight all around him, something soft being draped over his shoulders and Billy reaches out for it instinctively, grabbing at the thick, crocheted blanket and wrapping it around his shoulders. When he looks up, Steve is still there, kneeling in front of him with one hand raised, palm up, in an invitation.

"You wanna watch?"

"Huh?" Billy's tongue feels heavy in his mouth, and his brain is still lost in the sheer fact that Steve is here. Still here. He stayed.

"The storm," Steve clarifies, "I know…you, you, you don't…it's not…it's a lot like-" Steve waves a hand in the air, grasping for gestures when the words fail him and then waving over towards the window, "But it actually looks kinda cool, especially out over the lake."

Billy shakes his head, a tiny movement, but Steve keeps his hand out anyway.

"It might help," he suggests, "Might make you see, I dunno, see what it is. That's it's not…not what you're thinking. What you're seeing in there." He taps on Billy's forehead with a gentle finger, then puts his hand back out, patiently waiting. "Promise you, man, it's gnarly." He grins after the last word, all dorky and pleased with himself, and Billy can't help but snort out a laugh at the awful surfer boy impression Steve had been attempting.

He's trying. Billy realises suddenly, He's trying to help.

So he keeps one hand firmly on the blanket around his shoulders, fingers clutching through the open knit, but he places the other in Steve's, not missing the way Steve's smile turns soft the moment their fingers make contact.

"OK." It's all Billy can manage.

It's enough. It's all Steve needs to haul him up and tug him over to the window, flinging open the yellow gingham and getting them both next to the glass just in time to catch the next flash. And it's still a lot. Still has Billy's heart in his throat and his stomach twisting, but he doesn't move away. Doesn't want to. Because Steve's right. It is cool, the way the whole landscape is illuminated, just for that second and how the light dances in jagged flashes across the sky, reflected in the glassy waters below. How it's so big. So powerful. So immense. Kinda beautiful.

He says as much to Steve. And Steve nods. Smiles again, that soft smile. Warm and fond and all directed at Billy. And Billy's heart flips even further into his throat. Because his hand is still clasped in Steve's and when the thunder rumbles loudly, just moments later, Steve's thumb starts stroking gentle, soothing circles around Billy's knuckles, over and over until the sound fades, and even when it all stops, when it's silent again, Steve keeps hold of Billy's hand, their fingers entwined all tight like he really doesn't want to let go.

So Billy doesn't let go either.

There's another flash. But this time all that Billy sees of it is the light flitting over Steve's face, making his eyes shine and his skin seem to glow, just for a moment. Because Steve's not watching the storm either. He's staring right at Billy. And Billy feels it again, that thrum of electricity in the air. But it's not so scary now. Not when he thinks Steve is feeling it too.

#harringrove #softness #as always #lil bit of domesticity #some h/c #and a splash of ELO #as they deserve #i rewatched S1 recently and I NEED Billy in Hopper's trailer #having his breakfast coffee overlooking the lake #making friends with all the ducks or whatever seabirds they have #maybe learning how to fish and making up a fancy dinner for his bf of course

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sassyshoulderangel319 · 6 years ago

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A Retreat Birthday

Notes: Happy Birthday Lyric! @moonlight-lyrics

@eequalsmcscared, Join our little party!

“Mom! Mom! Mom!” I shouted, running into the executives office that she and Dad shared. She looked up.

“Yeah baby?”

“Lyric and Oliver are flying here for Lyric’s birthday next week and the executive suite is open. Can I have it for Lyric’s birthday party? Please? I promise I didn’t tell anyone it was booked when it was free. It just is free. Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease?” I pleaded, hands pressed together like I was saying a prayer---which, technically, I kind of was?

Mom gave me a look. I wasn’t a dishonest kid and she knew that.

After a moment, she sighed. “Alright. But you’re going to give Molly a night off on the graveyard shift so she can go home when it’s over.”

“YES! Deal! Thanks Mom!” I bolted out of the managers’ office, stumbling over my own bare feet, and back to the front desk, where I worked. I picked up the call and booked the executive suite for the party. “Oliver, Mom agreed!” I exclaimed.

“Awesome! So it’s ours for the night?”

“Yup. We can have a whole party and won’t bother anyone!”

“That’s great!” Oliver agreed. “Hey, do you think I could ship my gift to your island?”

I scrunched my nose. “Uh... maybe. I can’t guarantee it’ll get here on time, but I can go to the resorts P.O. box on the mainland every day to check.”

“Hmm... it’s just too heavy to fly with comfortably.” He thought for a moment. “Nah. I’ll just bring it with me.”

“You know she’s going to be exasperated that you got her a present, right?”

“And, what? You’re not giving her a present?”

“She and I agreed that the party at the resort and a massage with Taylor were going to be her gift from me. But... yeah I did. Just a little one though so she doesn’t push me off the dock.”

Oliver snorted. “We’re both terrible friends.”

“I’d argue that us getting her gifts when she said she didn’t want us to makes us spectacular friends,” I teased.

“Okay: mood.”

It was my turn to snort. “Oliver, you’re such a meme.”

“Mood,” he repeated.

I laughed. “Walked right into that one,” I said. “Okay. So are you coming the day of the party or the day before? Lyric’s gonna be here the day of.”

“I’ll be there the day before to help you set up if you want me to.”

“I can handle it. I’ve set up dozens of parties here.”

“Oof. Good luck.”

“Thanks. It won’t be too hard. It’s just one small party for three people in one room. Better than decorating the whole ballroom or beach by myself. Did those before. They weren’t fun and took hours. I’ll be okay with this one,” I said.

“Okay then I’ll arrive on the day-of too.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I said. “Hang on. I’m getting another call. Call you back later.”

“Bye!” Oliver hung up.

“LYRIC!” a familiar voice shouted moments after you touched down on the soft, sandy beach. You heard feet running down the dock and before you can react, you were smashed into a hug.

“Oof! Hi there!” you grunted. Familiar giggles echoed in your ears. You’d heard those giggles many times before.

Cassie pulled away and beamed at you. “Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to---umph!” Her singing stopped when you put your hand over her mouth. She peeled it off. “What?” she complained.

“Don’t sing it for all the world to hear!” you hissed.

Cassie rolled her eyes. “Lyyyrrriiiiic!” she moaned. “It’s your birthday! I have to sing for you!”

“You really don’t.”

Your friend sighed. “Fine. But we’re singing for you tonight.”

You smiled. “I can live with that.”

Cassie laughed and slung you into another hug. “Let’s get you all checked in, yeah? I convinced my parents to let us have the executive suite for the night.”

“No way. Isn’t that, like, the fanciest one in the resort?” you asked.

“Yup. You’re totally worth it,” she said, leading you into the lobby. She ducked behind the desk, clicked a few buttons on her computer, and grinned. “There you go! All checked in. Here’s your key!” Cass held out two plastic cards. You took them. “Want me to walk you to your room?”

“Sure if you have time.”

“Oh yeah I have time,” she said casually, pushing something on the phone on the desk. “Let’s go.”

You two chatted while you walked. You asked how the resort had been, she asked how life had been. She also teasingly asked you if you’d found a special someone yet.

The sand between the big main building that housed everything in the resort except the rooms and the huts that were the guest rooms had been churned by dozens of footprints in every direction. The path to the executive suite---which was slightly farther removed from all the others for privacy---was only marked by several sets of Cass’ footprints. Presumably as she set up for the party.

“So when’s Oliver going to get here?” you asked, climbing up the stairs to the room and fiddling with the key.

“He should be here any minute now. He said he was going to try and make it before evening,” Cass said.

You unlocked the door and pushed it open, fully ready to drop your bag on the floor and collapse on the bed to rest after flying all the way from home to the resort. Your wings were sore and throbbing and needed a break...

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” another familiar voice shouted, slamming you into another hug.

“Ollie?” you demanded. “What the f---how did you get in here without me seeing your footprints?”

Oliver shuffled his wings. “I can fly too,” he said with an impish grin. You rolled your eyes.

“Of course.”

“Now we’re all here!” Cass exclaimed, following you into your room. You gave her a small little glare. She rarely lied to you, but you could also understand why she wanted to keep the surprise a surprise. “I have some work I have to finish, but your massage with Taylor is in fifteen minutes? A half-hour? What time even is it?”

“Time is a construct,” you said jokingly.

“Mood,” Oliver deadpanned.

Cass snorted. “Okay. Anyway. Your massage is soon. And then I will be back to party it up when your massage is finished and I’m done with work.”

“Okay! Bye Cass!” you called as she slipped out of your room. Oliver engulfed you in another hug.

“Lyric! Happy birthday! It’s great to see you!”

“You too! It’s been forever!”

Taylor worked your muscles---particularly where the wings connected---with a gentle firmness that felt blissful. There was a cool breeze blowing, carrying the pleasant scent of the sea with it. The thin, sheer curtains that gave the cabana some semblance of privacy while it was being used for a massage drifted like ethereal fingers dancing and reaching endlessly.

The massage oil Taylor used smelled like jasmine. They didn’t press so hard that it hurt, but just firm enough to work out the knots in your muscles. Especially the ones you used to fly. That was Taylor’s specialty, according to Cass: flight muscles and people with wings.

It felt heavenly. Taylor as a person had a calming presence that was almost magical, and you felt that same presence just in their fingers and hands as they carefully massages you.

The ocean was only a few yards from you and the soothing sound of the waves washing high tide in relaxed you.

You took a moment to be mindful---to pay special attention to each little thing. The feeling of the massage therapist’s hands undoing the tension in your muscles, the sound and scent of the waves. The salty sea breeze dancing on your skin, cooling you off as it slipped over the massage oil. The oil’s gentle but wonderful jasmine smell. The back of your closed eyelids’ slight orange tint from the afternoon sun. The taste of the humid ocean air---just slightly salty through your lips parted in relaxation. It felt good.

Somewhere, you heard seabirds calling each other as they swooped over the ocean. You could also hear the families staying at the resort on the main recreation beach several yards away. They sounded like they were having fun.

Taylor was quietly playing some soothing music from a small set of speakers on their small table where they also had their oil bottles. It had a soft drum beat and an instrumental melody that reminded you of home.

You let out a little grunt as Taylor applied pressure to the seam where blue-and-purple feathers met skin.

“Is that alright?” they asked.

“Yeah. Maybe just a little firm.”

“Thank you for telling me. I’ll lighten up a bit.”

“Not too much though, please. It still feels good.”

Taylor chuckled. “I’ll bear it in mind.”

They kneaded around the seams of your wings for a long time. How long, you had no idea. There was no clock in the cabana, and honestly, you didn’t really care. You were determined to enjoy the moment and forget that time even existed.

“That feels good,” you muttered. Taylor snickered.

“Party time!” Cass squealed, throwing open the door to the executive suite. You’d showered off the massage oil and were feeling both relaxed and refreshed.

“What is in your hands you little sh---” you began, before Cass cut you off.

“Cake!” She set it down on the coffee table. The executive suite had a little living room separate from the bedroom where the party was set up. “Also, we had a pizza brought over on the ferry. It should still be warm!” She slid the cake off the top to reveal the pizza box underneath.

“You really didn’t hold back too much, did you?” you asked.

“Nope.” She smiled and passed you and Oliver plates. “Dinner, dessert, and party time!”

After the food had been consumed---it was delicious---the music was turned on and the talking began. The three of you caught up and told stories and laughed your heads off, sitting on the sofa, the arm chair, the floor, wherever. And moving around a lot for various reasons---the most common appeared to be hugging.

What shocked you the most was that Cass would sing bits and pieces of whatever was playing from the speakers. You liked her voice, but she rarely sang---especially around other people. Part of it was minor insecurity but the other part was the fact that she was half-mermaid and her voice could enchant whoever was around her.

But tonight she seemed relaxed and unconcerned---since she knew her enchanting mermaid voice had no effect on you or Oliver. It didn’t really work on friends (something about platonic affection that none of you actually understood). So you got to enjoy it for the night.

The sun was long down when Oliver nudged her with his toes, the clock on the end table reading that it was nearing midnight. “Hey. How about some more surprises for the birthday girl?” he suggested.

Your face fell. “Oh no. What did you two do?” you asked.

Cassie shrugged, scratching the back of her head. “Nothing.”

“Cass, you’re the worst liar on the planet. How everyone who stays at this resort hasn’t figured out your secret yet is astonishing,” you teased.

Cassie laughed. “Fair,” she agreed. She glanced at Oliver. “I think now is a great time for a few more surprises.” She was beaming. You didn’t trust either of them at all.

Oliver laughed and went around the wall that separated the little living room from the bedroom.

He came back with a big squarish package in his arms. Cassie laughed and pulled a much smaller squarish package out from where it had been hiding under the sofa.

“Presents!” Oliver exclaimed.

“You two promised!” you protested.

Cassie shrugged. “Too bad!”

Oliver plopped down so you were squashed between them on the sofa. “Me first,” he said, dropping the remarkably heavy package on your lap.

With a sigh, you tore the wrapping paper off.

It was a large leather-bound book. “What’s this?” you asked hesitantly.

“Open it,” Oliver said.

You did.

It was a scrapbook. Pictures of the two of you---occasionally featuring Cassie---on the island and many screenshots of text conversations.

The most prominent one being a full page devoted to, “Are those avocados?”---“... Those are honeydew.”

You groaned.

The rest of the scrapbook had lots more conversations, the occasional meme, and probably every picture the two of you had ever taken together.

You smiled and gave him a hug. “Okay, okay... thank you,” you said.

Ollie grinned. “You’re very welcome.”

Cassie laughed and placed her much smaller gift on top of the scrapbook.

“Cass you said you weren’t getting me anything,” you said.

She shrugged. “No. I said I wasn’t buying you anything. And I didn’t,” she said. There was a brief pause. “Okay I bought one thing but the rest I didn’t.”

You rolled your eyes and ripped the paper off.

It was a small cardboard box---the kind that usually held jewelry.

You carefully removed the lid.

Inside were two small items. A necklace and a ring. Both had pearls on them. One was silver and the other gold. The necklace had a gold chain on it threaded through a scallop seashell. The gold pearl was between the two holes of the shell in a small gold chamber holding it to the chain. The ring was made of what appeared to be a stainless steel nail with the head bent into a setting for the silver pearl.

You looked up at Cassie. “Pearls are expensive,” you said.

She shrugged. “Not when you find their oysters on the bottom of the ocean yourself,” she said. “The only thing I bought was the chain. I made everything else.” She gave you a big hug, being careful of your wings. “Happy birthday, Lyric.”

You hug her back. “Thanks Cass.”

Ollie hugged you from the other side. “We love you Lyric!”

#Happy Birthday Lyric!#Lyric #Oliver #my birthday present to you #!!!

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writerlilahsuzanne · 4 years ago

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Adrift - A Tack & Jibe short

Bodhi must have been a dragonfly in a past life. Or maybe a frog or a turtle or something else that thrives in the mess and muck of nature. It would explain how her body and soul settle and still out here in the Sound where the brackish water is placid, where it’s as if her kayak is slicing through a sheet of opaque glass.

She has mud and up to her knees from dragging her kayak through the surrounding wetlands, her long sun-streaked blonde hair sticks in sweaty clumps to her neck and forehead, and her own earthy scent swirls around her in the slow, heavy breeze: dirt and musk and patchouli shampoo and coconut sunscreen and lemon-eucalyptus bug spray that only sort of works.

When Bodhi was younger, her moms would have to beg her to come inside and take a bath, to sit at the table like a civilized person and do homework or chores that she never quite saw the point of. Why work on long division when she could climb a tree? Why study old men and the dates of wars when she could scoop tadpoles from a creek. Isn’t that more real? Life squiggling in her cupped palms, sturdy branches holding her, safe, up in the sky? And anyway, her moms always encouraged her to be free and wild and so she is.

It’s meditative, the rhythm of her paddles dipping in and out of the water; one side, then the other. Gentle waves glide along her boat, the seagrass and wild oats dance to the wind, the trees set farther back rustle with life. Along the way, Bodhi spots a flock of Redhead ducks that float in a clump near the shore, Seagulls and Royal Terns loudly scavenge for food and fish, Cormorants fly high above. She even spots a Great Blue Heron, long-legged and graceful and impossibly huge, picking its way slowly through the shallows. The Great Heron spreads its wings suddenly, perhaps startled by Bodhi and her bright red kayak, and takes flight. Bodhi drifts and watches it soar across the sky. Perhaps she was a bird, before, in a different life. She could spend hours or even days out here, all alone among the for birds.

“Hey, can we make a pit stop at the Visitor Center?”

She isn’t all alone. “Sure.” Bodhi smiles back at Hunter who is keeping pace behind Bodhi in her own kayak. Bodhi doesn’t mind the company, she’s out here with friends often, in fact, a whole group of them paddling the sound, or sailing between and around the chain of islands that make up the Outer Banks, or hiking through the dedicated nature preserve that takes up nearly half of this island. Hunter is around a lot lately. Like, always around a lot lately. Bodhi isn’t sure what she should take from that, exactly.

The Porter Island Visitor Center comprises two single-room buildings, one a museum-slash-information center, one a gift shop, both raised up a few feet on decks that connect via a weathered wooden walkway. There’s an outbuilding-type bathroom—barely more high-tech than an outhouse—and in the gift shop there’s a much nicer air-conditioned single stall restroom. They dock, and Hunter heads toward the gift shop.

When Bodhi moved here several years ago with her moms, the Visitor Center was one of their first stops. It was so quaint; a little sand- and salt-speckled shack with lighthouse and beach themed goods for sale. In the adjacent museum there is an entire wall dedicated to the years Blackbeard the pirate used the island’s shallow sound as a refuge in his downtime between the murders and pillages. There’s another whole wall about the island’s lighthouse. But Bodhi quickly adapted from suburban to tiny-island style living and now can’t imagine ever being anywhere else.

Bodhi idly browses the small sea-themed trinkets and a few racks of postcards, a shelf of hats and one of Porter Island t-shirts. There’s a section dedicated to books by local authors and books about local history and about the flora and fauna of the island. Bodhi flips through a book about seabirds. When Hunter emerges from the bathroom, she scans the gift shop until she finds Bodhi, then smiles like the sun coming out. Huh. That’s new.

“Ready?” Hunter freshened up while she was in the bathroom; her hair is smoothed down and damp with water instead of sweat, her light makeup touched up, and there’s no trace of dirt or grime. It’s interesting only because Hunter typically isn’t very fussy about that sort of thing. Sometimes, but she’s usually chill about... Well, everything. That’s why Bodhi likes hanging out with her. And doing other stuff with her.

“Yup. Ready.”

As they head out of the store, though, Hunter stops at the checkout counter and snags a giant sun hat from a spinning rack. “You’re so fair; you should get this.” She plops it on Bodhi’s head as the young-looking cashier watches them with obvious interest.

“This hat is like, excessive,” Bodhi says, tugging at the extremely wide brim. It’s one of those floppy sun hats, a rich lady sipping cocktails while on a yacht type hats. “Anyway, the sun is good for you.” Bodhi hooks the ridiculous hat back onto the rack. Cashier Boy’s mouth flicks up into a tiny smile. He’s cute. Too young, though, probably only eighteen or nineteen, Bodhi would guess. Bodhi is a little unsettled by that; being at a stage in her life now that someone that age would be too young for her to be interested in. Is this what getting old and mature feels like? Gross.

“The sun is good for you in small doses.” Hunter moves in closer still, brushes her thumb across Bodhi’s cheekbone. “All of those gorgeous freckles won’t be so lovely when they turn into melanoma.” Bodhi wrinkles her nose. Hunter’s thumb lingers at the corner of her jaw. Hunter’s eyes are pretty, Bodhi thinks. Like, she knew that but she hadn’t paid that much attention to them before. Well, she has. Just not this much. They’re like, ochre. Or a tiger’s eye gemstone.

“You guys are a cute couple.”

Bodhi startles and moves backward; Hunter’s hand briefly hovers mid-air then falls away. “No, we’re—” Hunter says, as Bodhi stutters out, “We aren’t— We’re—” But what even are they? A summer hookup that’s lasted four summers and now more? Friends, now that Hunter lives on Porter Island full time? Really good friends? Really good friends who hook up sometimes, but then go for long stretches without hanging out at all because it gets too intense too fast and yet they keep finding their way back together, as if it’s something cosmic or inevitable but neither of them really want it to be, unless they do?

It’s too complicated, too much to understand yet alone explain so Bodhi finishes her thought with a casual shrug.

It’s whatever.

“We should get back out there,” Hunter says, saving them all from the awkward moment. Bodhi doesn’t do awkward, so she’s grateful.

Back out on the water, Bodhi can’t seem to lose herself in the natural world like she always does. The cashier’s comment, and Hunter’s face after… Her own vehement reaction… Why Hunter has been around so much lately…

“Do you want to stay over tonight?” Hunter calls, trailing behind Bodhi’s kayak once again.

They usually end these excursions by falling into someone’s bed, or sleeping bag, or boat, or, once, a rustic treehouse. And usually it’s casual. It’s chill. Neither of them care to put a label on it because it’s just sex but if things have changed for Hunter, that means Bodhi should probably put a stop to it. Hunter’s her friend and that means something to Bodhi. She doesn’t hurt her friends, not on purpose.

“I dunno. I have to work early.” She never really has to work, let alone early, her moms are cool with Bodhi helping at the sailing shop they own whenever she’s in the mood to help. More or less. She probably should go in though, so it’s not a total lie. “But we can hang after if that’s chill.”

Bodhi can’t see her, and doesn’t crane around to look, but she can hear the disappointment in Hunter’s voice all the same. “Sure yeah, it’s chill.”

Bodhi is now certain that it’s anything but.

+++

At dusk, Bodhi sets up shop on the back deck, a packed bowl on the glass table in front of her, her bare feet propped up next to her phone, a full backpack ready to go next to her reclined patio chair. She waits.

The location is always a secret until the very last moment; a precaution so no one reports their activities and sends everyone scurrying away and they miss the entire event. Tonight an event Bodhi has been waiting for, since she missed the last one. Accidentally fell asleep, her own fault. Her friend on the inside will text her when it’s go time, so Bodhi watches the sun go down and the moon come out as her eyelids grow heavier and her mind and body relax. But not too relaxed; not this time.

She planned to go with Hunter tonight but…

“Hey.” Willa slides the back door open. Her curly hair is extra wild tonight; Bodhi loves that. She loves that her roommate and best friend is both predictable—never late for a shift at the sail shop, never oversleeps, never once missed a bill’s due date—and also totally off the rails unpredictable. Bodhi really never knows what Willa will do next. She’s predictable in her unpredictableness.

“Whoa, galaxy brain moment.”

Willa’s eyes narrow. “What?”

“Nothing.” Bodhi drops her feet to the deck. “‘Sup dude. Join me.”

Willa picks up the bowl and then holds it away from her, skeptical-like—sometimes she’ll partake, sometimes she won’t, but she always grabs first and hesitates later—then sits at the table next to Bodhi and picks up the blown-glass bowl and lighter.

“What are you doing tonight?”

A flame lights Willa’s face, she smokes and coughs and croaks, “Mostly questioning all of my life choices.”

Bodhi laughs, Willa is always so funny, even when she doesn’t mean to be. Especially then. “Same. But like,” Bodhi loses her train of thought when a cloud passes over the dimly lit moon. It’s wicked. What was she— “Oh. Yo, come with me tonight.” It’s not usually Willa’s scene, this sort of thing, but Bodhi couldn’t say with certainty what Willa scene really is except like, nothing or everything or… Something. Anyway, Bodhi doesn’t want to go alone, and that’s the relevant point.

Willa squints one eye closed, and fixes Bodhi with the other. “Sit around outside in the dark for hours, get eaten alive by mosquitos and no-see-ums while we wait for something that might happen?”

Bodhi grins. “Hell yeah.”

“I thought you were going with Hunter.”

Bodhi waves a hand in the air. She means it to be exactly as vague as it is.

“What’s up with you two?” Willa takes the bowl again and manages not to cough, and sits back more comfortably in her chair. There was time, at the very beginning, that Bodhi thought she and Willa might be something more than friends. First of all, Bodhi was very into the hot skater chick thing, and Willa is smart and determined and super fun besides, but she’s glad they only ended up friends. Bodhi gets a little emotional thinking about not having Willa around and has to smoke a little more weed to settle herself down.

“C’mon, come with me,” Bodhi tries again, when she’s sure she won’t sound too invested in Willa’s answer. “It’s cool, I promise.”

“Another night I would, I’m just so tired with everything going on and—”

Bodhi's phone goes off with a text, and she scrambles to get it. It’s the coordinates for tonight, so it’s now or never, or least not for another several weeks at least. And yet, Bodhi stays in her chair and watches her phone go dark again. “Maybe I’ll skip it,” she says it mostly to herself. “I don’t really want to go alone.”

Willa looks at her with alarm. She’s not the only one. Since when does Bodhi care about doing things alone? Since now, apparently.

“Bo, is it possible you miss Hunter? I mean you two were like, glued together and now you aren’t even speaking to her.”

It won’t be the same without Hunter there. That’s the issue. But why? Too stoned for this conversation and these thoughts, Bodhi’s mind is a jumble of feelings and half-formed ideas and spiraling tangents. She doesn’t have an answer for Willa, or herself, so she shrugs, as if she doesn’t care. She does, though. Too much. Way too much.

Willa stands, grabs the bowl and lighter from the table and plops Bodhi’s backpack into her lap. “Go watch your turtle eggs hatch.”

Federal law prohibits the sea turtle rescue organization from posting the location of active nests. It keeps the turtles safe and keeps flocks of tourists from gathering en mass on the beaches and bothering everyone who lives nearby. Bodhi’s friend Kea volunteers for the organization, she regularly patrols the beaches looking for nests and collects data, keeping tabs on the number of hatchlings that conquer the hard-won journey out to sea.

“You made it.” Kea keeps her voice low and ducks in for a quick hug.

The sea turtle rescue organization has already roped off a small section of the beach, and a handful of volunteers mill around nearby. There’s about ten other people gathered farther back, including a family with two young kids. Bodhi wonders if their parents are aware that they’ll likely be up until morning. Her moms brought her to a few of these hatchings when she was a kid, so she doesn’t judge. It’s cool, actually.

Kea goes off to take some measurements of the nest and count the eggs. It’s a Hawksbill nest, they think, so there are likely hundreds of babies getting ready to hatch. Bodhi finds a spot back with the rest of the non-volunteers. The kids are digging holes in the sand and jumping in and out of them, though their parents are making sure they don’t get too loud or wound up. Bodhi’s buzz has worn off. The night is humid and sticky. She does miss Hunter.

“Did you know sea turtles can hold their breath for seven hours?” Bodhi says to the kids when they scurry past her. They both stop. “And some kinds of sea turtles eat jellyfish.” Bodhi glances back to the parents to make sure they don’t mind her talking to their kids. “Do you guys already know that the babies have to find their way to the ocean all by themselves?” They both nod, in sync. She guesses one or both of them has an interest in sea turtles and probably have a few facts collected of their own. They’re quiet for a few beats, and then the smaller one asks,

“How?”

Bodhi tips her head. “How do they find the ocean?”

“Yeah… Yeah 'cuz if the mom leaves them and they’re just borned--”

“Born,” the other kid corrects.

“If they’re just born— How do they know where to go?”

Bodhi likes how innately curious kids are, how they instinctively yearn to explore the world around them and aren’t afraid to ask questions, to admit when they don’t understand things. She tries to keep that spirit alive in herself.

“Well,” Bodhi draws her knees up to her chest and smiles up at the kids. “Sea turtles are phototactic. Do you know what that means?” They shake their heads no. “It means they’re drawn to light. Like, when you have your porch light on at night and moths and other bugs all come to fly around it? Same thing. So when they’re born, the moon reflecting on the ocean tells them where to go. Cool right? Like, the moon and the ocean are calling to them, telling them where their home is.”

“Yeah!” says one.

“That’s why it has to stay dark,” the other one says, quiet, a little shyer than their smaller sibling.

Bodhi glances back to the parents again. “Right. And the beach at night can seem a little scary, but we’re totally safe and we want to make sure the baby turtles don’t get confused and go the wrong way. They could get too tired or hurt or a predator could get them and that’s not good.”

Bodhi talks sea turtle facts with the junior turtle enthusiasts a little longer, until Kea returns to announce two hundred and twelve eggs total.

“Can I take a peek?” Observers have to stay back, but Bodhi’s a regular at this point. Kea nods and leads Bodhi to the nest that’s illuminated only by the light of the moon.

“So when are you joining our ranks?” Kea asks while Bodhi crouches near the nest. She always asks that, when Bodhi will start volunteering for the rescue. Everyone else on the volunteer team is like, getting their PhD in turtle nesting or whatever, or else retired conservationists with more experience and knowledge than Bodhi will have in her entire life, so.

“Yeah, I’m good.” It sounds dismissive, she knows. As if she doesn’t care. But that’s better than everyone knowing she doesn’t have much to offer.

“All right, all right. You’d be so good in outreach and education, though. Especially with kids.”

Bodhi shrugs. Scratches her neck. “The trainings are too early…”

Kea wisely leaves it alone, though she changes the subject to something else Bodhi doesn’t want to talk about. “Oh, hey, where’s your girlfriend tonight? Hunter, right?”

+++

“I thought you were avoiding me?”

“I was.”

Hunter shifts in the doorway; her hips cocked, one arm braced against the doorjamb, the other stretched across. She’s tiny, a pixie with short brown hair and delicate features and round doe eyes, yet she takes up the entire doorway. “And?”

“And… Now I’m not?”

Hunter doesn’t move. She lifts an eyebrow. If she tells Bodhi to get lost—and she should—Bodhi will do it. But this is their dance: On and off, up and down, together and not. Hunter must be tired of it, though. Bodhi can tell because it’s usually Hunter who comes calling, and Bodhi who gives in once again. Bodhi says nothing and Hunter says nothing, then Hunter finally drops her arms and retreats into the muted cool of her condo, leaving the door open for Bodhi to come in.

This was easier when Hunter was only in Porter Island for the summer, four years of summer months working at one of her mom’s restaurants while she finished school. There was an end date, and Bodhi didn’t have to worry about what Hunter might want after that. Or what she wanted.

“How did the hatching go?” Hunter sits in a hard-backed leather chair, her arms and legs crossed. Hunter’s inherited home decor has always made Bodhi think of a law office waiting room, all heavy wood and leather and polished chrome. Such a contrast to Bodhi’s moms’ colorful bohemian vibe, or the kitschy beach-themed cottage she shares with Willa. The entire condo came as a gift, furniture and decor and everything, a life already chosen for Hunter.

“Good. Kea asked me to join their volunteer corps again.” Bodhi sprawls across the couch, her thighs stick to the black leather.

“You should.”

Bodhi shrugs. Hunter thinks she should do a lot of things. Bodhi sighs and stretches, her t-shirt and shorts bunch up, her hair falls loosely across her face. She knows what she’s doing, and it works. Hunter’s gaze shifts from exasperation to clear desire, and Bodhi wishes they could just keep things the same between them. It’s hot and fun and easy. Why does it have to get complicated just because Hunter moved here? “Look, Hunter. We’ve talked about this. I’m not looking for...” She leaves the statement unfinished because what is she looking for? A time machine? A way to capture the perfect summer fling and put it up somewhere for safekeeping, like fireflies captured in a jar?

“I’m aware.” Hunter’s lips press flat, her eyes flick away. She gets Bodhi. It’s too much, sometimes. “And I’m not asking you to.”

Bodhi sits up. “Okay, then… Okay.”

Sea turtles bury their eggs deep in the sand, Bodhi told the two kids she’d befriended yesterday. They stayed all night and, enraptured, watched the hatchlings take to the sea. Buried so deep that by the time the babies hatch and claw their way to the surface the mama turtle is long gone, far out to sea. One of the kids asked, eyes wide with hope, if they ever find each other, if they might meet up out in the ocean one day. The ocean is too big, their sibling answered, matter of fact. So, so huge it’s impossible. But Bodhi wondered if maybe they did. Despite the odds, perhaps they could find each other someday.

Bodhi stands and offers her hand, reaching out across the expanse. “I’m sorry I didn’t call you.”

Hunter looks up. “You should have.”

“Yeah.” She should do a lot of things.

Hunter takes her hand and rises from the stiff chair, lips pouted and shoulders high. Bodhi tugs her close and kisses her until she stops frowning. Hunter releases a long breath and her body relaxes into Bodhi’s arms. She’s pliable and willing, and so Bodhi walks them to the bedroom and pulls off first Hunter’s clothes and then her own. She’s been with Hunter so many times that the taste of her is like coming home. She knows what makes Hunter sigh or moan or fist the sheets at her side or clutch fruitlessly at the carved oak headboard and it should bore Bodhi but it doesn’t at all. Being with Hunter, in bed or out, is easy. Why change that?

It’s quiet after, a heavy quiet, with Hunter curled at Bodhi’s side. Her fingers drift idly across Bodhi’s stomach.

“I applied to graduate school,” Hunter says, voice gone sex-rough. She clears her throat. “At UNC Wilmington, but also other schools that are… Well, farther away. My mom wants me to get serious about taking a regional manager position with the restaurant group. So. I wanted you to know that.”

“Cool,” Bodhi says. Her chest goes tight. “That’s chill.”

Hunter’s hand moves from Bodhi’s stomach, and she rolls away to find her clothes. “Ryan’s having a party tonight if you want—”

“Yeah, definitely.”

She met Hunter at a party like this one, with camping chairs gathered haphazardly around a fire, sand turned orange from the glow, the ocean so dark it bleeds into the sky, impossible to tell where one begins and the other ends.

Silhouettes move across the beach—dancing, laughing, tipsily leaning on one another. It seems to Bodhi as if she knows every single person on this island and has gone home with many of them and it’s so simple for her. It’s fun, like kayaking or sailing or free-falling off of a pier. She doesn’t need labels or relationships or complications. Or at least, she didn’t.

Hunter stays at her side all night, warm and happy. Bodhi keeps her arm slung around Hunter’s hips, a possessive gesture she rarely feels the need to make. She wants to keep her close by is all.

“I’m gonna get another,” Hunter says, waving an empty can in the air. Bodhi blames her own too many empties for tugging Hunter in close and kissing the top of her head. “Hurry back,” Bodhi says. She’s a very affectionate drunk, so she’s been told.

“Hey! Tell your girlfriend to bring her keg tap over!” Ryan is a loud drunk.

Bodhi ignores the first part. “What idiot is dragging a keg down the beach?”

“Me!” Ryan is fun, but… Well, he’s fun.

It’s not late, but Bodhi is already considering packing it in for the night. She’d rather stay in and hang out at Hunter’s, watch TV, smoke a bowl or two. God, she is getting old. If they leave to go get the keg tap, it’s very unlikely she’ll want to return. “Sorry, dude. Not tonight.”

Ryan boos at her and quickly gets distracted by someone who announces they brought vodka. Hunter returns and together they watch the vodka quickly disappear.

The party really is so much like the one where she met Hunter, and like so many more before that, and yet even Bodhi has to admit that it’s changing. Some people have moved on, and younger, wide-eyed and innocent faces have taken their place. The number of friends who have traded partying for jobs that have them up before sunrise is steadily growing, some even with new engagements and recently signed mortgages and 401Ks. Even Ryan is starting medical school in the fall. The guy who once did ten fireball shots in a row and had the brilliant idea to surf on the top of someone’s Jeep, fell off and found out two days later that he broke his arm in three places will be a doctor.

And next to go will be Hunter. Bodhi tugs her in close again.

+++

“Where’s your girlfriend?”

Bodhi is barely two steps into the marina when Mr. Kelley accosts her. “Why does everyone think we’re together?” Even her footsteps on the floating dock sound petulant, a sulking slap slap slap. Mr Kelley shrugs. He’s the owner of the marina next door to her parent’s sailing shop, and a family friend.

“I suppose you have a— You’re vibing.”

Bodhi pauses. “Mr. Kelley did you really say ‘vibing’?”

“I have nieces and nephews,” he defends. He’s white-haired and sun-worn with a slow, drawling accent and a heart of gold. “Anywho, let’s get to work.”

Once every summer, Mr. Kelley moves the long-time dockers and rental boats into a dry dock to scrape off the coatings of barnacles that have attached to the hulls, and after, applies a coating to slow the accumulation of the sticky little crustaceans. It’s difficult, dirty, exhausting work that Bodhi refuses to let Mr. Kelley do by himself.

“The bane of my existence,” Mr. Kelley says as they set to work on the first hull, while seawater still sluices off in rivulets. They’re definitely a nuisance, the barnacles, as they not only look unsightly but cause significant drag in the water and a waste of fuel in motorized vessels. Bodhi thinks they’re kinda neat, though.

“What’s really cool is like, their adhesive is one of the strongest substances on Earth. The tensile strength is crazy.”

Mr. Kelley grunts. “I believe it.”

They’re also super important to the ocean’s ecosystem since they clean the water like crusty little filters. They also eat with their legs and have the largest penis relative to body size of any animal. So that’s something. Which reminds her…

“Mr. Kelley,” Bodhi calls out over the frantic scraping. “How about you? Any new men you want to dish about?”

“Bah,” he says. “Men.” Which Bodhi takes as a no. Mr. Kelley spends all of his time out on this marina. Unless the perfect man comes sailing in one day and sweeps him off his feet, it’s never gonna happen. Bodhi tried to get him to join a dating app, but he waved her off and claimed he was too old.

Bodhi doesn’t bring it up again until they’ve finished one boat and started working on another. Her arms and shoulders are already sore, but in a good way.

“Let me set you up with someone.”

He sprays off his scraper with the hose, cups some fresh water in his hands, and splashes it on his face. “What is it you told me, Miss Bodhi? Love looks like a lot of things?” He sweeps his arms out toward the marina, the ocean, the sky. “What if this is my great love?”

Bodhi can’t argue with that. She could see herself ending up the same way, her love of the natural world around her could be enough to fill her heart. The thing is, though, she has strong feelings for Hunter. She can admit that. But what she wants to do with those feelings is the issue. She doesn’t really do monogamy and as much as she admires and appreciates her moms’ super-solid relationship, she just doesn’t think it’s for her. And so she’s at a fork in the road: be with Hunter, settle down, commit; or accept that Hunter will be the one that got away. Which can she live with?

The sun is sharp on her skin, sweat pools in her clavicles and between her shoulder blades and settles damply in the waistband of her shorts. She mops her face with the end of her shirt and takes a water break.

“Can I ask you, like. A totally non-judgmental question?”

Mr. Kelley’s face is red from exertion and the heat. He raises his eyebrows and comes to sit on the dock pile next to the one she’s perched on. “Okay, shoot.”

“Are you happy?” It seems like a rude question, but she thinks Mr. Kelley will understand what she means. He’s way chill for an old dude. “Like, actually happy out here alone, doing your own thing? Or would you trade it for something else— Or like, someone else?”

Mr. Kelley is thoughtful as he re-hydrates, then he sets his water bottle on the dock with a decisive thunk. “You get to be my age, Miss Bodhi, and you come to understand that some things just are what they are.”

Bodhi nods, squinting into the sun. “Yeah.” She feels like that now.

“Even still,” he continues. “You have but this one, bitty life to live and if you aren’t living in pursuit of the things—and the people—that make you happy, then what’s the point?” He fixes his pale blue eyes on her, somehow getting to the root of Bodhi’s question. “She makes you happy.”

Bodhi shifts on the dock pile, as if trying to move away from the accuracy of the statement. She nods again. “Yeah. She does.”

He stands with some effort and creakily picks up his barnacle scraper. Next year, she’s bringing other people to help with the operation; Mr. Kelley is going to seriously injure himself one of these days. Not that he’d let that stop him. “Then don’t be afraid to imagine what a life of happiness could look like with her. As you said yourself, love looks like a lot of things.”

Bodhi hops up to follow him back to the partially de-barnacled boat. “I have to say, I do not appreciate you using my words of wisdom against me Mr. Kelley.”

Hunter comes over that night, for sex and for dinner and to get stoned, in that order. Bodhi watches her cook linguine with clam sauce and allows herself to imagine it: Hunter there every morning, that faux-hawk bed-head her hair forms itself into and the way she always, very first thing, stumbles mostly asleep to the kitchen for a glass of water. She’s always parched when she wakes up but refuses to keep a water bottle by the bed because she claims it isn’t fresh enough. Bodhi imagines Hunter there to kiss her goodbye when she goes off to the sail shop or to sail or hike or kayak, Hunter there to greet her when she gets home. Dinner together every night. Regular dates with the same person. Regular sex with the same person.

Bodhi can easily use the blueprint of her parents’ incredible marriage to construct a healthy relationship of her own. She knows it takes sacrifice and selflessness and a willingness to put Hunter’s needs and wants in step with her own, always. Ahead of her own, even. But can that fit in with Bodhi’s more fluid definition of commitment? Would Hunter be okay with that? And what if she wants something Bodhi can’t give her?

Hunter sets two plates of food out on the table and gives Bodhi a concerned look before sitting down. “You okay?”

What if Bodhi is too selfish and too afraid of being constrained? If there were anyone that she could see a settled future with, it would be Hunter. If. Bodhi picks up her fork and plasters on a smile. “Definitely. Thanks for dinner.”

“No problem. Your turn next.”

Bodhi fake-smiles harder. “So have you heard from any of those grad programs yet?”

+++

Bodhi has spent the last two weeks at Hunter’s side, at Hunter’s condo, living out of a backpack that contains a toothbrush and two entire outfits that Bodhi swaps back and forth. She uses Hunter’s deodorant and shampoo and toothpaste and hairbrush until Hunter picks up extras for Bodhi at the store and stashes them all in an emptied out drawer. Bodhi spends a long time looking at that drawer. Her drawer. That she has at Hunter’s house.

“I don’t think I’ll ever want to live with anyone,” Bodhi says one night while they watch a movie. She’s draped over Bodhi, legs entwined, her head rests on Bodhi’s chest and her arm is snug around Bodhi’s waist. Hunter shifts a little, presses a kiss right above Bodhi’s sternum. “Okay,” she says. It’s to her credit, Bodhi thinks, that she doesn’t full-out laugh in Bodhi’s face.

One morning, they wake up before dawn to go hiking. Bodhi wakes first, rubs her eyes with both hands and nudges Hunter awake with her foot. Hunter sits up, groggy and mussed, and blinks into the darkness for a while. She grunts and, predictably, stumbles to the kitchen for her morning glass of water. Bodhi’s stomach twists with a deep pull of affection. She makes Hunter eggs and toast with fruit and packs a backpack and they sail out as the sun is beginning to skim the edge of the stretch ocean behind the condo complex.

The trails out on the North Carolina coast are all flat, easy walks; certainly no comparison to the rigorous mountain trails on the other side of the state. But as much as Bodhi likes the challenge of mountain hikes, there’s something special about the maritime forest trails. When they arrive on a different Outer Banks island for their day’s adventure, the hike takes them from the ocean, up the sparsely populated beach, around though the soft dunes, down onto a long boardwalk built over a salt marsh, and on into the woods. Bodhi always marvels at how these towering trees of pine and holly and oak and maple can not only survive but thrive in such a place; how it grows from nothing but shifting sand, withstands harsh winds and hurricanes and sea spray and flooding, and has found a home for thousands of years on a little sliver of an island. She tells Hunter as much.

“The beauty of nature,” Hunter says, offering Bodhi a sip from her water bottle. “Stand back, trust that things will unfold as they should, and amazing things happen.”

Bodhi doesn’t call her out on the obvious metaphor.

On their way out of the trail’s loop, they encounter an older couple looking a bit bewildered. They pass by, then Bodhi doubles back.

“Afternoon.” They’re both wearing khaki safari hats, cargo shorts, and multi-pocketed khaki vests. One of them has binoculars slung over a shoulder, the other has a camera with a huge zoom lens.

“Awesome day for a hike, right?” Bodhi has found that asking people if they’re lost or need help rarely works. People don’t like to admit that they don’t know what they’re doing, even if they’re tourists who have obviously never been here before. But if she waits, they’ll usually bring it up on their own.

“Oh, yes. Hot though!”

Bodhi mmhmms

“Say, can you tell us if this is the Fort Macon Trail?”

“It is,” Bodhi says. “And you can start in this direction because it’s a loop, but if you want the full experience, start from the beach and head into the forest that way. Make sure you follow the trees with white dots once you’re under the canopy, the trail isn’t super obvious in some places.” They thank her and head into the woods first anyway. She waves, walking backward as she adds, because she has a hunch, “Keep an eye out for Painted Buntings! They migrate through here this time of year.”

They give each other a wide-eyed look of excitement and Bodhi smiles as she turns away. She knows a birdwatcher when she sees one, and the colorful member of the cardinal family is a unique find.

“They’re a threatened species,” she tells Hunter once she catches up to her. Hunter’s face reminds Bodhi of the time she studied for something for once in her life and got third place in a spelling bee and her moms sat in the front row, cheering as if Bodhi had received the Nobel Prize. “What?” Bodhi squints at her.

“Nothing, you’re—” She slips her hand into Bodhi’s hand even though it’s sweaty. “You’re good at that. How you share nature with people.”

Bodhi looks away and mumbles, “I only told them about a bird.” It’s not a big deal.

Hunter shrugs, the motion tugs Bodhi’s hand up and down. “Okay,” she says.

Hunter has left the brochures from various schools sitting out on her coffee table for weeks now. Bodhi has looked at them a few times in the same way she kept looking at the drawer of her stuff in Hunter’s house. It’s hers for the taking, so simple, just reach out and grab the hairbrush, Bodhi. Just open the brochure. Just claim what you want already. After their hike, back at Hunter’s condo, while Hunter is in the shower, Bodhi takes a breath and flips a brochure open.

Downtown Porter Island gets crowded as soon as the weather starts to warm, though “downtown” is a very generous term for two streets and a parking lot. Bodhi and Hunter and Bodhi’s Mom and Ma get ice cream cones and find an empty picnic table, baked from the sun, and try to eat faster than the ice cream melts.

“So, Hunter. How are we feeling about grad school? Excited? Nervous? Concerned that you may be only doing this because of the weight of your mother’s expectations?”

“Jeez, Ma. Sometimes the former high school guidance counselor in you really jumps right out.”

Robin gives a pained smile. “Sorry. Only making sure.”

Hunter licks around her ice cream cone and nods. “Actually, I’m excited. UNCW has a solid business management program and I think the job will suit me. I get to travel, meet new people. I’ll be stuck in an office a lot but…” She slides a knowing look to Bodhi. “I’m sure I’ll still spend lots of time enjoying the outdoors.”

Bodhi’s lemon sorbet gets a little stuck as she swallows.

“And it’s not too far,” Jenn, Bodhi’s mom, adds, likely for Bodhi’s benefit. “A quick ferry ride and a drive south a bit.” She pats Hunter’s arm. “Though of course we’ll miss seeing you all the time!” Bodhi swears she emphasizes the words all the time on purpose, also intended for Bodhi.

Hunter’s ice cream drips from the bottom of the cone, first a few drops, but then the soggy cone breaks away and a puddle of blueberry cheesecake quickly pools onto the table. “Shoot,” Hunter raises her sticky hands. “I’m gonna go get some napkins.”

“I’ll help,” Robin says.

As soon as they’re a few steps away, Jenn raises her eyebrows. “So.”

“So,” Bodhi repeats. She quietly eats her ice cream just long enough to bug her. If her Ma had stayed instead, she’d have been totally grilled by now, but Jenn likes to take the good cop role, usually. Bodhi spares her. “UNCW has a forestry degree.”

Her mom’s face plainly says she’s trying very hard not to react to that. “Oh? Is that so?”

“Mmmhmm.” Bodhi crunches into her cone. “It is so.”

Her mom pokes around her own cup of chocolate peanut butter cup with a wooden spoon. “You know, I was wondering how you were planning on handling the long distance relationship thing.”

Bodhi shakes her head. “We’re not in a relationship.”

“Enlighten me then,” her mom says. “What are you?” There’s no intent to argue there, only genuine curiosity and Bodhi can understand why. Even she isn’t sure how to define it, or if she ever really wants to. She’s come to realize that’s okay.

“She’s just— My person.” How else to explain it?

Jenn considers this, tips her head and swirls her ice cream thoughtfully. “Okay. I get that. And I’m excited for you, too. I think forestry is perfect for you, if you decide to pursue that. You know we always support you one-hundred percent, love.”

She does know it.

Hunter and her other mom are heading back, Bodhi watches them talk and laugh as they cross the street and it’s weird, it’s like her heart is bigger; stronger and brighter in her chest.

“I think it’s perfect, too.”

“And Hunter? Is she aware of how you feel?”

Bodhi doesn’t look away from Hunter’s approach, how right Bodhi’s life is when she’s around, how Hunter just knows somehow. “She does.”

She figured it out long before Bodhi ever did.

+++

It’s raining the day of the big protest in Wilmington. Fat drops of it make steam rise from the pavement as they all gather in place. Bodhi is sweltering inside of her raincoat. It does nothing to deter Bodhi and the other protesters, though, if anything it’s spurring them on. This is nature; it’s not always convenient. That’s the whole point.

The school is moving forward with plans to bulldoze an old-growth pine forest on the edge of campus to make way for a new practice field. Hunter has joined some other protesters in locking arms and forming a human blockade between the trees and bulldozers. Bodhi wasn’t crazy about her being directly in harm's way, but Hunter acknowledged Bodhi’s concerns and did what she knew was right anyway. And that’s what Bodhi loves about her.

“Did you know longleaf pine forests used to be one of the most extensive ecosystems across the South?” Bodhi offers a flyer to the small group scurrying by between classes. It’s fifty-fifty if anyone will take the flyer detailing the importance of pine forests and why they’re trying to save this one, and another one-out-three odds the flyer will end up directly in a trash can nearby. But Bodhi figures that's about one in six people who will read it and possibly be moved to join their cause. “And it’s also home to many plants and animals who don't live anywhere else in the world.”

Behind her, the bulldozers rumble.

“The forest you see behind me is nearly five hundred years old!” Aleksi, the leader of this and many other protests shouts through a megaphone. They have a shaved head and face full of piercings and the confidence and carriage of a leader. “It is home to at least thirty endangered species! Now I ask you, students, faculty, staff, esteemed guests, is this really worth sacrificing in order to give the athletic department yet another piece of our beautiful campus?”

The bulldozers finally leave at 7:30. The already gloomy day has grown darker. Everyone is exhausted and hungry and the construction crew will return the next morning, but the mood among all the protesters is jubilant. “The forest stands another day!” Aleksi calls, and everyone cheers. It’s decided that they’ll reconvene at a nearby vegan burrito place to celebrate and plan for tomorrow.

“I think I stared down that one construction worker for three solid hours,” Hunter laughs, lifting an umbrella someone gave her, a little too late, over both of their heads. Bodhi unzips her steamy raincoat.

“You were amazing.” Bodhi flaps her open raincoat in Hunter’s direction, trying futilely to dry her off even as the rain still splashes up from the pavement.

“Thanks.” Hunter drops a kiss on her lips. “Someone who was on the on the front line with me lives on campus and said they have some clothes I can borrow. Be right back.”

Bodhi watches her. An enormous part of her reluctance to commit to, well, anything, was because she was already happy. And what if she changed things and then she wasn’t happy? If it ain’t broke and all. But things change anyway, and like a fjord in a river, she might as well have some input on the direction of her own life. Nature is always changing, life is always and she has to learn when to change with it, and when to fight for the things that matter,

Aleski, in a black trench coat and black combat boots, approaches Bodhi. “Hey, I appreciate you two coming out. Hunter’s really a force, huh? Only quietly.” Aleksi laughs and Bodhi is fully drawn into their aura. Like, they’re super hot anyway, but it’s the charisma that really does it for Bodhi.

“Yeah, she’s something.” If Bodhi is a swiftly moving river, Hunter is a steady stream: under-appreciated and gentle, yet strong and steady enough to cut through a mountain.

Aleksi leans in, eyes lowered, intentions clear. “Is she your girlfriend?”

“No,” Bodhi says. Aleksi’s eyebrows lift. “She’s more than that.”

“Ah.”

Even now, Bodhi can’t quite put a label on their relationship, or if either of them ever really want to. It’s meant that Bodhi has to be more open and vulnerable, and Hunter more demanding of what she wants from Bodhi. Whatever it is, the two of them, it works. They love each other, they’re on the same page, and that’s enough. It’s more than enough.

Aleksi shifts away, their stoic face covering the sting of rejection.

“We’re usually open to a third, though.” Bodhi offers. Plenty of people aren’t really into that and that’s fine. Bodhi puts it out there only as an offer, nothing more. She’ll have to check in with Hunter first, anyway. Though Hunter’s gaze for Aleksi has been nothing short of awe and infatuation—and desire—from the moment the two of them met.

“Like a package deal?” Aleksi clarifies. They smile. It’s awfully charming. “I could be into that.”

Hunter appears from behind a building, now dry and wearing clothes that don’t quite fit. Bodhi’s heart soars. It’s incredible, Bodhi thinks. How rich her life has become by being open to love in all of its forms. Romantic love, sure. But love for her friends and family and the world around her. Although her path there has been a little erratic, adrift for a while in her own life and mind, in the end she got there.

Hunter holds her hand and, on the other side, Aleksi presses in close. Despite the heat and the rain and the exhausting day, Bodhi is buoyant. Her spirit is free.

And they will save that forest. Guaranteed.

Tack & Jibe

#short story #writing #original fiction #romance #my writing #writers on tumblr #Adrift #Tack & Jibe #Lilah Suzanne

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maximum-rewrite · 8 years ago

Text

Chapter 2

You thought this was just a better-written version of Patterson's books, right? Whoops. You were wrong. No, this story exists to tell you what really happened. Hold on to your seatbelts, friends. We're expecting some turbulence.

Okay, that’s it. I am sick of writing that garbage. It is too sappy and idyllic. Too human.

‘But Max,’ you might say, ‘I read the published version of this, and it all goes downhill pretty soon here.’

Look, I read Patterson’s version of this too. I know what happens in the books. And let me tell you a thing: compared to reality, those novels look like Candyland.

We thought he would be a good person to tell our story because he’s such a prolific and well-known author. People eat his writing up. So we told him the basic premise of our story, sketched it out for him as much as we could (obviously we didn’t want Itex to kill him for knowing too much), and advised him to take a little bit of creative liberty for the sake of plausible deniability or whatever. Then we skedaddled and let him take it the rest of the way.

Well, he screwed it up. Badly enough that I’ve decided to take this into my own hands.

I’m not a writer, so don’t get too crazy about the technicalities here. This does not exist to entertain you or let you escape to some nice gentle bunny world. I just… I need this. We need this.

As long as this book exists, there is proof that we did too.

My dreams usually aren’t dreams, they’re memories. My brain does not want to create new stuff; all it can do is relive past experiences. Which honestly sucks a lot, since my past isn’t something I’m particularly interested in seeing every single night, but that is the way it is: reliving over and over.

Except this one. I know this one could never happen in real life.

It’s the same dream that is in the book. I’m running, running, running, but not to provide data or to increase my stamina. In the dream, I run because I am trying to escape. Then the Erasers corner me, and they seem like they actually want to kill me. Not kill me in a murderous-instincts-bred-into-them way, but actual orders to get rid of me. And then I’m flying away, and they can’t catch me.

Yeah, that’s a real laugh. It gets even funnier in a sick way if you psychoanalyze it (which, by the way, Patterson tried to do before I told him where to stick it).

I’ve only been able to come up with that one fictional dream since Jeb died.

Jeb is the one who got us out of the School and brought us here. ‘Here’ being an estate hidden away in the Rockies. Here we learned to fly and to fight. Everything we know about history and society and logic and practical skills, Jeb taught us. He took us away from the testing and labs and exhaustion and pain, and then he taught us how to be self-sufficient. He freed us.

And then, two years before the start of all this bru-ha-ha, he disappeared. When he did not come back, we assumed he died. We didn’t grieve. We simply moved on, not wasting our time and energy on something we could not gain from. Just like he taught us.

Everything was more or less dandy at this point, which is where you guys enter. That’s where Patterson started, that’s where I’m starting, because that’s when everything fell apart.

Fang and I woke up at dawn to go sparring. We did it every morning, bringing one of the others along with us once each week to train them. Once every cycle, however, there was a day when it was just the two of us.

Daybreak struck early in the summer, and we lived on the east side of a mountain, so the sun already hovered on the horizon when we reached our practice clearing. I took a deep breath of the clean air as I stretched backward and heard the soft sounds of Fang doing the same. For half a second I let myself slip into a reverie, wondering why I could hear mating calls so late in the year. The male had to be awfully—

Wham. Reverie, broken by a feathery clubbing. Man, wings hurt. There was a lot of muscle in those puppies. I staggered forward a step, wrapping my brain around what happened. Fang, wings extended, just met my glare calmly. Actually, he looked kind of annoyed.

“Hey Max, that isn’t why we’re out here.” I wished I had justification to retort. But I didn’t. He was right. But then he kept going. “If you slack off, soon I’ll be better than you.”

I dropped my knees into a crouch and opened my wings, spreading my feathers out to their full span. “Oh yeah? Really think you can get one over on the one and only, first and greatest?” Fang just smirked.

“Depends.”

“On?”

“Whether you’ve gotten better in the last week.”

He didn’t give me a single second to switch gears before launching himself at me. I ducked to dodge the fist flying at me and found his knee waiting for my jaw down below. Stars popped in my vision. A beat of my wings propelled me away from him, but the moment my feet touched the grass again I was throwing my weight back toward Fang. I pummeled into his abdomen with my head and we both went down. I tucked my wings back and rolled away before he could grab me.

Fang shifted onto his side facing me, his eyes narrowed. Just like he’d done to me before, I met his glare with a cocky smile.

“Who’s the best again?” I crowed.

Lightning fast, his handful of dirt whipped out at me, throwing debris in my eyes. Before I could react he was all over me, trying to wrestle me down. I put up a fight and clipped his ear and cheek with my fist, but size won out. For now. When my vision finally cleared he was on top of me, pinning my chest and wing with his knees and my throat with an elbow. He was also smirking like he'd won. Cocky bastard.

I popped one of my eyebrows, skeptical of his supposed victory. He had me underneath him, but Fang himself wasn’t very stable, and he’d left my arms free.

His forehead twitched an instant before I moved. I mustered all my strength to jerk my wing and chest, destabilizing him enough to shove him off. I followed him over and grabbed at his body while he was winded, wrangling him into a hold he would have a hard time escaping unless he broke something.

Even though the tussle left me breathing heavy, I had to gloat after all the smack he talked before. “Better luck next time, buddy. They didn’t improve this model until Nudge.” He grunted his assent.

With that urge delightfully satisfied, I finally let him go. We both stood and dusted ourselves off, picking pine needles from each other’s feathers.

Oh!, I almost forgot. I gotta clear up some misconceptions you might have from the books about our physiology.

One of Patterson’s creative liberties was to portray us as very normal. I don’t mind – it makes us more marketable or relatable or whatever. If I’m telling you the honest story though, with no holds barred for the shitty stuff, then I’m also not going to sugarcoat us.

Short version: we ain’t human, friends.

Slicing, dicing, and recombining genomes to make a chimera doesn’t really work. You end up with a monstrosity halfway between both species and usually in a lot of pain for as long as you keep it alive. It is definitely not possible to make something that is totally human except for wings. The Flock was built from the ground up. Our genomes are completely customized to have the best of everything, but the scientists weren’t that concerned with appearances as long as we worked. Unless we try to blend in on purpose, it is pretty obvious that we aren’t standard kids.

You’ll get a better sense of what I mean as we go along. The biggest thing to know is the wings.

They’re big, somewhere in the vicinity of three times our height in length. Each of us was designed to look like a certain bird – I’m a golden eagle, Fang is a raven, Iggy’s some sort of seabird, etc. etc. Our wing shapes and feathering look like our bird-y cousins’.

We maintain our feathers like hair. If we don’t, it can be difficult to fly or just plain uncomfortable. We preen each other a good amount to reach those annoying middle-of-the-back spots. It’s kind of intimate. I guess if every person had wings it would be considered something romantic or sexy, but for us it’s useful and necessary.

So Fang and I wrapped up our training with our feathers preened, cleaned, and fluffy. We chatted while we walked back home for breakfast.

“Hopefully Iggy actually took some initiative this time and made breakfast without us telling him to,” Fang muttered, his voice dry. I couldn’t help but agree.

“Yeah, no kidding. I was thinking, I want to see if we can brush up on flight as a group today. We haven’t been out in a while.”

“Sure, sounds like a good idea. I know Angel still isn’t very good at—” He broke off mid-sentence, suddenly falling dead silent and stopping in his tracks. I paused too and reached a hand out to tweak his forehead.

“Still in there?”

“Shh!” he hissed. The look in his eyes seemed pretty serious, so I shut up and listened for whatever Fang was hearing.

My heart dropped into my stomach at the quiet thrum of helicopter blades growing louder as it approached. Helicopters never came up here – that’s why it was a good place for us to be. The noise echoed off the mountains surrounding us so much that I couldn’t tell where it was coming from, and then suddenly it was in our field of vision just across the valley.

“Did you see what type it was?” Fang asked. I nodded. Our eyes met and without saying a word we agreed on what had to happen. Flying through the trees was too risky and above them too visible, so both of us took off running toward the house.

When we busted through the door, the rest of our flock was already sitting down at the table. Our arrival triggered four identically confused faces.

“… Max?”

“Were you guys seriously that excited for breakfast?” Nudge asked.

It smelled like pancakes. I mentally cursed the stupid helicopter for ruining an excellent morning.

“We need to get out of here,” Fang explained. Again we were met with confused looks.

“Get out of here?”

I finished swearing just in time to offer one sharp word: “Helicopter.”

That elicited some new reactions, ranging somewhere between fear and confusion. Iggy was more on the frustrated end of the spectrum. “You’re sure it’s not someone who got lost?” I shook my head.

“It was an unmarked transport chopper. This isn’t just some weekend rental that went off the map.” Whoever manned or sent this thing knew what they were doing. They almost definitely were not here for fun, and there was only one un-fun thing that could be considered business around these parts: Us.

“These guys are here for a reason. We can’t just hunker down until they go away. We need to be smart. Leave your stuff. Iggy, get rid of breakfast evidence – we’re getting out of here.”

Jeb told us we could never be caught. Anyone who found the Flock wouldn’t even think twice about sticking us in cages at a zoo or a laboratory.

He was the one and only human who hadn’t seen us as lab rats or spectacles to ogle. He was the only one I would ever trust not to abuse us. Whoever was in that helicopter was no exception to Jeb’s rule and my personal rule – never trust someone outside the Flock.

Each of us perched ourselves in the branches of a tree nearby the house, like so many panthers watching silently from the canopy. Fang made our house look disused while I checked that everyone was secure. I left Angel and Gazzy together in spot, and found Iggy last.

“You’re in charge while Fang and I go check things out, got it?”

“No way!” he protested, leaning toward me with a scowl. “I’m coming with you guys.”

“You are not.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Iggy,” I sighed. “Dude, you can’t do reconnaissance very well if you’re blind.”

A kind of pained, kind of pissed look crossed his face. He wasn’t born blind – somebody jacked up an experiment on his eyes, and he lost vision permanently. The scientists wouldn’t have let that kind of imperfection survive if we’d stayed. Iggy had been slated for elimination before Jeb busted us out.

“You’ll be able to hear someone coming better than the others. You are the best early warning system there is, and we will need that if they manage to find us. Capiche?”

He was still scowling, but he nodded. Fang came out of the house then, and I glided down from the treetops to meet him.

“Ready?” He nodded.

Jeb paired each of us up and trained those pairs together. Fang and I were partners in that training. With no speaking or motion signals between us, we could fly in perfect synchronization. We did that now, skimming the tops of the trees together. Each of us silently scanned the ground on our side as we flew toward where we thought the chopper would be. For a while, neither of us saw anything other than the trees. I saw a rabbit.

Then a little trill from Fang made me look over at his side. At first I thought he was pointing out the glint of metal through the trees – the helicopter itself. When he banked and I followed, though, I saw what he really signaled for, and my whole body felt cold.

Winding through the trees was half a dozen men carrying various equipment. But not just any men. Not just normal men. Everything about them was predatory, feral. These were not people.

They were Erasers.

#Read It Now #Maximum Ride #Maximum Rewrite

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