𝚋𝚘𝚛𝚗 𝚒𝚗𝚗𝚘𝚌𝚎𝚗𝚝 {𝚓𝚓 𝚖𝚊𝚢𝚋𝚊𝚗𝚔}

𝚜.𝟷 𝚎𝚙.𝟹 -𝚙𝚊𝚛𝚝 𝚝𝚠𝚘-

"don't forget, I have you to be like me / where around is enough for a family / I'll be fine on my own, she said, I don't need you inside my head"

~

"How much was it again?" JJ asked, picking a piece of dirt off of his shoe and throwing it over the side of the pier into the dark shadows of the ocean below. Tate watched it disappear in silence and then went back to listening to the slow chords Kiara plucked out on her ukulele.

Just below her in the dark, Tate heard Pope take a deep, steady breath. "Five hundred mil." Silence fell around them as Kiara gave up playing and rested her ukulele between her legs, the still air broken only by the sound of the waves lapping up against the pier and loons calling to each other in the distance.

"Alright, let's talk the split," JJ said at last, the toe of his boot lightly touching the side of Tate's sneaker. She rested the side of her cheek on her knee and gave him a small, sideways smile. JJ tilted his head to return it, looking suddenly more energetic than any of the rest of them felt. "Now, before we say 'evenly,' may I remind you that I am the only one that can properly defend us from those groupers who were after us." He held up his stolen gun pointedly. "Protection? Not cheap, okay?"

"JJ," Tate scolded lightly, kicking him in the ankle and turning her head to the other side to hide her smile.

"You haven't trained," Pope said reasonably. "You've done zero training."

"YouTube, bro!" JJ argued back. "That's at least a five percent bump right there."

Pope tried again, "You haven't-"

JJ ignored him. "Any objections? Didn't think so."

Tate caught Kiara's eye and they exchanged a knowing smile. It was nice having each other to go off of when the boys got like this. Tate looked over to John B to see if he was thinking along the same lines as them, but he was staring off into the night, uncharacteristically quiet.

"What are you gonna do with your 100 mil, Pope?" Kiara asked, pointedly ignoring JJ, who had caught Tate's eye and winked, the corner of his mouth sliding into a goofy smile she couldn't help but return.

Pope thought for a long time, seeming to seriously mull over the question before answering. "Pay for college in advance," he said at last. "And also, textbooks. Those are expensive."

"What about you, Kie?" JJ asked.

"Yeah," said Pope, "What does a socialist do when she's rich?"

Kiara chuckled and looked around at the circle before shrugging and saying, "Just wanna make a double album. About OBX, the Pogues. You know, the way Catch a Fire is about Kingston. Record it at Marley Studio, Peter Tosh producing."

"Peter Tosh is dead-" Pope started, but Kiara beat him to it.

"Peter Tosh is dead. I know," she said, shrugging it off. "The spirit of Peter Tosh will never die." She held up her beer can in a toast. "How about you, Tate?"

Tate shrugged, toying with the laces of her shoes and thinking hard. "I don't know... I guess I would travel. I wanna go... somewhere."

"Where?" Pope asked.

"I don't know," Tate said, laughing. "That's the whole point. With a million dollars, it doesn't matter. I could go... anywhere. Just out of the Outer Banks... somewhere warm, but with less mosquitos." She swatted the air pointedly and the little bugs scattered out from around her hand.

JJ, who had been silent for longer than could be expected of him, finally spoke up. "Actually, I know what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna get a big ass house on Figure Eight and go full Kook."