𝗠𝘆 𝗘𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗽𝗲 ⇉ 𝗝𝗝 𝗠𝗮𝘆𝗯𝗮𝗻𝗸

I Can't

THEY FOUND themselves blinking awake to another sun-scraped morning, the kind where salt still clung to your skin and everything felt both heavy and urgent.

Ariella stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Pope on the rickety dock, watching Kiara stride toward them with the kind of stride that meant trouble had already decided their names.

Pope's eyes lit up with mock drama.

"Code red!" He calls, voice bouncing off the water.

Kiara skids to a stop, the boards thumping under her shoes. "What the hell's going on?"

Ari rubs sleep from the corners of her eyes.

She'd woken up early for this—stupid, obedient reflex—and already the morning tasted like diesel and regret.

"Apparently JJ and John B conked out in the marsh. They need a tow." She says.

Her voice was flat, tired; the news rolled off like hot oil.

Kie's brow knot. "What does that have to do with us?"

She jabs a finger between Ari and herself as if the question might physically prod sense into them.

"Exactly." Ari agrees, turning to the lanky boy who'd declared the crisis.

Pope shrugs in that way someone does when they know they're lying but want to be charming about it.

"We need you for mechanical." He announces grandly, as if he'd just handed them golden tickets.

"Mechanical." Kie and Ari echoes in perfect, skeptical unison.

The two girls link arms with the sort of reluctant solidarity you get from siblings and best friends and sat along the gunwale as Pope shoves off, pretending he knew the difference between a spark plug and a paperclip.

A few minutes of sunburned silence and the smell of seaweed later, Ari found herself at the wheel.

The boat rocks and sighs like something half alive. They pull up alongside a larger craft that hung in the water like a hulking, indifferent animal.

Pope hops aboard first, offering Kie a hand like a conductor opening the biggest act onstage.

Ari follows, parking their little skiff with the careful precision of someone trying not to make a scene.

JJ lay slump near the helm, looking half-comatose and wiped out; when Ari crouches beside him and kisses his cheek, the movement felt like anchoring.

He blinked awake, grabbing her chin with a clumsy tenderness and claimed a kiss—not the showy movie kind, but the domestic, fierce kind that said, I've got you.

Ari smiles and returns it, the warmth of him briefly dulling the ache of the morning.

John B's cough cut through the softness like a thrown rock. "Cough, cough."

JJ pushes his hair from his face. "Right. The—uh—the alternator's not alternating anymore."

John B, sounding more useful than he felt, chimes in. "It's not charged."

"Did you check the plugs?" Kie asks, already bending down with the blunt curiosity of someone who had fixed a thousand things and hated doing it badly.

"No." John B answers. "No, you guys should check him."

JJ hands Ari the only screwdriver in reach like a confused knight passing a sword.

Kie and Ari exchange a look—the kind that asked, are you sure we're the right people for this?—then sighed and took the boys' places.