[ON HOLD UNTIL 11/23] Always Have, Always Will~Topper Thornton /OC/ Pope Heyward

two.

"Goddamn it, Agatha..." Jorja breathed to herself as she got out of bed that next morning, finally leaving the house to look at the damage.

Hurricane Agatha hit like a bitch.

The storm had been worse than everyone expected. It had ripped through the Outerbanks. The Cut was hit the worse.

Pope was right, there was a power outage. And a bad one. Not a single ounce of electricity was running in Jorja's house, and trees were ripped out of the ground, fruit being thrown everywhere.

The first thing Jorja's father did that morning was have them run down to Pope's house, checking on them.

"You guys got hit just as bad," her father mentioned to Mr. Heyward as he greeted him. Their house was cluttered with trash and bushes in the front.

Mr. Heyward brushed it off. "It'll take a little elbow grease, but we'll manage. How's the crop over at yours?"

Mr. Jennings shook his head, repeating, "We'll manage."

Jorja spotted Pope all the way down on the dock next to his house. He was cleaning out his father's fishing boat. Jorja jogged on down.

"Need some help?" she offered, immediately.

Pope sighed. He was hosing dead leaves off the boat. "We need a new dock. This one is torn apart." He looked around. "It's gonna take us all summer to clean this up."

"Welp." She reached down, grabbing another hose to help. "We'll clean it together." She out on a smile for him, which he graciously returned.

Cleaning never seemed as bad when they were helping each other out. They washed out the boat for a while, their fathers deciding what to do to fix the dock.

After a while, Pope noticed the sun getting in Jorja's eyes. She kept squinting. Pope walked over to her and took off his baseball hat, offering it. "Here, wear this."

She felt herself smiling again. "You sure?"

"Yeah, your face is too nice to get sunburned." Pope hesitated after he realized what he said. "I mean-it's nicer than mine. It's pretty. I mean...you're a girl, you know?"

A dark blush appeared on her face. She was glad she wasn't pale, or else he would've noticed. Or maybe she'd just play it off as a sunburn. She put the hat on. "I am a girl," she laughed. "Thanks."

Pope shook his head, embarrassed by his words.

They had only been clearing the area for another twenty minutes when they heard whooping and hollering.

John B and JJ rolled up in John B's boat.

"Hey, ladies!" JJ greeted. John B gave a loud, "Whaddup pogues?"

"Hey, boys!" Jorja called back.

"Oh, lord," Mr. Heyward complained as he saw them driving in. The boat came closer to the dock.