Kiara and Rafe's Guide to Dating

lesson two: never withhold information that could impact the ploy.

Lesson Two: Never withhold information that could impact the ploy.

That's how it starts

We go back to your house 

We check the charts 

And start to figure it out

All My Friends - LCD Soundsystem

Rafe finishes his run at the Wreck, he'd been looking forward to this ever since he decided on going back to the Outer Banks.

One day back and he's already falling back into the routine of his neurotic 17-year-old self, the salt air clears his mind but also makes him too aware of his current situation. It's too familiar and there's an unease there because of it, not nostalgia but motion sickness. Being back home is like drinking a liter of water after being dehydrated, his stomach is full of the weight and he wants to throw up from moving too fast.

He knew that it was okay with Sarah and pretty much everyone else, but he still felt out of his skin here. Everything is the same, but the little changes are the ones that matter and Rafe isn't up to date with all that. He watches as an outsider as they make inside jokes, when Wheezie mentions something so basic about her life that Rafe pretends to nod along to, not understanding what she's saying. He can handle all this, nod and play along and observe because at least he doesn't have to deal with Ward yet.

The restaurant is busy, so he places a fifty under the bill and leaves the way he came. He holds the door open for a lady and gets a wind of her shampoo which triggers his neurons to remember the scent of Kiara's moisturizer that he got familiar with last night.

Rafe had woken up to her face pressed against his torso, her soft breaths steadily hitting his chest. Kiara, thankfully, was passed out completely and a deep enough sleeper for Rafe to peel himself away (she tried, in her sleep, to hold onto him and grumbled at the loss of contact) and decide to go on a run to get a grip. Clearly, his solution of a run wasn't working because he's too busy in his head to see someone approaching him in his peripheral.

"I think I need to sue my Lasik surgeon because that can't be Rafe Cameron leaving the Wreck."

Rafe makes a face at how bizarre that sentence was and turns to find the culprit. Wayfarer Ray-Bans, salmon shorts and a pale blue button up, pretentiously fluffed up hair—Topper Thornton.

"Holy shit buddy," Topper, all smiles, makes his way towards Rafe and claps him on his back, he shoves his sunglasses off his face to take a better look at him, "What are you doing here?"

"I'm—"

"No wait, what the fuck man." Topper frowns suddenly, "Why'd you leave bro? And out of nowhere too. We had a chemistry presentation the next day and I had to do it alone and find out you fucked off to Europe."

How the fuck did Topper still remember that?

"I didn't—" Rafe starts to apologize.

"Ah," Topper is smiling again, clapping Rafe's back harder this time, "No hard feelings. I mean, you gotta do what you gotta do and I see it's been working out well for you. Saw your face on some magazine in the airport a couple months back—see, if you didn't just ghost me, I would've sent you a picture. But I bought the magazine if you wanted to see it."

"That's... very kind of you but I'm good," Rafe says watching Topper scroll through his phone trying to find if he took a picture of it. "I'm here as Kiara's date for the wedding."