Sunshine State Of Mind ☼ JJ Maybank

Chapter Two: The Chateau

"Can I accept you unconditionally or are you gonna be weird about it?"

@ rundizzy on Twitter

The drive from Figure Eight, where I now lived, to The Cut, where the boys of the Weed Heist (as I was now calling it) lived, was a little bit more of a drive than I had anticipated. Even so, I wanted to soak up every second that I could. I didn't notice myself staring out the windows watching each house pass or even my unconscious way of leaning on JJ throughout the ride. And I absolutely did not notice the fact that JJ didn't comment on our shared closeness in the back of the van at all, but instead supported my weight. But I did notice the subtle ways the boys spoke to each other, as if they had lived their whole lives with one another and couldn't picture it any other way.

John B was the born leader, as I had figured out in our ride, and his van that we were occupying was affectionately called "The Twinkie". And it was also his house, "The Chateau", that we were on the road to get to. He was boisterous at our find, enough to give congratulations to not only Pope but myself in the form of his own whoops and hollers and a couple high fives. The thing I noticed the most about him however was that he seemed more at ease with me then JJ had and even a little happy that I was accompanying them to his house. He noted that I had to "celebrate my win" with them, and didn't seem to care much that I was new to the group, at least for the day.

"You had that meeting already, right?" JJ asked, looking towards the driver's seat to where John B had stopped at a red light. "They set up a date?" JJ scratched against the back of his head while he said this, playing a new protective role in his voice over John B. In the hopes of not diving into what wasn't my business, I decided to stay happily silent. This seemed like a good enough choice judging on how JJ already showed disdain at my appearance in their trio. JJ was classic. He was a classic kind of surfer boy. Ruled by classic rock. Everything I wasn't. Everything that made him so very much what I liked about moving here. And I wanted him to like me. So for most of the ride, yeah, I kept my mouth shut.

Pope looked between the two boys when John B answered back, "I wouldn't worry about it." Then, before the light turned green he turned back with a smile, and winked in my direction, "Plus, we got company. I have hosting duties to attend to."

JJ scoffed, "I'm going to ignore your dumbassery from now-" he checked his right wrist where there was no actual watch, "until Kie finds out what we dragged home." The van rolled forward and John B took a right turn into a long road. Pope groaned, as if he had forgotten something.

"Who's Kie?" I asked, looking hopefully at JJ for an answer but he just smiled smugly next to me and whispered "you'll see."

The question was then ignored further when the three boys said in unison, as if some tradition they had with newcomers, "Welcome to the Chateau."

As Pope turned around in his seat to look at me, John B was pulling up to a small white house with a screened-in porch and a hammock out front. Lawn chairs were strewn around the property as if they were so frequently used they were often forgotten about and there at the end of the lawn was the same long dock that a lot of the houses in the Outer Banks had, leading to the water.

I think out of the three of them, Pope liked me the most so far. He, at least, made it the most obvious. I made a mental note to stick by his side in the house and ignore the multiple times my hand and JJ's brushed against each other or when JJ held out his hand (but said nothing) to help me out of The Twinkie. I also made a Note to ignore the half 'menacing stare' and half 'clouded off' look JJ was giving me when we walked towards the house.