JJ Maybank Imagines

Wondering Why

JJ POV:

She comes from silver spoon, golden rule, private school. Never missed Sunday church.

And I come from blue collar, low dollar, out here where concrete meets old red dirt.

Yeah, we ain't supposed to make sense. Not on paper. Not in town. Not even in a damn movie. But God, when she walks into a room, all clean edges and soft smiles, it's like the world stops spinning just long enough for me to wonder if maybe... just maybe... I deserve a second chance at good.

I met her by accident. Literally. She rear-ended the back of John B's van with her dad's sleek black SUV. I remember stepping out, barefoot and annoyed, salt still drying on my skin from the ocean.

"What the hell—" I started.

And then I saw her.

Polo shirt, fresh lip gloss, trembling hands on the steering wheel. Eyes like late summer skies before a storm.

"Shit," I muttered, blinking. "You okay?"

She looked at me like I'd spoken a foreign language. Then nodded.

I should've walked away. Should've said something cocky and kept on moving. But something about her made me stop—made me stare just a little longer than I should've. She didn't look like this island. She looked like everything that belonged far from it.

But damn if I didn't want her anyway.

⸻

We started slow. Real slow.

Little waves. Little glances. Her friends didn't like me. Her daddy sure as hell didn't like me. Told her once that "boys like that" don't grow into men you can trust. Said I'd never amount to more than the bars I hung out in and the fights I picked after two beers too many.

He wasn't wrong—not completely. But he also never saw the way she looked at me like I wasn't broken. Like I wasn't a Maybank with bruised knuckles and a hole where family was supposed to be.

She asked me one night—real quiet—"What's it like? Your life."

I laughed bitter. "You sure you wanna know, princess?"

She nodded.

So I told her.

Told her about my dad's rages. About how I learned to keep my voice low and my fists higher. About nights where I slept in a boat instead of my bed 'cause it felt safer under the stars than under my own roof.

She didn't flinch. She didn't try to fix me.

She just sat there and held my hand.

⸻

You wanna know the scariest part of falling for someone like her?

It ain't the money. Or the clean house. Or the perfect future mapped out for her in golden lines.

It's the mirror.

Being with her makes me look in the mirror and see everything I'm not.

And everything I could be.

⸻

I used to think love was something you earned. That you had to fight for it, bleed for it, prove you weren't gonna run.

But with her?

It's quiet.

It's Sunday mornings on my surfboard while she reads poetry on the sand.

It's her fixing my collar before I meet her mom for the first time.

It's her letting me trace the curve of her shoulder with the kind of reverence I didn't know I had in me.

It's the first time I let her see me cry and she doesn't turn away.

⸻

But here's the thing about difference—people never let you forget it.

I see the looks her friends give me. The way her world doesn't know what to do with someone like me who speaks in sarcasm and scars.

I hear the whispers when we walk into her side of town. "That's him? JJ Maybank?"

She holds her head high. Always.

But sometimes I wonder if I'm dragging her down. If loving me is too heavy for someone who's only ever known light.

So yeah, sometimes I get quiet. Sometimes I push her away before she can leave on her own. She hates it. Says I shut down. Says she wants in even when it's messy.

And I want to believe her.

But the truth is... I'm still learning how to believe I'm worth being loved that way.

⸻

One night, we're sitting on the roof of The Chateau, legs dangling, her head on my shoulder. The sky's doing that thing it does in early spring—blushing like it's falling in love with the sea.

"I don't fit in your world," I whisper, half hoping she won't hear.

She doesn't move.

"No," she says, soft and certain. "You make mine bigger."

I turn to her, and she's looking at me like I hung the damn stars.

"JJ," she continues, "you think because you're rough around the edges, you can't be someone's home. But you are mine."

And that's when it hits me.

I don't need to be polished. I don't need to be rich. I don't need to come from love to know how to give it.

I just need to choose her. Every day.

And let her choose me back.

⸻

So yeah, maybe she comes from silver spoon, golden rule, private school.

And I come from blue collar, low dollar, and a past that still haunts my sleep.

But when she smiles at me like I'm something worth waking up for?

The rest of the world can keep wondering why.

Because I already know.

I love her.

And for the first time in my life...

She loves me back.

A/N: I love this song so much and I haven't written on this specific book in over a year!!! So i hope y'all like it!!!