Deep Water [OuterBanks]

17: boiling point

Functioning on roughly six hours of sleep, Alana Kessler was lounging on her front porch, absorbing every bit of vitamin D the sun had to offer. A comfortable eighty-five degrees leveled out over Kildare late that morning, the sky a utopian, cloudless shade of blue. She wore a pink bikini. Not the soft pink that was actually a few shades away from being white, but more or less a magenta. And though the color was far from her favorite, she had to admit that it fared well with her tanned complexion. The girl's wild waves fell just past her shoulders, her aegean irises aimed against the sunshine on JJ Maybank; more specifically the way his biceps flexed as he dried her car. Initially, the both of them had been washing the outdated jeep in a collaborative effort, but two swiftly became one when Alana quit mid-windshield, complaining that her arms were getting tired.

"All right, old girl's looking pretty damn good if I do say so myself." JJ tossed the damp towel over his shoulder, picking up his shirt from the uneven grass before making his way up the cracked driveway and over to the porch.

"You missed a spot." Alana jested, standing up from the plastic patio chair in which she was sitting, in order to gain a more adequate view of the truck's gleaming white exterior.

"You're messing with me." JJ shook his head, a half smile playing at his lips as he reached the blonde girl.

"Of course I am, you did a good job." Alana laughed softly as he twisted the brass door knob on the front door, pushing it open. "I wonder what Mia's gonna say once I tell her we're multimillionaires." Her mind wandered to her older sister as she stepped over the threshold and into the single-story bungalow. 

"Probably nothing. Isn't her boyfriend already rich as fuck anyways?" JJ asked casually while ambling off towards the kitchen to grab a beer.

"Latest in a long line of Kooks." Alana acknowledged, before going off in the opposite direction, taking several paces down the short hallway and to her bedroom to find an actual outfit.  She kicked off her flip-flops, moving across the wooden floorboards and over to her dresser, where a thin strip of photos caught her attention. "Look what I found while I was cleaning up the other day." A smile graced Alana's Vaseline coated lips as JJ wandered into the average-sized bedroom. She handed him the film strip displaying four second-rate photos of the two of them from three years ago. Looking back, the pair of thirteen year olds had rebelliously skipped out on their middle-school field trip on the mainland, for a nearby shopping mall. They had only managed to make it to the food court and a two-dollar photo booth, before getting busted by security. Not that they had much money to purchase anything else, anyway, especially as they had come in with a combined total of twenty-two dollars.

"You were totally into me that day." JJ quipped. "Look at how hard you were smiling." He pointed his ringed index finger at the third photo. The sides of their faces were nearly pressed together, and Alana was indeed wearing her most liberal smile; laughing as JJ had presumably said something stupid.