The sun set quickly, and it was nearly dark when Natalie reached Rafe. The walk from the sand to the parking lot could be laborious—the sad excuse for a walkway had been eroded by foot traffic and a thin layer of sand covered almost every part of it, offering little reprieve from Nat's miserable trudging through the sediment—especially when Rafe was content to lean against Kelce's car without moving an inch. He watched Natalie's ascent leisurely as if it were something on TV, and when she reached the top, he offered her the rest of his beer as a reward.

"I don't like beer," she reminds him, even though she knows he knows. He's fucking with her. He always is.

Rafe shrugs. "Wasn't sure if something changed while you were in New York."

"A lot's changed," Nat mutters as she kicks a moss-coated rock around. Despite growing up on an island, Nat was adamantly anti-flip-flop. She hated the strain they put on her ankles and the obnoxious clacking sound they created as her feet slapped against the pavement. Up until leaving for college, she endured years of ridicule for wearing sneakers to the beach, but she insisted it was the lesser of two evils. When she got to college, she splurged on a pair of taupe Birkenstock Bostons, which she almost returned upon seeing the disappointment and concern on her mother's face after she looked up the price. The key word being almost—the shoes are Nat's current weapon of choice as she huffs after kicking her rock too far, settling for another one between her feet.

"How much?" Rafe asks, tilting his head back to finish off his beer.

"A lot." Natalie looks at him like he's stupid. He hates it when he does that, but the truth is that Rafe usually does act stupid around Nat. He asks for it with dumb questions like that. 

Rafe's jaw clenches as he reaches into his pocket, rings catching slightly on the hem. Natalie hears the unmistakable crinkle of a plastic baggie. It's her turn to clench her jaw, exhaling through her nose as she keeps her eyes locked on the outline of his hand. She's waiting for him to take it out—to give her something to really get mad at him for—but he never does. His hand stays there, fisted around the coke like it's providing him emotional support. It probably is. That makes Natalie angrier than if he had pulled the bag out and done a line right off the hood of Kelce's car.

"Clearly some things stay the same, though," she scoffs. It comes out less taunting than she hopes—more bitter. She knows if he were looking, her voice would tell Rafe just how much she cared. 

Luckily (or unluckily) for Nat, Rafe's not really looking. He's pissed, and he never sees very well when he's angry. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing," Nat shrugs. "Can't kill every habit."

"Yeah, and I'm sure you're a brand new person now. A real city girl, huh?"

"That's not what I'm saying." Nat puts her hands up in surrender. She probably would've tried to say it if she knew Rafe wouldn't see right through it. New York had done a lot for her—she had the confidence to act more mature and enough perspective to actually be a little more mature—but it had yet to lay the meat on her bones that would erase all traces of the Outer Banks' bikini culture and its effects. "I figured you hadn't quit."

Quitting would call for a change, and things always stayed the same in the Outer Banks. (Except they didn't anymore. Not for Nat. It was getting hotter and stickier and more suffocating by the day.) If nothing around Rafe was shifting, why would he? He's never been big on self-improvement. "Yeah, sorry, fuck you. We can't all run away and reinvent ourselves."

Nat shuts her eyes, fingers coming up to rub at her crinkled eyelids. She really didn't come here to fight. "It wasn't meant to be an attack. Seriously. I'm just saying—people are talking about you. Like, I knew you hadn't quit because at least two people told me."

"Who?"

"Doesn't matter."

"Yeah, it does, who's saying that shit?"

"They don't mean it in a bad way, Rafe," Nat states. "But like—the fact that people are concerned? That's concerning."

Rafe knows what she means. Half the kids on the island have an addiction to some substance or another; it's only more proof that things rarely change in Kildare. Everyone gets their addiction from their parents, who got it from their parents. Rafe had to be disruptive in a large way for his addiction to appear differently from all the other addicts around him. To all the other addicts around him. It takes one to know one, he guesses. He wonders why his father hasn't noticed, then. Maybe he has and he's just waiting until it becomes what he deems a "real" problem to address it. It looks like that time may be coming soon.

"I don't need you coming here," Rafe points to the gravel below them before turning his finger onto his chest, "and telling me how to act. Okay? Not when you haven't been here in two fucking years."

"Then why'd you ask me to come here?" Nat challenges, taking a step toward him.

Rafe shrugs, eyes darting between Natalie's before resuming his nonchalant attitude. "Missed you."

"Fuck off," she laughs. Once again, she can't help but sound more bitter than she aims to appear. Rafe's a fan of flirting his way out of arguments, mostly because it usually works. Especially on Nat. 

Actually, scratch that—Rafe likes flirting his way out of confessions. Arguing is one step down from sex for him. Not just in terms of thrill but in risk; in either case, he loves it when he has the power. Once girls start asking for vulnerability out of him, ("Kiss me." "Tell me why you want me here, if not to talk about your worsening cocaine addiction.") he has to find a way to turn the tides back in his favor. A smile and a taunt tend to be the easiest way to do that.

In this case, he catches one of Natalie's hands mid-turn as it swings at her side and uses the leverage to pull her back to him—closer than she had been before. When she fixes him with a frustrated stare, he grabs her other wrist and brings both hands to slide up his chest and meet around his neck. "I'm serious. I missed you, Tally. So much," Rafe slurs into Natalie's neck even though she knows he's not drunk yet. His forehead drops to her shoulder and she can't stop herself from bringing her hand up to the nape of his neck. It's hard not to when he has the same hair he had at sixteen and the same scar behind his ear from hitting his head on the corner of the Thorntons' pool.

"Miss hearing your voice," he sighs, and Natalie's not sure if he's referring to the last year and a half or the two minutes since he'd cupped her hands in his, during which she's remained completely silent.

"Whose fault is that?" She teases. She always has to tease Rafe when she tells the truth. Her smile distracts him from the confrontation in her words, even if he can't actually see it from where he's tucked away against her collarbone. He can always hear when she's smiling.

Rafe shrugs, and his shoulders never quite release all the tension. "You're the one who left."

You're the one who made me, Nat wants to say. Instead, she shrugs back. "You're the one who stopped answering."

She's still smiling—trying to abate his anger—but Rafe can sense the irony in it. Nat pulls away before he can; New York really did change her. She looks at him head-on, still close with her foot between both of his.

"Yeah, that was...shitty of me."

Natalie knows it's the closest she'll get to an apology from Rafe (maybe ever), and that's what causes her to step away. "I don't want to keep doing this."

"What?"

"Like—going back and forth all the time."

"That's what a relationship is."

"No, it isn't," Nat laughs. For real this time. "And even if it was, is that what we're calling this now?"

Rafe throws his hands up, looking around with exaggerated confusion. His eyes dart side to side as they drip with inquisition and his top lip curls upward in disgust. They'd been fucking around like this since their junior year of high school. Maybe it wasn't a cookie-cutter relationship, but it was certainly something.

"I'm just saying!" Natalie defends.

"Well, I don't even get what the fuck you're saying!"

Natalie throws her hands up in frustration. (She picked it up from Rafe.) "Like—what the fuck else do you want me to say?! It always goes like this. We're cool for a minute and then one of us is pissed or we're not talking for a year."

"I said I was sorry!"

"No, you didn't."

"Well, I am. I'm sorry, okay?" Nat can tell he's only saying it to appease her. He's speaking in that boyish tone that Bowen, to her horror, has also started to adopt whenever their mom is on his ass. Rafe never really had a mom to take his anger out on, so Natalie guesses she's the next best thing. How Freudian. 

"Yeah, whatever."

"I am." 

"Okay." She goes to sit on the hood of Kelce's car. She and Rafe used to climb onto the roof of his Jeep and look at the stars, but Natalie's not quite close enough with Kelce to do that, so she settles for the hood and tries to ignore how the edge of his license plate presses into her calves. Rafe stares at her for a moment before opening the back right door, brushing over piles of clothes and wrappers to reach the cooler and the six-pack (now technically a four-pack) of beer it contains. He grabs two. (Now, it's technically a two-pack.)

He extends one to Natalie as he walks past her, the outside of his leg brushing against her knees. She accepts it when he comes to lean next to her, not because she's suddenly abandoned her hatred for beer in the ten minutes since Rafe last offered her one but because she knows it's his sorry attempt at a peace offering—a fermented olive branch.

She doesn't drink it, holding the cold, sweaty bottle between her legs as her hands squeeze around the ridges of the cap until there are several needle-shaped indents in her palm. She squeezes even after they've turned red and her knuckles have turned white, and Rafe has to knock the back of his hand against hers to get her to let go. 

Nat's not sure how long they sit there—however long it takes Rafe to finish his and her beer. Not long. At some point, she resorts to scrolling through Instagram and TikTok, and Rafe resorts to watching her. Eventually, Serena sends a text asking where she is and if everything is okay and they both know they can't ignore it.

Natalie doesn't say anything as she hops off the car, brushing the back of her dress off and slipping her shoes back on. She scans the beach to her right, trying to catch a glimpse of Serena. When she catches her back by the keg with Kiara, she turns to Rafe. "You gonna come down?"

He shrugs, peering down the neck of his (Nat's) beer to make sure it's all gone. "Maybe later."

Natalie knows what that means. There are two possible outcomes: Rafe will come down later, but it will have been long enough that both he and Nat can convince themselves they don't need the other, and they'll spend the rest of the night staring at each other from across the beach. The second (and more likely) outcome is that Rafe won't come down later, and Nat won't be able to stop herself from feeling a little jilted even though she knows better than to trust anything coming out of Rafe's mouth. They won't see each other again until God knows when, and they'll probably end up having another night much like this one, where the distance fluctuates faster than the tide.

Either way, Natalie's letting him go. She's not sure if that means she lets him win.

Then again, she could take matters into her own hands—look up at Rafe through her lashes and challenge him in the way all boys like to be challenged. But even that would require a certain level of vulnerability and, believe it or not, Natalie thinks she'd rather be bitter than be honest. She's resigned to their fate and lets her bitterness start now, lips pursing as she nods.

"Okay. See you later."

They both know she won't.