CHAPTER TWO , 002 Hauntings
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        The morning crips, like the first sip of piping coffee, always burned. But, heat equals passion and who wants a life without passion?

The burns were worth the taste and that taste tiptoed down the tip of her tongue as it peaked from the corner of her lips. Siren eyes, concentrated feverishly on the canvas before her, flickerd away as a woodpecker announced his close position to the sleeping dock.

To the untrained eye she might look like a silly girl practicing a silly hobby at 6:13 in the morning. But to a professional in the arts of her, she was an angel, draped in a sheer robe, giving the world an acrylic form of the chaos in her mind.

"You're too obsessive with these early morning activities. It's weird though, that every time you're out here it's one of the beautiful mornings."

Nailea didn't turn her head from the canvas. "Did you just call me beautiful, John B?"

"I called the morning beautiful."

"You're a sap." she set her brush down and turned to him.

"Just don't let it go to your head."  he eyed the huge easel, "I'm gonna end up carrying that thing back to the house, right?"

"Yep." she popped with a tilt.

Extorting big boy muscles was one of Nailea's favorite pastimes. It's not that she hated physical labor—okay, maybe it was—but, she just didn't see the point when there was always a capable and strong person available at her hip.

        John B had taken to a hammock outside after helping Nai with her supplies. She offered her company, but he said he only wanted the sunrise and silence. Nailea could understand that. There was a mutual understanding in the Missing Father Club.

        Her bare feet padded across the cold, wood floor as she crept back into her room. JJ was laying there, looking like a sculpted statue. He was hugging her pillow with the blankets only covering his hips and down. The morning light kissed his skin through the window above her bed. Patterns of constellations formed in her mind as her eyes traced the refracting splotches of light (that kind of reminded her of fairy footprints, if such things existed) sinking into his shoulder blade from that one cracked corner in her window.

        Nai sat on the edge of the bed and ran her fingers through his blonde hair that had been kinked up by sleep. His heavy eyelids rested in peace and spread happiness along her face like butter on bread. She could very clearly see the blonde dusting on his long eyelashes in this lighting.

        "JJ.." she whispered. Nailea's fingertips tapped his cheekbone.

JJ opened his eyes and groggily started at her. "¿Estoy en el cielo o Dios envió un ángel a la tierra? Am I in heaven or did God send an angel to earth?"

It was when he said mean things like that that made her question why she kept him a mere, antagonistic inch away from her heart.

He sat up to face her. Leaning in close, he studied her cheeks that were pink from the morning's air. "On the contrary," she said, "Creo que estamos en algún lugar profundo entre los demonios. I believe we are somewhere down deep among the devils."

        Nailea trailed her hand from the back of his neck to the front of his chest. Her morning hair fell slightly in her pining face. This, this is what she couldn't live without. It would be selfish to try and change anything, again.

Change would murder them. And Nailea would be damned if she allowed them to die again after she sold her soul to bring them back from the grave.

       Two summers ago. 

       Nailea Westwood and JJ Maybank were on the mother fucking run.

       Turns out stealing sixers and a pack of cigarettes at the age of fifteen was frowned upon in society. Who knew?

       They were swiftly rounding a corner on the edge of town (contraband in their hands of course) when the docks came into sight.

       "Fuckin' thieves! I'll fuckin' skin you if I ever see you again!" the half plastered and balding store manager said as he chased after the pair.

       Nailea's adrenaline was so high she barely noticed when the stoned street turned to wooden planks beneath their feet. She could see their boat, well, JB's boat a solid thirty feet away.

       It took everything in her to not stumble when JJ ushered her faster with a hand on her back.

        "Here, go go go!" JJ handed her the beer so he could begin to unite the boat. Nailea successfully hopped on the boat and secured their goodies in a corner on the floor.

        "Keys!" JJ tossed her the keys as he threw the last end of the rope in the boat. She hastily shoved them into ignition, eyes realizing the store manager was halfway across the dock.

        "Shit shit shit." JJ chanted as he finally got on the boat.  The second his boots landed Nailea punched it, and they were off.

        Different volumed 'fuck yous' echoed in their victorious atmosphere. JJ cracked a beer and bumped Nai with his hip to move from the wheel.

        "Excuse-the-fuck-out-of-you." Nailea attempted to gain back control of the wheel, only to have a sloshing can of beer shoved in her hand.

        "Nuh-uh." JJ cut the wheel hard and turned his previously backward hat forward.

        She sucked it up with a pout and drank her beer, resting her elbow on his shoulder. Water drops clung to their skin from the unnecessarily sharp turns JJ was taking. He drove crazier than her dad, which was saying something. The pair would often be found knocked on their bottoms after her father began his fishing routs. Although, she did notice how JJ drove safely and with "expertise" when he was the one driving, with her father aboard.

        Funny, right?

        Nailea grabbed onto JJ's arm and felt his muscles tense. His eyes, baby blue and full of sarcastic salt, remained on the water ahead. She restrained from staring too long.

        Goodness she wanted to kiss him. She wanted to grab his face kiss his lips until she died—actually, considering it is her JJ after all,  there's a high probability she would haunt him from a tree above and throw petals of poison over him and his new (alive) lover. Nailea firmly believed that her affection for that boy could claw beyond the embrace of Death. Maybe it's dramatic, but she was irrevocably and unequivocally in love with her best friend. And she planned on telling him, tonight.

        Soon enough the docks on either side of them turned into wilderness and JJ navigated them to Cece's Cove. Hidden from society by protected forests and eroded rock structures, the cove was home to a singular, abandoned dock. The story behind the place was laced so deep with tragedy that bejeweled tears welled in Nailea's eyes whenever she thought too hard about it.

        Cecilia Tanny was the enslaved wife of Denmark Tanny, a slave who bought his own freedom and founded the famous Tannyhill Plantation. They said he showed up one day with a mysterious amount of gold. All the land sat in the midst of this man's fingertips, yet he would never be able to obtain his world. The family who "owned" Cecilia refused to accept any of Dannark's payments to free his wife or daughter. The story says that Cecilia and her daughter were murdered in an attempt to escape to the cove, where Denmark waited for them.

        But that's all it was, a story.

        The pair now sat on the dock, watching with tinted eyes as the dusk set in. After three beers, two cigarettes and a shit ton of laughter, her black-oil lashed blinked up at his gold-dusted one's a little slower. His hand on her hip felt more intimate than it should have.

        She'd always been a lightweight, all the while it took JJ at least five beers to catch a decent buzz. Was she too drunk for this?

        "Hey, J?" her head so close to his in the appearing moonlight.

        "Yes...Nai?"

        "Te amo. I love you."

        He knew. He knew by the way her head was tilted. He knew by the way her cheeks were blushing. He knew by the way her voice was shaking.

        He knew what kind of love she meant.

        He also knew that she was drunk. It doesn't count if she's drunk. If he's learned anything from his father, it's that drunken words don't count. The drunken rages that occurred at midnight didn't count when the sober apologies existed in the mornings.

        It all happened so fast, like a lightning strike, and realization didn't hit him until the thunder roared. It was soft and perfect and heavenly and slow. She was kissing him.

        Oh, how he imagined this moment a million times over, but not like this. It was never supposed to be like this. She was supposed to be sober when this happened.

        He pushed her back by the shoulders. "No, Nailea. What are you doing?"

        "I'm confessing my love to you and kissing you to prove it." her heartbroken voice held a slight slur to it.

        "You're drunk."

        "Drunken words are sober thoughts, they say." the corner of her mouth tipped up in hopefulness.

        "No. This is bullshit." JJ looked away, clenching his jaw. Why did you have to put yourself in a position where I'd have to compare you to him? "This is fucking bullshit and you know it."

        The first act of "Nailea Crying Tonight" had officially begun. The feeling of rejection squeezed at her intoxicated heart, leaving bruises in its wake.

       "You're being mean, JJ." her voice felt raw with hurt already as she began to wipe the tears.

        "It's not supposed to happen this way and you know it."

        He wouldn't look at her. The anger of embarrassment. The mourning of what-ifs. The destruction of last pages in her fairytale.

        Only when he heard the deafening silence did he meet her eyes. Her sad, watercolored eyes. "Nai—"

        "No," she sat up straight, well, as straight as she could and put on her pretending face. "Take me back. Take me back right now. I-I want to go home."

        So he did. They left the cove in silence with all the hopes in the world that no one would remember a thing in the morning. The empty wish pounded simultaneously in the duo's eardrums as their hearts tried to match the rhythm in attempt to fully grasp what exactly the wish was.

        He watched her get out of the boat and walk to her darkened house. No lights were on, but the truck was still there, which meant her old man was out with Big John.

        No lights. No lights. No lights.

        Not even the porch light, which meant Mr. Westwood didn't expect Nailea to return and trusted JJ to take care of her for the night.

        Oh, how he should've stayed with her that night.

        The eerie feeling ate his gut as he watched her slip into her empty abode. She hates when the house is empty. JJ hit the steering wheel hard and cursed before he eventually drove off.

        Exactly three minutes after the boy left the roaring ignition of a truck's engine could be heard echoing amongst the trees.