Hightide - An Outer Banks Fanfiction

Chapter 2

'Your heart 

and 

my heart

are very, very 

old friends.'

- Hafzis

. . .

       The grin on Dario's mouth twitched. "It's good to know that I'm not that easily forgotten."

Rip couldn't believe that after four years of no contact he was stood in front of her. The memory of him in her mind as a boy only a year older than her, could barely comprehend that the man before her was the same person. She couldn't even remember how they'd met because to Rip, it felt like Dario had always been there.

"What are you doing here? How did you even know where to find me?"

He leaned against the wall, sliding his hands into his jacket pockets and shrugged as if his sudden appearance after so many years was no life altering thing.

"I had no idea where you went after what went down in Cali but when your friend John B died it hit the news this side of the coast. Ricky saw a picture and you were in it, so when he told me I made my way over."

"Ricky's still alive?"

Amusement fractured in his eyes. "He's only a year older than me."

"Come on, the stunts he used to pull as kids I'm surprised he's not done some serious bodily harm yet."

"Oh he's definitely done some damage. Just the other month he called me from the hospital because he decided to jump his bike over a bus without any training whatsoever. The jackass went and broke his back." Dario chuckled, shaking his head at the thought of his idiot friend.

"You know, laughing at a friend whose broken his back says a lot about a person."

"Then I'm a jackass who's surely going to hell." He grinned before waving a hand dismissively. "I find it funny because Ricky found it funny. Nothing could keep him down as kids and that's only got worse as we've got older. He's near enough broken every bone in his body at least once and I could tell you a story for each and every one."

"That doesn't surprise me as much as it should." Rip smiled slightly. Ricky had always been a reckless force of nature.

"He misses you as well, you know." He said. "He wanted to come with me but I all but confined him to the hospital."

"You two really haven't led very interesting lives if you still waste time missing someone you knew four years ago."

"It was never a waste of time to miss you."