ONLY ANGEL | JJ MAYBANK

SEVEN... she's all I wanna be

Before she flew through the door and out of her house with her bag full of her essentials in hand, she skidded to a stop at the refrigerator to pluck the blue sticky note with Charlie's scribbled handwriting on it.

Working at the yacht club today $$$ Don't worry about dinner tonight

Raising her brows in content, Collins snatched the marker lying on the table and scribbled under Charlie's message:

Out boating with the Pogues... Trust me!

She stuck it back on the fridge where she'd found it before slipping out from her house and out onto the porch where JJ await and Collins was greeted with his familiarly charming grin and breathtaking blue eyes.

Checking the nonexistent watch on his wrist as he twirled his juul between his fingers, JJ narrowed his eyes and pretended to think like he was doing complicated calculations in his head. "Six minutes. Nice and speedy, don't have to worry about that with me."

Collins felt her cheeks burn and she averted JJ's eyes as they walked down the dirt trail towards John B's house. She didn't know if she should say something or if there was anything to say at all. Crude humor wasn't exactly her forte, and JJ just seemed to know exactly how to make her feel all flustered and flattered with seemingly no effort.

When it's clear that Collins isn't going to engage in the same suggestive banter, or more that she's pretty sure that she is incapable of doing so, JJ cleared his throat and moved on to the next thing that popped into mind. "Duke, huh?"

He gestured to her shirt with his finger and Collins followed his point by glancing down, then nodding affirmatively. "Yeah, sort of a pipe dream of mine, I guess."

"How so?" JJ questioned, blowing a stream of vape out of the corner of his mouth.

"I mean, it's a crazy good school. Even the kids who went to private preschool don't always make it in. Kind of hard to believe that a girl from the wrong side of the island could be accepted by a place like that. And it's not too far from here so I'll still be close to Charlie, which is a necessity. Too good to be true, I guess."

"Why would you wanna go to college in the first place? Seems just like a lot more work and money than I'd care to spend." JJ commented with a slight scowl. He'd never been the studious type, so he couldn't imagine voluntarily enrolling in four years plus of education when he was already having trouble staying awake in Home Ec., and that class was just about daily living...

"I have to go if I plan on being a doctor." Collins told him. "Besides, say you do find the Royal Merchant, how much money are you talking about here? What would you do with it anyways?"

"400 million dollars worth of gold, baby." Collins almost choked on her own breath. "I'd tell you to read it and weep but I don't have a pen and paper on me."

"I didn't even know money like that existed around here." It almost made Collins physically ill thinking about how much money some people had, so to think that there was money buried at the bottom of the ocean that was worth more than any of those investment moguls could imagine, it gave her a funny feeling inside. "And I thought the people on Figure 8 were well off. So what would you plan on doing with your hundred mil?"

It didn't take long for JJ to share his answer, much to Collins's surprise given the endless possibilities he had. "I've already made my pledge to going full Kook. So did JB."

"Cool." Collins giggled. "You guys deserve to. I can't imagine what it must feel like chasing after the last thing your dad died trying to find for you. Pretty screwy. What's the first thing you're buying?"