salt water | outer banks

2| the weak and feeble

"That's cute, your little boyfriend misses you," he teased.

"He's not my boyfriend by any means—you know that. Kiara would skin me alive if that happened. He's just a friend." She glared.

"A friend that you sneak around with. Makes sense." He shrugged and washed his hands in the sink to get the remnants potting soil off.

The siblings began putting the remaining groceries away in silence, not bothering to take the conversation any further for a few minutes. The only noise would be the subtle rattle of the paper bags and Jax getting frustrated with where everything was supposed to go.

"I got a question," he said after a while. "And be honest."

Venus nodded. "Sure."

"Do you even like Rafe like that, or are you just fooling around because you can?" Jax asked, crumbling one of the empty bags between his fingers.

"I—"

Venus' words had thankfully been cut off by a knock at the door. Jax gave her a knowing look and she rolled her eyes at him before going to open it.

"Hey, V," Rafe greeted.

"Hey." She stepped onto the porch and closed the door behind her. "Why did you want to see me so bad?"

"I can't just want to see you?" he chuckled, running his hand through his hair. "I...I wanted to check on you before the storm. I was gonna tell you to bring Jax's truck if you came over but someone's a little stubborn."

He led the girl over to the truck he'd driven over and opened the tailgate. A generator sat in the bed.

"Rafe, does your dad know you took this?" She gave him a knowing look.

"He's wanting to get some more after the storm anyways. I'll just tell him I let you borrow it, he's—he's always liked you, so he won't care," he laughed.

Venus flicked him in the head. "He'd probably like you a lot more if you if you stopped doing shit behind his back. Dummy."

"Look, I thought it would be a nice thing to do but if you don't care about it, then—then I can just take it back. It doesn't matter to me." His jaw clenched as he began second-guessing his decision.

"Why—how did you know to bring a generator?" she questioned with a soft sigh.

"You said the other day when I brought up the storm that yours didn't work well, so"—he held his arms out to the generator sitting in the truck—"here I am."

Venus tucked her hair behind her ear, a pleased smile covering her lips as she looked at the Cameron boy. He scratched the back of his head, unaware that she was watching him.

"Y'know, I'll just take it back. This—this was stupid, you don't even want it." Rafe started to close the tailgate as he spoke, but was stopped by the Beck girl placing her hand on his own.

"Hey, it's not stupid and I never said that," she laughed, "you're actually kind of sweet when you want to be, you know that?"