EFF IT! ➸ jj maybank

004.

   For the drink, for the boat, for the thrill of doing what she was told not to. Maybe even for Topper.

   So, that night, Sonny snuck out her window.

   Of course, she was caught sneaking back in — her parents were too observant for their own good — and grounded for a week (showing up to that meeting looking like death warmed up was punishment enough), but it didn't deter her. The next time the chance to sneak out came around, she made sure to do it right. To not get caught. And each time she did it, Sonny got better, until eventually she was a master. One even the sheriff couldn't catch.

   So what the fuck was that?

Sonny was fucking baffled, honestly.

   She thought about it the whole way back to Tim Jones' old boat shop, where she'd dropped off the LIBERTY and its keys without getting caught out — luckily.

It was good, really, since she'd had the boat longer than she intended. But Tim had only smiled at her and waved, like the missing boat wasn't even on his agenda. Perhaps it wasn't. Or maybe it was, but he knew it was with Sonny. Maybe Tim was getting too old to care.

"Penbrook," he said to her.

She nodded, murmuring his name, and gave him a half-hearted salute as she left.

Her mind was completely elsewhere.

Elsewhere being the motel room, the gun, and JJ Maybank. Freaking Maybank.

Sonny was no angel. She smoked, she drank, she took boats and surfboards without permission, and she even did a couple dodgy deals on the side for a while. But Sonny could honestly say, she had never been so close to being caught by the cops as she had been in that motel room.

   Because of JJ.

He was a textbook liability, with a group of misfits who all shared the same trait. To different degrees, sure, but still. The Pogues travelled together in a little herd, like pack animals in the jungle, but half as stealthy and half as smart. She would have thought they'd have been better at sneaking around, all they were known for was getting into trouble, but apparently experience meant nothing.

Perhaps she was naive to think they would've been better at it. JJ spent most weekends in a holding cell, after all.

   Ugh, her nose scrunched as she started her walk back home, Maybank. She couldn't understand how anyone liked him, and some people did. Her father included.

   God knows why, honestly.

   Sonny decided she didn't. At all. Because there was a close call with this stuff, and then there was that — breaking into a motel room, waving a gun around, climbing out the window to hide from cops and nearly getting them caught anyway. It was a mess, and Sonny sincerely hoped she never had to hide from cops with him again.

   Funnily enough, her life ambitions didn't consist of rotting her days away in a jail cell and definitely not with JJ and John B as cellmates. Tweedledum and tweedle-fucking-dumber of all people.