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𝖍𝖔𝖜 𝖙𝖔:   𝖑𝖔𝖘𝖊 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖌𝖎𝖗𝖑

(THE PROLOGUE)

𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐮𝐧𝐛𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐤𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐫𝐮𝐥𝐞

"THAT'S RONNI. Best friend numero dos and the cause of no pogue-on-pogue macking rule...yeah...JJ and I had a pretty rough time through puberty. JJ's still having a rough time. Like the rest of us, she's got some serious mommy issues―Kook-sized mommy issues. She was raised by her dad, around all boys, so she's pretty much one of the guys at this point. Her favorite color is blue, which you will see from the extensive collection she has of everything possible in that color, so never say anything bad about it. Ever. Her dad, Harvey, was best friends with my Dad after her mom left...the Dunweathers are the reason why I'm still standing. I owe them my life."

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SO HERE'S THE THING. Money changed people. There was a reason why greed was one of the seven deadly sins. It had a habit of bringing out the absolute worst in anyone. So it only made sense that on Kildare Island in the Outer Banks, two worlds were separated by that one feat―money. Those which had it basked in the greed of their material possessions, and those that did not were left with envy―but with two of the most unforgivable sins came the others in suit and never once did the residents of Kildare believe they would find themselves in a remake of The Goonies.

John B. Routledge spent his entire life under the umbrella of envy. As a pogue, he felt it necessary to work for everything he had, something he learned from his father. His dad, Big John, always tried to give him the best life possible with what little he had to give. It was that mentality that made the single-father spend his life obsessing over finding the secret of the island―the hidden treasure, the ghost story―The Royal Merchant. A shipwreck lost somewhere in the depths of the Atlantic circulating Kildare Island, never to be seen again, with four-hundred million dollars worth of gold sinking down with it. A treasure hunt, enough to bring out the inner child and inner greed-hungry evil in anyone.

But that's not where the story began for John B. That's where it ended. The story began with him and his best friends. The Pogues, living in the Outer Banks―paradise on Earth―the pogues, pogies, throwaway fish. Lowest members of the food chain. Used to catch the big fish, ignored and neglected because they could be. They lived on the Cut, struggling to pay for their houses, but managing by doing the dirty work the rich would never do. John B would have never asked for anything more than that―anything more than the four people that stood by his side.

Jordi Jamison Maybank was the first person John B met back in the third grade. Even as kids, there was always something tethering the two of them together. Both of them were the only child in their family, which meant the moment they found someone just as wild and crazy as the other, they clung onto each other. He was a bit of a wild card, his family coming from a line of fishermen hung up on drinking and smuggling as much as they could get their hands on―and JJ spent a good part of his life trying to run away from that. Trying to run away from his father in any way he could, whether that be spending months with John B and his father or surfing all day.

That's where Veronica Dunweather came in. And the rule. Veronica Dunweather was one of those people growing up that came like a strike of lightning, shocking and a little scary when you got too close. But she was the kind of girl that made the starring role in a movie, the girl that kickstarted the Mary Sue foundation for perfection―and then, in true Pogue fashion, her life took a hard left turn and she ended up right in the middle of the family John B and JJ made, slumming it with two jobs and a shitty parent.

Remember that little thing called money? And greed? And how it changed people? Ronni was the first time that John B got a good look at that. Well, not her specifically, but her mother, Rachel. Sometime in fourth grade, Ronni lost her estranged grandfather, who lived out in Figure 8 where the rich islanders sipped their margaritas. Rachel never got along with her dad, hence why she and her husband struggled to make ends meet in the Cut with their only daughter.

But then her dad died―and he left Rachel a lot of money as his only heir. Enough money for her to up and leave her family in the Cut, greed taking it all for herself and moving to Figure 8 where she would eventually marry again. This time, to a rich widowed man looking for someone just as rich as him. So Ronni and her dad picked up the pieces of their broken heart while Rachel replaced them with a new husband and a step-son, Logan. Ronni found comfort in spending time with John B and JJ while Harvey Dunweather started to take up fishing on the weekends with his new friend, Big John, who faced a similar heartbreak.

Since the fourth grade, it had been that trio―they were as close to a family as you could get without the blood. Each of them dealing with abandonment issues from their mommy's, all while Big John and Harvey tried to raise three rambunctious kids as single-fathers (one of which wasn't technically theirs, but JJ was as theirs as he could get). Dinners at the Château every night, bonfires made by Harvey Dunweather while Big John skinned and cooked the fish. Ronni, John B and JJ having competitions to see who could make the biggest cannonball off the pier, long days in the boat that Big John had let Ronni paint 'HMS POGUE' in some white paint off the side.

Then came puberty―then came girls―and the relationship between the trio changed to their dismay. John B and JJ would share glances with one another when Ronni showed up in her bikini. They would catch themselves thinking some thoughts they shouldn't about their best friend, and by the time they were fourteen, the two boys had set up a clear rule between one another: no pogue-on-pogue macking. To keep their friendship intact with both each other and with Ronni, it was necessary to maintain.

Their fourth member came freshman year of high school. Pope Heyward was a little weird, slightly odd at times, but that was what made him fit in perfectly with their group of friends. Ronni befriended him first in their honors English class after having felt at odds not having JJ and John B by her side―they were not in honors English. Pope coincidentally sat down in front of her, and she spent the rest of their first class period obnoxiously trying to see how much she could balance on his head before their teacher yelled at her.

But John B and JJ were not the only ones to develop a crush on Ronni, and eventually, the no-pogue-on-pogue macking rule extended to Pope after he'd been inducted into the Pogues, as well. For a while, it was just the four of them, until the summer of sophomore year when pretty much everything went wrong very, very quickly.

"What do you mean he's gone?"

Ronni was crouched down to eye-level, her hands on John B's knees so that he could look in her direction instead of at the floor of the Chateau. JJ stood over her like a shadow with a flicker of concern rising in his eyes. Pope, at work, leaving John B to the company of his two oldest friends as he tried to process what happened the morning before. Ronni had been trying for the last five minutes to get him to talk, sharing concerned glances with JJ every so often.

"I mean, he's gone. He left after we got into a fight yesterday―said he had made a big break and was going to go look for a shipwreck. He's still not home," John B explained with a bland tone, the frustration of the fight and the concern for his dad fighting for dominance. He met eyes with Ronni, and a flicker of worry fell through. "Has Harvey heard from him?"

Ronni instantly went to stand up and reach for her phone, but when she felt a hand reach into the back pocket of her jeans, she turned around to see that JJ had grabbed her phone for her. He handed it to her and she instantly called her dad, Big John's best friend, to see if he had heard anything about his impromptu trip to the middle of the sea yesterday. He hadn't.

That was the first day of a long nine months.

They were only two months deep into Big John's disappearance, lost at sea, when Kiara Carrera came into the picture. She'd been lucky enough to miss the worst of it. The long nights of John B crying, his sobs ringing heavy on Ronni and JJ's shoulders as he clung to them. Pope tried to clean up the beer cans before Harvey came over to check up on him, but after a few weeks, he'd given up. Harvey didn't care. They all grieved―none of them around John B, though, who refused to believe that his father was dead. It was around then that Ronni and JJ fell into one another.

Kie was really the last piece of the puzzle for them to fit perfectly. Even though she came from an entirely different world than them, a rich girl mixed up in the mess of a Pogue life, her presence helped. John B was able to pull himself out of the depressing rut he'd been in by the fourth month, and he was functioning as normal by the fifth month. The other Pogues were grateful for that. John B was the glue that held them together, and they were not whole when one of their own was in pain. That's just the way it was.

Kiara's appearance pulled the rule to surface-level between the group. No longer was the no pogue-on-pogue macking something solely in place for Ronni anymore, but it was for Kie, too. And maybe because it was easier than crushing on their best friend, the boys struggled with that one too. It was hard to say who had a thing for her first. Pope, probably, but eventually John B started to move his eyes away from Ronni and to Kie instead. Like they said, it was easier. And Kie was about as amazing as a girl could get.

Well. For everyone but JJ, who never once looked away from Ronni, and started to realize that maybe he and John B were fucking idiots for ever creating that stupid ass rule in the first place. Because even if he wanted to get the girl (which, dear God, he really fucking did), he couldn't. She was off-limits forever. He just mentally checked off every single box inside of his sad, little blonde head of how to lose the girl.

So the prologue on how to lose the girl: 𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐮𝐧𝐛𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐤𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐫𝐮𝐥𝐞. And wish you fucking didn't.

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