CHAPTER TWO
what drowning feels like

EVEN THOUGH IT'S THE LAST PLACE she wants to be, ever, Briar demands that John B drops her off in front of her house first. Supposedly the gang is going to bum around on John B's boat until dinner time and maybe try their hand at catching something for dinner, but Briar truly doesn't understand the appeal of fishing. She doesn't even like fish. Although, hanging out in John B's boat does sound better than going home. One advantage of living in the Outer Banks is that she can get in a real tan before the summer ends so she doesn't have to be like the other girls who constantly reek of too-orange spray tans. But first she has to make sure her mother hasn't died of alcohol poisoning while she was off gallivanting with her new summer crew.

"I'm home! It's me!" Briar hollers, her voice echoing against the marble floor tiles as she throws the front door shut— "Your darling daughter? Light of your loins—" and kicks her shoes off. That's when she sees it.

In the past year, Briar has come to think of her new house as more of a cavity than a home. It's a classic two-story with an attic cluttered with little boxes of bits and bobs that either didn't quite fit anywhere, or her mother just couldn't be bothered enough to sober up and unpack. Its pearl-white walls are bare except for the gilded mirror mounted on the wall at the end of the hallway that Briar catches herself preening in every morning before she leaves the house.

Sometimes she pretends she is the evil queen in Snow White—she knows she's grown way past the time little girls still believed in Prince Charmings and white horses and happy-ever-afters, but some part of her can't help but latch onto the darker edges the way she stakes her fingers into gummy JV flesh to keep them from stepping out of line. Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the hottest bitch of all? And she's standing there, in her tight tank top and the miniskirt that's pushing it, all wolf-wicked blue eyes and sun-kissed skin stretched over toned legs that garnered too much attention.

They never go into the kitchen, and Briar's mother never cooks, so after a whole year and a half, all the boxes are still sitting on the island counter. On the lacquered coffee table in front of the leather sofa, there are stray things like keys and dirty wine glasses and a ceramic ashtray her mother bought from their trip to Bali a few summers ago soiled now by cigarette ash and lipstick-ringed cigarette butts. Proof of existence. Sometimes there are flowers in glass vases—or what her mother calls minimal effort to spruce up the place, make it look less bone-dry—but they're usually dead by the end of the week. Even though she knows she's stuck here for as long as her mother wishes—or at least until college—Briar can't help but feel like they're just passing through because there's nothing in this place that makes it feel like a home.

Nothing much changes within this hollow cavity, so everything is noticeable at first glance. They're not minimalist by choice.

So when she notices a pair of expensive white boat shoes next to her ratty Converse, she smells a fucking rat in the house.

Fury claws at her chest, slashing a red streak across her vision as she storms up the stairs, and before she knows it, she's throwing her mother's bedroom door open and there it is.

"Oh, shit—"

"You," Briar growls, a feral tempest raging in her skin as she takes in the sight—her father who'd supposedly abandoned them for his other family, struggling to pull on his pants and button his shirt at the same time, red-faced and red-handed, and her mother, wine-glass in hand, her silk robe slipping off her shoulder, and the untidy bed and its untidy business and a room that reeks sharply of sex—and the next thing she knows, the world has crackled to black. Briar snatches up the closest thing she could grab from her mother's dresser and without thinking twice, hurls it at her father. He dodges in the nick of time.

The brush strikes the wall and clatters to the ground at his feet. He's got one hand on the button of his pants, trying to keep it from falling to his ankles, and the other is raised in surrender.

"Sweetheart, let's talk about this, okay? Listen, just wait, wait, wait—"

She doesn't wait. She doesn't listen. All she wants to do is claw his stupid, vile face off. Chest heaving, teeth bared, Briar grabs for the next thing. Her hand closes around a snow-globe Briar made her mother buy when she was seven and she launches it at him with all of her might. This time, he isn't so lucky. It catches him in the face, glancing off his cheekbone before shattering on the floor, glitter and childhood seeping into the carpet like an unholy stain. When he straightens up, eyes wide with horror and fear, white in the mouth like he can't quite believe she'd struck to maim, Briar feels powerful.

"You have some fucking nerve," Briar seethes, venom lashing in her tone as her father finishes buckling his belt and is advancing towards her like she's a hostile viper about to strike. And she is. The next thing she's going for is his jugular. She's not guaranteed to miss this time.

"Flower," Paul Thornton says, voice low, like he's talking her off the edge as he slips out the doorway. But the way he says her old nickname—the one he used to call her when she was little—only makes her want to rip his throat out. His expression is pinched, pale. Good. "It's not what it looks like—"

"We're not your family anymore," Briar says, eyes flashing, steel in her tone, unrelenting. She shoves him. Hands to the chest. He stumbles, flinching like he's been punched. Livid, Briar shoves him again with all her might. How dare he play the victim? How dare he come into her house, and act like she's the bad guy?

"Listen—"

"Get out." Briar stares him down, jaw tight, her heart beating like a battering ram against her chest. Her blood is white-hot and she feels three sizes too big for her own skin, feels as though her hair might turn into snakes. Her father gapes at her, floundering for something to say, something to salvage, but there is nothing and she can't stand to look at his face any longer. She does not break. She will not give. She shoves him again, an inferno in her veins. "Get out! Go home to your wife and your son. Don't fucking come back here."

When he finally does move of his own volition, he only glances over his shoulder once to say, "don't... Don't tell Topper, okay? This will kill him. Please. I was never here."

Briar doesn't budge. She only levels him with an incendiary look. The nerve of this man. What does she care for his son? Topper Thornton might be her half-brother, but he will never be her family. And neither will his good-for-nothing father.

And then Paul Thornton is gone, a shadow in the hallway, a thunder of footsteps pounding down the stairs like a heartbeat, struggling to shove his belt into the loops of his pants.

"Baby, Briar," her mother sighs, and Briar hears the front door open and click shut before she turns to her mother who is still sitting on her bed, fixing her skewed robe, and strides across the room, pointedly ignoring the lace underwear and the used condom on the floor. "It really isn't like that. Me and your father."

"He's not my father," Briar spits in a voice made of teeth, acidic-like, the word "father" corroding on her tongue.

Crossing her arms over her chest, she stares out the window overlooking the street and watches Paul Thornton hurriedly scampering back across, back to his house with its perfect mirage, it's perfect picket fence. Watches him delicately touching his fingers to the welt on his face where the snow globe had struck him and wincing, Watches him enter through the front door of the house across the street—his family's house—knowing the rest of his family isn't home, that the neighbours can be bought off to keep their mouths shut. It's fucked up, why her mother chose this house. Even more fucked up is that both her room and her mother's room face the same street, which meant that every time she looked out her window, she had a nice view of her father's other family.

Something pinches and twists vindictively at a soft point her chest, and Briar is hit with a pang of longing for her old house back in Hayes Street. All her life since she was six there has been a dad-shaped hole in the wall and now there is this: her father's retreating figure, the shattered snow-globe on the floor, and the Judas bruise blooming on her father's face telling her she was never going to be enough for him to stay.

"Sure. But you are my daughter," her mother says, and there is the click of a lighter and then the acrid smoke from a cigarette permeating the air.

"Can't I change my surname, then?" Briar asks, tearing her eyes away from the other house and its vile occupants. She hates how soft her voice comes out. With everyone else on the outside, they feel the sharpness of her tone. That's what made her top girl. That's what let her swallow the former cheer captain whole so she could take her place and run the squad. Now, though, there is no trace of that Briar in her. "Briar Honeycutt sounds a whole lot prettier than Briar Thornton. Prettier on paper, too."

"That's a lot of paperwork, honey."

Her first instinct is to lock herself up in her room and cry. But Briar doesn't make a habit of tears. Especially not for the man who abandoned her for another family like this one meant nothing. So she does the next best thing.

"Hey," Briar says, phone pressed to her ear as she collapses backwards on her bed, not caring that she's still sticky with sweat from the day's antics, "what're you doing now?"

"Regret not coming with us?" JJ teases, his words half-drowned by the roar of the boat on open water. "And, really? Thirty texts? Sheesh, you'd be such a clingy girlfriend."

(Before Briar cracked and called, she'd left an endless string of messages that got more and more demanding successively. The most recent one read: you think you can ghost me, you lil shit? All of which were in good nature, of course. Jokes.)

"Shut up and give the phone back to Kiara."

"You know, I still don't get why you don't just call her Kie like everyone else does. Like, isn't it less of a mouthful than—"

"Maybank," Briar growls, a warning edge in her tone. "Don't fucking test me."

JJ lets out an explosive sigh, and there's some shuffling in the background on the other end of the line before Kiara says, "Hey! You okay?"

"I'm bored, Kiara," Briar drawls, staring at her nails. "Ditch those fools and come hang out with me. We can steal my mom's liquor and watch a movie."

"You know you're on speaker, right?" Pope says, incredulously. "We all heard that, you bitch."

"So that means we're all invited to party at Briar's house!" JJ declares deviously. Briar can practically envision the impish grin on his face and she rolls her eyes. "Tell your mom I say hi, and that I can't wait to see her sweet, sweet—" There's a loud smack and it sounds suspiciously like a hand slapping skin. True enough, JJ's whining about Kiara hitting him to John B.

"Just come out and hang with us, top girl," John B says, closer to the speaker, "we'll kill your boredom."

"Yeah!" Kiara chirps. "We're going surfing. You can tan on the beach and watch us. Or I can finally teach you how to do a wrap-around!"

Against all rationale, Briar wants to say yes, because anything is better than feeling sorry for herself and staying in her cold house with its cold walls and cold cigarette smoke. Or festering in her bedroom—a painstakingly curated space, arguably the only decorated room in the barren house—with its purple sheets and fairy lights strung up high and posters of rock bands and polaroid pictures plastered across the walls from previous cheer camps peering down at her from all four sides but not an iota of warmth.

But then there's the thing with her mother and Paul and it's a lot to take in one day, and she's not in the mood. A wave of exhaustion crashes over her, and Briar feels it in her bones. She's tired. So, so tired.

"Nevermind," Briar says, scowling at her ceiling. Maybe she'll put on Real Housewives and see if her mother was sober enough to join her. "Surfing's lame, anyway."

JJ gasps, feigning offence.

Before anyone can respond, Briar hangs up.

✷

THE TRUTH IS Briar adores Kiara's name. That's why she can't bear to shorten it, not only would she then be like everyone else, but because she likes the way it sounds rolling off her tongue. Ki-a-ra. It's a pretty name, and it floats perfectly over the pillow of her tongue like a smooth pearl in her mouth. Sometimes she says it to no one in particular, like a secret whispered in the suburban tomb of her bedroom, as if by saying Kiara's name thrice, she'd manifest her like the Bloody Mary. Sometimes she puts their names together to see how they'd sound side-by-side. Bri-ar and Ki-a-ra.

A few days after the whole mom-and-Paul fiasco, a hurricane blows into town, and Briar wants to call Kiara, but service is down, and all twenty-eight of Briar's messages don't go through. Evacuations are being conducted, but Briar and her mother stay put in their house because they're in an area that isn't supposed to be as affected by Hurricane Agatha as other regions in the Outer Banks, so it's safe. Supposedly.

Outside, the hurricane rages, but the inside of their house is strangely still, and only a few traffic cones roll through their front lawn, barely touching anything standing. Even the little garden her mother had been trying to start was unsullied by the vengeful hands of the weather.

Rain lashes violently against the window, like a thousand tiny claws raking down the glass, demanding to be let in. As she emerges from her room, Briar spots her mother standing by the window of the living room that'd been bolted shut by some kind contractors last night, glowering incandescently into the street like a bitter god nobody prays to anymore. But, really, Briar knows she's watching her ex-husband's house. Leant against the wall at the mouth of the hallway, Briar studies her.

Once upon a time, her mother was sexy. She still was, actually. Even though she smelled of alcohol and menthols and went about life in a catatonic haze like she saw everything, but really, she wasn't seeing anything, she had a spark that most other women lacked after their twenties. She wore camisoles and lace lingerie, and her skin hardly sagged because she slathered it in creme-de-la-mere every evening and when she walked, she swung her ass in insouciant half-circles that made it near impossible for all the boy-neighbours to look away.

Maybe that's what made her The Other Woman in the web of her father's infidelities. A silky mane of dark hair that always hung around her head like smoke and striking blue eyes, the kind that captured souls that stared a little too long and ate them for breakfast. Now, she sucks on a cigarette dangling from her scarlet-letter mouth. Briar doesn't know if it's wine or lipstick that's staining her teeth when she sneers at the picket fence that wavers and topples over, as if the destruction of a perfect house might result in the crumbling infrastructure of a perfect family.

And with the way Briar's mother is glaring out the window, watching the world seethe and destroy, it looks as though she might've magically conjured the malevolent tempest wreaking hell upon the Outer Banks. All her wicked vehemence pouring into the hurricane tearing through the suburbs. Whoever said Briar's mother was a dream must've been mistaken. The women of this household were twin nightmares.

"You should get away from the window," Briar says, sauntering over to the sofa and throwing herself into its soft embrace. She hooks one leg over the arm of the sofa and the other is bent at the knee, pointed to the ceiling. She's staring at her phone, curating a playlist because there's nothing else to do. The boredom spreads, and someday Briar thinks she's going to be more catatonia than girl, just like her mother. "Something could come through the glass and kill you."

"And miss the whole show?" Her mother lets out a laugh, like a Disney villain watching the princess fall into eternal slumber. A thick branch blows into their front lawn, ploughing into the windshield of Topper's shiny new car. Maybe her mother was right about one thing.

Irritation scratches at her hairline.

"We didn't have to come here," Briar sing-songs, plugging in her earphones and flicking through her music library for something to block out the storm. "We could've stayed in the Valley with all my stupid little friends and their stupid little problems. We can live without him, and we wouldn't have to be stuck in this stupid hurricane."

What she isn't saying is that it's torture watching her father play house with his other family. The family he'd left just to start a new life with Briar's mother, before he'd backtracked and decided that it was a mistake, and subsequently left them for his first family. It hurt to watch them be happy together in their perfect little dollhouse. It hurt to see Topper have what she couldn't. And frankly, Briar was sick of it.

"That would mean letting him win, darling," her mother says, her bitter voice a dark and horrible thing. "Ever heard of the saying out of sight, out of mind? I was his second resort that he left, but you, my girl, are a reminder that he can't run from what he's done. He cannot abandon us. If his wife thinks it's unsavoury, so be it. I will be here until the day she dies to remind her that she lost him once. She can lose it all again. And so can he."

So it's a sickness, this psychological warfare her mother's waging on her father. But Briar doesn't say anything. Just watches her mother watch the house across the street like she's waiting for the howling wind to blow it all down.

AUTHOR'S NOTE.
watching obx and literally how does anyone like rafe at all. how. he's so pathetic. I can't fucking stand him. everytime he shows up on screen and opens his stupid fucking mouth i hear the sound pacman makes when he dies.

next chapter briar finally gets sucked into the shenanigans but for now we keep our queen at a distance! (I AM SO EXCITED TO GET INTO THE DYNAMICS! ESPECIALLY BETWEEN BRIAR AND POPE. THEIR FRIENDSHIP IS INCREDIBLY SPECIAL TO ME - AND I KNOW I SAID THIS ABOUT EVERY ONE BUT FRFR POPE AND BRIAR? I HAVE SOMETHING SOOOO SWEET PLANNED FOR THEM.)

also guys fr the playlist i made for this fic is fucking perfect. i love it so much.

and i just want a real summer with my friends back *sobbing* I HATE BEING AN ADULT.

✷

SUNDRESS ── jj maybank / kiara carrera
Chapter Two,   WHAT DROWNING FEELS LIKE.
⚓️          S1.01: PILOT