𝑨𝑫𝑹𝑰𝑭𝑻, jj maybank

TWENTY-THREE - emotions

TWENTY-THREE —— emotions

Bee drove to the beach with an empty mind. She focused on getting there, getting into the water, onto her surfboard. Then she could allow herself think. Then she could breathe. The storm of emotions within her had been building up over time, and the past two days only added to it. Bee needed the ocean and she needed the clarity. She longed for her escape.

The beach was empty, hidden away from Tourons and even most of the locals behind a wall of trees and bushes. The only way to reach it was a small path that led from the side of the road to the soft sand and lively waves. Bee parked her truck, stripped down to her bikini, grabbed her board, and shouldered her way through the overgrown branches.

The mere sight of the water and the feeling of its breeze floating over her skin calmed her. She took a deep breath and kept walking, kept her face blank, her back straight. Her toes dipped into the water, then her knees, her hips, her waist, her shoulders. The ocean's summery warmth welcomed her in a familiar embrace.

Bee pushed herself onto her board and paddled out, the waves splashing against her face and hair. She smelt salt in the breeze and felt the sun on her skin and wished over and over that the lump pressing against her throat would melt away. It was starting to ache and she didn't want to sob, so, for now, she inhaled another deep, shaky breath and willed herself to keep paddling.

Once she was past the lineup, Bee sat up on her surfboard and paused for a moment. Still, unmoving. The waves rocked beneath her board and her wet hair clung to her back in ropes. In the silence, her jaw clenched with unfiltered anger and she wracked her brain desperately for someone to blame it on, her eyes staring daggers into the horizon.

She decided she hated her mother for spending more time at work than with her own children. She hated her for tip-toeing around the truth and for concealing her feelings. She blamed her mother for demonstrating that emotions aren't something to discuss. And Bee couldn't stand that regardless, she still loved her mother and that her mother loved her back, probably more than she fully understood. It made it hard to hate her.

Sometimes, Bee hated her father for abandoning her and leaving their family to drift apart, even if he couldn't have prevented the his death. No one could've prevented it; that's what terminal meant, after all. And that's what hurt the most. Bee blamed her father for making her cautious around people, for making sure she never got too close because she might lose them, too.

But she could never actually hate her father, not really. She missed him too much for that.

Most of all, though, Bee hated herself for giving into these flaws. She hated that she was terrible at admitting her emotions and she despised her fear of attaching to people. She was too afraid of losing them, and if JJ was that person, then she could never bear to have him out of her life, whether or not he was just a friend or something more. She hated these parts of her, the things that were engraved so deeply in her brain that she couldn't tell when she was sabotaging herself.

Bee knew she fucked up. She knew that she and JJ had feelings for each other and she was well aware that the rule she'd been so adamant about had no real weight in the long run. Kiara would get over it, and she was certain that John B and Pope were rooting for JJ and Bee to get together, anyway.

As the realization hit, Bee's chest constricted with a sob. She cried for the shattered relationship between herself and her mother. For the loss of her father, the person she had been closest too before he died. And she cried because she probably just lost JJ, too, and there was no one to blame for that except herself.

She knew that if her father was still around, then he'd know exactly where she was and he'd find her where she floated in the ocean. She could picture him paddling his own board out to her and drifting a few feet away, waiting in silence until she calmed herself down. He would talk through whatever the issue was and offer advice, a comforting hand on her shoulder, a tender sparkle in his green eyes.