Michael

I already know that Linc's coming up behind me before he actually scares me. I hear the soft footsteps in the sand right behind me, so I turn around and scare him instead. "You thought." He looks the couple inches down at me from his 6'3 stature to my 6'1 height. "Crap. I can't ever get one on you, bro," Linc fumes. I just laugh at him and watch Garrett suppress a smile. "It's okay, Garrett, you're allowed to laugh at us," I tell him over Faith's shoulder. "I'm going to grab something from my bag real quick, I'll be back," Garrett says. He jogs away, toward our bungalow, leaving Sara, Mike, and the Burrows clan running toward the beach chairs by the water. "Faith, can I talk to you for a second?" The look on her face reads mine, and she recoils a little bit; she probably thinks that I'm going to hurt her. "I'm not going to hurt you, I promise. I just want to tell you that if Garrett ever says anything to ever hurt you, I want to know about it. I just want to help you, and I don't want to see you hurt, so please, promise me that you'll let me know if he says anything out of line." She smiles at me and hugs me. "I will, dad, I promise. And besides, Mike already volunteered to punch him in the face or the gut. He says I get to choose where. You guys are the best." I watch her run to catch up with Mike and Sara, and I decide to follow her after a few minutes.

There are a few reasons that I'm not a fan of beaches: to start, I have tattoo sleeves that will hurt too much to remove, and Sara likes them, so I won't. And number two, I only have eight toes. I don't really mind it as much as other people do. Besides, toes are overrated.

I take my shirt off and throw it on a beach chair that's sitting under a pink and blue striped umbrella. I go to follow Faith into the water, and it's then that I realize that she's never been swimming before. "Do you like it?" She looks at me and nods with a smile. "I love it! It's so cool, and I want to eventually learn to surf!" I run until I'm waist deep in the water, then I go out to Mike and dunk him under the surface. "Hey! What was that for?" I laugh at him, and I realize that this is the first time that I haven't thought twice about jumping right into the water. Normally, I'm reluctant to take my shirt off.

Garrett is back from the bungalow wearing a pair of black Nike slides, and Linc gives me a look. I look at him with the "Knock It Off" look, and he sighs and finally relents. He smiles at Garrett, and Garrett takes his shirt off and jumps in. He's surprisingly tan for a kid that lives in Chicago, and I know that because I'm not tan either, by any means. He's muscular, too, because his arms aren't as skinny as Mike's. He takes the dock route and does a backflip off the end, and Sucre does everything but hold up a ten out of ten sign from the white sandy beach. "Holy crap! How did he do that?!" He comes up above the surface again, smiling and pumping his fist. "I about hit my head on that stupid dock!" Mike swims over and high-fives him.

We swim for another three hours, and then I retire myself as the quarterback for our dock football catching and go lay on the beach chair. I take one in the sun, because I could use a tan. Sara comes up a few minutes later from helping Mike perfect his sand castle. "Hey," she says, laying down on the long chair beside me. "Hey yourself," I toss back at her. One of the things that I love most about Sara is that you can throw things back at her playfully, and she never really gets offended.

She puts her head on my chest, and we just lay on the lawn chair for a while.

I must have fallen asleep, because when I wake up, the sun is almost set and my chest is bright pink. Crap, this is going to hurt.

Sara sits up, and there's a white spot on my chest from where she was laying. "Oh man, Linc is going to make fun of me big time for this," I say, and Sara looks down at my chest and actually laughs out loud. "Oh my gosh, Michael, that's actually really funny." I playfully roll my eyes at her and sit up, getting ready to go back to the bungalow and eat. "I love you," I say, giving Sara a kiss and wrapping my arm around her to go back.

"Finally… Oh my gosh, what happened to you?" LJ tried to be polite, he really did, but not even a well-rounded young man like him could keep it together. "Dear Lord, dad, what did you do?" Mike's leaning out of the kitchen and looking at me. The only way I can describe it is like a pen drawing on a piece of pink construction paper. That's it.

Apparently, Linc grilled burgers and they ate two hours ago (it's seven now. Way later than I thought) so Sara and I get the leftovers.

It starts raining around eight, and I really hope that it doesn't go into tomorrow. We were going to go into the actual town and look around, because there really is some cool stuff. But if it rains, we can't do that.

I've been up for what seems like an eternity, worrying and thinking about things that shouldn't matter as much as they do. About how Faith and Garrett are doing in the smaller bungalow outside. If Mike and Trevor are still awake in theirs.

I'm not sure what I think of Faith and Garrett being together. The first day I met Faith, at two in the morning, I knew that she was my kid. I can't say that she's not, because she's practically my twin. He's a great kid, and I'll admit it, but I just don't know if I'm ready for her to be someone else's favorite person yet. I'm being a little dramatic, I know, but I'm just not sure yet.

I just hope that he doesn't do something idiotic.

I give up on staying awake, because even my overthinking brain has had enough.

I crawl into bed next to Sara, who stirs when I lay down next to her. "Why are you still awake? It's two in the morning," she whispers, barely awake. "Just thinking," I reply, "thinking like I always do." She seems satisfied with this answer, so she rolls over and goes back to sleep. I kiss the crown of her head a few times before I lay back down and fall asleep.

I wake up to the sound of the pouring rain against the roof and windows, and I slowly get up from the bed and stretch. "Oh, man," I whisper, lifting my arms above my head and walking out into the kitchen. It's only five thirty, which isn't as long as I would have wanted to sleep. I sit in the living room with a cup of freshly brewed coffee, watching the sun slowly rise above the horizon. I look out into the ocean and the sunrise, the palm trees blowing in the wind. All of a sudden, I hear laughter and footsteps coming towards the door. "There's a leak in the corner of the roof. Can we stay in here?" Mike and Trevor come through the door, soaking wet and panting. "Sure. I'm awake, but your mom isn't," I warn Mike. He nods and takes his phone out of his pocket, and sits down on the couch to either watch something or play a game. All of a sudden, I hear a voice coming from the other side of the paper thin bungalow wall. "Faith?" There's a slight pause before the answer comes. "Yeah?"

"Were there ever times that you thought your parents sucked, that they abandoned you because you weren't good enough?" Another pause. "There were days before I knew their story that I thought they had abandoned me, that they didn't care about me and that they hated me. Then I found their story and knew that that wasn't what happened." Hearing that breaks my heart. She shouldn't have ever thought that we didn't care about her, ever. "I was just wondering, because for some reason, today I was thinking about why my dad left, why he had to die. Sometimes I just get it in my head that he didn't want me." It makes me mad to hear that he thinks that Whip didn't care about him, because if he would have known, Garrett would have been his world.

I actually tear up at the mention of Whip, remembering all that he did for me. He was my best friend, my only friend at that point in my life. I sit there at the kitchen table, sipping my plain black coffee and watching the sunrise. "Dad, are you okay?" Mike looks up from his phone on the couch to me. "Yeah, Mike, I'm okay." He looks at me with genuine concern on his face, then gives me the, "I Know You're Not Okay But He's Right Here Beside Me" look, and I smile at him. The sun will eventually make a rainbow if it keeps raining like this, which will be pretty later.

I hope we get to go out to the beach later and maybe at least swim for a couple more hours today, but as I'm looking at the forecast on my phone it doesn't seem like we'll be able to. There's an eighty percent chance of storms all day. Well, I guess we get to use our inside activities today.

It's still raining at seven when Garrett walks into the living room. "Hi, Mr. Scofield!" He smiles at me and I smile at him, and he walks to the couch to sit down on the couch. "Hey, Garrett. How'd you sleep?" I look at him expectantly but hide it, and he laughs and I can't tell if it's what's on Mike's screen or at what I said. "Great, actually. It's really comfortable."

Mike shifts to something different on his phone, and it makes the other boys laugh. "Oh my gosh, that's hilarious!" Trevor and Garrett are laughing hysterically on the couch. "What?" The boys snap their heads up from Mike's phone to face me. "Umm… nothing." Mike's being a little suspicious, so I walk to the couch and look at his phone. It's a picture of me laying on the couch, asleep with the dog filter. What is it with him and the dog filter? "Mike, I've started to notice a trend here. You love the dog filter, don't you?" Mike looks at me and laughs. "That I do, dad, that I do."

Faith wakes up about fifteen minutes later, walking into the living room soaking wet. "Man, it's raining hard. I walked, like, ten feet and I'm soaked. I brought my suitcase to change." She walks into the bathroom and changes her clothes, then comes out in a pair of black Nike volleyball shorts and a Nike shirt. She sits on the couch between Garrett and Mike, which is the only place left to sit anyway. "Oh my gosh, Mike. Dude Perfect? That's one of my favorites," Faith says, sitting down.

I decide to go over to Sucre's to see if he's awake yet, and I find him doing the exact same thing that I was just doing; drinking coffee and looking at the sunrise. "Hey, papi. You're soaked," he says to me. I just shake my head and smile at him, pulling him into a hug. I sit down at his kitchen table, watching the soccer game on his TV. "Yeah, Maria and Mari are in the kitchen making something. I think it's cookies or something like that." I'm surprised; normally, they don't eat sweets that early in the morning. "Cool. Mari's cookies are the best," I compliment, and Sucre smiles that same smile from all those years ago. "Yeah, papi, they are. She probably made some extras if you want one!" At that moment, Maricruz comes into the living room. "Hey, Mari. Beautiful as always," I compliment her, and she blushes. "Thanks, Michael." Sucre looks at me, shocked that I would say something like that. "Papi, don't hit on my wife," he says, completely straight faced. He's just kidding, because I've known him long enough to know. "Hey, papi! I'm just saying that she looks nice. You and Linc say the same thing to Sara every time you see her!" Maria chimes in from the kitchen, "He has a point, dad. A good one too." Sucre playfully rolls his eyes and then laughs at me, going to refill his cup of coffee in the kitchen.

"I'm going to go bother Linc and LJ for a while, see what they're up to," I tell Sucre, walking out the front door. "Hey, see you, Michael."

I walk to Linc's place to give him a hard time for a little bit, and by this point I don't really care if I get soaked anymore.

"Hey, Linc."

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Sorry that this is such a short chapter, there's just not as much time to write anymore because of school starting back up. I hope to have some more writing up soon!