𝘣𝘦 𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘦 outer banks.

prologue.

"12.37 seconds." Coach Nelson told Bella just when she was getting out of the pool, tired of all the lapses she swam today.

"Good enough for me." She replied.
Bella has been competitively swimming since she was 8 and she loved it with her entire heart, at least for the first couple of years.
Partly because her mother, Valeria Parker loved it too and they always practiced together.
When she died of a sickness on Bella's 13th birthday Bella's love for swimming completely vanished.
Her father, Michael Parker, was not going to let her quit though.
Bella was an amazing swimmer and he wasn't going to let a champion like her slip out of his hands and let her hang out with pogues everyday, all day.
Which is actually what Bella wanted.
And also exactly what she was planning to do right now.

"Let's wrap it up coach. I have to go." Bella casually told Coach Nelson like she was the one making the decisions. Which to be honest, she mostly did.

"It's not even time yet, we have 30 minutes left-"

"Ehh," Bella cut off, "Actually, I have exactly 2 minutes left till I'm meeting my friends and you know I don't like to be late."

"You're always late for practice!"

"Right sorry, and you know I don't like to be late for things I actually want to be at."

The coach scoffed and threw his hands in the air.
"I'm sick of you acting like this Bella. You might not care but this is my job and if your father finds out you're leaving early again he's not going to be happy with me or you."

"His happiness isn't exactly one of my priorities."

"Bella!"

"Alright, I'm sorry." Bella said as she headed towards to pool again, making it seem as if she was going back into the water. She took a swift glance at her bag with her dry clothes and some of her grandma's cookies for her and her friends.
Just as Coach Nelson was going to thank Bella for cooperating she ran straight towards her bag while throwing her swimming cap and goggles on the ground.

"Bella!!"

Thankfully, she got to her bag without falling despite of all the pool water on the ground.
Nelson tried to run after her but Bella already got to the other side of the water where the fence around the pool area was located.

"You're going to get me fired!" Nelson yelled.

"You're a rich kook anyway!" Bella yelled back while successfully climbing over the fence, running towards her bike and driving towards the place where her and her friends were going to meet.
She was going to be late anyways so there was not much she could do but she knew that when she would arrive her friends would kill her. Well, JJ would kill her.
The boy would seriously give up his life for Bella's grandma's cookies.

She would get to her friends faster with a car but those kind of privileges were just for the lovely kooks.
Which means that if she wanted one, her father was going to have to buy it for her and she wasn't going to let her father buy her anything.
Bella was a pogue, just like her mother and no one was going to change that.
The only thing keeping her from completely living on the cut was swimming.
She was going to quit soon but she just didn't know how to tell her father. Bella didn't like to admit it but she became a little scared of her father after her mother died. He changed. He pushed everyone he loved away, including his own daughter.
He started hiding his sadness behind anger and his relationship with Bella broke.

The way that Bella's father acted made her angry. But a part of her understood. Every hurting person has different coping mechanisms and Michael's was just not ideal.
Bella would always make up excuses as to why her father pushed her away. The excuses were things she told herself, to convince herself that it wasn't her fault.
And it really wasn't. But she found it hard to realize that when you're biggest friend turns into a person you don't recognize. And there was nothing Bella could do about it.
So the excuses just continued in her head. It was her coping mechanism.
Deep down she knew it wasn't healthy but she didn't want to accept it, not even after 3 years.

[...]

I know this is very short but this is just the prologue . The real story starts now:)) (finally lol)