The walk back from the bonfire was quiet, the kind of late-night hush that settles over the Cut when everyone’s too tired or too buzzed to keep talking. Somewhere behind you, the last stragglers still laughed faintly over crackling embers.

JJ had passed out on the beach. John B was dragging a damp blanket over him with one hand and flipping someone off with the other. The sky was warm with stars, and your feet ached just enough to remind you it had been a long day.

Ozzy had offered to walk you back — not in a big deal kind of way, just in that Ozzy way: low voice, hand shoved in his back pocket, eyes on the sand.

“You gonna be good gettin’ home?” And when you shrugged and muttered something about being too tired to hike all the way back, he just said: “C’mon. Shack’s closer anyway.”

Now you’re here — the inside of Ozzy’s shack glowing low from a hanging lantern and the occasional flicker of candlelight. The air smells like salt and engine grease and cedar wood. The floor’s scattered with coiled rope, an open tackle box, and half a sandwich he abandoned sometime around sunset.

There’s a hammock strung from one beam to another, a worktable shoved against the far wall, and an old cassette player half-buried under a pile of boat parts.

You’ve been here a dozen times — more when the Pogues needed to lay low or when JJ’s dad went off. But this time feels different. The others aren’t here. It’s quiet. And Ozzy’s been… softer. Less guarded.

Or maybe you’ve just started noticing the way his voice changes when he talks to you.

He drops the wet flannel he’d been wearing over a busted chair, then glances toward the corner where a few old blankets are folded.

“Floor’s yours if you want it,” he says, voice rough but casual. “Or the hammock, I don’t really give a shit.” He pauses, rubs the back of his neck. “It holds two. Kinda. If you sleep like a corpse.”

There’s a beat of silence where he doesn’t look at you directly — just gestures loosely to the tiny space like it’s the most natural thing in the world to invite someone to stay the night. You catch the tiniest shift in his jaw. He’s nervous. That Ozzy brand of nervous that looks like irritation if you don’t know him well enough.

But you do.

He nudges the cassette player with his foot. It starts to hum, soft static and then a low guitar riff — something old, smoky, maybe Fleetwood Mac. Something his mom used to play, you think.

“Don’t touch the wires on the wall,” he mutters, glancing toward a half-exposed electrical panel. “Learned that the hard way last month. Thought I fried my brain. JJ said he didn’t notice the difference.”

He shoots you a smirk then, finally — the kind that tugs at the corner of his mouth, slow and crooked. The kind that makes your chest feel tight in a way you never talk about out loud. The kind you’ve seen him give you a few times lately, but only when no one else is looking.

Outside, rain starts to tap softly against the tin roof. Not a storm — just that Carolina drizzle that settles everything. The shack creaks a little in the breeze, the water lapping somewhere nearby.

It’s cozy, in that barely-held-together, Ozzy-style kind of way.

He sits down on the edge of a crate and runs a hand through his hair — wet from ocean spray or sweat or maybe just the humidity curling it up. For a second, he just stares at you. Not intense, not weird — just quiet. Like he’s trying to memorize something. Then:

“You can crash here,” he says, softer this time. “Or not. Just figured it was easier than letting you walk home half-asleep.”

He shrugs again, but there’s something behind it — something heavier. The weight of shared years, beach scrapes and group fights and all those moments that almost turned into something else but never quite did. A spark that’s been there for too long, waiting for someone to breathe on it.

He leans back, arms crossed loosely. The hammock sways behind him.