Peter draws his favourite new dagger. “Don’t you speak to me.”
Jamison rolls his eyes at him. “And d?nnae ye wave that wee fucking knife in my face.”
“Or what?” Peter asks with high eyebrows.
Without thinking twice, Jamison draws his sword. “Or this.”
“Stop!” I yell urgently, shaking my head at him. “Please, Peter.” I pull on his arm. “Stop.”
And then Peter spins on his heel, grabs my face with both his hands, and kisses me.
It happens so quickly and with such a peculiar force that stretches beyond me. Was it physical? Was it gravity? Was it his hands? I honestly couldn’t tell you, only that I don’t stop it. I don’t even think to stop it till it’s already naturally stopped.
A bit because it feels counterintuitive to stop Peter Pan from kissing you, and I wonder if that’s maybe his mother’s fault. Magically charming, is that what Itheelia said? In this moment, that makes a good deal of sense to me, actually, and over time, I suspect I will dull to what that quietly implies.
When Peter’s near me I feel like I forget why sometimes, truthfully, I like it better when he’s not.
It’s hard to remember things around him at the best of times, but when he’s touching you—it’s hard for that fog to fully lift.
Then the kiss is over and the fog lifts to a haze, and I see that Jamison’s gone.
And here is the terrible thing and the part that frightens me: Was that kiss three seconds? Was it three hours? I couldn’t tell you—I have no idea.
I didn’t even get the chance to tell Jamison that if I could figure it out, no, I don’t think that would be even sort of bad at all.
* * *
* And regrettably sexy.
* I say as though I’m not.
? And Rune tinkles that she indeed must know, and frankly, I do not blame her.
* This is true regardless of anything else.
* A girl may hope though.
* Which means “stubborn.”
* He died before I was born. My mother met him on a dig.
* Which means “sad.”
? Which means “sadness.”
* And I’m not even at all remotely jealous.
* Read nosily.
CHAPTER
TEN
Over the next day or so, Peter regales so many people so many times with how he saved me from Hook. That I was in danger and Hook was grabbing me, about to kill me or worse, and then Peter came—swooped in, crowing, to save me.
I don’t like it when Peter calls him Hook either. He says it like it’s a dirty word, and it’s not. I’m rather fond of his name.
I’m rather fond of all of him, actually, I think.
Two nighttime’s have passed since I saw Jamison last, and every second I’ve had to myself, I’ve spent in my mind trying to get back to the moment before Peter came for me as though it’s a puzzle that I’m missing a piece to. Was he about to kiss me? I wanted him to so badly.—I didn’t even realise how badly until it didn’t happen.
And before that, before we went inside the mountain. The air on my face and the snow that fell on our noses—I go over it again and again in my mind because I’m scared it might slip away as all memories do here.
How angry I was with Peter—for what happened with him and Marin and him and Calla—since being around him again, has dissipated how I worried it would.
It began to feel less bad; time can do that—lessen things, make them more bearable, dull the sharpness of truth till it’s something you can swallow.
It doesn’t hurt me like it did before. I’m not angry like I was; it’s all muted now.
And we haven’t spoken about it or anything.
In Peter’s version of the story where he saved me, he doesn’t mention that I ran away from him. He doesn’t mention that he didn’t care that I was gone for nearly two days. He doesn’t mention that it was a reaction to him kissing other girls. There are facets to the story Peter leaves out entirely, and the more he says it, the more believable it becomes except for the part that floats to the top of my consciousness every single time: when my face and Jem’s face were close, and the wind was against us and pushing me towards him, and the snow was dusting us lightly like we were a dessert and it was the icing sugar. It felt like tiny kisses even though they weren’t, and I remember how I felt in that moment in the freezing cold freshness. It was the first time since being here that I actually felt free.
So even as everything else around that moment starts to dim, for some reason, that particular thought remains illuminated in my mind.
I’ve started notching it under the dining room table, every morning that I wake up, to count how many days are passing. Jamison said two days ago it was thirty-one days till my birthday, which means twenty-seven days from now is November 1, which makes today October 3.
I shouldn’t like to miss my eighteenth birthday; that’s my main incentive for tracking the time here, but then also a part of me feels maybe it’s wise to do anyway.
“I turn eighteen soon,” I tell Peter, and he looks over at me, eyes wide in horror.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Oh.” I shake my head, a bit flustered by his response. “No. I—I’m happy to—”
“Eighteen is old,” Peter tells me tonelessly.
“You’re about eighteen or nineteen,” I tell him.
He looks down at himself, bothered by it. “Any older and I’d be gross.” He moves over towards me and lowers his voice. “I don’t do this for the others. Don’t tell them, okay?”
“Okay?” I frown.
“I can bring you the fountain water. You can drink it, and you’ll stay seventeen.”
I stare over at him. Stay seventeen?
Oh my god.
Something about that sounds nearly like a dream come true—to be young forever?
I stare over at him, frowning a little.
“Don’t you want to be young forever?” he asks, grinning down at me. He touches my face.
“Maybe?” I eye him nervously.
He beams at the thought, lifts me up, and spins me around in the air, and we free-fall onto the nets behind us.
We land so he catches me, breaking my fall, then he rolls on top of me, pushing some hair from my face.
“Think of the adventures, girl!” He crows to the ceiling. “Stay seventeen with me,” he tells me, eager.
“You mightn’t even be seventeen,” I remind him gently, rather positive he’s definitely not. Seventeen-year-olds don’t have shoulders like he does, no matter how much regatta or rugby they play.
Peter ignores me. “Nothing good happens once you’re eighteen.”
I give him a look. “How do you know?”
He shrugs. “What good things happen when you grow up? You’re just old. You have to work, and it’s stupid.” He shakes his head. “There are responsibilities. You have to look after things and people and—”
“Those aren’t bad things, Peter,” I tell him a bit sternly.
“I just want to look after you,” he tells me and kisses the tip of my nose.
“And I’d be seventeen forever?”
He laughs and shrugs. “Age is just a number. Take the water, and if you keep taking it, you’ll be young forever. You’ll just always look like you.”
I look down at myself.
“I take it every week,” he tells me with a shrug. “Sometimes twice.”