He stares over at me. “Why d?dnae ye?”
I can’t quite remember, more than that I just didn’t want to. I think I put that thought away too? I think it had to do with Jem. I think he might have run through my mind when he shouldn’t have, when I was lying there with Peter—with Peter’s hands on me, with Peter trying to do more. I think my mind might have kept falling through some trapdoor back to Jamison. That frightened me, wanting him so viscerally even after I’d banished him the best way I knew how at the time.
How can I say that though? I put away what I did for a reason. I must have had a reason. But it is hard to remember what that might have been with him here in front of me, lit up by the flickering amber light, backed by a million stars.
“I don’t know” is the weak and flimsy answer I give him instead of the truth that I’m afraid of.
And still, my eyes fall down him like they shouldn’t.
Why didn’t I? It was Peter Pan with his hands on my body how I’d thought I wanted them to be, and then when I had them there and on me, I just thought about Jem. I wondered: How does a nose get so perfect? And where does he get the nerve to have that rose-petal mouth?
I think he knows why. His face is searching mine for clues to crack my hard-shell exterior.
He gives me a quarter of a smile. “Just didn’t?”
I shake my head, cheeks on fire.
He lies back on the ground, rolling in to face me. “And now?” His eyes find mine.
“Now.” I lie down, copying him. “Now, I’m eighteen,” I tell him very bravely and extremely kicked.
“Y’are,” he says quietly and just watches me.
It’s a slow kind of watching, a drinking me in, an inspection of my whole face, with a particular focus and fascination with the corner of my upper right-hand lip.
“Are you going to do anything about it?” I ask him.
Jamison breathes out slow and measured; that frown of his that’s always sort of there is very much present now. This brilliant spattering of consternation and frustration, and I wonder how much is too much when it comes to staring at another person’s face.
“No’ today,” he says, and I can’t hide it; that barrels me over. It’s not what I was expecting—not at all. I thought he’d grab me and kiss me up against the palm tree over there. Slip those hands of his under the dress the fairies made me, and I’d let him how I didn’t let Peter.
Why didn’t I let Peter? I wanted to want to. At the time, I felt as though I should. I didn’t want to say no; I wanted to say yes. But that wasn’t reflective of my actual wants—I just don’t like to say no to Peter. Does that make sense? Is that strange?
There is this pull towards Peter. How many deals with gravity does he have, I wonder. Pulls can be good, but they can also be bad.
A black hole has a gravitational pull; it sucks in everything near it into its darkness, never to be seen again. My affection for Peter sometimes feels without my permission, as though I can’t help but like Peter. I guess that’s the fate talking.
There is something about Jamison though. If Peter is gravity, Jamison might be the earth the apple falls to. And I might be a slave to gravity, but Jamison might be the place I prefer to land.
However, judging by his polite decline, I’m not his preferred landing site. Eighteen and still not an actual woman.
I stiffen up as I remember what I should have all along.
He sighs. “D?nnae go like that.”
“Why shouldn’t I?” I ask, more emotion in my throat than I want him to know exists in me for him. “It’s not a big deal to you! You do it with Morrigan all the time.”
He pulls a face. “Sure, yeah, no’ all the time—”
I cut him off. “And then you did it with her and that awful girl from that stupid tavern.”
He tilts his head. “Aye.”
“And others, I’m sure!”
“Are ye sure then?” he asks, eyebrows up and annoyed at me for that.
“Well, have you?” I ask, sitting up again.
He licks his bottom lip. “Aye.”
I shake my head at him, and it’s full of hurt. “But you won’t do that with me?”
Jem’s face suddenly goes solemn. “Bow, I winnae ever do what I did with them wi’ ye.”
“Oh.” My head pulls back, and my eyes well up. My cheeks go hot, and my mind starts to sink in a million questions of how I could have gotten this so wrong. Have I been wrong all along? I must have been. “Okay.” I nod. “Perfect. That’s…good to know.”
Jem stares over at me, and I can’t pick his face anymore. I thought I could but obviously I can’t.
“It’s no’ the same, Bow.” He sounds tired now.
“What’s not the same?”
“You and me.”
“Why?” I demand, hands on my hips, and he frowns as he watches me, confused. “Because I’m not an actual woman?”
He licks his lips. “Did I say thon t’ ye?”
I nod.
“To yer face?” he clarifies.
I nod again, and he sighs.
“Fuck.” He breathes out, and I don’t understand a thing in the world.
Jamison shakes his head, eyes still not quite on me.
“Sorry.” He sighs, watching me for a brief moment before he looks down, pressing his hand into his mouth. “That’s no’ it.”
I frown.
“Is it because we’re friends?
He gives me a long-suffering look. “We’re no’ friends.”
And that guts me—more than a little—if were to be honest.* I’m offended again, and I shake my head, refusing to believe that and hoping that he can’t see on my face how much that hurt me.
“Yes, we are! Of course we are,” I tell him. Actually, truthfully, he’s probably my best friend here.
“Daph.” He gives me a look. “We’re no’ friends.”
I roll over because otherwise my eyes will give me away, all stupid and watery.
“Hey.” He rolls me back so I’m facing him, and I think his face might soften at the sight of me. “Listen, I d?nnae think about my friends how I think about ye. I d?nnae want t’ be around them how I want to be around ye. I d?nnae want t’ touch my friends how I want to touch you, Daphne.”
I take a shallow breath and wonder if he’s saying what I think he’s saying, but he’s hurt my feelings a few too many times in the last few minutes, so I cross my arms and glare over at him proudly. “And how, might I ask, do you want to touch me?”
He breathes out his nose. “One day, yer going to ask me to show ye exactly how wi’out that defiance in yer eye, and on that day, I will very gladly show ye.”
I swallow heavy. “But not now?”
He gives me a sliver of a smile, but it’s a new kind of his that I don’t know about yet. To be entirely honest with you, I’m getting rather well versed in all Jamison’s different faces. There’s something melancholy caught in his eyes, and he mashes his mouth together, thinking before he talks.
“I d?nnae remember”—he peeks at me out of the corner of his eye—“the first time I did that.”
“Oh.” I frown.
“I ken who it was with and all.” He shrugs. “My dad took me on a voyage to another isle. There was a princess—”