I think I know about a Day in a part of my brain I haven’t used in a while, and I flick through the pages of my memory, looking for the thought I know is in there about who this Day man might be, when a hand slips around my waist.
I know whose it is immediately—there’s no question. Only one person takes me by the waist these days, and only one person does it with something akin to force. Peter pulls me back tight against him, and he doesn’t notice when his grip knocks off one of my flowers. It tumbles down the rest of my dress, and I watch it skitter across the floor, landing at the feet of a man whose face I can’t see but whose back I should know.
He stares at the flower for a moment before looking back over his shoulder, and our eyes catch like my heart does in my throat at the sight of him.
I tell myself to smile at him—quickly! Like a friend would!—but I don’t, and he swallows heavy, crouches down, picks up the flower, and then looks the other way.
Peter digs a finger under my rib to get my attention, and I spin around to him, smiling with the face I’ve practiced a thousand times for when he catches me thinking about the other.
But it’s not just Peter. It’s another man also.
Tall, broad, dark skinned, regal looking. He stares at Peter with a heavy brow.
“The Never Prince.”
Peter nods at him curtly. “Old Man.”
The man doesn’t look too old, really. Not much past middle-aged.
He flicks Peter an unimpressed look. “It takes one to know one,” he says before he smiles at Rye and Calla, calling them each by name. And then his eyes land on me. “And who’s this?”
Rye gently pushes me towards him, and Peter’s grip on me tightens, but I don’t think anyone can see it.
“Lady Never,” Rye tells him.
And the man’s eyebrows go up, intrigued. “Ah.” He nods once. “He’s taken a lady.”
I give him a wry look. “I’m afraid he’s taken many.”
That delights him. He chuckles as he extends his hand. “I’m Day.”
I shake it. “Daphne.”
“Daphne.” He nods once in a knowing way, and I feel myself frown a little. He notices, I think, because he smiles quickly and gestures to the room around us. “Do enjoy. And welcome! I’m very glad you’ve arrived.” And then he walks away.
“Girl.” Peter tugs at my wrist, turning me around to face him. “Calla says there are mermaids at the dock. Should we go and say hello?”
I give him an uncomfortable smile. “The mermaids don’t much care for me.”
“She’s right.” Calla shrugs, indifferent. “They don’t.”
Peter gives her a sharp look. “Why not?”
Calla shrugs again, this time like she’s innocent, but I think I see it skitter across her face that she’s worried that he’s cross at her.
Peter turns back to me and gives me a valiant look. “I’ll get to the bottom of this.”
“You don’t have to!” I tell him, but he’s already marching off. “Peter, it’s fine,” I call to him.
He ignores me and instead calls back, “Calla, come.”
She walks after him, her face all pinched with worry, and I feel sorry for her how I used to feel sorry for me.
Rye sighs. “I need a drink.” He nods his head towards a table filled with them.
“Did you bring a date?” I ask him with a light smile.
“No.” He shakes his head. “The person I wanted to come with came with someone else.”
“Ah.” My eyes fall to the drink he just handed me.
He stares over at me and says nothing, and I don’t know what to do so I do nothing.
“That’s my friend over there.” He points to a boy who looks about our age. “I’m going to say hi.”
I nod.
“You’ll be okay?”
I nod again.
Our eyes catch, and his face looks serious—angry, almost?—and then he moves away.
I throw back my drink and pluck another before moving out onto the balcony.
I don’t need some air—my entire life is air nowadays—but it feels more acceptable to be on a balcony by yourself. As though I’m perhaps being decidedly pensive, not just accidentally alone.
The air smells different here. On Neverland, it’s sweet. Like dew on fruit. Here it’s like pine and maple pecans.
And then a flower appears in front of me, offered on the hand I like best in the world. I know it before I even look up to see that it’s him. I know his hands impossibly well because it’s always felt so scandalous to think of his face when I’m lying next to Peter, but to think of Jamison’s hands? What’s in a hand? Nothing at all. Least of all me these days.
“I believe this belongs t’ ye,” he says, offering it to me.
“Keep it,” I tell him, flashing him a smile that I hope looks less threadbare than it feels on my mouth. “One’s grown in its place already.”
“Ah,” he concedes. “Ye love an enchanted dress, d?nnae ye?”
I give him a demure shrug. “I wear what’s given to me.”
Jamison’s eyes fall down me before they drag back up to meet mine. “This dress—”
I swallow, my eyebrows bending in the middle. “You don’t care for it?”
“Aye, sure, I care for it.” He gives me a playful look. “That fairy missed her wee calling there.”
I breathe out a small laugh. “I suppose she has.”
Jem holds the flower out to me again. “Put it on me.” He taps the lapel on his jacket.
I take a breath, but it’s shallow because I tend to lose mine when he’s around me.
I find the buttonhole in his jacket and poke the flower through it. I’m sure it’s going to fall immediately, but then quite on its own and rather magically, a little stem grows and fastens itself onto him.
He stares at it, confounded. “Did ye do that?”
I shake my head, and he looks up at me.
“Magic,” he says, staring at me.
I say nothing and drop my eyes but give him a smile before I turn back towards the balcony. I lean over it, looking down, and I hope he’ll stand next to me.
I don’t want to not be beside him. I’m just afraid he’ll see something in my eyes that tells him what I should have just put away. How stupid of me to hold on to it. Let it run its course? Pish. Give me the aspirin.
He sidles up next to me, arms on the balcony, leaning over it. His shoulders feel like a shield even though they aren’t around me.
“Y’are here wi’ Peter,” he says.
“Yes,” I say as I stare at Peter down on the dock with another girl. I hope Hook doesn’t notice; he will if I keep staring at them, so I look up at him instead. “Who are you here with?”
He gives me a long look, and I realise that’s a question I probably don’t really want answered. Morrigan, I think he’s about to say, but he flicks me a little look.
“Me marm.”
“Oh.” I laugh once, and I hope it doesn’t sound relieved. I give him a little shrug. “Most beautiful woman here then.”
He tilts his head in consideration. His mouth pulls, and he stares right at me. “Sure, I d?nnae ken if I agree.”
And somewhere far away, that bag I threw to the floor rattles around, begging to be remembered, but I can’t hear it, and even though it excites me, it incenses me also that he’d say that to me after what he’s put me through.