I walk a few steps away from him, as I suspect keeping my distance from Jamison will be a key component in maintaining a healthy relationship with him, and then spin back to face him. “How old are you?”
He breathes out a laugh. “Twenty-two,” he tells me.
Quite grown-up, really, don’t you think? Quite a man—especially compared to Peter. Except I’m not comparing him to Peter, because why on earth would I?* Peter’s a boy, and Jamison’s a man, and I’m a—
“And you?” Jamison asks breezily, and across my face, I feel a flicker of a frown. “How old are ye?” he asks again.
I’m a woman. That’s what I consider myself to be, I think. Except when I’m around Peter, and then maybe I’m a girl, because I don’t imagine he much cares for women. But if I were on my own, and a voice inside me were to ask whether I’m a woman or a girl, probably—truthfully—the answer is that I’m right on the cusp of both. I feel a pull backwards and one forward—to grow up and to grow down. A leaning towards responsibility and a nervous panic within me to run from it. Which is new. I’ve never had that before. As though Peter himself planted a seed in my mind where, for the first time ever, the future is a thing I’m a little bit afraid of.
Fear is contagious, in case you didn’t know.
And my brain is moving very fast right now, in this moment. Only a second or so has passed since Hook asked me my age, which is a regular, non-weighty question （that I, myself, asked him first!）， but something about it now that it’s pointed back at me feels weighted, and the answer bears heavy on my mind. As though my allegiance to girlhood or womanhood might infer something more.
I’m ever so slightly reluctant to tell him because I don’t want him to stop looking at me how he is right now, eyes flickering up and down my body like a tiger sizing up an antelope, and I know I shouldn’t like it and maybe I should be scared, but I do ever so like the feeling. I like it much more than I wish I did in general and absolutely more than how I felt before when I saw Peter’s hands on that Calla girl’s waist, so maybe what I’m really feeling is a kind of desperate recklessness to be seen and nothing else more complicated or subversive to the real reason I’m here.
I clear my throat, stand all tall again, relax my face, and calmly answer him.
“Eighteen,” I lie before saying quietly under my breath, “Almost.”
Jamison’s mouth pulls as he breathes out, and he squints again, a bit dubious as he shakes his head. “How ‘almost’？”
“November 1,” I tell him, and I sound hopeful as I say it, like I want my birthday to be acceptable to him.
He thinks to himself for a minute. His eyes flick up and left, his mouth forming a thinking kind of pout, and then after a moment, he nods once. “All right.”
I swallow, standing very still but rather relieved that he doesn’t seem entirely put off by me.
“All right?” I repeat back at him, eyebrows up a little.
Jamison clears his throat as he takes a step closer towards me, his mouth as close to my ear as it can be before it touches. “Between my shoulders. Like a weight.” He shifts his head so we catch again, his gaze going from my eyes to my mouth to my eyes again. “And I feel it in my bones.” He pauses. “Not that bone!” He nudges me playfully, and where his elbow touches my ribs, the feeling of him being there lasts so much longer than it should. “Get yer mind out o’ the gutter.” He smirks at me.
I breathe out loudly. “I wasn’t even—”
“In my normal bones.” He keeps going, ignoring me. “I feel it all over. Like a flu.”
Then he holds my eyes for a few seconds, and he’s looking at me now in a way that feels different from before. It’s heavier. Before, his eyes on me felt like a cardigan, and now it feels like a winter coat.
“Afternoon, Jam.” An older man nods at him cordially, and Jamison nods back, giving him a warm smile.
I frown up at him, thinking. “Are they calling you Jem?”
He shakes his head. “Jam.”
I smirk a little. “Like the preserve?”
He rolls his eyes. “Sure, or like the first three letters o’ my name.”
I smile, pleased to have annoyed him a little. I put my hands behind my back as we walk through the town.
The eyes of the townsfolk are on us, and I quite like the feeling.
He’s much taller than me. At least a full head and probably some extra.