He’s just staring at us, broken glass around his foot.
“Oops,” he says, stepping over it and walking towards us.
“Hi.” I smile quickly, and I don’t realise that I don’t breathe out upon realising it’s Peter. I bring my knees up to my chest, because I’m relaxed, I think? That seems like something a relaxed person might do, don’t you think? Brodie’s shoulders stay rather tense though.
Then Peter walks over and sits down next to me, throws an arm around my shoulders, and stares at Brodie, saying nothing.
Brodie swallows, clears his throat, and then stands.
“Thanks for having dinner with me,” I call to him.
He doesn’t say anything as he looks over his shoulder, just nods.
“What were you talking about?” Peter asks once he leaves the room.
“Oh, nothing.” I shrug. “Just how he came to Neverland.”
“Did he tell you I saved him?”
I nod. “He did.”
Peter gives me a triumphant look. “Were you very proud of me?”
I brush my lips against his cheek. “I was.”
He leans back in his chair and smiles, breathing out, content.
“Where did you go tonight?” I ask, even though I already know the answer.
“Dunno.” He shrugs.
“Did you see anyone?”
He inspects his thumb. “Could have.”
“Calla?” I ask, feeling a hint of insecurity.
He stares at me for a long second, then flies off and tosses himself into one of the giant nets. I sigh and fly after him, less exuberant, and I supposed I collapse into the net more than throw myself into it.
He rolls from where he’s lying over to me, as though he’s tumbling down a hill, stopping when the whole side of his body is pressed up against mine.
“Do you know how I got here?” he asks me brightly.
I glance around, a bit confused. “Here…where?”
“Here, here.” Peter shrugs. “Neverland here.”
I should say—in case I wasn’t clear before—there’s something almost addicting about kissing him. Whenever he kisses me, there’s always the inevitable end of that particular kiss, and from that moment until I reach the next, I wonder about kissing him…when it’ll happen again, how it’ll happen again, why it feels like when you have a little bit too much champagne and your arms go heavy and your whole body falls to a funny, heavy kind of relaxed.
“Mmm.” I frown a little. “I should think that I’ve heard the story from Mary or Wendy before, but you’ll tell it better, I’m sure.”
He kisses me for saying that. I knew he would; that’s why I said it. So he’d duck his face lower than mine a bit, knock my mouth where he wants it, and press his lips that get bolder and bolder by the second up against mine.
He shifts a bit, pulls me on top of him, rolls himself underneath me.
He puts his right hand on my lower back and frowns at me for a second.
“It’s okay if I put just one hand on you here and the other behind my head, right?”
I nearly laugh, but I don’t because his eyes get a look in them if he feels you’re laughing at him.*
“You don’t have to hold me the same way every time, Peter.”
“Oh, I know.” He shrugs. “I was just making sure you knew that because I want my hand behind here, but I didn’t want you to be a girl about it.”
I breathe out, flicking him a look. “How did you get to Neverland, Peter?” I ask so as to avoid starting an argument.
“Well, it was a springtime morning, and I was in Kensington Gardens with my mother,” he starts. “I was the cutest baby you’ve ever seen.”
“I’m sure you were.” I nod.
“I was in a stroller, and she was talking away to some lady—you know how girls love to talk—”
I roll my eyes again.
“She wasn’t paying so much attention to me. Why do you think mothers do that?”
“What?” I frown at him. “Ignore their children, do you mean?”
He nods, waiting for an answer—very unlike him.
I swallow, thinking back to my own. I think she used to ignore me too. It was a nice thing to have forgotten. Actually, I don’t think I should like to remember with pinpoint accuracy the depth of how much she ignored me.
“Busyness, I suppose.”
“Busyness,” he growls under his breath like he’s trying to scare it away. “I hate busyness.”
How his face goes—so angry about it, so hurt—as though he’s losing the wonder from his own story and the memory is being waterlogged by the emotions surrounding what it might be like to be abandoned in a park by your mother when the reality isn’t numbed fully by one’s being saved by fairies and magic.