His mouth pulls a little. “Daen want ye to have to sell your earrings.”
“Jem—”
And then he shrugs dismissively. “Sure, I only did it so I could take ’em off ye at a later date.”
I drop my chin and squint over at him as though the idea incenses—not excites—me.
“You’re awfully presumptuous.”
He flicks his eyebrows up. “And you, Bow, d?nnae hide the intrigue behind your eyes all thon well.”
* * *
* Ignoring the part where I’m doing it because a boy was mean to me. I can’t say for certain （as we’ve never spoken of such things）， but I have the distinct suspicion that she would not approve of that specific detail.
? I’d never make it back through the galaxy alone.
? Maybe? I don’t know. I can’t be totally sure.
* Even though I think it’s a bit like a funny kind of showing off.
* Completely delighted, I’m very sorry to admit.
? Though just hovering below the surface of me, I am very impressed.
* Yours, perhaps. I don’t know.
* Because the ocean doesn’t count.
CHAPTER
EIGHT
Peter didn’t say a thing, not a single thing, when I walked in with my new clothes…as though he didn’t even notice at all.
All the pieces Bets made for me were completely divine, by the way, and he hasn’t said a thing about them once—absolutely zero inquiries. No wondering where I got them, no questions about how I paid for them or when I got them, not even a peep about whether a devilishly handsome pirate won me over a tiny bit by sparing my mother’s emerald earrings—not a single word.
Which then begs the question: Did he even mean what he said in the first place, or was it merely a throwaway thought he said without thinking （how very much like Peter） that I took to heart when I wasn’t meant to take it anywhere?
It is hard not to take the things he says to heart though. I see it happening all around us all the time. I watched him tell Calla that her hair was too long and it was getting in the way; the next day, she arrived with it noticeably shorter.* I heard him tell Kinley that he throws like a girl,? and then I saw him practicing by himself later on. He told Brodie he was taking up too much space on a seat a few days ago, and then Brodie didn’t come to dinner that night.
These parts of Peter are a bitter pill to swallow, and every now and then, I get to a point where I wonder why we’re all here, why any of us stay loyal to him. And trust me, we are loyal to him. But then there’s the other part of Peter where I catch him teaching Percival how to shoot the perfect bow and arrow and showing Kinley how to free dive for huge chunks of time. I saw Calla’s face soften when Peter carried in a bucket of clams and lay them in front of an elderly Stj?rna woman and kiss her on the cheek before wandering away.
I do have to remind myself that he was raised by fairies and, in part, the land, and thus he behaves like the weather.
It’s not often that the weather doesn’t dwell in extremes. It’s usually hot or cold, sunny or rainy, stormy or brilliant, and he is the same.
Whatever Peter is in that specific moment, he is wholly that thing. When he is petulant, my god, he is hateful, but when he is sweet, he is the human embodiment of birds landing on your fingers and deer feeding freely from your bare hands.
So then, I reason, that one doesn’t just simply hate the weather entirely because sometimes it, occasionally, behaves a tiny bit cruelly.
Not that I could ever hate Peter, because it’s Peter. I should quite like to if I could; I’ve lain awake at night after he’s spent the day with mermaids, without me. I’ve tried my best to hate him for it, but I can’t, and I know that’s peculiar. I know it is. Maybe I’ve known him days, maybe it’s been years by now, but being around him, he just…soaks into you, and I do suspect that were we ever to fully part ways the way my grandmothers did, that I too would grow into one of those old women, cracking open windows, trying to find my way back to him, trying to catch a whiff of freedom and summertime and the way his skin smells like coconuts and salt. But then, maybe it’s more than that? Because even when I’m with him, even when he’s lying right there next to me, I have this feeling that perhaps if I were to leave him, in any which way, maybe I would die or something? That sounds so odd, I know. It’s just a feeling I have sometimes. I’m not sure why.
At this point, I have accepted （for the most part） that Peter and I do have a peculiar connection, which I’m quite sure has travelled both time and space to be present in front of us.