“Yes.” I stare at him, daring.
“Okay.” He pushes up from his stool so he’s standing. He burps and sways but catches himself. “Care t’ expound?”
I squint up at him. “How drunk are you?”
“How”—he gets very close to my face—“is that any o’ yer business?”
I sigh. “Jem—”
“Fuck you.” He points right in my face, and I shift backward.
“Excuse me?” I gape at him.
“Fuck ye and go,” he spits, looking me up and down. “What’re ye doing here? Why dae ye keep coming to me?” He lifts his shoulders dismissively and stares me down. “I d?nnae want you about. Ye keep fucking everything up.”
“We’re friends,” I say quietly and hold my breath so I don’t start crying.
“I d?nnae want to be yer friend!” he yells loud enough that the whole tavern goes quiet for a minute.
He glances around, self-conscious for half a second, and then he shakes his head as he looks at me. His top lip, which I have had a particular fascination with over these last few days—the shape of it, how it curves and is perfectly defined by his facial hair, the colour of it, how it sits when he’s thinking—it’s usually the most splendid thing, and here, now, it’s curled up all ugly and spiteful.
He gives me a tight smile. “Ye ken it’s easy to forget sometimes when yer with ye, because yer English and ye read books and ye think yer smart—”
“I am smart.”
“Yeah, okay, if ye say so.” He scoffs, and that one winds me up a bit.
I’ve always known I’m clever. I’ve never cared before if people didn’t think I was clever because I knew that I was, but him scoffing at that—I feel like an ant.
Jamison waves his hand around my face. “It’s all just to distract from what ye really are,” he slurs.
I stare at him defiantly. “And what am I?”
He gives a thoughtless shrug. “Yer just a girl.”
“Okay?” I frown over at him and shrug back. “I’m a girl, and you’re a boy, and what’s your poi—”
“No.” He cuts me off. “I’m a man.”
I roll my eyes. “Okay.”
He lifts his eyebrow, catching my eye to deliver this next one. “And I’m interested in actual women.” He nods his head towards Morrigan.
I take a couple of breaths to steady myself, and he uses the moment to drink half of that bottle he’s holding in one go.
I wouldn’t like to cry in front of him, or maybe I wouldn’t mind doing it under any other circumstance but this one in particular, with that girl watching on, sneering over at me. I glare back for a few seconds, and Jamison notices, so he turns to her and kisses her for three incredibly smutty seconds, and then he turns back to me, eyebrows up like he’s proved his point.
I shake my head at him. “Are you trying to hurt me?”
“Aye.” He nods coolly. “Is that no’ what yer into?”
“No!” I shove him. “You can’t treat me like that! Sometimes Peter hurts me but he’s like a kid. He’s just selfish; he doesn’t know he’s doing it. But you’re doing it on purpose!”
Jamison steps towards me and gets right in my face. “He daesnae ken he’s doing it ’acause unless yer right in front of him, he’s never thinking of ye.”
“That’s not true.” I shake my head.
“Aye sure, it is.” He nods, glaring at me. “Ye know it is.”
“That’s just how he is! It’s not his fault!”
“O’ course it’s his fault!” Jamison growls, and it’s a proper growl. Like an animal. “He could choose t’ be better. He could choose t’ evolve. He just won’t!” Hook shakes his head. “The fountain daesnae stunt ye emotionally, Daphne. It just means ye d?nnae look older.” He shoves his hands through his hair all impatient. “My mum’s looked thirty fer about seven hundred years, but she’s no’ running about behaving like a fecking prat.”
I stare over at him, trying to work out if it’s true or whether he’s just being unkind for the sake of being unkind. It sort of makes sense—？ But then, I wouldn’t put it past him because I don’t really know Jamison all that well. Sometimes it feels like I do, in this stupid, transcendent way, in the way that I had a pathetic, fleeting thought this morning where I wondered if perhaps I’d flown all the way across the universe not to be with Peter but to find Jem, and do you know what? I thought that was a stupid thought at the time when I thought it, and I think it even more so now, because as I look over at him, bleary-eyed and unaware of the woman’s hand reaching down his shirt, I realise I don’t actually know him. Not at all.