He gives me a look. “That’s a plus.”
“Not for Peter.”
He watches me for a second, says nothing, then says, “How dae ye get there?”
I give him a funny look. “Aeroplane?”
“Flying tin in the sky?” His head pulls back. “I d?nnae think so.”
I roll my eyes at him. “Don’t you captain a flying boat?”
He chuckles. “Nae. My dad did.” He shrugs. “My ship’s just a ship.”
“Oh.” I look up at him. “What did happen to the Jolly Roger?”
“I d?nnae ken.” He shakes his head. “It’s just gone—disappeared.” He shrugs. “It disappeared before he died, actually. Bit o’ a sad demise.” He looks far away when he says that, and I want to reach over and touch his hand, and then I wonder who that hand has touched and how many times since I saw him last, so I do nothing.
We’re around the back of summer now, the edge of the island. It’s a sharp drop-off into the bluest, clearest water I’ve ever seen. More so than on our side of the island. There’s an honesty to this shade of blue—a trueness to it that makes my heart spark in a funny way.
“I heard yer his girlfriend,” Jamison says a bit suddenly, and I look over at him.
I frown. “How did you hear that?”
He shrugs. “Word travels.”
“Yes.” I nod. “It does. And I think his are empty.”
His face pulls a little. “So y’are?”
I purse my mouth. “So he says.”
He nods a few times and doesn’t look at me when he asks, “What does that look like?”
I glance at him, confused （or, in the very least, thrown） by the question.
“Ye…what?” he fishes. “Ye share a bed?”
I lift my shoulders mindlessly. “We always have.”
His eyebrows dip in the centre, a quiet frustration present. “Yer fucking him now then?”
I stare over at him. My mouth falls open, and I say nothing.
I hated hearing him say that. It was awful, that word in his mouth in that particular way. About me, no less? I don’t want to hear him say that about me. The back of my neck goes immediately hot.
Jamison takes my silence as a yes, and he breathes out in a way that makes me wonder for a second if the thought hurt him.
“No,” I tell him quickly.
“No?” he repeats. “Why no’？”
I stare at him for a good couple of seconds—any seconds spent looking at Jamison are good seconds, I think, maybe?—and then I look back down at the water.
“Why is the water so blue here?” I nod at it.
His eyes don’t immediately move from me. They stay a couple seconds more than they probably should before he speaks again.
“Compared to yer planet, do ye mean?” He sniffs. “We d?nnae throw our shit in it.”
“No, I mean”—I give him a look—“it is exceptionally blue.”
“Aye.” He nods mostly with his chin, watching me closely. “Sometimes things are just extraordinarily beautiful fer no reason at all.”
A breeze dances over my face that reminds me of a thing I think I forgot, and I frown trying to remember exactly what it was, because I feel as though perhaps it’s a thing I should know—？
Jamison takes that to mean I found his answer unsatisfactory. However, the truth is I find nothing about him unsatisfactory, at least what I am beginning to remember.
“They say this is where the colour blue comes from.” He nods at it. “That this here is the original deposit from the start o’ the universe, and then the fae carry it out to the other places.” A little shrug. “Thon’s why it’s so concentrated here.”
“Oh,” I say, because what else can you say to that? I clear my throat, nodding at him. “I like your coat. Is it new?”
His brows tug. “No?”
“Oh.” I keep walking.
“Ye’ve worn it before,” he calls after me, and I stop, turning to face him.
“Have I?” I ask.
He stares at me a few seconds, and then he blinks in this funny way, as though he’s annoyed or tired. “Ye went to the place in the sky.”
I nod. “Yes.”
He nods slowly. “Ye put things away o’ me?”
“I guess,” I say quietly.
His mouth turns down at the edges, like a shrug, and then he moves past me, walking ahead.
“You go up there,” I tell him.