Back the way we came, the air getting easier and easier to breathe in the farther we get from the centre. He grabs his coat with his other hand. Doesn’t have time to put it on.
I can see the mouth out of the cave, but it’s dark out now. The only light we have is the one the moon’s reflections on the ocean are giving us.
I don’t hear him breathe easy till we’re out, and I want to tell him that Peter would never, but I have a feeling that maybe he might?
He breathes out and gives me a long look. “We’re going t’ have t’ wait till the scraigh o’ dawn.”
I nod as though it’s a solemn thing to me, not my very birthday wish. “Okay.”
It’s cold now. Freezing, almost. We’re both soaked through from the steam we were in before. I start shivering so he builds a fire and puts me near it. Finds food, feeds me. I’m waiting for him to do more, but more doesn’t come.
He just sits by me, staring at the fire, holding his hands out to keep himself warm how I’d hold my hands to him for the same reason.
“He did try the other day,” I say, looking at the flames, not him.
Jem looks over at me. “To what?”
I give him a look.
“Oh,” he says, eyes straight ahead. A singular nod. “And ye—”
“I said no.”
Now I have his attention.
“Oh.” He frowns a bit, thinking. “Why?”
“I didn’t want to.”
“And what did he say t’ that?”
I consider this. “Not much to it, so much as he lay upon my decline some reasons as to why we in fact…should.”
His eyes pinch. “What were they?”
I sniff. “Primarily that he wanted to.”
Jamison breathes out. “He’s such a fucking prick.”
“Sometimes, yes,” I concede.
“But ye d?dnae?” he asks, looking over at me all earnest.
I shake my head.
He stares over at me. “Why d?dnae ye?”
I can’t quite remember, more than that I just didn’t want to. I think I put that thought away too? I think it had to do with Jem. I think he might have run through my mind when he shouldn’t have, when I was lying there with Peter—with Peter’s hands on me, with Peter trying to do more. I think my mind might have kept falling through some trapdoor back to Jamison. That frightened me, wanting him so viscerally even after I’d banished him the best way I knew how at the time.
How can I say that though? I put away what I did for a reason. I must have had a reason. But it is hard to remember what that might have been with him here in front of me, lit up by the flickering amber light, backed by a million stars.
“I don’t know” is the weak and flimsy answer I give him instead of the truth that I’m afraid of.
And still, my eyes fall down him like they shouldn’t.
Why didn’t I? It was Peter Pan with his hands on my body how I’d thought I wanted them to be, and then when I had them there and on me, I just thought about Jem. I wondered: How does a nose get so perfect? And where does he get the nerve to have that rose-petal mouth?
I think he knows why. His face is searching mine for clues to crack my hard-shell exterior.
He gives me a quarter of a smile. “Just didn’t?”
I shake my head, cheeks on fire.
He lies back on the ground, rolling in to face me. “And now?” His eyes find mine.
“Now.” I lie down, copying him. “Now, I’m eighteen,” I tell him very bravely and extremely kicked.
“Y’are,” he says quietly and just watches me.
It’s a slow kind of watching, a drinking me in, an inspection of my whole face, with a particular focus and fascination with the corner of my upper right-hand lip.
“Are you going to do anything about it?” I ask him.
Jamison breathes out slow and measured; that frown of his that’s always sort of there is very much present now. This brilliant spattering of consternation and frustration, and I wonder how much is too much when it comes to staring at another person’s face.
“No’ today,” he says, and I can’t hide it; that barrels me over. It’s not what I was expecting—not at all. I thought he’d grab me and kiss me up against the palm tree over there. Slip those hands of his under the dress the fairies made me, and I’d let him how I didn’t let Peter.
Why didn’t I let Peter? I wanted to want to. At the time, I felt as though I should. I didn’t want to say no; I wanted to say yes. But that wasn’t reflective of my actual wants—I just don’t like to say no to Peter. Does that make sense? Is that strange?