“Oh.” I frown.
“I ken who it was with and all.” He shrugs. “My dad took me on a voyage to another isle. There was a princess—”
“You lost your virginity to a princess?” I cry, a bit distraught, and he huffs a laugh as he looks at my face.
“Aye, I did.” He shrugs. “And I liked her, sure, and she me, but she haed done it before, and I was so fecking nervous. I just got steaming drunk, and we did it. And I d?nnae really remember. Flashes, just…”
I stare over at him, frowning.
“But it would be nice to remember the way the sky looked or how she felt when I held her or how the light was on her face or—” He looks up at me like I’ve caught him doing something embarrassing, and he flashes me a quick, apologetic smile. “I d?nnae feel bad about it. It happened. I did it to myself, but I d?nnae remember, and I wish I did. It’s important, ye ken? Yer first time, it’s important.”
I stare over at him in a new kind of awe. He’s terribly thoughtful and, perhaps in this specific moment, frustratingly considerate and sweet.
“Okay.” I nod a few times. “But to clarify, do you think I’m drunk right now?”
Jem lets out this barrel laugh; it’s big and deep and has the warmth of twelve thousand bonfires to it, his hands on his stomach as he properly laughs at the sky.
“No, I d?nnae think yer drunk.” He gives me a long-suffering look. “But, Daph, yer figuring yer shit out. Yer mind’s all over the place.” He breathes out his nose. “I just want it on me.”
“It is on you!” I protest, and my foot stomps in my heart.
“Now”—he shrugs like he’s already conceded to it—“for bye, when we do that, we’re no’ doing it because some wee footer forgot yer birthday.”
“Why will we do it?” I ask him very quietly.
Jem stares over at me a few seconds. “Because we cannae no’ anymore.”
Our eyes catch, and I swallow heavy. He moves in closer towards me so there’s just a few inches between our faces. The fire flickers beside us, and his eyes come alive next to it. All the sapphires in the world appear to be stockpiled in his eyes. But then I wonder if maybe he just himself is all the sapphires and all the diamonds and all the gold in the world. In all worlds, perhaps.
He gives me a half smile. “Good night, Bow.”
“Good night, Jem.”
* * *
* Oliver was his name.
? Which, I’ll remind you, is actually a nest.
? Also, can you please imagine with me how kicky a sleeper Peter Pan is? The most effervescent boy in the world.
* I’m not.
* Or if he does, he cares not.
* That I love increasingly more and more each passing day, even if I also sometimes hate it.
? Or something.
? Mostly for me.
§ A bit for him in the imaginary hope that we would bump into one another, but not in the actual reality of us really bumping into one another, where he then frowns at me.
* Even if it’s maybe actually all I want to see.
? A horrible, awful legend. Isn’t it?
* Very bravely, I might add.
* Which it is, but it’s not really what I meant.
* And I feel nervous and cross at once.
* Which I shan’t be.
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
He didn’t notice, by the way—Peter—that I was missing that night. Or if he did, he didn’t care. He didn’t say anything about it when I just showed up at the tree house at around lunchtime the next day.
He didn’t ask me where I’d been or what I’d been doing or even if I was okay. He just wrapped his arms around my waist, lifted me off the ground, and gave me a kiss that I didn’t understand.
There was a sort of roughness to it that I couldn’t tell you even now whether I cared for or not. A bit of me did, a bit of me didn’t…but if that isn’t just my entire relationship with Peter…
“You take your medicine this morning?”
“Hmm? Oh.” I look back at him, shake my head. “No.”
He goes inside to get me some, and I stay there, watching the younger boys.
Peter’s back after a minute, hands me the tonic in the flower like always. I don’t even mind the taste now. I think I used to not like to drink this, but now I can’t remember why.
My eyes fall onto Holden, the Lost Boy who arrived however many days ago he arrived—I can’t remember. He’s playing in the sun with the others. He looks so small.
I nod my head at him. “Has he been okay?”