32. Peter
32
Peter
I t did.
It got better every time, and I wanted to try everything .
Sex was fun. Maybe the most fun thing I’d ever done, at least when it was with Everett. Looking at pictures online wasn’t the same, and even the people who put up videos...well, they weren’t Everett.
It wasn’t the two of us together, chasing laughs and gasps and moans and joy.
I got that same feeling I’d gotten when we were kids, sitting on the floor of his grandma’s living room, sneaking kisses under the noses of adults. Except it was even better, because there was no sneaking.
There was just heart-racing excitement and his gorgeous skin under my hands and the surprising warmth of his body and Everett. He was all I’d ever wanted.
And it wasn’t just sex that got better—though that was great and for a few days after our first time, Everett had had to convince me to do anything else (though I’d gotten to convince him to make pizza with nothing but an apron on, and let me just tell you that little string tied at the small of his back, right above his gorgeous ass, did things for me). Everything got better.
The people in Cider Landing really did need a handyman, and I liked figuring out how stuff worked. Eventually, magic twisted up with curiosity and I wasn’t sure where one began and the other ended, but it got easier.
And Everett? He spent a lot of time taking care of the administrative side of things. On Christmas Day, Everett came to me with—oh, it was the coolest thing ever. We’d decided on calling the business Honey Home Services, after the cakes my mother made, and, well, for the kids still out in the woods and the ones who’d come out like me.
And on Christmas Day, he showed me the logo he’d come up with, complete with a tiny honeycomb and the cutest little bee I’d ever seen. He hadn’t just drawn me a logo though, he’d set up a website of our own, registered the company—he’d set up everything , and I’d never been prouder in my life.
This wasn’t something anyone had given Everett or me; it was something we made together, and I loved every piece of it. I loved that when I stuck my business card up on the same community board we’d gotten those first jobs, that it was Everett’s art right beside my name—or, well, the name Peter Bailey, which felt more mine than Peter Hawking did. It was completely ours, our future right there, and I wanted to jump into the air and fly around town, shouting for everyone to hear that we’d done it!
That was...Dr. Hawking said, maybe a bit much for the regular people of Cider Landing. Nevertheless, even she seemed happy for us at the Hawking family reunion we attended that spring.
It was that summer Everett got his first commission from the town. He’d taken up painting again, and he was so freaking good that everyone knew it, and he’d done his first mural on the side of Marsha and Ezra’s market.
Now, he was working on one on the wall outside of town hall , and I was there helping him.
Or, well, I was watching him work his own special magic on the plain bricks of the building.
I was staring up at him, squinting against the sunlight, when a girl appeared beside me.
“It looks nice,” Aurora said, her hands clasped behind her back, swaying back and forth on the patch of grass beneath the mural. “He’s good.”
“He’s amazing ,” I whispered back.
Aurora looked between me and Everett’s back. He was measuring out one of the squares—he worked in one area at a time, breaking up the whole wall so he knew how to move the crane we’d rented that hoisted him high enough to work.
“So you’re happy?” Aurora turned toward me, narrowing her eyes. “Like, really happy. Out here with all the normal people. You don’t miss the forest?”
I bit my lip, taking a few seconds to really think about it. “No, I don’t miss the forest. I mean, it’s still there. But if you mean do I miss you, then yeah. I miss you all like crazy when you’re not around, but a lot of us are still in town, and there’s Everett, and I’m not alone. I don’t feel like I don’t fit anymore.”
Aurora nodded. I’d braced for her feelings to get hurt, but she seemed strangely satisfied with my announcement.
“Everett invited us to a cookout,” she reminded me, raising one perfect golden brow. “Jessie keeps talking about cookies.”
I grinned. “Yeah, we’d love that. Everett!”
When I called his name, he started, coming out of a daze as he’d been trying to figure out the exact right way to handle a swoop of color that I already knew would come out perfect. “Yeah?”
“Can we have a cookout with the kids this weekend?”
He turned in the basket of the crane and looked down at the pair of us, seeing Aurora for the first time. I knew he wasn’t thrilled about the kids in the woods, but we’d talked about it—we talked about everything now—and I knew he just wanted to see them safe, which meant keeping lines of communication open.
“Of course,” he called back. “Saturday okay?”
“That sounds lovely, Everett. We’ll look forward to it.” Aurora spun around and I watched, somewhat dazed, as she skipped off.
“Peter?”
“Hmm, yeah?” I looked up at him.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.” It took me a second to shake myself out of it, and when I did, Everett was still watching me.
It was weird, to change and grow up and know I’d had a whole long life out there in the woods with Aurora, but it wasn’t bad. I wasn’t sad about it—wasn’t even sad about all I might’ve missed out on.
If I’d never been taken, Peter Hawking wouldn’t have done all his work. Dr. Hawking wouldn’t exist. I wouldn’t have Everett.
I didn’t want to take his life any more than I wanted to give up my own amazing future.
“Can you hand me that bucket?” he asked.
It was beneath the crane, and when I snatched it up, I looked around. There was nobody nearby, but it never hurt to be careful, even in Cider Landing.
I floated up to him, taking hold of the safety rail of the crane’s workspace when I could.
“Thanks,” Everett said, leaning in to give me a quick kiss when he took the paint bucket. “Does she look older?” he asked, glancing off after Aurora, a scowl on his face.
I bit my lip as I clung to the crane basket, considering the way she’d stuck her chin out, the way she’d carried herself, and that, I realized, was why our brief encounter had left me feeling off balance. “You know, I think she does.”
And maybe even for Aurora, growing up wasn’t the worst thing after all.