Page 16 of Never Landing

I let myself fall back onto the porch swing, curling my knee under me and leaning in to wrap my hands around his face. His cheeks were smooth under my hand, not like he’d shaved, but like he’d never once in his life had to shave. But if he was Peter, he was thirty, so how did that work?

Still, it was undeniable. It was Peter. My Peter.

Gods, I’d missed him so much.

“I never forgot you, Peter. Not for a second, not ever. I came back looking for you, but I couldn’t find you anywhere. I spent the whole summer before college asking everyone in town about you, but they treated me like I was nuts.” I shook my head, trying to ignore that prickling in my eyes that had come back, and...Dammit, I didn’t care. This was my best friend ever, the guy I hadn’t seen in more than fifteen years, sitting right in front of me.

He was the last great thing in my life.

Yeah, it was pathetic that I hadn’t ever had anything better in my life after fourteen, but I fucking hadn’t. High school had been hell, alone with a bunch of strangers who hadn’t been interested in welcoming a new kid to their pre-arranged cliques. College had been a slog, trying to do my very best and get the best grades, working a full-time job all the while to prove to my parents that my master’s degree in art wasn’t just about wanting to laze around and paint naked ladies all day. Then a year-long unpaid internship with one agency, that had led to a job at another: Warren.

I hadn’t dated anyone for longer than a month or two, because none of them had been right. None of them had hadgolden-green eyes and sharp cheekbones and the softest lips and...

“But there was a boy. Last night, there was a boy who looked like you, but younger.”

Peter looked down at his hands, and his eyes went glossy. “But I...I’m old now,” he said, as though it was a reasonable response. As though it was about...

Fairies.

I smiled at him, as hard as it was through the lump in my throat and tears in my eyes. “You’re really not. You’re...fuck, you’re still younger than me.” I snatched the paper out of his hands and tapped it. He looked precisely like the man in it now. “Twenty-three. He was twenty-three in this picture. With his mother. Your...mother?”

Peter stared at her, swallowing hard, then leaning back. “I don’t have a mother. I never—I knew her, that lady. She was nice to me. Sad. But I don’t have a mother. Or a father.”

Through all of this, he continued staring at the woman on the page.

“I didn’t before. Remember her. I’m starting to—I’m starting to remember a lot of things. So much.”

I blinked and stared at him, and his legs tensed. His whole body was tense, in fact, ready to bolt. Again? Had it really been him the night before, still a child?

That was ridiculous . . . probably.

Still, every part of me screamed with protest at the thought of him running away from me. I couldn’t lose him again. Never again. But how could I convince him to stay?

“Pizza,” I blurted out, ineloquent and random, but not wrong. Peter had always loved pizza. That would make him stay. I had the ingredients, even the yeast for pizza dough, since I’d been planning to make some bread. “We can make pizza. In thekitchen.” I waved toward the back door, and he turned to look at it.

When he looked back at me, his eyes were sparkling with that old Peter impishness. “With pineapples?”

I laughed. “I’ll freaking put bananas on it if you want.”

His grin was perfect. It was Peter. “Nope. Just the pineapples. And ham.”

10

Peter

Bananas on pizza sounded awful, but I ate a banana anyway.

I wasstarving, and Everett’s kitchen was full of all kinds of things—snacks I’d forgotten I liked and drinks that fizzed on my tongue. I couldn’t remember being hungry before. Sometimes, we lost kids ate honey cakes that the people in town made, but that was all.

All I’d had until Everett.

Now, I wanted to open my mouth up wide and eat everything in his kitchen.

“You okay?” Everett asked, his dark brow arching higher up his forehead as he laid ingredients out on the counter between us.

My cheek was round with the better half of a banana, and I nodded.

“Want some crackers?” he asked.

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