When I still don’t move, his foot gently rubs against mine and my smile begins to grow. The bed shifts with his weight as he sits down on the comforter, and I smile. My head lulls from side to side with the rhythm of the music he plays, but it only lasts a few more moments before he stops suddenly.

“Keep playing, Peter,” I whisper. “I haven’t heard enough. You’re almost at my favorite part.”

“What part is that, Wendy?”

His body shifts again, and I feel his fingertips against my inner thigh. My breath catches in my throat. Feelings, emotions I am not sure how to put into words simmer in my lower belly, but I don’t move away. His palm gently touches where his fingers just were and my eyes open to meet his as he scoots closer on the bed.

Swallowing over a lump in my throat, I search his eyes and wonder if he understands the way he’s making me feel. Something I don’t even fully understand yet. After all, Peter is only a boy. A boy that ran away from home when he was born. Or so they say. This is all new to me, new to him, but I can tell by the look in his eyes that whatever I am feeling, he’s feeling too.

If it was really true that Peter ran away from home the day he was born, the boy who looks to be the same seventeen years I am would, instead, resemble a child. Not the boy, almost man, sitting across from me now. A boy on a dangerous cusp of exploration, playing recklessly, too close to the unknown, currently staring back at me with so much heat in his eyes, I feel slightly embarrassed for the both of us.

This is new. This isn’t the way our meetings normally go.

For as long as he’s been coming to sit with me, what must be several years now, and playing his pipes at the foot of my bed, I never once thought he’d be staring back at me the way he is now.

Recently, I had wished for it. Dreamed about it. However, every dream I’ve ever had pales when compared to the look he’s giving me now.

“You’ve changed…” Peter says as he leans in closer, setting his pipes aside and bracing his hands on either side of my body. He brushes a strand of hair out of my eyes, and I tremble. With a smile, he takes my breath away when he whispers, “Want to know my favorite part, Wendy Moira Angela Darling?”

With a nervous gasp, I stare at his mouth and whisper, “Part of what, Peter?”