The pirate boy (Frerard, Petekey)

Chapter twenty nine - i'm supposed to love you

Chapter twenty nine - i'm supposed to love you

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"You thought I was a what?" Lisa asked, eyes wide and eyebrows threatening to disappear into her hair.

"I thought you were a prostitute." I said. The majority of the Aurora's crew had shuffled down below deck with us, and while a few men sat on the floor tending to their injuries, Lisa and I were talking quite amicably, like we hadn't just been trying to kill each other's friends.

Lisa spluttered, rather horrified at my observation. "Do I look like a prostitute?"

I shrugged again. "There's nothing wrong with being a prostitute," I mused. "Such nice people."

"But–" Lisa struggled to grasp for words. "What was it about me that suggested that I was a prostitute?"

"You were a female," I stated. "On a boat."

The furrow in Lisa's brow deepened, and she stuck out her neck a little, as if leaning towards me would somehow grant her access to my mind. She seemed to be having immense difficulty understanding why the whole woman-on-a-boat thing was such a significant factor in the hooker illusion.

"Women don't go on boats, Lisa," I said. "Unless they're hookers." I looked at her, leaning down a bit to study her face. She wasn't having much of a reaction.

"I suppose that's why every crew we fought looked at me so strangely. They knew I didn't belong even before I did."

"No, no," Captain Wentz said, materialising from behind Lisa and gently resting his hand on her shoulder. "I'm certain that it was because you were just so ridiculously beautiful that they couldn't look away."

Lisa flushed red, trying to hide her smile and failing. "Peter," she chuckled, and he tucked her hair back behind her ear.

There was no doubt that Lisa and Wentz were courting. I still had yet to figure out where I stood with Gerard, though. My disgraceful Gerard. (Yes. I was really starting to grow very attached to that name.)

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Gerard had been talking with Lisa all night. I had woken up early and shuffled down the hall to stretch my legs and kill some time, expecting the rest of the ship to be sleeping, but Gerard's cabin was illuminated by candlelight, the yellow-tinged glow spilling out under the door, and the quiet murmur of voices and stifled laughter echoed through the worn wood of the walls.

I thought it would be best not to disturb them; I was sure they would have a great number of tales to tell each other and would need a lot of time to catch up with each other's lives. I wondered what it would be like to have to relay my entire life to someone in a story. Life wasn't like a story to me. It was a tangle of contradicting emotions, being scared and disregarding the feeling and playing brave, and I couldn't imagine how I could ever describe that to someone. Even less could I imagine what it would feel like to hear of all the adventures of another's life when previously I had not even known them to be alive at all. So many possibilities would suddenly appear, possibilities of the future and the past– because all Lisa's recent past was to Gerard was a story, something unknown and intangible, and he would never be able to experience it the way Lisa did.

The floor was cold, and I had not bothered to put on shoes, so I reluctantly shuffled down the corridor and up the steps onto the deck. I don't know what I had intended to do once I had got up there- probably just aimlessly stare at the sea, or watch the black sky slowly fade to a bruised pink as the sun rose– but I didn't make it halfway up the steps: Gerard had slipped out of his cabin and followed me. He rested his hand on my forearm, touching the goosebumps on my skin, and I turned my head and stepped down so that we were at the same level. (I was still a step above Gerard, but alas, I was small, and hunched even smaller from the chilly morning air, so it equalled us out.)