Page 36 of Darling

“I didn’t know I could look like this,” Wendy admitted. She wished her mom could see her like this, just as hard as she wished her mom would never find out what she’d gone through to make it to this chair in the back of this restaurant.

Dorothy sucked her teeth loudly and put both hands on Wendy’s shoulders. “You don’t have to look like this every day,” Dorothy said. “Sometimes it’s enough to know that this is in there. You can reach for it whenever you like, because this look is a part of you. But it is always your choice whether you want to put in the work. There is power in not doing this, just as much as there is power in knowing how to do it.”

Wendy didn’t know what to say.

“You should say thank you,” Ominotago suggested when the silence got to be a bit too long and the moment began to fade.

Wendy turned around to face Dorothy. “Thank you.”

Dorothy snorted and waved a hand modestly.

“I really mean it,” Wendy said earnestly. “You’re so good at this.”

Dorothy folded her arms and beamed back at Wendy with her hard-won, morning glory face. “Darling,” Dorothy said softly. “I’m the best.”

“Now, I wouldn’t go as far as—” the queen by the door began, but the door burst open, and Curly shoved his head inside.

“Peter says we can come—Whoa, you look good.” He paused to stare.

“Aanii, Curly, what does Peter want?” Ominotago asked urgently, waving a hand to block Wendy from Curly’s line of view.

Curly went on his tiptoes to avoid her arm and continue gaping at Wendy. “Peter said we can come out, but the Crocodile and Detective Hook are sitting at a table. They’re not doing anything, though. They look mad.”

“Oh, great.” Ominotago sighed.

“The Crocodile looks madder, if that’s any consolation,” Curly said.

Ominotago turned to Wendy and shrugged. “You ready?”

Wendy nodded and followed Ominotago and Curly out the door.

Compared to the dressing room, the rest of the restaurant was much less stressful. The mermaid motif was strong in the dining area. The walls were painted turquoise and purple, the tables were draped with gauzy blue-green ombre tablecloths, and at the center of each table was a white seashell with a candle in the middle. The tables were arranged in a semicircle around a small stage that was packed richly with fake seagrass and green tinsel. There was a machine pumping bubbles out into the restaurant from backstage, and the speakers played a light gurgling underneath the jazzy restaurant music. The waitresses, just as Wendy had guessed from backstage, were all drag queens. Their uniform was a crop top T-shirt and sequined miniskirt, and beehive wig in matching monochrome. They had white seashells glued over their chest to their T-shirts, mermaid style.

Peter, Nibs, Tinkerbelle, Charles, Curly, Fyodor, Waatese, and Minsu were sitting at the large table closest to the stage. Ominotago’s friends were clustered together and had saved a seat for her between Waatese and Tinkerbelle. Nibs had his arm over the back of the chair next to him, which was Curly’s. There was only one seat left and it was next to Peter.

Peter tapped the seat and looked at Wendy pointedly. She turned to plead with Curly to switch, but Curly’s expression shuttered closed and he shook his head quickly. Whatever argument the table had about where Wendy was supposed to sit had clearly already been firmly decided.

Wendy made her way across the room and reluctantly settled into the seat next to Peter. He put his arm over the top of the seat behind her—not touching her, but close enough that Wendy could feel the warmth of his body and take in his smoky floral scent.

He leaned over to whisper in her ear. “You look incredible. But you looked better in your room, dressed like yourself. Full of fire and anger, with sleep in your eyes.” He settled back so he could gaze at her in the low candlelight. “The Real Wendy Darling,” he finished.

“Why?” Wendy asked.

Peter tossed his hair back and chuckled prettily. He paused to pick a glass of red wine off the recently vacated table next to them and took a sip. He swirled the liquid around his mouth for a second and swallowed languidly before looking over at her. “You know why,” he said quietly.

Wendy did not. She decided to wait him out. She didn’t look at his wine-red lips or his angel curls or his eyes like heated amber; she looked through him.

“Because…,” Peter said, after some time, still gazing at her. “The Real Wendy Darling is capable of anything.”

His words struck something deep inside her that pooled low and hot in her belly, and she instantly remembered the wind in her hair as they’d climbed together down the trellis. Peter slouched lower in his chair and spread his legs, and Wendy thought helplessly about his muscles under her thighs as she’d clung to his waist and the firm full-body gentleness of his grip as he’d held her in the kitchen. The scent of him was overpowering: the smoke, crisp like night air; and the flowers, green, making her skin itch to roll in grass, soft and tender beneath her fingertips. As if following the path of her thoughts, Peter scraped his nails over the fabric behind her chair, in a slow smooth rhythm that was almost hypnotizing. Wendy suddenly understood very clearly how a boy like this had captured a girl as smart as Tinkerbelle and a girl as proud as Ominotago.

It was too much.

Wendy turned away from him and toward the table closest to the door just to catch her breath as she was immediately faced with the other part of Curly’s message: the Crocodile and Detective Hook.

The difference between the two men was immediate and jarring to the point of near hilarity. The Crocodile was massive in height and as wide as two average-height people put together. He was wearing an outfit that would have been funny on anyone else, but just served to make him look scarier. He had on a brown floppy hat, and a brown vest that bulged ominously like it was crammed full of tools. The sleeves of his black button-up shirt were rolled to the elbows, and his bulging, hairy forearms swelled out. He had a massive watch on one wrist and what looked to be a house arrest monitor on the other arm. His eyebrows were furrowed so far down over his eyes that Wendy would have been concerned about his ability to see if they weren’t glittering so brightly in the candlelight. The other alarming thing was that he had the man next to him—who was clearly Detective Hook—gripped tightly by the wrist.

Detective Hook himself looked very normal in comparison to the Crocodile, aside from the near-demonic expression of fury twisting his features. He had black hair with silver temples, and that rectangular sort of mustache that cops seem to favor. His nose looked like it had been broken at least twice, and he had more stubble than one would consider professional. He was wearing a surprisingly nice blue suit and shirt, with a maroon overcoat draped on his chair. Every single molecule in his body was focused on Peter, to the point where Wendy felt like she could feel him cooking the air between them with his rage. Also, of course, he had the prosthetic hand replacement. It was more delicate than Wendy had imagined a hook to be, clearly functional as opposed to decorative, but it was still beautiful.