“Sorry,” he says, offering her an apologetic grin. “Thank you.”
“Anything for young love,” she says wistfully and returns to her basket a few rows away.
Young love. That’s not what we have. It must be too soon for that, but we have something, and it’s making itself at home in my heart more every day, as much as I try to fight it. I try to hold myself back, remind myself that this isn’t permanent, but my heart gives me the finger and goes its own way.
“Hungry?” Maxim asks. “Food?”
“Yes, please.”
After we buy a picnic basket stuffed with wine and cheese and fruit and sandwiches, we walk our bikes down to a riverbank. He spreads the blanket and I lay out our lunch. The sun is high, the weather mild, the air fresh, and the company? Maxim is the only person I want to be here with right now.
“Any more on your politician back home?” he asks, the strong length of him stretched out. He’s propped on one elbow, popping grapes into his mouth.
“When I got back to the hostel this morning, Mena had emailed me some things to look over.” I take a sip of wine from a disposable cup. “The pay is almost non-existent, of course, but it would be great experience. Nighthorse is the real deal. The things he wants to do for Natives in Oklahoma are exactly what I would love to see happen everywhere. I’m impressed.”
“Think you’ll do it?”
“I told her I want to if he’s interested.”
“Oh, he will be. How could he not be?”
“We’ll see.” I shrug. “I’m with you. I can’t stand most politicians. They’re the main ones who lied to Natives. Tricked us. Betrayed us. Our own senator slipped that pipeline in at the eleventh hour for Warren Cade.”
Maxim makes a strangled sound, and when I look over at him, he’s coughing.
“You okay? Wine go down the wrong way?”
“Uh, something like that.” He stares into his cup. “Sorry. You were saying something about—”
“Warren Cade, yeah. He’s such an asshole.” I take a deep breath to counter the fury that rises every time I think about that heartless man. “But of course, he’d look after his own interests. Senator Middleton was supposed to be looking after ours. I’m going to learn this system inside and out and put leaders in place who will look after what’s best for the people.”
“Who determines best, though?” Maxim crumbles a crust of bread on his napkin. “Some would argue what Middleton did created new jobs for his constituents, and that was right.”
He holds up his hands defensively when I aim a baleful look at him. “Hey, just playing devil’s advocate. Don’t shoot me.”
“I know that pipeline created jobs, but it also broke promises the government made to my people. Again. It endangers the water supply for an entire community. And you know what? They declare buildings historically protected so businesses can’t destroy them with new offices or whatever they determine means progress. That’s because someone says the value of that thing is worth more than the revenue destroying it would create. Yet every time something of ours has been declared sacred, it’s desecrated as soon as protecting it inconveniences someone in power.”
“So you want the power.”
“I want to spread it. Create it. Put it where it will be used better,” I say, indignation riding the blood in my veins. “Yes, there’s usually more than one ‘right.’ Right is relative sometimes. Not life or death, or cruelty or those absolutes. All you can do is fight for the right you believe in. There aren’t enough people fighting for my people’s ‘rights.’ What is right for us and the basic rights it seems are so quickly afforded to everyone but us. That’s what I plan to spend my life fighting for.”
He smiles, and it’s almost sad.
“What?” I ask. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking,” he says, pushing my shoulder gently until I fall back on the blanket, and he hovers over me, “that you are going to be so damn incredible.” Our eyes catch and his smile fades. “And I wish I could to be around to see it.”
He told me. I knew this wasn’t permanent. He said no attachments and that he would walk away, but the finality in his words hurts so much.
“You’ll be off on your expeditions, huh?” I ask, reaching up to push back the dark hair falling in his eyes. “Saving Mother Earth?”
“Something like that.” He runs his thumb over my bottom lip. “Antarctica. Then I’m going to the Amazon. You know twenty percent of the world’s oxygen comes from the Amazon?”
“No shit. You learn something new every day.”
“You can if you wanna,” he laughs. “Then possibly the Maldives, which within just a few decades may be uninhabitable.”
“Wait, like the islands? Like great vacay Maldives?”
“They’re only six feet above sea level. By the middle of this century, parts of it and even parts of Hawaii may be under water.”
“You’re serious?”
“Of course I’m serious. The shame is that by the time people start believing how serious this really is, it’ll be too late.”
“How did you get into this? Why is it so important to you?”
“Let’s just say I grew up thinking a lot about our natural resources,” he says with an ironic smile that tells me absolutely nothing. “And didn’t always like what I found.”
“So you’re off to save the planet.”
“And don’t forget I want to make a lot of money.”
“Capitalist,” I whisper, straining up to kiss his neck.
“Crusader,” he whispers his retort over my shoulder, licking and sucking my collarbone.
“We’re going in completely different directions, aren’t we?” I hate the pathetic sound of my own voice—the way my heart constricts at the thought of him in the wilds of Antarctica and the Amazon while I toil on behalf of the future Senator Nighthorse in Oklahoma.
“Yeah, we are.” He tugs on my hand and pulls us to a sitting position on the blanket, seating me between his knees with my back to his chest. “Let me show you where I’ll be.”
“What?” I peer at him over my shoulder. “What do you mean?”
“Gimme your hands,” he says, his voice resonating in my back. His arms bracket me as he reaches for my hands, holding them out in front of us.
“Let’s go back to the days when the world was flat for a second.” He places my hands side by side, palm up. “I don’t have a globe, so we’ll make a map. Here’s the good old US of A.” With his index finger, he sketches what roughly looks like the shape of the United States at the far edge of my left palm. “You’ll be there in Oklahoma.”
He draws a line down and across to the far lower quadrant of my right palm and stops at my wrist. “I’ll be all the way down here in Antarctica.”
He moves up a little, leaving tiny needles of sensation across my skin with every touch. “The team will leave from here to get there.”
“Where is that?” I ask, my throat closing up and my eyes stinging.