Chapter 23 #3
“Anyway, without getting her further in trouble, we racked up a lot of passport stamps before we turned 30.”
Rowan threw her napkin at him.
They finished their meal and parted ways, promising to meet up over the next couple of days. Juniper and Rowan walked side by side down the rest of the block.
“I don’t think Runapewaks have a passport stamp, but I can sign your passport if you want.”
“I’m going to kill Manny.” Rowan snatched Juniper’s body closer. “We should get you a passport though, if you don’t have one.”
“Yes, we should.”
Rowan stopped them in front of a Sicilian bakery. “I was thinking dessert?”
“Dessert appetizer. Then dessert again later.”
The bell rang as Rowan opened it and backed against the door to let Juniper through. “Mmm, second dessert is my favorite.”
“Rowan! Are you back?” The man in an apron behind the counter asked.
“Visiting,” she corrected. She looked over at Juniper and smiled as they reached the counter. “With my girlfriend, Juniper.”
“Nice to meet you.” He winked at Juniper and leaned his hands on the counter. “Your usual?”
“Yep,” Rowan tucked her hands into her pockets and rocked on her heels.
“You got it.” He placed six varied cannoli in a white box and tied it off with red and white twine.
“Gino’s the owner.”
“Been selling cannoli for thirty years. Then my parents before that. On the house.” He patted the box.
Rowan reached for her wallet in resistance. “No, let me pay, please.”
“Nah,” he said. “It’s a nice night to enjoy some dessert with a pretty girl.”
He slid the box into a bag, handed it to a blushing Rowan, and they were back on the street again. At the end of the block, Rowan grasped Juniper’s hand and pulled her into the alcove of a brick apartment building.
Rowan set the bag on a small table beside the door.
She threaded her fingers together with Juniper, and raised Juniper’s hands above her head against the side wall of the alcove.
She melded their bodies together as she kissed her eagerly.
Every swipe of her tongue felt like writing a new language, or perhaps reviving an ancient one with new life breathed into it.
She slowed her pace but deepened it at the same time, and Juniper chased every movement.
Juniper hooked a leg behind Rowan’s knee to nudge it toward her body. Rowan took the hint and shifted her knee between Juniper’s thighs and pressed up against her and pressed her deeper against the wall.
Juniper laid her head back against it. “Fuck,” she whispered through jagged breaths.
Rowan released Juniper’s hands and slid her fingers down the outer curves of her body to land on the soft thickness of her hips.
“You are the most beautiful woman, Juniper.”
Rowan attempted to drop her knee.
“Don’t you dare move, Birdsong.”
Rowan moved back up the inch she’d dropped and added a couple more for good measure. With her chest rising and falling, Juniper pressed down against Rowan’s knee and groaned. She wanted to be taken right then and there. Over and over again. Forever.
She shook her head languorously against the wall and huffed out a short laugh. “What if someone opens the door?”
Rowan leaned back and smiled. “We’re going up. This is where I used to live.”
Juniper’s excitement was palpable. “Really?”
“Manny still lives here, so let’s hope he still uses the same code.” Rowan typed four numbers onto the metal keypad, and the door buzzed as it unlocked. “Success!”
Juniper followed Rowan into the elevator.
Rowan pressed the sixth floor button and the rickety elevator lurched them slowly to the top floor of the building.
They walked down a dim hallway with a threadbare, red carpet runner until they reached a door.
The night breeze pulled the door open as Rowan turned the knob.
“Wait ‘til you see,” Rowan nodded to behind Juniper. “Manny and I are location snobs.”
Without turning around, Juniper chuckled. “I wonder what he’d think of the Rez.”
Rowan passed the bag to Juniper so she could grab the two folding chairs sitting against the side of the access door structure.
With bag in hand and eyes wide, Juniper walked straight to the ledge of the rooftop and stared.
Bursting across the dusky horizon in front of her was the Manhattan skyline.
Towering skyscrapers of steel and glass; testaments to the ceaseless energy of human advancement.
She felt Rowan take the bag from her and then wrap her arms around her waist.
“You look like you’re gazing out over your Queendom.”
Juniper smiled and pulled her in closer. “It’s like a living, breathing entity. Forged from all of these complex connections between human and environment.”
Rowan hummed in agreement. “Many of the skyscrapers were built by Native ironworkers who came from the Six Nations reservations up north. There’s a lot of Indigenous history in this city.”
“Wasn’t there that myth that Manhattan was sold for $20?”
“Manahatta, the Lenape call it. The Dutch were meant to share the grass, not take the land.”
Juniper shook her head against Rowan’s shoulder. “Same story, different place.”
Rowan sighed. “Indeed.”
“But, Indigenous people will survive anywhere. Everywhere. We keep moving forward; we reclaim and rewrite the story.”
Rowan kissed her on the cheek, and Juniper overwhelmed herself with the need to ask the one burning question she’d ruminated on all day, for years before this moment.
“Would you have loved me here too?” She whispered.
Rowan turned her around in her arms. The whites of her eyes were glossy as she swiped the inner corners with her fingers.
“I have loved you in every version of my life that I’ve lived, every version I will live. You’re it for me, Juniper. You always have been.”
Juniper struggled to steady her voice. “You found your way back to me.”
Rowan kissed her tenderly and wiped the tears she didn’t know she’d been crying with her thumbs as she cupped her face. “Always.”