Chapter 4 #2
“I’m sorry. I really am so sorry, Junie–” She corrected herself, “Juniper. Sorry.”
“Weak. You can leave now.” Juniper smirked. “Again.”
For a moment, Rowan’s eyes looked wild with hurt before she averted them from hers. Juniper fought the urge to feel bad and dug her heels back in, further this time, out of sheer obstinance.
Stay. Angry.
“Sucks being totally dismissed by someone, doesn’t it?”
“I’ll be next door if you need me. Hopefully you won’t,” Rowan said, in a quietly bitter tone, instead of answering that question or looking at her again.
“No,” Juniper sighed out, listlessly. “You know, I’ve never actually needed you or anyone else. Don’t suspect that will change now.”
She felt triumphant that she managed to maneuver the conversation back to anger instead of remorse. Anger was a much more comfortable emotion for her to navigate.
Rowan paused with her hand on the doorknob. Then she pulled it open and exited without turning back. Juniper allowed one tear to fall that she wiped away roughly with the back of her hand. She reminded herself it was possible to cry from anger too.
◆◆◆
Rowan tapped her pen against the header of the legal pad sitting on her desk.
She was steeling her nerves, or at least trying to, before walking the three feet from her office to Juniper’s for a two-hour long planning meeting that Theo had already put on their calendars.
It was almost like he didn’t trust Juniper to actually go through with it.
Where Rowan had had the tiniest of hope while standing in the doorway the day prior that their first reuniting moment might be characterized more by apologies, or forgiveness, or even an unsaid let bygones be bygones, she was now acutely aware that that was not the game Juniper would be playing.
She knew she had hurt her, she just didn’t know she’d still be taking it that badly this long after.
Even thinking that made her feel like a hypocrite.
She knew her heart must have broken after what she did.
And it’s not like Juniper was the one semi-stalking Rowan’s social media. Although, maybe she also had?
She mindlessly sketched alternating rows of mismatched geometric shapes on her paper and thought back to how clueless Theo had been during their interaction.
Rowan had tracked every slight narrowing of her eyes, the ever-present slight curve to the edge of her lips, probably imperceivable to anyone else but her.
She had always been able to pick out Juniper’s tells. Especially the ones that told contempt.
This was silly. She felt some resolve course through her mind. They were in their thirties now, for fuck’s sake. She pushed her chair back and stood abruptly, knowing she needed to capitalize immediately on this rush of confidence before she came crashing back down into her seat.
She faltered in her steps when she reached Juniper’s office to find the door already open.
Juniper was looking at something on the computer monitor that sat angled on the desk at the back of the room.
The morning sun gleamed through the windows behind her and emphasized the interplay of the deep golden and dark brown tones in her hair.
“You can come in, Rowan,” she said flatly without looking up from the screen.
“Okay, sure.”
Rowan was already fumbling. When she realized Juniper wasn’t going to get up to go to the center table, she pulled a seat from it and sat on the other side of the desk from her.
This was some kind of power play by Juniper, she was sure.
Rowan re-centered, took a deep breath, and tried to open up again.
“It smells good in here,” she commented on the herbal, woodsy-sweet scent in the air. It was soothing.
“Sage.”
“Did you burn some or something?” She looked around the room to find the source.
“Smudged. To get out the bad energy.” Juniper pointed blindly to the windowsill, where a large shell with a half-burned bundle of sage nestled inside of it sat.
With all the bad energy Juniper was emitting, she’d need to burn through a whole thicket of sage before that could happen.
“Funny,” she remarked flippantly.
“More like… necessary.”
Rowan dragged a hand down her face. “Sure.”
They then sat in a painfully long silence, Juniper looking at the computer, Rowan wishing she could fade into the ether at this point.
Anything to avoid any further argument or outright silent dismissal by Juniper.
Of all people, Rowan didn’t mind the quiet, but this was something else entirely.
Any person would feel uncomfortable with this level of chill in the air.
She finally broke the silence again and asked, “How’s your mom?”
Juniper stopped typing but didn’t break her focus from the screen.
“Look, we’re going to have to find a way to work together professionally. So I think it’s best if we keep it that way.”
“Okay,” Rowan breathed out incredulously. “We’re literally sitting here in silence, and either way – I didn’t know asking about your mom would be considered unprofessional.”
“I’m sorry, I just mean that for both of our benefit, we should get this done as quickly and painlessly as possible.
I care a lot about this program. As you know, I built it.
I didn’t go off to some fancy school and spend the last decade talking about climate change in the abstract.
We feel it here, have felt it here for some time, and we don’t have a lot of time left to make serious changes,” Juniper contended, still without breaking eye contact with the computer screen in front of her.
“You think all I do is talk about climate change in the abstract?” Rowan narrowed her eyes at her, also taking offense at the way she seemed to exclude Rowan when it came to discussing how the Runapewak were experiencing the impacts of climate change.
Like she wasn’t actually one of them anymore.
Like her dad didn’t fish their waters everyday for his livelihood.
She heard Juniper loud and clear – you are not one of us anymore.
And she wondered if she ever really had been.
“I think that there are some people in the world who like to talk a lot about philosophical things but don’t always have the action to back it up,” Juniper clarified lazily as she finally gazed up to meet Rowan’s eyes.
There was a deliberate coolness about Juniper’s tone that felt so unnatural, the steadiness, yet passiveness, of her gaze unnerving.
“You think I’m one of those people?” Rowan’s tone, though quiet, was firm.
“Are you not?” Juniper shot back with a raised eyebrow.
Rowan stared at her hand as she tapped her middle finger a few times on the desk, gathering her thoughts before shifting eye contact back to Juniper and launching in.
“No, in fact, quite the opposite. You could learn a thing or two from the experience I bring to the table. Experience, across the world, for over a decade. I bring multiple perspectives, best practices from many different Tribes and Indigenous groups worldwide. And yes, an understanding of law and policy too. You could try actually listening for once — you might be surprised what you can learn that way. But I’m not going to sit here and read off my resume to you either. Fucking look me up if you need to.”
That last part was maybe not the right approach. Juniper barely stifled a giggle.
“You’re asking me to google you?”
Rowan was a lawyer. She could go point-counterpoint all day long.
How quickly could all of the years of training fly out the window when it came to arguing with Juniper?
Right away, apparently. She could keep going toe to toe with Juniper, devolving into an immature middle school lunchroom style fight, or she could be silent.
Her deep-seated irritation over this unfair treatment pushed her to choose the latter.
She wasn’t going to entertain this. So she said nothing.
Juniper turned giddily back to the computer. The clack of nails flying against keys typing out Rowan Birdsong signaled pure condescension. Of course she would actually do it. Of course. She never had to be dared to do anything more than once, and barely the first time at that.
“Okay, let’s see… oh, here’s your Twitter. Maybe I should follow you? You probably don’t need any more followers, but what’s one more…” Juniper made a deliberate show of clicking the follow button. “Here’s your organization’s website. Oh, great headshot.”
“Thanks,” Rowan muttered smugly, hoping a different kind of irritation would prompt Juniper to stop or at least shift course.
Wrong choice again. She was 0 for 2 at throwing fuel on this fire.
“What should I expect to see next? A video of you opening the door barefoot for Architectural Digest to answer twenty questions about the green design concept of your Manhattan penthouse?”
“Stop,” Rowan finally snapped.
She leaned across the desk and jabbed the power button on the monitor. If Juniper thought she could afford a penthouse in Manhattan, she really was isolated out here.
“Treating me like shit based off of your own assumptions, extremely incorrect assumptions at that, is one thing. But trying to demean me? For someone who wants to keep this professional, this is not professional. Take yourself seriously, Juniper.”
“Take myself seriously? Oh, I take myself very seriously. It’s you who I don’t take seriously.”
Rowan moved her seat around the desk to sit beside Juniper. A power play of her own. The action appeared to set Juniper on edge. Where Rowan had previously wanted to keep a safe distance, she now wanted to make her presence known. She was not going to be dismissed like this.
“And why is that? And for real this time. Don’t create some little gimmick of looking me up on the internet to deflect from saying what you actually think. Get it all out.”
“Here’s what I really think. I think that you jumped ship on this community as soon as you could to live what you thought, and still think, is a better life.
I’m not going to sit here and act like this place is all sunshine and flowers.
We both obviously know it’s not. But I’m also not going to sit here and have you think you know what’s best for this program or for this community, just because you come from that world now with all that experience.
And you may technically be over me in this department, but you do not run me. ”
Rowan felt ice frost her veins. The chill in the air had won out.
“You’re right. Let’s get this over with. Then maybe we won’t ever have to see each other again.”
Rowan knew what she said wasn’t true. She was going to have to see this woman every single day for the rest of the time they worked in this building together. She couldn’t handle that as much as Juniper apparently couldn’t either.
Despite all that former bravado, she watched Juniper’s face fall.
Did Rowan really need to add that last part about never seeing each other again?
Another reminder that she could disappear at a moment’s notice?
Sure, Juniper was being petty, dismissive.
But she knew deep down Juniper was right to be skeptical of her sudden reappearance.
Her nonexistent track record of doing anything meaningful for their Tribe.
She had been worried about that herself.
Juniper promptly stood up and squeezed sideways between Rowan and the desk, brushing thighs against knees, to move toward the door.
Rowan felt blood rush through her veins at the unexpected proximity.
She caught the faintest waft of a warm, flowery perfume, fresh like honey and wildflowers.
She knew it would be inappropriate to grab the edge of her dress and pull her back to finish the conversation, to actually have the fight she seemed so desperate to have, yet she caught her hand drifting out to touch her anyway.
She stopped before she could do anything she’d regret.
This felt so unnecessarily confusing. She wanted to call out to her. Tell her to wait. She didn't mean it. But hadn’t she?
Juniper pretended to busy herself in the empty storage room.
“Feel free to let yourself out. We can pick this back up tomorrow.”
After a few seconds of stunned paralysis over what had played out in the last ten minutes, she got up seeking the solitude of her own, yes, private office.
“Looking forward to it,” Rowan muttered as she moved toward the door, slightly betraying the now confusing thoughts running through her mind.
Was she, despite all of this, kind of looking forward to it?