Page 134 of Ranger's Rise

Our neighbors laugh. Their food comes out and we’re trading food. I do rice, waving off the other bowls. The neighbors want mac and cheese and collard greens. Ranger gives it over happily and takes a biscuit for him and baked apples for me.

Dumping the onion and mushrooms on my chicken, I’m a happy camper. Ranger makes happy noises over his ribs. The men talk and the woman is happy to listen just like me. That makes her cool in my book.

When I’m done Ranger stops talking. “Sorry,lo’u alofa. I’m so impressed with the food and how it’s done. Thank you for bringing me here.”

“You’re doing fine, Ranger. We talked the whole way here. I don’t need every second you live, but I like seeing you live them.”

The woman next door laughs. The man is smiling at us. “We’ve been together for seventeen years. She says the same thing and means it. You’re going to live happily with an outlook like that.”

Ranger smiles at me. “Aiyana said that too. The ancestors bless us with a long story and I’ll be happy with Freedom.”

I’m glad we get that and love Aiyana and the others that healed him. Dakota was at our party and I thanked him and asked him to thank the others. He said it was done making me laugh. Aiyana is alright in my book too.

We pay and leave our new friends to dessert. I’m too full for that. Before he can head to the bike, I pull him. We walk the barely lit path to an open rocky area. “We’re on a plateau. The view and stars are beautiful at night.”

He sits on a rock and pulls me to his lap. “Love you, Freedom. The view is beautiful, but it has nothing on you.”

I laugh at him. “Oh, alright.”

He turns me and sings softly about a man amazed with how much a woman pulls out of him and how she gives him space, time and when he needs it, her love. Every word runs through me. His little squeezes and kisses to my ear have tears in my eyes. I’m glad when he stops, but so humbled that he thinks like that, that he feels like that man in his song.

“Everything I feel is because of you,lo’u alofa. It’s not just words. I love to see the stars and the views you’ve shown me, but you’re my world. My world is beautiful because you made it so. Without you, it’s just stars and views. This, us here, I feel it and it’s everything.”

The fucking guy has tears on my face. “I feel it too, Ranger, and believe it’s because of you.”

He tightens his hold and kisses my head. “Okay.”

I laugh. He’s so fucking easy.