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The water is deep and I can’t feel the bottom, but he holds me up, one arm around me and the other secured around the rope that’s tied to the tubes.
We barely move in this stagnant, deep water, and Adrian kicks his feet to push us further down the river.
Dunking my head back into the water, I get over the shock of the cold. “This feels so good,” I say, hooking my arms around his neck.
“Me or the water? Adrian asks.
“Both,” I answer.
“You’re not worried about fish nibbling your toes anymore?” Adrian reminds me.
“Shut up,” I say and kiss him while running my fingers through his wet hair.
Layla giggles as Finlay dips her feet in the cool water but he hands her back to Emma so he can roll off the tube and into the water. When he reaches up to grab hold of Layla, she protests.
“I won’t let go,” he tells her, and finally Layla kicks away from Emma and into Finlay’s arms. I made a lot of assumptions about Finlay without even knowing him, and now I see him in a different light. Sliding my eyes back to Adrian, I tilt my head, assessing him, knowing I made the worst kind of assumptions about him too.
The day seems long but I’ve stopped counting the hours. I feel lighter, and not just because Adrian is holding me up in the water.
“Where did you come from?” I whisper, watching the water drip from his hair and down his face, feeling as if I’m drunk but I’ve only been drinking water.
“I’ve always been here,” he says against my lips. Safely behind the tubes, hidden away from Emma and Finlay, I tip my head back into the water while holding onto Adrian’s neck as an anchor knowing that he won’t let go, just like Finlay promised Layla, making her feel safe to take that risk and jump into the water. It’s enough to create a lump in my throat, and I close my eyes, not just to block out the sun but to block out everything from coming to the surface.
* * *
The river seemsto go on forever, but Adrian says we’re almost to the end. Safely back in the tubes, I watch as water droplets on my legs are burned away by the sun.
“Look,” Adrian says, rousing me from a groggy state, and I follow the direction he’s pointing to the riverbed some distance ahead. Sitting up in my tube, I shield my eyes further from the sun, staring in awe at the horses bending their heads to take a drink of the cool water.
“Oh my God,” I whisper as if my voice would scare them away.
“Look, Layla,” I hear Emma say.
“Horsies!” Layla’s high pitch squeal mirrors the feeling inside of me.
“They’re so fucking beautiful,” I say, and Adrian laughs at my choice of words, but I can’t think of any other way to describe them.
We float closer, entering the bottleneck of other tubes filled with people stopping to look at them. The horses paw at the rocks, their necks stretching down, touching their mouths to the cool water as if they are oblivious to our presence. I’ve never seen anything so majestic in my life, and I can only describe it as that; majestic. The sight moves through me, embeds itself in my memory, and I don’t even think to pull my phone from the dry bag to take a picture.
“Did you know they’re believed to be descendants of the horses brought over by Spanish missionaries in the 1600’s?” Adrian speaks for the first time, and I realize I’ve been gripping his arm so tight that I’ve left half-moon indents from my fingernails.
“They are unbranded, wild, and free,” he says nostalgically, and I watch, entranced, as more than twenty wild horses use the Salt River to take a break from the brutal summer sun. I’ve heard about them, of course, but I always thought they were a myth, hard to glimpse – like ghosts.
“I didn’t think there were any wild horses left,” I say, craning my neck as we pass by.
“The federal government wanted to remove them, called them stray livestock.”
“What a joke,” Finlay pipes up.
“But they’re still free, right?” Emma asks, holding a squirming Layla in her arms.
“There was so much public outrage it made national news, and the governor signed into law to protect them. Now people from all over the country come here just to see the wild horses, and all it costs is an $8 day pass to the Tonto National Forest,” Adrian continues, smiling at me.
“How do you know all this?” I ask, turning back to the horses, taking one last look as the river takes us farther away.
There are so many things I don’t know about Adrian, and what a tragedy that is.
He runs a hand through his hair, turning to me and drenching me with his gaze he replies, “I pay attention.”
