Page 28 of Forged By Sacrifice

“Why are you modifying your language?” Truck asked.

“Dude. Politics. Can’t run my mouth on TV.”

“I can’t believe you actually think you’re going to get elected,” Truck said, picking up where he’d left off earlier in his harassment of my goals.

“I’d vote for him,” Ava defended me.

“It’s slightly frightening,” Eli responded.

“It’s frightening that I’d vote for your friend?” Ava asked.

Eli shook his head. “No. Yes. Just the thought of Macauley here running our country.”

I stuck my hand to my chest. “That hurts.”

“Convince us then,” Georgie said, joining the conversation for the first time. “Tell us one thing you’re going to do.”

“Save the planet. World peace. Solve the hunger crisis.”

Everyone laughed, but I didn’t.

“You sound like you should be onstage at the Miss America competition,” Georgie said.

It hurt just a bit, but it was true that my statements were simple. Maybe even bordering on the ridiculous. Preposterous. Immature. And that was all on me, because I’d always joked about it with my friends. I’d teased about my plans and about sowing my oats before becoming the family man who was needed to run for office. I hadn’t meant it to sound so calculating. Yet, it was. There was more to it than just that. More to me. I didn’t want to run for office for the power or the glory. I wanted to run for office to make a damn difference. I might not have had the full plan yet, but I knew we could get there as a nation.

Georgie seemed to sense my emotions, because she said, “Weren’t you already out there saving the world in the Navy?”

“It isn’t the same.”

“Now wait a minute?” Truck said just as Eli added, “It is.”

“Come on. You both know I don’t mean to say that serving in the military isn’t a great way to make a difference. I’m just saying we need more than that. We need someone in government who can pull everyone’s heads out of their as?buttocks, so we can work together instead of separately.”

“I can’t believe you have that much faith in our country,” Truck said.

“No politics,” Eli chimed in before Truck or I could get riled up over anything. “You’re never supposed to talk politics or religion with friends.”

“That’s going to pretty much be impossible to stick to if Dickwad runs for office,” Truck griped.

I turned the conversation because Eli was right. We didn’t need to go down this road tonight. I raised my glass and brought us back to the joy we were celebrating. I said, “To Ava and Eli and Baby Wyatt. May he be brought into a world that has righted itself from the cliff it’s falling off of.”

“May she have health and happiness on top of all the love that she’ll have with you two as parents,” Georgie said.

“To Baby Wyatt, whatever gender, and to Eli and Ava for bringing us all together,” Truck added.

We clinked glasses, and Ava took a small sip before raising her glass. “To good friends, to Georgie’s new chapter going back to school, and Mac’s new chapter leaving the Navy.”

“School?” I breathed out before I could help myself.

“Georgie’s going to law school,” Ava said for her. Georgie had told me her undergrad had been pre-law that first night on the beach, but she’d stopped me from asking more questions, and I hadn’t pushed. I thought I’d learned everything I needed to know once she’d told me about her family.

“Nice! Congrats,” Truck said, sticking up a hand that Georgie high-fived. “Now Mac will have someone to bail him out when he gets caught with his pants down with his campaign manager’s wife.”

I snorted. “So not going to happen.”

“Why can’t his campaign manager be a female? Couldn’t he be caught with his pants down with her? Or maybe her husband? It would make the story just ever so slightly more modern,” Georgie teased Truck.

He blushed. “True. That was very old-school, sexist of me. Who do we really want him to get caught with his pants down with?”

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