Page 79 of The Primary Pest
Perhaps it was a school of little fish.
Time passed with only the sound of the wind and the rising and falling ocean swells between them. They were definitely too far out for seabirds.
“If you got back and could have anything in the world, change anything in your life,” Ajax asked, “what would you do?”
“Stay-at-home dad. Local soccer coach.” Dmytro smiled. “No. Kidding. I’d take a job training Iphicles men in hand-to-hand combat and weapons so I wouldn’t have to go out in the field anymore.”
“Why didn’t you do that before?” Ajax bumped his leg. He hoped it was Ajax, anyway. He caught Ajax’s feet between his and kept his legs as still as he could while still staying afloat.
“Conserve your energy, little mink.” Dmytro blinked away a splash of water. “When I’m in the field, the pay is astronomical. If I’m killed on the job, the insurance pays triple my income, plus they get my pension. They’ll never want for anything. That’s the trade-off.”
Ajax nodded. “I’m going to do something totally different from now on too.”
“Different than ‘whatever I want,’ do you mean?” Dmytro asked with a laugh.
“It’s not like that. People always think you can do whatever if you’ve got money. That money means freedom. It’s really kind of the opposite if you ask me.”
“How so?” Dmytro couldn’t wait to hear this.
“This is the perfect example, don’t you think? I doubt we’d be floating out here in the middle of nowhere if my dad worked at Taco Bell.”
“Guess not.” He held Ajax’s hand in his. Laced his fingers with Ajax’s longer, slender ones and noticed Ajax’s nails were turning blue.
“There’s the lack of anonymity, for one thing.” Was Ajax’s voice getting thready? “That goes straight away when your mom and dad send you to school in a town car with a bodyguard.”
“When did you ever seek anonymity?”
Ajax smiled and rearranged the papers on his face. The idea was ingenious, but they kept drying and blowing away, leaving salt crystals that looked like drying tears in their wake. Maybe those were drying tears.
“We’ll get out of this.” Dmytro offered vain hope and little else. There was always a chance. He’d done everything humanly possible. Ajax still wore his watch, although tampering withthe case like he’d done had destroyed its water-resistance, the tracker inside was waterproof. But Bartosz was the only one who’d known about the tracker. Since he was at the bottom of the sea, it was likely they would end up there as well.
Best not to offer that bit of information.
Best not to get Ajax’s hopes up too high because nothing good could come from realizing that’s all they were. Just hopes.
“There’s always a small chance.”
“Who’re you trying to convince?” A smile flickered on Ajax’s lips, then died.
Dmytro wiped water out of his burning eyes. “What are you going to do differently when we get back? No more Ajax Freedom, I presume.”
“I’ve been thinking about that for a while. I called myself Ajax Freedom to prove my independence to Mom and Dad. I made a lot of money off social media. Now, I can do pretty much whatever I want with my own money. Why does my life seem so simple from here where I can’t do a damn thing about it?”
Dmytro pulled him in for a gentle kiss. He couldn’t help himself. He’d fallen so deeply, deeply in love with this man, and now he couldn’t bear the thought of losing him.
Ajax broke away first. “I’m going to be Ajax Fairchild again. I’ll start some kind of story-hour podcast for kids, even if I can’t be the front man. We’ll read books. Play music. Keep kids company whose families are forced to leave them home alone after school. I’ve given it lots of thought since all this happened.”
“Sounds like a good idea.”
“What if I can leverage some of the money I got being Ajax Freedom to persuade large corporations to create on-site day care centers?” Ajax drifted away, and Dmytro pulled him back.
“We could… lobby Congress. Create better tax breaks for corporations that promote job sharing. Off-site employment opportunities… so families can be with their kids? Use encryptedtechnology to create… safe shared spaces where whole families can check in with each other, even if they can’t afford smartphones… or—”
“You want the children of working parents to feel what?” Dmytro asked, desperately trying to keep Ajax with him.
“Connectedto their families… Stimulated, educated, loved… whether their working parents can be on hand to deliver that love in person or remotely.” Ajax sighed. “Hey. That sounds like a mission statement to me. Got a pen? Better help me remember all this. I don’t feel so good.”
Dmytro wanted to cry. “How would you do it?”
