Wings Over the River

Azia Archer is a writer and artist living in Minnesota, USA. She is the author of Atoms and Evers (dancinggirlpress) and is currently querying her novel, Small Birds, a lyrical work of upmarket women’s fiction touched by magical realism. Azia is the Editor-in-chief of the literary journal Root Smoke on Substack. You can find her online at aziaarcher.com or across social media platforms via @aziaarcher.

Wings Over the River

A Tully and Jeremiah Story

Jeremiah always walks a little too close to the water.

I notice it every time we take the river path—the way his boots drift toward the muddy edge as if gravity is pulling him there. The river moves slowly, slipping around stones in lazy bends, the sunlight breaking apart across its surface.

“Careful,” I call. “If you fall in, I’m not saving you.”

He glances over his shoulder at me, grinning.

“You absolutely would.”

“I absolutely would not.”

“You would,” he says with complete confidence. “You’d complain the whole time, but you’d still jump in.”

“Jeremiah.” I cross my arms, tilting my head.

“What?”

“I’d push you in further.”

He laughs, loud and easy, the sound carrying across the water and into the tall grasses. I’ve grown to love that laugh. It arrives before he does, like the world gets a few seconds’ notice that Jeremiah Triggs is about to make an entrance, all broad shoulders and that dangerous little grin.

“You always do that when you’re trying to scold me.” He mimics my stance in exaggerated motions. I roll my eyes and move past him, shaking my head.

We’ve been walking like this for months, through the changing Minnesota seasons. We started in September. It’s early June now. 

Five years after Joe died, we both came home again. I moved back into my room at the farm and Jeremiah finally abandoned a friend’s couch where he’d been hiding out and returned to his childhood bedroom next door. And slowly, without ever discussing it, we started walking. 

We walked along the creek that ran between our homes, the one we played in when we were kids. We walked across the fields in steady steps. We walked in the snow, the Narnian trees surrounding us. And for a while it felt wrong, the two of us alone. Grief had made us quiet. But eventually the quiet between us began to mean something else—ease, comfort, something in me already knowing the shape of him.

Tonight, we’re at Sibley Park. The Minnesota River slips beside us in patient curves. 

Somewhere out in the marsh, a pair of sandhill cranes move through the tall reeds, their long necks rising and disappearing again like pale ghosts in the grass. 

Jeremiah nudges a rock down the path with the toe of his boot.

“Bench?” he asks.

“Bench,” I agree.

The bench sits where it always has, overlooking the marsh where the river widens into a shallow wetland. The wood is sun-bleached, the paint long gone. Tall grass snakes around its legs as though it’s trying to reclaim it for the earth.

I sit first. Jeremiah drops beside me a second later, the bench creaking under his weight.

He’s close. Not touching, but close enough to put my body on high alert. I can feel the warmth of him, the heat of his arm bleeding through the thin cotton of his shirt. His breathing is slow and steady but every once in a while, he shifts slightly, as though he’s about to say something and then thinks better of it.

Jeremiah is a big guy—tall, thick through the shoulders, broad across the back. His white T-shirt clings to his biceps like it knows it’s lucky to be there. When we were teenagers, Jeremiah was a storm, energy barely contained inside a body too big for softer moments. He used to throw people into the lake during summer parties with one arm. Now, he’s pensive, contained.

I glance at him out of the corner of my eye when I feel his gaze on me. The storm looks strangely nervous. 

“You’re staring,” I say.

“Am not.”

“You are.”

“I’m thinking.”

“That’s worse.”

He smirks. “Why is that worse?”

“Because historically your thinking leads to questionable decisions.”

“Rude.”

“Maybe. But still accurate.”

He leans back on the bench, stretching his legs out in front of him, smiling.

“Maybe I’m thinking about something important.”

“Oh? Well now I’m curious.” I swallow hard. My stomach has chosen this exact moment to take up residence in my throat.

“You should be.” The way he says it makes my pulse jump.

I turn back toward the descending sun. It glows red and enormous over the marsh.

“As I was saying,” he says after a moment, “I’ve been thinking about something all week.”

“That’s usually a dangerous sentence.”

He huffs a low laugh but doesn’t look at me.

“Last Tuesday,” he says. “When we were out walking.”

“Oh,” I say, because I think I know exactly where this is headed.

He glances at me then, just once.

I lean back against the bench, watching a fish break the surface before slipping back under the current.

“We were passing those big maple trees,” I say.

Jeremiah exhales softly.

“And you were explaining something completely ridiculous.”

“I was not.”

“You absolutely were.”

“What was ridiculous about it?” he asks, looking mildly offended.

“You were explaining why raccoons could probably survive the apocalypse.”

“They probably could.”

“Jeremiah.”

“I stand by that theory.”

I laugh, but then the rest of the memory catches up with me.

“But then you got really quiet,” I say. “And you just… left.”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Because I was trying to work up the courage,” he says.

“And I couldn’t find it.”

“Courage?” I ask.

But I already know the answer.

He turns toward me and every nerve in my body wakes up. Then, almost absentmindedly, his arm drapes across the back of the bench behind my shoulders.

Not touching.

Just… there.

My pulse quickens. I briefly consider standing, walking it off, recalibrating.

He scratches the back of his neck with his other hand, suddenly looking very unlike the reckless idiot who once jumped off the highest quarry cliff on a dare. It’s disarming to see Jeremiah unsure of himself.

“I’m trying to decide,” he says slowly, “whether I’m about to ruin our friendship.”

That catches me off guard.

The air between us feels lighter somehow, but also tighter. Something invisible pulling us closer together.

Jeremiah’s arm slides down from the back of the bench.

Gradually.

Carefully.

Until it rests around my shoulders— a perfect fit.

My breath catches. My heart now joins my stomach in my throat.

We’ve hugged. Loads of times.

But that was Before.

And then there was the night at the cemetery, when we held each other for hours as we moved through our grief over Joe’s death.

But this is different.

Loaded.

Jeremiah leans a little closer.

“Tully?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re not going to punch me, right?”

Instantly the tension eases.

“No promises.” I laugh. I can’t help myself. Teasing and laughing with Jeremiah is second nature.

He huffs a nervous laugh. “That’s not comforting.”

“Then maybe you should reconsider your life choices.”

His eyes drop to my mouth for just a second and then back to my eyes.

Something electric passes between us.

He leans closer, slow enough that I could pull away.

But I don’t.

I can’t.

My heart is pounding now, loud enough I’m sure he can hear it.

“Jeremiah?” I whisper.

“Yeah?”

“You’re staring again.”

“Yeah,” he says gently. “I know.”

And then he kisses me. 

His mouth is warm and certain; proof he’s been starving for this.

But the moment our mouths meet, the world explodes.

A violent rattling cry tears across the marsh as a pair of sandhill cranes erupt from the wetlands below us. Their enormous wings beat against the dusk air, gray bodies lifting suddenly into the sky, prehistoric screams ricocheting between them.

I gasp against his mouth, jerking back in surprise.

Jeremiah startles too, half laughing, half swearing as the noise echoes around us.

“What the—”

We both jump to our feet.

The cranes wheel overhead, their calls echoing across the river as they climb higher into the golden sky.

For a second we just stare at each other.

Then we both start laughing.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Jeremiah says.

I’m laughing so hard I grab his arm to steady myself.

“Dinosaurs,” I gasp. “They sound like dinosaurs!”

“They are! They are actual dinosaurs! Just like chickens! I know it!”

Jeremiah says it with complete seriousness, and I know we’ll be revisiting this later. This is a raccoons-will-survive-the-apocalypse kind of theory.

“They screamed the exact second you kissed me.”

He runs a hand through his hair, shaking his head.

“Worst timing imaginable.”

“Perfect timing,” I say, because I know this moment will be carved into my memory forever.

The cranes glide higher, their calls fading as they disappear into the pinkening horizon.

Jeremiah looks at me, studying my face for a moment before leaning in again.

And this time, when he kisses me, the sky stays silent. But the wanting pulsing through me feels deafening.

We sit there long after the cranes disappear, alternating between watching the last light fade from the river and our mouths finding each other again—slow, curious, learning.

Jeremiah’s arm stays around my shoulders. My head drops against him, his cheek resting against the top of my head.

Somewhere above us, wings move over the river in the darkening sky.

And for the first time in years, the silence between us feels full of something other than loss or comfort.

It feels like the beginning of something.
Something bright.
Something a little reckless.
Something exactly like Jeremiah.