The Roots of Us

by Candace Knoebel

  “Do you have to work today?” I asked some time later, watching a flock of ducks chasing each other across the water, bills dipping in every now and then.

  He glanced over at me, a small grin brewing. His smile was art. A perfect masterpiece I wanted to collect. “I’m off until Monday.”

  “Three days?”

  “A perk of being the owner. I called Martha earlier to let her know I’d be taking some time off. She was more than happy to oblige. She’ll do just about anything to get me out of there so she can have the place to herself for a bit. She says I’m a loomer.”

  “I can see that about you,” I said with a small laugh, nudging my shoulder into his. “A brooding loomer.”

  He chuckled. “Maybe. If you’re free, I was thinking I could show you around town. You can’t become a local if you don’t know all the secret hangout spots.”

  “Really?” I asked as my heart did a small flip.

  He nodding, smiling. “How about you change, and then we can head out?” He paused, studying my profile. “Although, you in that shirt is doing something to me we might have to handle first.”

  I grinned like a fool. Straddled his lap, heat already spreading between my legs. “I think I feel what you’re talking about,” I said as I ground against him, pressing my lips against his. He was intoxicating. Thrilling. Delicious.

  He groaned against my mouth, and then lifted me up, carrying me back to the house.

  OCTOBER 20, 2015

  WE NEVER MADE IT OUT of the house. Not that day or the next.

  “I could stare at you all day,” he said.

  He picked up a piece of metal in his workshop, and then measured where he needed to make the next cut. The sun was beginning to set, a small bead against the horizon.

  I was sitting on a stool, wearing only his shirt, hair messy and lips swollen from his whiskery kisses. My overalls hung carelessly from the hand of the sculpture, an afterthought from the quickie we had earlier that morning up against one of his tables.

  I couldn’t have been happier. A feeling I wasn’t used to. It encompassed my entire heart. Made me feel like I could lift off the ground at any moment. I was drunk from it. High. Never wanting to come down.

  I smirked at him, heady and tempting. He sat the piece down and crossed the small gap between us, hands digging into my waist as he stole another deep, searing kiss. He tasted like mint and sweat, and I couldn’t get enough.

  “If you keep kissing me every two seconds, you’re never going to finish,” I said with a giggle. He pulled away, his gaze swimming with mine. We were somewhere far from there, in a world made of denial and hope.

  “If you’d stop looking at me like that, I might be able to resist,” he said, his tongue tracing the outline of my lips.

  I felt him in my marrow.

  It took every ounce of strength, but I pushed him back with a small laugh. “Go,” I said, waving him off. “I want to see the artist in action.” I reached for my camera and held it up, recording him as he seemed to dance between his tools and the metal structure of me he was putting together.

  Hours moved past us, but we didn’t know any different. I was enraptured watching him. Catching him at different angles as he welded and measured and cut. His muscles flexing with a fine sheen of sweat.

  I zoomed in.

  He did this thing where his tongue stuck just outside the corner of his mouth while he was concentrating. An adorable, humanizing gesture. His hair would fall in his face, out of his loose bun, a dark sliver shielding his eyes from me. I moved behind him, zooming in on the birthmark on the back of his neck, mind spinning with ideas on editing this shot.

  I stood back, lowered the camera to the pleasant roundness of his ass. He had a shapely ass. Muscular and tight, and just the right amount of—

  He spun around. “Are you recording my ass?”

  I lifted the camera to his face, wanting to capture his reaction as I said, “You have the ass of a god. I’d be going against my own principles of art if I didn’t put that ass on film.”

  He stepped closer, his face filling the small screen. “Would you like to see more?”

  He was taunting me. Playing my own game. He was already shirtless as his fingers found the buttons to his jeans. My heart was banging against my chest. I told my hands to remain steady so I could record the slow falling of his pants. He was a boxer-brief kind of man. Navy-blue material hugged his sculpted thighs as he stared into the camera.

  My mouth went dry.

  “Keep going,” I instructed, every fiber of my being turned on and ready by the erotic feeling of this moment. I’d never done this before. Never used my art in this way. A slow strum of acoustic music played in the background, his movements synced with the heady pace.

  His smile was dark and daring as he dug his thumb into the hem of his underwear, and then slid them down without a flicker of fear. Lord, help me, I thought as I drank him in. How could one person be so painfully beautiful? It wasn’t just his height and his muscle that made him feel large and overpowering; it was his presence. The way he held himself.

  I took my time moving around him, camera in hand, recording the beauty of his body. A recording I’d store away for only my eyes. A close up of the corrugation of his stomach. I imagined editing in an overlapping of the desert, my lips pressed together, blowing the sands of time across his belly. Every shot of skin inspired an image in my mind.

  “You’re sexy when you’re focused,” he said as I came around and stood in front of him, zooming in on his lips. I wanted to nibble on them. Take my time tasting his mouth. Learning the curves of his lips. “Now, come here.”

  I sat the camera down, eyes trained on his.

  He grew hard when I pulled off my T-shirt, leaving us both exposed and vulnerable to the camera. I wasn’t sure my heart had ever pounded that hard as he took me right there.

  “I WANT A COPY OF that,” he said, a hook of a smirk on his face.

  Electricity lived inside me, jolting every time he spoke. The thought of him watching us together made my heart race. Made me feel like I’d marked him in some way. It was our secret. The reason I chose the career I did… to keep moments like those forever, so when we were gray and our bones were brittle, we could remember the time when life was vibrant within us.

  “Only if you let me name her when you’re done.” I jutted my chin in the direction of his sculpture.

  “What will you call her?”

  I thought about it. Chewed on the corner of my lip. “She should be named Fortuna.”

  “Fortuna,” he said, testing the name.

  “After the goddess of luck and chance. It was luck I met you on the beach that day, and chance I found you in the diner shortly after.”

  He grinned. “Deal.”

  I slid my overalls on over his borrowed T-shirt, and then took in a deep breath of air. “I don’t know about you, but I could use some fresh air,” I said as I stopped at the door to his shed. “Want to walk with me?”

  We strolled through the garden in the back, following a pebbled path that artfully wove in and around the sprawling acres of his backyard. String lights hung from tree to tree, creating a majestic pathway to walk under.

  The time put into his garden had to be painstaking, almost as if it were a shrine. There were perfectly placed ponds with Koi fish and small, lit cascading waterfalls. A variety of lush, tropical plants in vibrant greens and yellows with display lights underneath them. It was a hidden paradise that stretched on, and it made me yearn for my camera I left back in the shed.

  “If I were religious, this is where I’d want to go to pray. Props to your gardener. “

  “My gardener thanks you for your compliment,” he said with a smug smile.

  I whipped my head in his direction. “Wait… you keep this up?” Surely this man couldn’t be real. He could cook. He could make art. He was deep and complicated and beyond handsome. And he could kiss like it was no one’s business.

  Couldn’t forget
that detail.

  “It was my mother’s.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I know it’s silly, but… I guess it makes me feel closer to her. Like I’m making her proud.”

  It hit me then. How fiercely loyal and giving he was to those he held close to his heart. His house, the garden, his diner, they were his trifecta keeping him glued together. It scared me, because he was good to his core. Always putting others before himself. There wasn’t enough of that type of goodness in the world. Everyone was always looking out for themselves.

  My heart softened more for him before I could stop it.

  I took his hand in mine, heart diving deep into the bright blue of his eyes. “What do you want, Hudson? Really? Everything I know about you tells me you’re living your life for everyone else. But what about what you want?”

  He stared at me for a moment, his eyebrows furrowing as he contemplated my question. His hand lifted, and then he brushed a curl behind my ear. “To have a family and be happy.”

  I saw it then, in his eyes that were steadfast on me. Tucking children into bed at night. Cozying up by a bonfire, laughing about that day’s activities. Growing old and turning gray, still madly in love. Things I never wanted. Things that didn’t sound as scary.

  Cool it, hormones, I told myself. What the hell was it with women and their biological clocks zapping them where it counted every time a sexy man talked about wanting children? I wouldn’t be another statistic, throwing my dreams aside so I could settle down and ruin some little person’s life.

  I cleared my throat and started walking, tucking my thumbs behind the straps of my overalls. “I’m sure you’ll find that one day, Hudson. Any woman would be lucky to share that dream with you.”

  My stomach sloshed at the thought, but I shoved the feeling away. I didn’t want a family. Kids needed parents who could put their own selfish needs aside. Mine didn’t. And weren’t we all a product of our upbringing? Cycles repeating themselves over and over until someone came along strong enough to break the bad ones?

  I didn’t have faith I could be that someone.

  Sad, but true.

  He fell back in step with me. Nudged me. “What about you? What would make you happy?”

  “Honestly?”

  He nodded.

  “To feel at peace.”

  DECEMBER 14, 2015

  I NEVER PLANNED ON SPENDING so much time with Hudson. Or in Florida, for that matter. Five months to be exact. I went there to clear my head before the start of a new project. Not to find myself in another relationship. Actually, I didn’t know how to label us. Lovers? Too emotional. Friends with benefits? Too casual. No matter how much time we spent together, neither of us brought the subject up. A subject I found myself dwelling on more often than not as of late.

  He had this way of making me forget.

  With him, I forgot about the real world.

  I forgot about my rules.

  I forgot about not getting too close.

  We were in his car, windows down, driving toward a surprise. Hudson liked to surprise me… a lot. He’d surprise me with coffee whenever I was out recording. He’d surprise me with a kiss whenever I was editing the small jobs I’d commissioned to keep a steady income flowing. He’d even surprised me with Oreos when I was stressing over editing my latest piece I’d be using for submissions.

  “Where are we going?” I asked for the millionth time as the salted breeze drifted through the car.

  He chuckled, the sound soothing and warm. A sound I’d grown too accustomed to. “Your lack of patience is alarming,” he teased. “It’s a wonder you’re able to edit for long periods of time like you do.”

  “I apply patience to the visual aspects of my life whereas, currently, I’m visually impaired. Therefore, patience can kiss my ass.”

  I scratched at the blindfold he’d wrapped around my head. It was satiny smooth. I thought it was one of his ties, but he’d appeared behind me and put it on too quickly for me to tell.

  “We’re pulling in now,” he said as his hand slid over my thigh and squeezed.

  His voice seemed deeper, gruffer with my eyes closed. It made me feel like putty. And why did my skin react that way every time he touched me? He’d touched me at least a thousand times since we first hooked up, but it still caused this weird, confusing, fluttering feeling in my stomach. I felt like a teenager who couldn’t get my shit together.

  A second later, I was blinking from the light, trying to clear my gaze as he untied the back of the blindfold. I glanced down. It was a tie.

  “Where are we?” I asked, looking at clearing in the woods in the middle of nowhere. “Don’t tell me… is this the part where you pull out a chainsaw and tell me to run?”

  He laughed and reached behind him, into the backseat. “If by chainsaw you mean picnic basket, then yes. This is the part where I tell you to get out of the car, so we can have our date.”

  “Oh… this is a date then? You know we’ve moved past the stage where you have to impress me to get into my pants, right?”

  He rolled his eyes, his grin in full effect. “Shut up, Hartley, and get out of the car.”

  “I like it when you’re bossy,” I said as I got out. We met in front of the hood.

  “Good. Spray this on,” he commanded, handing me bug spray.

  “Why?”

  He smoothed the pad of his thumb over my collarbone. “With skin as sweet as yours, you’ll surely be a mosquito lure.”

  I sprayed myself down, nearly gagging when I forgot to close my mouth. I was a mess.

  “This isn’t exactly my idea of a date,” I said as he took the spray and then reached for my hand.

  “I have something special planned. You’ll love it. Trust me.”

  The problem was I did.

  WE WERE SPRAWLED OUT IN front of a fire he’d made from fallen branches. It took us an hour to collect enough. An hour in which I learned he was resourceful. He knew all kinds of things about everything. It was like his brain was where encyclopedias dumped themselves when they were traded in for Google.

  “I’m stuffed,” I said after I took the last bite of my sandwich Martha had made for us. “If I could afford it, I’d steal her and hire that woman to be my personal chef.”

  He took my plate, and then put it back in the wicker basket before pulling me close against him. We were underneath a blanket. It wasn’t freezing, but it was cold enough for a blanket. Winter wasn’t the same in Florida. One day, it could be a comfortable sixty degrees, and the next, it was eighty-two.

  “Or you could stick around.”

  He had to notice when my muscles tightened, but he didn’t let me go.

  “Honesty?” he asked a second later.

  My stomach swooped. I was stuck in a balancing act between happiness and regret. The first expectation of his could knock me over.

  “Sure,” I said as I peered down at my shoes. I wore my Nikes. Good.

  “I like you, Hartley. More than a lot. I know we said we wouldn’t put conditions on whatever is happening between us, and I’m cool with that. I just want you to know what I feel for you is the realest thing I’ve ever felt, and if you decide you don’t want to run anymore, I want to be the one you stay put with.”

  He was good. Picked a place where I had no idea where I was, making it hard to get up and go.

  “You don’t mean that,” I said as I shimmied out from under his arm. I needed to put inches between his scent and his heat.

  “But I do,” he admitted. “And that look of fear on your face tells me you do, too.” He was so sure of himself.

  That was another thing that unnerved me about him. Why was it so easy for him to make up his mind about something? I still couldn’t decide if I liked strawberry or vanilla ice cream better, and I’d been eating it my whole life. How did he know he liked me enough to want to invest in me? Sure, we’d spent nearly every day together for the last three months, but three months wasn’t enough to dig the ugly out of someone.

  “Why
did you choose here?” he asked as he took my hand in his.

  I didn’t pull away. Damn it.

  “I pulled up a map, closed my eyes, and this city was where my finger landed.”

  “Sounds so simple.” He ran his finger over the grooves in my knuckles.

  “That’s because it was. Not everything has to be thought out.”

  “Do you think it’s coincidence?”

  My eyebrows dipped. “What?”

  “That you ended up here… with me?”

  I knew where he was going with this.

  “The spoon dropped. Remember?” he said, recalling that first day in the diner.

  I did remember. And I should have ran then.

  “It’s a superstition, Hudson.” I was trying to downplay it even though my heart was beating out of sync.

  His gaze captured mine, holding it, refusing to let go. “Maybe… but it came true, didn’t it?”

  A glimmer caught the corner of my eye. I turned from his fire-lit face, and my jaw dropped open. Meteors fell around us. It was breathtaking… like sitting in an amphitheater surrounded by streaks of light falling to a tune only the night could hear. They were everywhere. No certain point to fasten my gaze to. And there the thin, crescent moon sat, like a conductor watching his masterpiece.

  “It’s like the sky is crying diamonds,” I said, laying back with him, letting him tuck me close to his side.

  There were no words for what I felt then. Just this intense desire to freeze time. To thank every bad moment for allowing me to fully feel the beauty of what was happening.

  He handed me my video camera, which he must have hid in the basket. I didn’t deserve this… him… this moment. It was overwhelming, like sinking further and further into unknown waters. I was in this thing with him deeper than I understood, and I realized I had set us up for more than just heartbreak.

  “December brings the Geminids shower,” he said as my eyes did their best to take in all the meteors I could. Every time I gazed one way, another fell the other way. It was magical. Breathtaking. A videographers dream.