The Roots of Us Page 2

  I’d completely forgotten.

  “Did you?” I deflected.

  Mom made a noise under her breath. She did this every year on this day… poking and prodding me for information on my father, info she was too prideful to get herself. Sometimes, I didn’t understand her. How could she still think about someone who had completely ruined her life? How could she wonder what he was up to? It was like he took a piece of her when he left us. A piece she didn’t know was missing, but kept searching for in the information she wanted me to steal from him.

  “Hartley, I’m serious.”

  I sighed. “I planned on calling him after I showered,” I lied, idly scratching at the nail polish I’d spilled on the counter while painting my nails the other night. Gunmetal gray. Indifferent. Gloomy. Mysterious. Badass.

  At least, that was what I wanted to project.

  Calling my dad on his birthday was low on my priority list. It was down there beneath color coordinating my closet and making mini planters out of wine corks like I’d seen on Pinterest.

  “I doubt he’ll answer. It will be like last year. That woman of his does her best to pretend like he never had a life before her.”

  “He’s not exactly innocent,” I pointed out, trying not to think about my dad and the shit he’d put us through. But it was always there, a greedy, vile thing in the pit of my stomach dissolving every chance at happiness.

  There was a slight pause, followed by a gulping sound. She’d pulled out the yearly bottle of Cabernet, no doubt. There were only two times a year she indulged in a glass or two of the blood-red liquid—my father’s birthday and the anniversary of their divorce.

  “So what did you do today?” she asked, changing the subject as quickly as she’d started it.

  Bear Man’s eyes flashed inside my mind. Hues of blue swirling behind my lids. “I checked out the beach, and witnessed a little girl almost drown.”

  She gasped.

  “Luckily, there was a man there who was able to save the girl. Estella was her name.”

  “Where were her parents?” Her voice was riddled with judgment.

  I stuck my finger in the water. Perfect temperature. “Her mother had gone to the car to put their stuff away.”

  “Some people,” she said, and I could almost picture her shaking her head. “I swear, every generation gets worse. Parents too busy or too lazy to look after their own children. Thank God I won’t be around to witness when it goes to shit.”

  I shook my head with a small smile. “Nice, Mom.”

  She wasn’t listening. “Thankfully, I raised you right. I can rest at night knowing no grandkid of mine will become a little asshole. All those whiny kids I see nowadays. Glued to an electronic device. Crying when they don’t have it. Blaming everything wrong in their lives on others.”

  “Well, lucky for you, I don’t plan on having kids,” I reminded her, reaching to turn the water off. I’d lived with two people who started something they couldn’t finish. I wasn’t about to put myself, or a child for that matter, in that situation. I never wanted to feel the chains of love around my neck, allowing someone else to hold the key.

  I could almost hear her rolling her eyes through the line. “I still think that’s a tad extreme, Hartley. You just wait. You’ll change your mind when you’re older and finally meet the right man.”

  I raised my gaze to the ceiling. She always found her way back to this subject. My mom was single-minded when it came to her plans for my future. As if men were the sole purpose women were put on this planet. Too often it was engrained in our heads that we couldn’t live a normal life if we didn’t have a man by our side and a baby on our hip. I was done waiting by the phone for a man who didn’t have the depth and courage to put me first. I wouldn’t put myself through that again. Ever.

  “I’m twenty-seven, Mom, and it’s not about meeting the right man. I have a lot I want to do with my life, and raising a family was never something I saw for myself.”

  “You think I saw it for myself?”

  I didn’t answer. She might have forgotten who she was before Dad cheated and left, but I hadn’t. We had the perfect house. The perfect life.

  And then it crumbled with one selfish decision.

  “I still think it’d do you some good to find yourself a boyfriend.”

  I hated that she lived her life through me. It only worsened after my parents split up. I’d become her companion. The brunt of her scattered, broken emotions. Smothered by her one moment and abandoned the next. It hadn’t gotten any better until she decided to see a doctor a few years back.

  “Have you?” I retorted.

  “Hell no. There’s no way in hell I’ll ever let a man run my life again.”

  “Maybe you should become a lesbian then,” I said with a small smirk.

  She didn’t waste any time giving it right back to me. “I just might. Maybe I already am.”

  We both laughed, but the laughter was short-lived when a scream erupted from me.

  “What in the hell?” Mom said.

  Still shrieking, I jumped onto the toilet, trying to get as far away as I could from the god-awful thing scurrying along my floorboard.

  “It’s a monster! So gross,” I shouted, searching around for anything I could kill it with. It was moving toward me at an alarming rate. Hell-bent on attacking me, I was sure.

  “What is it?” Mom asked. Calm. Collected. As if my life wasn’t on the line.

  “I don’t know. Some kind of huge, disgusting brown thing that looks like a roach but only a million times bigger,” I screamed as I hopped onto the counter. It moved behind the toilet.

  “It’s probably a palmetto bug. You’re in Florida, honey. They’re everywhere.”

  I grabbed my can of hairspray and sprayed the shit out of it, then used some toilet paper to squash it. “I think I’m going to throw up,” I said, dropping it in the toilet and quickly flushing it.

  Every badass had their weakness.

  Bugs were mine.

  Seconds slipped by, the silence clenching back its laughter.

  “Are you alive?” Mom finally said.

  “Funny.”

  “Hartley,” she said after a moment.

  “Yes, Mom?”

  “Don’t make the same mistakes I did. Being alone is something I chose, only because my time for love has come and gone. I’m finally happy inside the skin I’m in, but you… the whole world has presented itself to you. It would do you some good to open your heart to someone.

  “I know… I know everything wasn’t perfect when you were growing up. I wasn’t the best example… especially when it came to men, but they’re not all like your father. The good ones are still out there, waiting.”

  Her words made me itch. It wasn’t often that we talked about the ugly parts of life. I was never the child who clung to my mother’s side or crawled onto her lap at night. Human touch wasn’t something I craved. I needed space. Room to breathe. To me, emotions were like clothes. Both a necessity to wear.

  But I didn’t like my clothes tight-fitting, just like I didn’t like tight-fitting emotions.

  “I love you, Hartley,” she said, knowing she’d hit her limit with me of emotional talk for the day.

  “Love you too,” I said before hanging up.

  After soaking until the water turned cold, I got out and sat on the edge of my bed. Still wrapped in a towel, I scrolled through the numbers until I found my dad’s. He was listed under asshole, so I didn’t have to scroll far. I debated calling him. The last time he’d called me on his own was when I was sixteen, a week after my birthday he hadn’t shown up for, and it’d only been to ask if he left his favorite fishing pole in the garage.

  Needless to say, we hadn’t spoken much after that.

  For years, I wondered what I did that made it so easy for him to leave. I searched for the reason every time I walked away from a relationship, but always came up short.

  Leaving a man wasn’t the same as leaving a child.

/>   How could he wake up every morning and not feel the need to check on the first person he ever helped create? Wasn’t he curious about me? Did he ever want to know how I was doing? I picked and picked and picked at my scabbed memories of him. Was I too clingy? Had I cried too much as a baby? Did that one time when I was seven and complained about having to watch him play golf push him further away from connecting with me?

  Mom never said it was my fault he left, but she’d never said it wasn’t either.

  Compulsively, I reached for my laptop and logged onto Facebook. I couldn’t help myself. I was a glutton for punishment. He didn’t have a profile, but his new wife did. It only took a second to find her. A second I never should have taken.

  There they were—his shiny new family—plastered on my screen. Smiles and hugs and laughter frozen within frames of lies he kept buried inside. They had one child together. My half-brother. I’d never met him. I doubt he even knew about me. Trevor was his name. From the pictures of his latest birthday, I saw he had just turned ten.

  Though we shared different mothers, I saw a piece of myself in him. The piece that connected us. We shared the same almond-shaped eyes Dad had given us. The same smile that curved more to the left than right.

  I felt a strange bond toward him. A desire to protect him… wishing my father could be the father for him he couldn’t be for me.

  I scrolled some more. There was a newer picture. One I hadn’t seen before. He was holding his new wife in his arms, gaze twinkling as he gazed down at her on the dance floor at someone’s wedding. The status read:

  Fourteen years and counting. Love you and our little family to the moon and back.

  After closing the laptop, I pushed it away, vowing never to look him up again. I wasn’t going to call him—I refused. I made a promise to myself on New Year’s Eve to stop living for others and to start living for myself. Taking the two-month trip I promised myself to Florida before jumping into a new editing project was the first step in following through with my pledge. Mom didn’t want me to go. It upset her that I was so far away. But I needed space to think. Time to clear my head.

  I glanced at the phone with a small, triumphant smile. This year, things were going to change. I was going to change, one hard choice at a time.

  I fell asleep comforted by the words from Alone by Edgar Allen Poe, wondering when I’d slay the demon in the cloud.

  AUGUST 23, 2015

  I PUT MY CAR IN park as a cloud of dust swarmed in behind me, swallowing my Volkswagen bus whole. It was an old green and white bus I bought straight out of high school. I fell in love with the shape and the idea of all the memories made back when peace, love, and happiness were the mantra.

  When the dust cleared, I found myself staring at a hole-in-the-wall diner on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere while the sun played hide and seek between the clouds. For the past week, I’d passed by this place on the way to the small house I rented along the shore, feeling a strange pull to visit.

  I never ignored intuition.

  There wasn’t much to the outside. A weathered wooden sign nailed to the front read: Ellie’s Dockside. Beige paneling in dire need of a good scrubbing wrapped around the building. A string of lights half-hung from the gutters that had probably been there since the first Christmas they were strung.

  But there was this amazing sculpture made from welded metal by the front door of a dog… maybe a bulldog… sniffing at a man’s feet sitting on a bench by the front door.

  I reached for my camera and snapped a picture. It was an addiction of mine, stealing and collecting moments and memories. I was a visual person, desperate and hungry for life to feed me all it had to offer. I could build a new world through pictures, one where beauty was found in the simplest of things.

  Grabbing my messenger bag, I hopped out, the gravel grinding beneath my boots. There was no sign of a storm in the sky. Like a bad breakup, Mother Nature had a way of moving on as if nothing ever happened, even when she left destruction in her wake.

  I walked through the front doors, noting there was barely a soul inside, but the scent of home cooking lured me further in. Grease. Poultry. Spices…

  I froze.

  Bear Man was sitting at the bar, hunched over at the far end of the room, his grizzly reflection blurred in the window. His hair was pulled into a bun atop the crown of his head. We’d spoken but a few words to each other. Not nearly enough to make an impact, yet there I stood, heart and lungs sputtering like they’d forgotten how to work. Like I hadn’t ran into someone I was attracted to before and been able to take control of the situation.

  But this time was different. He was somehow different.

  And I had absolutely no idea why.

  He raised his head. For a moment, I thought he recognized me. It was obvious in the sharp-edged awareness stabbing through his eyes. The way his gaze refused to move away from mine. My hand rebelled against my mind’s orders and lifted, offering a small wave. Why didn’t I take that extra five minutes to brush my hair this morning? I thought when I dropped my hand and waited.

  His shoulders stiffened, but his hand never lifted in return. He went back to reading the newspaper in front of him. Acted as if he didn’t see me, when I knew he had.

  Shocking.

  Screw you too, Bear Man, I thought, rolling my eyes.

  Engaging with men who had sad eyes and tough demeanors was dangerous. They felt this need to put on a front. To act like they were indifferent despite the intrigue that was there. I’d seen it one too many times. Call it my Achilles heel. It was exactly why I left the last town after filming was over. Why I continued to leave every town after hooking up with someone.

  I had a three-month rule. Date, and then when it got serious, move on.

  Men were dangerous. Untrustworthy. Impermanent.

  My father was proof of that.

  A young man lifted his head from the table he was wiping down, a smile warming the lines in his face as soft notes of music played in the background. “Don’t mind him. He’s allergic to civility,” he said, his eyes playing over me.

  “Lucas…” Bear Man growled in warning, his voice grisly and deep. He didn’t turn when he said this. Just kept looming over the bar sidled against the wall of windows overlooking a lake. Was he the boss? He had to be. He had that prickish air about him. A sort of managerial vibe that shouted haughtiness. I dated my fair share of men that were in charge. Producers. Directors. They were all dicks. All thought a title over their name made up for what they lacked in bed.

  Lucas rolled his eyes. Lifting his hands like claws, he mimicked a bear growling. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who thought Bear Man had a stick shoved up his ass.

  The thought made me snicker.

  “Sit anywhere you like,” Lucas said. “I mean, I might have to make some arrangements with the others in here.” He turned and gestured to the empty building. “But I’m sure we can fit you in.”

  “How about there?” I pointed to a table for two next to the front window. The sun streamed in at a glorious angle, bathing the small, worn-down table in golden light.

  “There works. I’m Lucas.”

  I smiled, gripping the strap straddling my shoulder. “Hartley.”

  Lucas had an easy air about him. His skin was bronzed, his golden head of hair shaggy and stiff, probably from salt water… a standard I’d noticed often with Floridians near the beach. I couldn’t mistake the scent of the ocean coming from him… a mixture of salt and coconut suntan lotion. He wore cargo shorts, a white T-shirt, and flip-flops… something I was still getting used to commonly seeing around there.

  “Would you like anything to drink, Hartley?” Lucas asked.

  “An iced tea would be good.”

  “Be out in a flash.”

  Lucas disappeared through the double doors. I noticed Bear Man was sitting straighter, his hard eyes stealing small glances of my reflection in the window as I moved past the booths to the table for two.

  I
let him watch. Put an extra sway to my hips just to take back ownership of his earlier shutdown. Eat it up, buttercup.

  After sitting, I pulled out my laptop, aligning it in ritualistic fashion. Square with the table. Opened at a perfect forty-five-degree angle. Those were things I had control over. Things I could rely on being.

  “One iced tea for you, madam,” Lucas said, setting it down.

  I moved it back an inch, so it was flush with my laptop.

  “And here is our menu,” Lucas continued, handing it to me. It was a laminated piece of cardstock that appeared handmade. “Our special today is a pan-seared flounder over a bed of arugula, topped with a spicy aioli, but I like to suggest the codfish and chips. Ours is unlike any you’ve ever tasted.”

  I made a face.

  His eyebrows dipped. “Not into fish?” The left side of his mouth lifted into a smirk. He had nice teeth. “If you flip the menu, there is a section dedicated to poultry on the back.”

  I felt the burn of someone watching me along the side of my face. It was Bear Man. He was using the window to study me. I glanced at the appetizers, since I wasn’t super hungry. I’d just devoured a small bag of Oreos I packed this morning.

  “Can I get an order of potato skins, please?”

  “Sure thing.” Lucas turned and headed back through the double doors.

  “Hudson,” a woman shouted from the back. I turned in the direction of the voice, barely making out a tuft of silvery hair bobbing from behind the round window on the swinging door to the kitchen.

  With a groan, Bear Man picked up his coffee and headed to the back, keeping his eyes trained forward.

  Hudson, I thought, like the river.

  He was larger than I initially noted. As tall as the doorframe and just as thick, too. Muscles rippled beneath his white shirt and dark blue jeans as he took large, hulking steps, face pressed in a natural grimace.

  Was he always like that? So overbearing and brooding?

  Turning my attention back to my laptop, I started going through my emails to find my next job offer. I wanted to be a part of something different the next time around. Film a piece that opened people’s eyes to common misconceptions.