Rootbound

by Tarah DeWitt

Because that’s the singular constant in life, isn’t it? That one minute you are completely obliterated by it, and then in the next moment, it carries you toward something else, regardless of whether or not you’re still emotionally reeling.

She whips out her phone and manages to sync it to my Bluetooth immediately. I flinch and prepare for the worst … … And am pleasantly surprised when the first song is by Chris Stapleton. Not my favorite of his, but tolerable at least. The next song throws me off, though. Hootie & the Blowfish? Song number three is, straight up, an oldie: “The Chain” by Fleetwood Mac. After that, the chaos continues. I’m subjected to Justin Bieber, followed by George Strait, the Eagles, Katy Perry, Tom Petty, Post Malone, Shania Twain, Queen, then a few in a row that have the most filthy and/or violent lyrics I’ve ever heard (uncensored, and the girl doesn’t even bat an eye) … She mouths “spank me, slap me, choke me, bite me” without so much as a hesitant glance in my direction. It takes more than a song to scandalize me, but the unflinching, relentless randomness of this has heat creeping up my neck. Oh, sure, now we’re back to some country. I can’t take it anymore, and frankly, I’m starting to get a little afraid. “What. Is. This.” I try (and fail) to keep my tone neutral. She is momentarily shocked that I burst our long-standing bubble of silence. “What? It’s Tyler Childers.” “I know who this is. I mean what is this whole goddamn playlist? There is absolutely no rhyme or reason to any of it.” “What do you mean? They’re all good songs—that’s what it is!” she says, not trying to disguise her offense. “No,” I manage to respond with an annoyed sigh. “Ummm excuse me, what do you mean no?!” she...

Tait Von Frankenstein, or something to that effect, practically wears a “fuck off” sticker on her forehead.

The man is big, probably six and a half feet tall, I note—purely for the sake of being able to describe him to the police—and handsome, to be sure. Hemsworth-esque. But, as with many of his kind, he ruins it with speaking. I also decide that Wranglers are highly underrated on men. As are men’s legs. There’s something to be said about strong, thick legs on a man. The arms and shoulders and chests—they’re all great, but … good legs usually lead up to an equally good man-butt. Yep, can confirm.

I wrap my arms around it as its limbs flail. My hand closes around something and it slightly gives under my touch—squishy? “What”—a strangled gasp—“the”—more of the noise—“fuck?!!” it says. “That’s my BOOB!” the voice manages to push out while trying to swallow back air. I run my hands down and sure as shit, I feel how the body tapers in at the middle, and back up and out where boobs would, in fact, be … Fuck. Recognition surfaces … “Tait?!!”

“By the way, the saying is ‘colder than a witch’s tit’, not hotter,” I inform her, not without snark. “Huh? Why would a tit be cold?” “Not sure, probably because it’s implicating being coldhearted or something? And the heart is right beneath a tit?” “I thought witches were associated with hell, thereby meaning that their tits would be hot. Are you sure that’s not it?” “I’m positive. I have the dual pack of Grumpy Old Men and Grumpier Old Men on DVD and have watched them a million times. That is the first and only other time I’ve heard the saying colder than a witch’s tit.” “ANY chance you guys could stop saying ‘tit’?!” Grady chimes in. I look over at Emma to find her wearing the same “oops” expression as me, and we shrug.

Kiss the person to your left,’ ‘streak around the house three times,’ ‘send a dick pic to someone at the table’?! You play this with your family members?!” I laugh, horrified. “We have varying versions, okay?” Grady explains. “Note that the kiss doesn’t say where or with tongue or anything, and most are up for interpretation if you’re smart.” He taps his temple. “I once sent Grandma a picture of Dick Cheney when I pulled that card. This version at Henry’s place is admittedly the nastier, less family-friendly one because he never plays. The one we keep in the bunkhouse is by far the worst, though.” He beams with pride.

“Well, this one involves my sister, but she’s not here anyway, so screw it. When she found out she was pregnant, she had an ultrasound early on in her pregnancy that I went to with her, since her husband had to work. In the early weeks they do transvaginal ultrasounds, which means that there’s a wand that has to go up your hoo-ha, not the kind that just roll around the outside of the belly. “Nothing medical embarrasses me, or grosses me out, really. It’s why I originally went to school for nursing. I can deal with that sort of thing. Ava, on the other hand, cannot. She is horrified to be naked in front of a medical professional in any capacity, even as an adult. So, I am sure you can imagine her excitement, then, when her sonographer walks in, and it’s her ex-boyfriend.” Henry and Grady start to laugh, and damn, I love how Henry splays his hands like that, this time interlocking his fingers across his abs as if the laugh is trying to burst from him, as if he wants to hold it and keep it close. “So, they catch up. Ava is sitting there with her bits out, a paper sheet between them. This guy was still so completely hung up on her, even with another man’s child inside of her. He just kept chatting away, completely oblivious to her discomfort. I was dying in the corner, trying to keep in tears as her face just got more and more frustrated. And then she snapped, and she screamed at him. ‘Are you going to stick that thing up me or what, Anthony?!’” I die laughing all over again, ...

“How’d you know it was me?” she asks, catching up to my side. “You stomp your feet like the ground pissed in your Cheerios. I noticed it the first night I saw you in the woods. It’s probably why I mistook you for a Sasquatch,” I tell her, and immediately lose the hold on my expression when I see her affronted one. I blow out a quick laugh, and it draws out her smile. “Ass. I guess that explains why you tried to mount me, then. You finally saw one of your kind and went into rut?”

“When you were born, Tait, and when it came to you girls … it was like Vivien found what she was put on this earth to do. She was so enamored with you guys, amazed. We both were. But we stopped paying any mind to each other, except to hurt each other by what the other did or didn’t do. It’s really not a unique story, I know.” He takes a deep breath and looks at me nervously, like he’s approaching the part that he knows he’ll lose me on. “Our marriage died the death of a thousand little cuts over time. I had to carry on this family legacy that I wasn’t ready for, that I knew she resented me for—but it was what I knew, and what I wanted, I just didn’t have the balls to tell her. I was a selfish bastard, because I was so busy being wrapped up in myself that I didn’t make sure I prioritized you.” He takes a deep breath again. “I think as parents, we think of our kids as a kind of extension of ourselves, and don’t realize that they are their own human people … at least not right away. I think your mother and I had become too wrapped up in our bitterness toward each other to see you guys there in front of us. But Viv desperately wanted a family that stayed together, and when we failed, she felt like she failed. I hated the idea of making anything any harder for her, and yet I was so angry at her at the time. I know this sounds like a cop out, but I felt like I was giving her what she deserved when she asked for it, the chance to be the best mom she could be to you … because, whe...

Me: Tits a plan, then. Sweet dreams! Henry Marcum: Well, now that you’ve brought them up, I’m sure my dreams will be. Me: OMG. TITS. Henry Marcum: Yeah … I got that. Me: IT’S, OR EVEN TIS!!!! ONE OF THOSE.

“You honestly made fun of my playlist choices when you are rocking with THIS?!” She holds out my phone to me and breaks into a massive grin. Fuck … “Mamma Mia?!!! You’re into MUSICALS?!

“When you buy a new plant, you often have to cut the roots when it comes out of the pot. That way, when you put it into the ground, the roots will reach outward, and it will thrive. If you left it in that plastic pot, in that compacted shape it’s in, the roots would grow around and around in a tangled mass until it’d choke the life from itself. It would become too rootbound to grow.”

“Attagirl.” Oh, fuck. I’m tempted to grab a tortilla from the package nearby and slap myself with it. An “attagirl” has me practically preening; I think one of my knees caves a little.

“Honey, they’ve all been dates to me. I’ve just been waiting for you to catch up.”

I think I hear my heart crack for him—this kind man, who probably seems like a cranky asshole to any outsider, but who lives for the ones he cares about. Grump he may be, but I’d love for him to be my grump. He’s already become my favorite friend.

“I wish you could see how you glow. How you brighten a room every time you enter it. I can’t imagine anyone, ever, losing sight of that with you. And I’m glad you’re here, and that you’re not wasting your time with anyone like I did. I hope … I hope you’ll continue to.”

“You smell better than dinner, and I’d rather have you, Tait. So if you want to eat, I think it’s best if I stay over here.” And there it is. Because who are we fooling at this point but ourselves? I want him, and I plan to have him.

Also, how do I keep you? Is it way too soon to feel like this? I think you’re my soulmate and I never thought that was a real thing before I met you. You’ve turned my thoughts into an endless stream of cheesy romcom lines that are somehow applicable and understandable now. You had me at hello.

“No, Tait, really. I just have been so worried that the opposite would happen, you know? That all this would make you want to shut down and shut out more. But you’re out here living life like a Tim McGraw song!” I roll my eyes. “Stop.” “I mean, it literally sounded like that. You were all ‘I went four-wheeling, I went Rocky Mountain hiking, I went—2.7 seconds—in a pond with Cowboy Thor,’” she sing-songs, badly.

Just hold my hand and I’ll hold yours, and we’ll both get to where we’re headed together, okay?”

There’s no doubt that Tait is in my life, and will be in one form or another now, forever. We’ll have to see each other at holidays, at minimum. I’ll have to meet the guy she ends up bringing home one day. I’ll have to swallow this love like glass, and I’ll have to be her friend. While the thought of not loving her rakes its claws down my brain, the thought of not knowing her at all clogs my throat. And shit, this is not how I remember heartbreak.

All love, at some point, is going to be devastating, isn’t it? We all just choose to be brave, to go after what we want, who we want … even if it means potentially losing a piece of ourselves.

And a house or a state, a career, or even this ranch isn’t home, just because of its location. My life is me, and you, and this chaotic family that I don’t even have to worry about scaring you off with, since you already know how insane they are and love them anyway. My home, my life, is with the ones I love.

“Even if this ends up being forever, at some point something will happen and it will end—even if that end really is the whole ‘till death do us part,’ thing. It will end, somehow, someway, and it will be devastating. So, I’m not afraid of heartbreak again. What makes this worth it is that there will be heartbreak, because of how damn good it will be until that happens.” Her eyes fill and when she smiles a tear spills. “Even if this fails in a less than spectacular fashion, Henry, I want to love you until then. I want to love you until it’s devastating.

“I want to put down roots here: beside you, across a pond from you, somewhere new with you, I don’t care. You’ve made me want to do that, to plant myself somewhere and flourish.” My forehead falls to her stomach until I can steady my breathing. “I want to love you until I’m absolutely devastated too, Tait. I’m going to.”