After maybe twenty minutes, he slows to an idle and kills the engine entirely.
The silence is almost absolute, broken only by distant motor boats, birds calling from the shore, and the lap of water against the hull.
Knox leans forward over the handlebars, rolls his shoulders, and just sits there. Face tipped up toward the sun.
"You okay?" I ask.
He inhales, long and slow, and lets it out like he's been holding it since Tuesday. "Yeah, this is a part I really like."
We sit like that for a while, the jet ski rocking gently on the water. The sun is warm on the back of my neck, and the heavy, secluded peace of the moment pulls my mind straight back to that night at the clearing. I remember how deeply intoxicating his scent was, and how badly I wanted to just bury my face in his neck and stay there.
Thinking about this is terrible for my self-control, though. Because right now, pressed flush against his back with the sun baking the wet neoprene and the lake rocking us in tandem, the boundary between "comfortable" and "intimate" is dissolving fast. I force myself to lean back just a fraction of an inch, putting a sliver of polite, necessary distance between us before the friction and my own runaway thoughts cause my nipples to pebble against his spine.
As if on cue, Knox turns his head, catching my eye with a slow, devastating smirk. "Alright. Ready to take the wheel?"
We manage a clumsy, rocking swap of positions right there on the water. He holds my elbow while I awkwardly swing my leg over the console, the jet ski tilting dangerously under our shifting weight. I grab his shoulder to catch my balance, and his large hand immediately lands on my hip to steady me. For about four breathless seconds, we are a tangled, slippery mess limbs.
And when I actually manage to take the driver's seat, I'm terrible at it. Overcorrecting, wobbling, and aggressively spraying him with lake water on every single sharp turn.
"You're a natural," he says.
"I'm a menace," I reply.
"Those aren't mutually exclusive."
Eventually, we beach the jet ski on a sandy strip on the far side of the lake—a secluded sliver of shore tucked between two rocky outcrops and shaded by massive pines. The sand is coarse and wonderfully warm under my bare feet when I step off, and I welcome the deep shade after the full, blinding glare of the water. Knox retrieves a small waterproof dry-bag from the storage compartment and produces two bottles of water and a bag of trail mix.
We eat in comfortable silence, sitting side by side in the sand with our legs stretched out toward the water.
"Thank you for taking me here," I say eventually.
"Don't thank me yet." He takes a swig of water and screws the cap back on. Then he reaches into the waterproof bag and pulls out something small wrapped in a paper towel.
I look at it. I look at him.
"It's not a big deal," he says quickly, handing it over. I unwrap it.
I unwrap it, turning the small envelope over. There's a handwritten label on the front. I read it twice, my jaw dropping. "Knox... are these Himalayan Blue Poppy seeds?"
"The authentic ones, yeah," he says, suddenly very interested in the sand by his feet. He draws a small circle with his index finger, erases it, draws another one. "You mentioned last week that our apartment balcony gets the exact weird microclimate needed for them."
I look from the impossibly rare seeds to him. "Knox, this is—these are incredibly hard to find."
"Good thing I know someone who knows someone, then." He smirks, then reaches up to rub the back of his neck, his voice dropping. "You've been... a really good roommate. And I figured the balcony needed something worthy of your skills."
A warm, heavy flutter kicks up in my chest, spreading rapidly outward from my sternum. I just sit there in the sand, clutching the tiny envelope to my chest and beaming at him. He glances up, catches the full force of the beam, and his ears go distinctly pink. The color starts at the tips and works its way rapidly down to his jaw.
He clears his throat. "Anyway." He stands, brushing sand off his legs. "We should get moving."
"Heading back already?" I ask.
He offers me a hand up. "Nope, time for part two."
***
The foot massage parlor is tucked between a bookstore and a coffee shop on a quiet side street I've never noticed before. The sign is hand-painted with golden characters on a dark green background, slightly uneven.
Knox holds the door, and we step from bright afternoon into warm, dim quiet.
