“They were broadsided by an SUV that barreled through a red light, so I guess that was the best case scenario, because from what the first responders said, it was fast and painless.” A lone tear skimmed down the rough terrain of Phil’s face, catching on his beard. He ignored it, continuing, “But I always thought that was odd, to assume to have any notion of someone else’s pain. Who’s to honestly say they didn’t feel pain? What? Is it just because they couldn’t speak of it? Because no one heard their cries?” Phil sniffed loudly and shuddered, which seamlessly led to him shaking his head back and forth. “I can guarantee you, unspoken pain doesn’t hurt any less.”
The pieces clicked into place.
“That’s why you get people to talk about it,” I said, making sense of his words. “That’s why you do what you do. Help people process their pain.”
He was stoic as he offered me a smile meant to be kind, but one that carried the heavy weight of sorrow within those two lips. “No, Eppie. I don’t think so necessarily. I think maybe that’s why I was dealt the pain, because I’d been preparing for it for so long.”
“What an unfair world you believe in.” I sighed.
“It’s not a matter of me believing in it or not, it’s just what exists.” Phil tossed his glasses to the dashboard and reached across his body to unclasp my seatbelt. “Pain exists. And horrible people who don’t realize the gifts they’ve been given—those people exist, too.”
“Like Lincoln’s parents,” I said.
“Like Lincoln’s parents. Like your parents.” He rubbed his eyes with two balled up fists, then pushed his hands through his hair before waving toward me, shooing me from the car. “Go on inside. Get some sleep. I’ll be by to take you back to the station in the morning.” A yawn tacked on to his gesture indicated that this night should be over, for all of us. I was so done with this day. With my birthday. “You remember where Lincoln said to look for the money?”
“Yeah. Under his bed.”
Phil laughed gruffly. “Be careful what you find there, my dear. The space between a teenage boy’s mattress is a very sacred place.”
I chuckled, too, grateful for the relief, but nervous by the statement.
“I’ll proceed with caution then.” Just before I exited the vehicle, I turned back to Phil, waiting until he looked back over at me and I had his attention. “Thank you,” I said in a quiet, almost apologetic, voice. “For coming to our rescue tonight. I really appreciate it. I mean, it’s late and I’m sure you’re tired and—”
“It’s nothing, Eponine,” he assured.
“That’s absolutely as far from the truth as you can get. It’s something, Phil. Really something.”
All he did was smile, and there was no sorrow masked within it this time. It felt warm, like a hug. A hug from someone who loved you completely. “In that case,” he said, lips still upturned, “You are most welcome.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
“Hey.” Dan stopped just outside of Lincoln’s bedroom door, his fingers on the gripped hand rim of his chair. “Hey, Eppie. I didn’t know you were here.” He backed up enough to rotate directions and pushed forward a cautious foot or so, waiting in the doorframe. “Mind if I come in?”
“Oh, yeah. Hey, Dan.” I propped up on my elbows. I must’ve fallen asleep because my heart raced as though suddenly stirred from a dream and my mouth was tacky and dry. Rubbing my eyes and glaring against the overhead light I’d left on, I said, “Of course, come on in.”
“Sucky birthday, huh?”
“Not all of it.” I shrugged as I pulled down Lincoln’s covers and swung my legs over the side of his bed. My bare feet hit the hardwood and I toed at the worn divots in the flooring with a chipped pink toenail. “Most of it was really great, actually. Just the whole boyfriend-turned-felon thing. That’s kind of a bummer.”
Dan’s smirk was a good one with two pouty lips that made his face permanently look flirtatious. He threw his head back a little, causing his sandy hair to flick across his forehead and drop into his light eyes. He shook it out quickly. “Yeah,” he laughed. “I can see how that could be the case.”
“I don’t know, though,” I started. “Kinda makes him seem hardcore, you know? I think we can work with that.”
“Hardcore and Lincoln don’t even belong in the same sentence. He’s a softy through and through.”
I thought of Lincoln—of his perpetual smile and penchant for anxiety over worries legitimate and unfounded. Maybe he was a softy, but that was okay. Being hardened by this world, I figured, was a true tragedy, and Lincoln didn’t belong in a tragedy. A comedy of errors, possibly, but not a tragedy. For as long as I was in his life, I wouldn’t let that be the outcome.
“Did they set bail?”
“I don’t think so. Officer Marlin said it would be morning before we’d know the amount, and I have no clue how we’re even going to come up with the cash.”
That wasn’t entirely true. From the time of Herb’s accident, I knew that Lincoln had been setting aside his paychecks to cover the cost of our dog’s surgery. Those savings—he’d said—were located directly underneath me at the moment, sandwiched between box springs. All I had to do was flip the mattress back to retrieve it.
“Can I enlist your help with something?” I asked Dan and he nodded before the full sentence was even out.
“Of course.”
“Lift this up?” I pointed to the bed. “He’s got money under here. I don’t know—it feels kinda personal for me to go rummaging through Lincoln’s stuff like this. I’d rather have an accomplice.”
“Certainly. Glad to help,” Dan said. His hands were already heaving the pillow-top upward before I had a chance to hop from my perch. “Though I can’t unsee anything I may find under there. I’m charging you for any therapy I may have to enroll in as a result of whatever horrors I may uncover.”
“No worries,” I laughed. “I happen to know a guy.”
Dan gasped. “Oh dear.”
“What?” My heart picked up speed and my fingernails were between my teeth instantly. “What is it?”
“Oh no. This is awful.”
“What?”
“Your boyfriend has a real problem.”
Porn. It was certainly porn. All guys struggled with it, right? I mean, of course a nineteen-year-old kid would have stacks and stacks of pinup-worthy women wedged under his bed. But wait, wasn’t that what the Internet was for? I couldn’t figure why he’d have physical copies when silicon enhanced images were just a mouse-click away. My skin clammed up and I tried not to let it bother me, but insecurity swept in and I unintentionally folded my arms across my own chest, hiding within myself.
“What kind of problem?” I asked slowly, not wanting the real answer.
“Yuck,” Dan grimaced with a dramatic shudder. “A truly awful one.”
Okay, so maybe it wasn’t pornography. I couldn’t imagine that Dan would be so disgusted when I assumed his own Internet history would point to the same sorts of vices.
“How awful?”
“Your boyfriend... Wow.” Dan swiveled around, a stack of some unidentifiable magazine upside-down in his lap. “You’ve heard of bestiality, yeah?”
Oh, hell. I was getting nauseous just at the thought, and I had no idea what to even think.
“Yeah, I guess.” My stomach tumbled.
“Well, this is so, so much worse.”
What on earth could be worse than the sort of perversion Dan was hinting at? I couldn’t handle it anymore. Just as I was about to rip the magazine from Dan’s grasp, he flipped it around and cocked his head devilishly, his blue eyes slivered into thin, teasing lines. “Mechanophilia, sick bastard.”
An image of a very Trudy-like camper graced the cover of Vintage VW. Dan shuffled about five more similar periodicals through his fingers, groaning at the sight of each one like the next was worse than the last.
“What are you doing?”
My hands dropped to my side and I spun around. “Lincoln!”
“Hey buddy!” Dan cheered, tossing the magazines into the air like the celebratory release of a graduation cap. They fluttered down around us and I could feel the soft breeze from the pages against my skin.
Lincoln immediately dropped to the ground to recover his precious stash. “Hey, man! Be careful with those. They’re vintage!”
“Yeah. I kinda picked up on that from the title.”
Lincoln was tending to the disarray when I tackled him for the second time today.
“What are you doing here?” His shirt twisted within my fingers and I wrung it tighter as I pulled him up to me. Disbelief filled my tone and my expression. I shook my head, not quite convinced he was truly here in front of me. “How did you get out?”
“My parents dropped the charges.” Like I didn’t weigh a thing, Lincoln lifted me by the hips and placed me to the side. His knees crackled as he rose to stand, collected magazines in hand. “They still claim they own Trudy, but they’re willing to talk it out tomorrow at their house instead of next week in the courtroom.”
My mouth quirked into a frown. “How very generous of them.”
“I know, right?” Lincoln smiled and swiped his finger across my nose. “Anyway, I’m gonna go wash the prison smell off of me. I’ve got criminal funk deep in my pores.” He leaned down to drop a chaste kiss on my forehead, yet Dan still audibly groaned.
“Don’t drop the soap!” With his hands cupped around his mouth, Dan taunted a very exhausted, very drained Lincoln. Even though he was both of those things, he managed to eke out a feisty, “Hardy, har,” before heading to the bathroom.
For the next half hour, Dan and I talked while Lincoln spent a well-deserved break showering off the day’s events. We spoke of Lincoln’s parents, of Dan’s deep-seated dislike for the entire Ross family—Lincoln excluded—and the many ways in which this sudden and unexpected occurrence wasn’t quite so sudden and unexpected.
“They’ve always been horrible,” Dan had said, his jaw set and teeth gritting down tight. “I was two years older than Lincoln in school and much closer in age to his older brothers. I think his parents thought that was weird—that I’d choose to hang out with someone younger when Tommy and I were peers. But the truth was that Lincoln was the only likable person in that family. All they ever did was criticize him and put him down.” The water had shut off in the adjoining bathroom, but Dan kept talking, pulled deep into the memory. “I stood up to his dad once. Didn’t end well. He’d been giving Lincoln grief about some ball cap he wanted to wear. Said it made him look uncivilized or some senseless shit like that. Said he was always hiding under the brim of a hat because he was too much of a coward to look people in the eye.”
My heart stuttered in my chest and I unintentionally clawed at my skin like that could get it beating on track again. But it just hurt. My heart hurt for Lincoln.
“I told his dad to suck it and that landed me out the door and on my ass, but I didn’t leave before telling Lincoln what I really thought.”
My eyes were wide and my mouth gaping. “And what was that?”
“That wearing a damn hat didn’t make him a coward. That people took off their hats as a show of respect, and his father didn’t deserve any of his.”
I’d heard the blow-dryer click on and smiled inwardly at the adorable fact that Lincoln dried his hair. He really was just too much sometimes.
Dan continued. “I told him to let that hat be a reminder that there are choices in this life, and you get to choose whose opinion you value. I said, ‘Wear your cap every time you need a little confidence, and know that it’s pretty much the same as giving your dad the finger.’” His shoulders rolled with the chuckle that escaped and he shook his head in a way that indicated a sense of accomplishment. “I’m not even sure if he remembers the conversation, but I haven’t seem him go a day without it on his head since.”
After that, a freshly-cleaned Lincoln joined us back in the room and Dan excused himself, saying he planned to wait up for Sam while watching ESPN highlights and eating an entire carton of cookie dough ice cream all on his own. He’d offered for us to join him, but Lincoln politely declined, while at the same time giving me a look that made my insides mush.
“So,” I said as soon as the door shut behind Dan and we were alone. “You dry your hair, huh? Didn’t take you for much of a primper, to be honest.”
If the way a guy’s mouth curled could be considered sexy, Lincoln’s was exactly that. I was beginning to think the corners of his mouth were the most sensual parts on his body.
“I don’t typically dry my hair, no. But I didn’t really want it dripping on you.”
“And why would it drip on me?”
“Um, I don’t know,” Lincoln smirked. “Maybe when I did something like this?”
His hand reached forward and he swung an arm around my waist. Then, like we were dancing, he waltzed me backward to the edge of the bed until my knees buckled against the solid mattress. We dropped down together in a pile of laughter and racing hearts and hormones.
“Doing time has made you a bit horny, huh?” I giggled against his mouth as it collided with mine for a kiss.
“Well that just makes it sound creepy.” Lincoln popped up and shook out his hair, demonstrating the effectiveness of his thorough drying. I laughed into his solid chest. “But truthfully, the thought of being apart from you—unable to talk to you or even touch you—makes me want to do nothing but absolutely that.”
I pressed up for another kiss, and my tongue darted into his open mouth. Delving in deeper, Lincoln’s traced mine and our bodies meshed together like even though he stood a good foot taller than I did when we were vertical, we were always meant to go with one another. Like there was no difference between us. Like together, everything just fit. He hooked one lanky leg around my hip and snuggled down close and we became one as much as our clothes and hearts would allow.
We kissed for at least an hour, until the clock read nearly 2:00 a.m., and we traded positions and breath as we found new places to tease and explore. All the while Lincoln remained a true gentleman, even when my body tempted him otherwise. He was cautious and courteous, and when he lifted up to look me in the eyes and murmur with raspy words, “Stay with me a little while longer?” I didn’t even have to speak my answer.
Of course I would. Of course I’d stay. I couldn’t imagine ever leaving.
THIRTY-EIGHT
In the morning, Lincoln got me up to speed on why he thought his parents would do such a thing as jump to stolen vehicle conclusions when they clearly knew its whereabouts and in whose garage it resided. We sat at the round kitchen table and ate a breakfast he’d prepared (which included what I figured was an entire pig’s worth of meat), and it almost felt like playing house, except for the fact that I’d stayed with Sam in her room last night, rather than curled up close in Lincoln’s arms. He’d said he wanted to save our firsts, and waking up next to me was one he wanted to hold out on for just a bit longer.
“So when I turned sixteen,” he spoke as he snapped a piece of crunchy bacon between his teeth, “I needed a car, or at least I figured I did. Kind of that whole rite of passage thing. Anyway, my dad had an old run-down VW camper just sitting in the garage. It had been his when he was my age and I’d had my eye on it since I was eight.” He shoveled another heaping forkful of eggs into his mouth and I was suddenly reminded of our first date back at the diner months ago. Something in my gut fluttered at the thought, those butterflies still in there, reawakened. “I figured it would be the ultimate father-son bonding experience, you know? All the movies and TV shows depict it like the best conversations about life and love occur under the hood of a restored vehicle.”
I took a sip of my orange juice, quieting my swallow because the kitchen was silent and his words were intense. “And that’s not what happened,” I inferred based on his expression.
“No, no it wasn’t. We didn’t work well together, when we did work together at all. He’d promise me a Satur
day, but would end up going into the office. Or he’d come out at night when I was tinkering around in the garage, and instead of offering help, he’d tell me I was breaking curfew. How is it even possible to break curfew in your own home?” He shrugged indifferently. “Anyway, I did my best with what I could and I managed to work enough odd construction jobs to pay for the parts to get her up and running. It took nearly three years, but by graduation, Trudy was a pretty impressive piece of metal.”
Though I never related to a guy’s love for his car, I could understand the sense of fulfillment Lincoln must’ve felt by giving life to something that once had none. When I really thought about it, that seemed to be a common theme with Lincoln.
“So we had this huge graduation party at our house with Mom and Dad’s elite circle and all I wanted to do was show Trudy off. I’d take each guest into the garage and provide them with more details about her improvements than they probably cared to hear. But I couldn’t shut up about her. I was immensely proud. And my dad? I thought maybe after seeing all that I put into it that he’d feel that, too.”
Even from what little I knew of Lincoln Senior, I doubted that would be the case.
“So he comes out and starts pointing to all the things I did wrong. The missing piece here. The skipped over step there. He’s laughing and whispering to his suit-clad cohorts like I should be pitied for the shoddy job I did. So I kinda lose it. I start yelling and throwing wrenches and bolts and things like I’m a toddler. I’m telling him that I didn’t want to have to do it on my own—that I wanted his help—but he just stands there, smirking. He takes another swig of his drink, shakes his head at me as he turns around, elbowing his friends in camaraderie, and then says over his shoulder that he has no interest in wasting his time with things that can never be fully fixed.”
Love Like Crazy Page 24