Chapter 16 Lincoln
Lincoln
Iwiped the string of spit with the back of my hand, the stench curling around my nose. Sourness coated my tongue, and shame ate away at me from the inside out, starting with my lungs and swallowing me whole. Vinny’s eyes were laced with concern. As if I deserved his empathy.
When you’re watching a movie about someone who's lost their memories, almost always there’s a long flashback of everything they couldn’t remember—watching their entire life out on fast replay.
There's heart wrenching music as they slowly realize just exactly who they are, reuniting with the people desperate to be remembered. Within seconds, everything makes sense again. Sometimes, there’s even a kiss or a wedding.
Me, though? It wasn’t that at all. It was worse than everything I’d worried might be true, and there’d be no hug, or kiss, or shit for me.
“Hold on, Linc. Let me call Nina, she’ll know what to do.”
The need to purge the past mixed with anger, its heat burning hotter by the hypocrisy in his steely slimy eyes. This motherfucker dared to pretend to care about me when he’d never had the guts to defend his cousin. I pulled myself up, vomit seeping through my slacks.
“You! You won’t fucking bother Nina.” I grabbed him by the collar and jerked him into me. “You think that’s the right way to treat her? Your own family?”
“Linc …”
“I remember.” I hissed.
“You do?” His eyes went wide and red, something lingering just behind them.
I nodded.
“Look, I—”
“You let me hurt her,” I gritted out.
“Dude, I had no power over you. Then or now. You want to be a dick to whoever you’re into? I’ve never been your keeper.”
This must be the bravest Vinny has ever been. Wrong time for it. I gripped his collar and tie with my other hand, then pushed him on his ass right on top of where I just threw up.
“You’ve never bothered to do a single thing for her.”
He jumped to his feet and pressed his chest against mine.
“You’ve got no fucking idea what you’re talking about. I’ve been your friend through thick and thin.”
“A friend doesn’t just see you become the scum of the earth and say nothing,” I snapped. “You made me Nina’s problem. You knew she had enough on her plate as it was.”
I walked away. His screams of protests and claims of favors owed echoed in the purple hues of dusk. Vinny could soak in debris and bile for all I cared.
I meandered the streets, cutting down on Halsted and Wellington.
The jazz started to bleed into the evening right out of Kingston Mines, its brick facade worn but proud, its orange awning sagging just enough to show the history behind it.
There was a buzz of smoke, laughter, and the shuffle of feet waiting to get lost in the blues.
Nina listened to Fleetwood Mac and enjoyed dancing.
I shook my head. There’d be no Nina and me. The delusion was over.
I passed under the glow of a 7-Eleven. “Songbird” had triggered my memories, and yes, I’d had flashes of really fucking bad stuff, but I now had to dig through every single one of my newfound memories and live them.
A dark liquid was puddled on the sidewalk, old beer leaking from trash bags by the curb.
I’d knocked over a beaker in the science lab.
The liquid splashed across the counter and onto the floor, spreading fast, a sickly yellow puddle that hissed against the burners.
The teacher had rushed over, barking orders while everyone stared at Nina as if she’d been the one too clumsy to control her own experiment.
It’d burned through the table. I could have hurt her.
Everyone laughed while she flinched back, humiliated.
All I did was grin, downplaying my recklessness.
A couple of tourists laughed too loud outside Giordano’s, clutching paper bags.
I plunged again and drowned in the memory of some junior who’d asked her out for homecoming.
He was bragging about how he’d be the guy with the prettiest girl.
I’d snapped and told him he was having Mr. Harmons’s sloppy seconds.
Shortly after, everyone ran their mouths that she was messing around with a teacher.
I’d bristled every time I heard it, no matter that I’d been the one to start it.
Nina’s whole schedule got changed, and she had to do counseling.
The whispers behind her back never stopped. No one asked her out again.
Across from me, a man jogged, whiffs of his breaths visible in the night.
Nina’s warm breath had puffed white in the morning air, ragged, rattling sounds coming from her chest as she struggled to meet her time to pass the mile test. I’d laughed, then told her to suck it up and it was a good thing she had no parents to be disappointed in her.
Oblivious to how her lungs were on fire, making a fucking joke out of her fight for breath.
The neighborhood was alive, but I moved through it hollow.
Three-flats lined up in the streets, bricked and stone cut with tinted windows and cozy nooks.
I passed the painted murals along Clark, bright splashes of color that should have lifted me but only reminded me of Nina.
How she’d lit up when she suggested painting a mural on the open wall above the stairs, and how I’d told her, in front of everyone in student council, that her understanding of color theory was as nuanced as a two-year-old’s and she should spare the next graduating classes from any monstrosity she might slap together.
I saw her in every reflection in every storefront window, her hurt written across panes streaked with spray paint.
I felt the bile rise again and held myself against a wall, gagging. But I forced my mouth closed and swallowed; if she’d lived through my cruelty, I’d be strong enough to relive it. My phone vibrated in my slacks, and when I pulled it out, I felt even worse.
Nina: Hey, Linc. Are you coming home? You’re usually back by now.
I closed my eyes. Home. I knew it was a slip.
She’d been resisting it, but we’d been getting somewhere.
I thought of my stupid, stupid notes. My plan to flirt and win her over.
Immature. Pointless. Hurtful. Infinity Weddings.
I’d done that too. Sure, it’d been Natasha’s fingers deleting slides and typing shit, but I’d given her the idea, and she ran with it.
Hell, I also did. All ’cause I’d fucked her.
I had to swallow bile again. It made sense that she was the woman I’d been with.
I pushed myself off the wall and turned north again onto Broadway.
The air reeked of grease from late-night diners.
I shoved my hands deeper into my jacket pockets, shoulders hunched as if I could fold myself smaller and disappear.
But the memories wouldn’t let me. I ran through every unforgivable thing I’d done and replayed every single one with sickening detail.
All but one.
She’d been getting ready for a scholarship interview. She wanted a shot to afford the big fancy school on the East Coast, and not the too-expensive in-state institution. “Fly away, little songbird,” she’d murmur during College Seminar. She was good to go. Until she wasn’t.
“Lincoln Carter, please, come to the principal’s office.”
She was in one chair. I was across from her. She’d never looked at me with hate before. Sadness, annoyance, grief, yes. Never hate. I swallowed, just like I had back then.
“Ms. Reyes is distressed because a personal box, very important to her, seems to have been … misplaced,” the principal explained.
“Mr. Carter, Ms. Reyes claims that her box was peeking out from under your driver’s seat when she arrived to school.
It sent her into a health crisis that made it so she’d be in no condition to interview with NYU. ”
The weight settled on my chest, making it impossible to breathe.
For the life of me, I couldn’t remember taking the box from her.
That was Dr. Ross’s whole point, though, wasn’t it?
I managed to keep my mouth closed so I wouldn’t throw up, but I was still blocking the memories from how horrible I’d been.
It’d been me, though, because when the principal asked if they could look in my car to clear the misunderstanding, I opened the door. And there was her box.
Nina had jumped at and slapped me. “How could you?” she’d said over and over again.
Another stupid cruel prank of mine. She’d worked herself up into an asthma attack.
I knew now that’s what the health crisis had been.
And she’d lost her opportunity to interview for a full ride to the college of her dreams.
I’d done that. Even if I still couldn’t remember.
Even if after they told my father, he had beaten me to the point my ribs were bruised for weeks.
Bruises I hid. Bruises I still felt a month later when I’d set Nina up behind the bleachers.
Even if I’d coughed up blood, Nina had gotten the worse end of the stick, again.
I’d bet being free of student loans would have made a difference.
A whole lot of difference. And I ruined that.
No matter what I did. I couldn’t outrun the past I’d made for her.
There was no forgetting her pain this time.
I turned onto Lakeview Avenue and walked until I hit Diversey, then stared at my apartment building. It left me hollow because it stood for every cruel thing I’d done to achieve it. My phone vibrated again.
Nina: I can stay with Vinny. I said I’d move out. You don’t need to avoid your own house.
A laugh slipped out, thin and uneven, the kind you let out when the joke’s at your own expense. Nina wasn’t leaving my fucking house. I understood now. I knew what I needed to do. Accept that I could never atone for who I’d been, then ensure I’d fix everything she’d lost because of me.
I searched for the contact and placed a call. She answered on the third ring, her detachment bleeding through, even when she wrapped it in a smooth tone.
“Hey,” she said. “I was wondering where you went. I thought you’d be coming.”
“Can I stay with you tonight?” Silence. “Just for a night,” I added.
“Sure. If you must.”
“I can’t be around Nina. I can’t ask anything else of her.”
She exhaled. “Okay.”
Carmen shuffled around on the other side; she was about to hang up.
“Hey.”
She breathed to let me know she was still there.
“No more cold feet. I want to burn everyone’s world to fucking ashes,” I hissed. “Nina’s cousin’s. Natasha’s. Mine.”
“Oh, sweetie.” Carmen chuckled. “We’re getting there.” She exhaled. “Come on over, I’ll text you my address.”
With that, I hung up and walked into my building, knowing, for once, I was doing the right thing. Even if it hurt.