Chapter 6
LINC
When she said she wasn’t into cars after asking if my baby was a Toyota, I thought our night was over before it began. But I was wrong. W-R-O-N-G, wrong.
Taylor and I dined at a favorite beachside restaurant of mine in Zuma Beach, and the evening has been amazing. It’s what all first dates should be like. Conversation flowed. There were no awkward silences and lots of laughing. Boy, did we laugh.
Taylor King has a warped sense of humor and a wicked tongue.
She and Grandma are going to get along like a house on fire.
That thought doesn’t scare me, but then again, I shouldn’t be surprised after the conversation I had with Grandma the other day.
We were having a cup of tea—well, I was having tea, Grandma was having tea-quila, as she likes to call it—and she put the spotlight on me, and my love life…
…“I’m not getting any younger, Linc.”
“And neither am I,” I throw back at her.
“Don’t sass me, boy. What I mean is, I’m not getting any younger and all I want to see is you settled down. I’ve seen you thrive in the racing world, and I couldn’t be prouder of you, but now, I want to see you happy and in love.”
“When the right woman comes along—”
“Are you shitting me?” Grandma interrupts, her eyebrows raised.
“Language, Grandma,” I scold her.
She waves me off, sips her tea-quila and continues. “Ohh, Linc, you fool, you’ve already met her.”
“Grandma, Eve is not the one for me.”
“I’m not talking about that skanky ho, I’m talking about your fake girlfriend.”
“I don’t have a fake girlfriend,” I refute.
“So you really are dating that lovely girl then?”
“Well, I don’t know, but Tay and I are going out Friday night when I get back from Chicago.”
“You have a nickname for her already, that’s cute.” She pauses and thinks hard. “Would your couple name be Lincor? Or would be Taycoln?”
“How about just Linc and Taylor?”
“Pffft, that’s boring. When Jason Statham leaves what’s her face for me, he and I will become Kelson because Jasly just sounds stupid.”
“This whole nickname conversation is stupid.”
“Hush your mouth,” she admonishes. “Finding love is not stupid.” She places her teacup down, reaches over, and takes my hand in hers. “Lincoln, my dear boy, you have a heart of gold and I want to see you happy.”
“I am happy, Grandma.”
“I know you are, but I want to see you in-love happy. There is no greater feeling than being in love.” Grandma gets a wistful look on her face, and I know she’s remembering her one true love, my grandfather, Michael Schofield.
He was the love of her life, even though their love affair was brief—he was killed in a robbery when Grandma was eight months pregnant with Mom.
Pop-Pop died saving Grandma when a shootout between the robbers and the police started.
A stray bullet hit him in the back, and he died.
After losing Pop-Pop, she gave up on love.
She once told me, “Your pop-pop loved me more than life itself. I always felt cherished, and I’d never been happier than when I was with him.
He died protecting me and your mom, there is no greater sacrifice than that.
No one will ever live up to that, so why tarnish it?
Besides, they will only di,e and I can’t go through that again.
Micheal Schofield is my one and only love.
The other men are just footnotes and someone to scratch that itch. ”
That’s not a thought I want but creepy images aside, I know she’s right. “But, Grandma, how do you know you’ve met ‘the one’?”
“You just know, my boy, you just know.”
As I sit across from Taylor, I realize, Grandma is right—shhh, don’t tell her I said that. When you know you know, and I have a feeling about Taylor. When the waitress clears away our plates, I decide I don’t want the evening to end, so I brazenly ask her a kind of forward question.