Chapter 17 #2
“It’s not okay!” He ripped away from Lincoln, numb fingers losing his grip on the glass.
Water splashed his ankles but he didn’t care because he was angry.
“It’s not okay. I should want a trial. I should want to tell the world the things he said to me, the threats he made.
I should want to take a stand for every Muslim who’s ever been targeted or victimized because some politician told them to be afraid of us.
For every Muslim who’s been spit on, sneered at, cussed out, beaten up, for no good reason.
But I don’t want to be that person, because I’m not that person. I’m a coward.”
The rant robbed him of the last of his energy, and Emmett sank to his knees in the wet carpet.
He had no tears left to cry, only an oppressive weight on his chest that made it difficult to breathe.
Someone else was crying, and he was pretty sure it was Aunt Beatrice, but he didn’t care. In that moment, he was numb.
Lincoln knelt in front of him. His knees squished in the puddle, but he didn’t seem to notice. He put a finger beneath Emmett’s chin and forced him to look up. Into blue eyes unprotected by sunglasses. Into so much grief and tenderness that Emmett felt smashed into the floor by the weight of it.
“Listen to me, Emilio Emmett Sharif Westmore,” he said, in a tone Emmett had never heard before.
And it made Emmett pay attention. “You are not a coward. After everything you’ve been through, you’re still standing, and that makes you a fucking hero.
You put up with intolerant bullshit, and you survived.
You tried to save your family from that fire, and maybe you couldn’t, but you survived your burns, and you’re living your life.
You didn’t ask for any of this, not the harassment or the fire, and certainly not the aftermath. ”
Lincoln’s firm touch moved from his chin to his shoulder.
“No one expects you to stand up and become the poster child for Muslim rights everywhere. No one. You are doing what you need to do so you can get through this with your heart and soul intact, and everyone in this room will support whatever decision you make. You have to make a decision that you can live with. Do what you want, not what you think you should do, or what you think we think you should do. Understand?”
So many words tumbled through Emmett’s head, bouncing around without making sense. He wanted so hard to believe what Lincoln said, that none of this was his fault.
I’m fooling myself. I went against my parents. I fucked up Lincoln’s life forever and I’m too much of a coward to admit the truth. This is me reaping what I’ve sown.
Happiness was an illusion easily broken by truth. Soon even what he’d been building with Lincoln would be obliterated by the truth. He ought to confess now and save Lincoln the stress of supporting him through this legal mess.
“He’s right,” Adrian said. Adrian, his cousin, and the biggest reason he couldn’t confess. Adrian had protected him with silence; Emmett had to do the same. “We’re by your side, dude. Whatever you do.”
Aunt Beatrice entered his peripheral vision, wiping her nose on a tissue. “Yes, we are, and yes, we will. You don’t have to become a martyr. All any of us want is for you to be happy.”
Happiness is Lincoln. Happiness is singing. Happiness is both, together.
“I want to go to the hearing tomorrow,” Emmett said.
The truth in those words lifted a bit of the oppressive weight from his chest. “I don’t want a trial, but I want to speak to the judge.
I want him to see that my sister and parents aren’t just some Muslims. Just some victims. They were human beings.
They were loved. My family deserves that much from me. ”
“Then we’ll go,” Aunt Beatrice said. “Van can close the club by himself tonight. We have to be up early tomorrow for that drive.”
“Come with me?” Emmett asked Lincoln.
Lincoln’s tender smile nearly undid him. “As if I’d let you go without me. Adrian?”
“I’m in.”
Emmett looked at his cousin, who’d come closer to complete the circle of support around him. A cousin he’d thought hated him for no good reason, only to learn the exact opposite was true. “Thank you.”
“We’re family, dude.”
“Yes, we are,” Aunt Beatrice said. “All four of us.”
Lincoln started blinking hard, and Emmett could only imagine his thoughts. The Bounds family had taken him in and made him their own, and now so was the Westmore family. He probably had more honorary relatives than he knew what to do with.
“Will you stay tonight?” Emmett asked him.
“Of course.” Lincoln’s eyebrows went up. “Um, if that’s okay with Beatrice.”
She laughed. “It’s fine.”
“I have to go home for some clean clothes, though. Dig around for something respectable to wear to the hearing. What do you wear to an arraignment, anyway?”
“Don’t put yourself out worrying about a suit. Slacks and a nice shirt will do.”
Lincoln mimicked wiping sweat off his forehead. “Oh good, because I haven’t worn a suit in years.”
Emmett liked the mental image of Lincoln polished up and sporting a nicely tailored suit. He’d be a walking wet dream, so it was probably good he didn’t have a suit to wear to Baltimore tomorrow.
“I wore one to prom a few years ago,” Adrian said. “My date thought bow ties were offensive, so she didn’t want me to wear a tux.”
For some reason, the notion of offensive bow ties made Lincoln crack up.
“What do you boys feel like for lunch?” Aunt Beatrice asked. “I’ve got some tomato sauce in the fridge. How’s pasta sound?”
“As long as it’s not bow tie pasta,” Emmett said.
Lincoln laughed harder.
Going back to the house for a change of clothes felt like the most selfish thing on the planet, despite being kind of necessary.
Lincoln didn’t want to leave Emmett when he was clearly still distressed by the arrest and arraignment news.
He also didn’t want to wear rumpled shorts and a smelly T-shirt to the hearing tomorrow morning.
Being apart for less than an hour was an acceptable compromise.
He also brought the QChord with him, because Emmett needed a distraction. They all did, and music was the perfect way to focus on something else.
After a filling lunch of spaghetti and garlic bread, he settled Emmett on the couch with his laptop, and Lincoln brought out his synthesizer. “Let’s try to arrange something we’ve never played before.”
Emmett frowned. “Like what?”
He tilted his head at the laptop. “You pick. Find something.”
“Okay. Contemporary or classic?”
“I said you pick.”
The harshness of Emmett’s grunt was belied by his twitching lips. His fingers clicked across the keyboard while he did his warm-up scales. After a minute or two of searching, he hit a key and sat back. The very distinct chords of “Collide” by Howie Day played on the laptop’s speakers.
Nostalgia swept through Lincoln like a warm breeze.
XYZ had played this song at their first public show in a small, cramped club in Philadelphia that paid in appetizers and free drinks.
None of them had been twenty-one at the time, so they’d drowned their livers in Coke and Mountain Dew.
He’d eaten enough mozzarella sticks to keep him on the throne for over an hour the next day, but it had been worth it.
As he listened to lyrics he knew by heart, he started to really hear them. And even though Emmett wasn’t singing, he heard them in Emmett’s clear tenor. Singing lyrics that applied so much to their lives in that moment. “Even the best fall down sometimes.”
Didn’t he know it.
“You and I collide.”
He met Emmett’s gaze and held it while the song wound down, repeating the last couple of lines over and over. Their lives had certainly collided for a reason and given them both something precious. Something Lincoln would do anything to keep.
“Perfect choice.” Lincoln cleared his throat, surprised at how husky he was.
“It was my way of saying thank you for earlier. For being there while I had my meltdown.”
“I’m glad I was here. I’m glad that I am here.
” He strummed across the plate, his fingers creating beautiful little guitar-string notes.
“For a long time after the car accident, I wished I’d just died and saved everyone the trouble of taking care of me.
More than once I stood at the top of the stairs and thought, Maybe the fall will kill me.
But as much as I hated how I was living, dying scared me more.
Dying meant it was over, you know? No chance of things getting better.
“And now that I know what I’d have missed, I’m so glad I never let the dark thoughts win. I don’t believe in God, but I do think I believe in fate. Just a little bit.”
Emmett’s soft smile was worth the way saying those words had flayed him open, exposing that he’d contemplated suicide.
Emmett curled his hand around Lincoln’s wrist and squeezed.
“I believe in God, Allah. But I don’t think He intervenes in our lives the way I was taught.
Not anymore. We have free will to make our own choices.
His judgment comes at the end of our lives, not during.
The judgment we endure during our lives comes from man alone. ”
Truth.
“A man set the fire that killed my parents,” Emmett continued. “And a man will pay the price for his actions, in this world, and then in the next. I can affect what happens to him in this world. The next world is up to him.”
Lincoln’s chest swelled with pride. They’d had a variation on this conversation before, but Emmett had never spoken with such conviction before.
He truly believed what he was saying. God hadn’t punished Emmett with the fire any more than he’d punished Lincoln with the car crash.
Men had set those events in motion. Lincoln had to live with the fact that he’d probably never know who’d caused his accident, but that was okay.
He could rejoice knowing that Chandler Gunn would pay for the pain he’d caused Emmett.
Everything else was details.
Emmett laughed, a beautiful sound that reinforced his words. “Ready to play?”
“Absolutely.”
They played “Collide” over and over, living inside the song and the bubble of peace they created when they made music together.
A bubble Lincoln desperately wanted to carry with them to Baltimore tomorrow.
He wanted to protect Emmett from the pain of reliving his worst nightmare.
He wanted to be Emmett’s safe place after the hearing was over.
He wanted to be with Emmett in everything, because as he sang a soft backup to the chorus, Lincoln knew that he was falling in love.