Chapter 6
Gabrielle's POV
"Alright. It's getting late," I tell my cousin through the phone.
"I know. What time is it where you are?" she asks.
"Okay. Well, you gotta get to bed," she says.
"Yeah. And I gotta see where my husband's at," I reply.
"He's not home yet," my cousin asks.
"No. Sometimes he has to stay a little bit."
I don't wanna tell her anything about how I've been feeling.
Honestly, for the past hour talking to her, I had to fight myself to get in the mode to be interested in what she was saying, because as the minutes tick on, the more I'm worried.
I mean, Lincoln has been staying late here and there, but he usually texts me.
He did text me earlier, saying that he was gonna stay an hour later at work, but it's almost eleven.
I'm getting worried.
Jada wishes me well, and I get off the phone. I start pacing the house, my legs shaking, my stomach feeling as though it's gonna bottom out. Dialing Lincoln's number, I wait for the phone to ring.
There's nothing. Like literally nothing.
I dial again.
Nothing. No ringing. No nothing.
Maybe there's no signal. Maybe he was right. But then the phone clicks. His voicemail comes on.
"Hi. This is Lincoln. If you have something to say, just leave a message at the beep, and I'll get right back to you when I have the time."
The phone clicks. What is going on?
"Where are you?" I whisper, staring at the screen.
I'm really getting worried.
Should I send him a text?
Will he just ignore it?
He might not get it anyway.
I can't believe this. I can't believe I'm sitting here worrying, frantically waiting for him.
You know what? I'm not even gonna worry. I'm just going to give him the benefit of the doubt.
And I really do try. I try my utmost.
Until 2 a.m. in the morning, he is still not home.
Calling him again, taking a walk around the block, I start to get angry. And then I start to get really worried. It's as if I'm seesawing between anger and worry, thinking he got into an accident, thinking I'm gonna get the voicemail again.
I prepare to hang up when I hear the phone click and there's air on it.
"Lincoln," I say, stopping a block away from our home to hear him better.
"Yeah."
His voice is muffled, and he sounds very awake, almost as though he were in the middle of running a marathon or something. Why does he sound so pepped up? And what does he mean, “yeah”?
"Lincoln… what… where the hell are you?" I ask, outraged that he's taking this so casually.
"Coming home."
"Baby…" I pause for a minute, looking at the phone. "It's nearly three o'clock in the fucking morning."
I don't mean to be so vulgar, but seriously, what the hell is going on? Why is he so calm about this?
"Yeah. I know."
That's all he says, and his voice sounds weird. I don't know how to explain it, like, hurried almost. And the only way I can pinpoint it is when he's rushing.
"You're not gonna give me any other information outside of that?" I question, upset.
"I'm sorry, Gabby," Lincoln answers.
"You're sorry?" I challenge him, now legitimately confused. He's not giving any information. My ears strain, that womanly part of me trying to decipher whether he's with anyone. Might as well ask.
"Are you with someone?"
"No."
"Really?"
"I'm on my way home."
"Baby, that's not the point. I'm trying to…"
I pause for a second. "Where are you right now?"
"I'm, like, ten minutes away."
"Okay."
The both of us stay there in silence.
"Okay, Lincoln. You need to start talking to me right now because I swear to God, if you don't give me some kind of information, you're gonna come home and find me gone. What the hell is actually going on right now?"
"Baby, please. I'm not—nothing is worrying that—"
He starts stuttering.
"Lincoln."
The phone starts breaking up. He comes through staticky. Then I get mad thinking he's doing it on purpose.
"Sorry about that. We were going through a tunnel."
"Who is we?"
There's nothing on his end.
"I'm getting a ride," he finally says.
"A ride from who?"
"From Tom."
Call me crazy, and I love my husband, and he and I have been close since we were kids, but I don't believe him.
I really don't believe him. I hate that I feel like I'm unraveling right now, but nothing is making sense at all.
Because he says he's with Tom, and he's getting a ride, maybe because the shuttle doesn't ride at that time, but he's acting really freaking weird.
I know him. I know him so well. But this person on the other end of the line is not acting like my husband. And if someone told me he was being held at gunpoint, I'd actually believe them.
The thing is, I know this man. I've known him for thirteen years.
Ever since I met him thirteen years ago, the first thing I thought of him, outside of him being handsome, is that he is reliable and honest. Thirteen years ago, it was in the middle of March that we met.
I was thirteen, about to turn fourteen that year.
Lincoln was eighteen, and I had just started working a part-time job sorting packages after school.
I'd seen Lincoln around.
Nothing big, you know?
It's just one of those situations where a person becomes a part of your life without ever having intended for them to. We’d come around and he was just in my circle, not directly in my circle, but in the neighborhood.
We’d seen each other. I had a small crush on him.
And, you know, things just kind of went off from there.
I hadn't even really seen him that much, maybe like every week, or I'd seen him around town with his girlfriend or with some of his friends.
Then two years later, I was about to turn sixteen the next month.
Lincoln was twenty years old. We were paired as a delivery team, and that was the day that our dynamic changed.
We did the long shuttle hours together, driving together as a team to transport cargo, and I loved it, being so close to him, essentially being his work wife.
He had a girlfriend at the time, and I never wanted to get in between them. Even when he had started to open up to me more about his life and his childhood, and, you know, we just felt like family to each other. We were so easy to get along with each other.
And then his girlfriend was mentioned less and less. I kept asking about her, telling him to do nice things for her. And at that point, the crush kind of fizzled out because I'm not gonna be the kind of person to get in between someone and their relationship, especially because I was so young.
And he had told me that, he had teased me about having a crush on him.
I hadn't told him, but I guess he guessed.
And I told him that one day, I would like to marry a guy like him.
He said, If you were older, maybe we would talk about it.
You know, that normal conversation that human beings have with each other that people try to pretend doesn't happen.
We kind of fell into each other. Then the next year, one day when it was stormy out, our shuttle broke down in the heavy rain.
This was the night we truly connected. He tried to work on it himself, but we were both getting waterboarded.
So we went inside the shuttle, which was built like an old-style RV, and we just hung out together laughing at it all.
Even though we knew we were gonna get in trouble, even though it wasn't our fault, just us being there together was so beautiful.
And I remember the words he said to me.
"I swear to God, I can be in the pit of hell, and as long as you're right beside me, it's not so bad."
That was the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me.
And then the rain started getting a little more aggressive, the thunder storming and clapping even more.
He took my hand, and he held it. And I don't know.
Something changed between us. We weren't having sex or anything like that.
We weren't even dating. I can't say. I always just…
felt like his. I don't know how to explain it.
And then the following week after that, exactly one week after the storm, it was late. He opened the passenger door for me, as he always did. Then he climbed into his side. It had been drizzling a little, so his pretty dark hair was wet, almost making it look black.
We just stared at each other, before he leaned into me and gently took my seatbelt to buckle it for me.
My heart had been racing. The minute he buckled it, and it made the snap, we both realized how close our faces were.
He stared at my lips and I at his. Like the cosmos were drawing us together, our own gravitational pulls causing us to drift closer to each other, he leaned into me, and I to him. It was the first time I felt his lips.
Soft lips.
My eyes closed as I felt the inside of his mouth for the first time. His tongue said hello to mine.
He tasted faintly like the peppermint gum he always chewed, and a little like the coffee we’d just split.
I remember being obsessed with how perfectly my mouth fit against his. Every time we moved it was like a tiny electric shock rushing straight down my spine and between my legs.
I couldn’t think.
I didn’t want to.
I just wanted to stay in that darkness behind my eyelids forever, feeling the way his mouth moved with mine, gentle yet hungry, like he’d been holding this back for months too.
It was the kind of kiss that ruins you for every other kiss after it.
Soft, so slow, his moan in my mouth, oh so full of everything we hadn’t said out loud yet.
My hands ended up in his wet hair without me even deciding to move them, and I just pulled him closer because I physically couldn’t stand even an inch of space between us.
It was simple and sweet and quiet. I'll never forget that day. I'll never forget. We were both exhausted, and we hadn't even realized what the hell was happening until we were in the middle of doing it.