“I know how to take care of myself. You don’t have to shove food in my face.”
“Right. I’m the one shoving food in your face,” Linc deadpanned, turning his head, and half of a taco disappearing into his mouth.
Our knees touched under the table, his pants skimming my bare skin as we ate. Neither one of us pulled away.
“What’s it like always being compared to Tyler Hendrix?” I asked, wiping the corners of my mouth and already moving on to my second taco.
Linc spiked a brow. “What’s it like always being compared to Audrey October?”
“Touché.”
Linc swallowed a mouthful, then looked at me. He had those intense eyes that made a person feel naked. “The way I see it, Ty doesn’t own music. He has his gig, I have mine. Yeah, we both bleed red, but we stain the world in different shades. If I constantly felt like I had to prove something to everyone, I’d lose a sense of identity. I wouldn’t be making music anymore. I’d just be making noise.”
“There’s a lot of noise out there.”
Linc pointed at me. “That there is.”
“And what happens when people stop listening, Lincoln Hendrix?”
“That’s not even the scary part.”
“What is?”
“What happens when I don’t have anything left to say? No more stories to tell, no more songs to sing? No more inspiration? That moment when everything’s just ... quiet.” He tapped his head.
An ominous breeze flitted the tear in our greasy brown paper bag. I tossed the last bite into my mouth. “You’re a buzzkill.”
“Hey, you asked,” and then after a few seconds, “You and Audrey aren’t close anymore.” It wasn’t a question, more of an obvious statement. An opened door to peer inside to see what happened between us. A way to penetrate and get to know me.
“I wouldn’t binge her filmography or anything, but I guess I’d throw water on her if she were on fire.” I paused, letting the fresco drench my mouth.
“So now you kick it with those other girls? Sidney and them?”
“Just to pass the time.”
“Is anything real in your life?”
“Yeah.” The thought of Sophie brought a smile to my face. We’d been friends for as long as I could remember, grew up together until I’d left Florida at eleven years old. She was the only one who hadn’t turned her back on me even though I’d left her to follow a childlike dream just when her life shattered. Her parents had announced they were divorcing, and I’d left the next day. We still talked every day, and she came to visit whenever she could.
“Sophie is. She’s my homie.” I looked up at him with a smile, a dare poking my cheeks like two dimples. “You know, you didn’t have to buy me a cheap dinner. I already planned to fuck you into a coma.”
Linc laughed, not taking me seriously. As he shouldn’t. I tended to blurt things I didn’t mean just to get a reaction out of people, see how they responded. “You think that’s what this is? Me trying to fuck you?”
“If it quacks like a duck ...”
Linc leaned in, eyes narrowed on me. “If I want to fuck you, I’ll fuck you. I don’t need to buy you a few street tacos to do it. But I offered to take you home, and the moment you jumped into my car made me responsible for you, killer. If I dropped you off at your house and you died in your sleep from alcohol poisoning or from whatever shit you took, I wouldn’t be able to live with little Rudy’s death on my conscience.”
“Ah, a hero.”
“Nah, a gentleman.” Linc smiled that crooked smile again.
T-Pain bumped from car speakers as we walked back to the truck. A girl was sleeping across a bench beside the trash can. Pumpernickel curls spilled out of a beanie, and striped rainbow socks poked from the bottom of her blanket. I dropped the remaining two tacos in the brown paper bag at her side.
I felt Linc behind me as I stood back up. “Is anything they say about you true?”
“Shhh,” I mouthed, turning around to face him. “She’s sleeping.”
5
