"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 likehis. 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.
