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Lincoln Li-Wilson hadn’t spoken to his dads in three days.
His entire body was jittery with it. He hadn’t had any caffeine since he’d left his dorm room that morning, but even now, deliberating over an empty text message draft in their family group chat, his restless knees bumped the underside of his great-aunt Casey’s dining table and rattled the stray mugs and bottles on its surface.
Grant had called a few times yesterday, all of which Link had ignored and watched go to voicemail. Maybe that was why neither of them called today, either.
It wasn’t like Lincoln had chosen a university ten hours north of San Dimas for nothing. His dads just didn’t seem to have gotten the memo.
But it also wasn’t like he didn’t want to hear from them every once in a while…
Another bottle clattered on the tabletop.
“You good, kid?” Casey asked with a nervous chuckle, her hand still wrapped around the beer bottle she’d set down across from Link. He hadn’t even noticed her walk in. “You had me thinking there was an earthquake!”
Lincoln cleared his throat and said in a low, stable voice, “I’m fine.”
Casey huffed and leaned back in the seat across from him. “Just like your dad—and his dad,” she added wistfully, taking a sip of her beer. “Whatcha up to?”
“Not much,” Link said. When his great-aunt nodded and hummed and didn’t press for more information, he added, “They haven’t called.” Another pause, and then, “Do you think they think I’m mad at them? Because I’m not. It’s just, like… I’m a month into the semester! I know how to get to class now, and how to do laundry—”
“Whoa!” Casey interrupted with another laugh. “Okay, first of all, I’m doing your laundry right now. And I’m sure they just want to give you space.”
Lincoln chewed on his lower lip, idly backspacing and retyping the goodnight message he’d started. “I guess so.”
Space was what he’d wanted, after all. It was why he’d spent the second half of senior year secretly applying to colleges far from home, all while telling his dads he was looking into soccer scholarships at UC Riverside.
He’d barely ever even had a full conversation with Casey (not counting when she’d stayed in San Dimas for a week during Link’s sophomore year of high school, after… everything that happened) before calling her one night, saying not to tell his dads yet, but he was thinking about going to Cal Poly Humboldt, and he’d get a job and pay rent and figure out how to clean if he could just live in one of her spare bedrooms in the middle of nowhere for a few years.
Lincoln had ended up living on campus, instead—his therapist had been worried he’d end up only making friends triple his age again—but he still spent nearly every weekend (and even some school nights) at Casey’s house.
He loved the forest, and all the huge fields where he could practice kicks under the unpolluted sky. It had been nearly four years, but sunsets still hadn’t gotten old; they were different every night.
And he loved spending time with Casey. She didn’t know anything about soccer or dance or how to help with his college algebra homework, but she liked to play two-player card games with Lincoln, and she somehow always knew exactly the amount of space and silence he needed at any given time, and she even let him drink with her as long as it was only in the house (and only The Brew Dude).
Lincoln left the text to his dads unfinished and unsent, and set his phone down on the table.
Casey looked up from the magazine she’d apparently started skimming while Lincoln had been zoned out. “Headed home? Your sheets are still in the dryer, kiddo.”
“No, I, uh… Would it be okay if I stayed the night?” Lincoln’s randomly assigned roommate was loud and messy and didn’t like him very much (which Link had successfully hidden from his dads so far), and he was just too emotionally worn out to deal with that tonight. Besides, now that he was thinking about it—
“Why? You wanna party it up?” Casey half-joked, swishing the bottle in her hand.
“It’s dumb when you put it like that,” Link complained, although ‘embarrassing’ was probably the better word. He was 19 years old; drinking pale ales and playing cribbage with his dad’s aunt probably wasn’t the most exciting way he could be spending his Saturday nights in a new city.
Casey grinned and huffed as she stood to look in the fridge. She had much fancier liquor in there, too—she lived so modestly, it was easy to forget how well-off she really was from her brewing company—but she’d told Lincoln he couldn’t have any until he passed a big exam or scored a game-winning goal or had something else important to celebrate (not that he’d asked). “Your parents are gonna kill me one of these days.”
Lincoln grimaced at her phrasing.
“Sorry,” Casey muttered, clearing her throat. She popped the top off a second bottle and slid it across the table. “Hey, I was doing way worse stuff under my parents’ noses as a kid. So were your dads—trust me.”
Link took a sip and grimaced again. He still didn’t love the taste of beer, but he had to admit Casey’s was a lot better than the tiny sip his grandpa Darryl had made him taste when he was little. He’d been trying to win an argument with Grant about the flavor (which did not work, because Grant was so mad that Darryl had given Lincoln a sip of alcohol that Link didn’t see his grandpa again for at least another year).
“Alright,” Casey said when Link took another hesitant sip. The second one didn’t taste so bad. “Just… try not to drink every time you’re stressed or homesick or whatever, okay? You’ll get hooked. You’re already a little coffee addict,” she scolded him, and then ran a hand through her own hair. “Ugh. Is this what parenting feels like?”
Lincoln gave a little embarrassed laugh. “I literally only drink here.”
“Good on you, kid.”
“I’m not old enough on my ID to buy anything, anyway… not that I would!” he added with wide eyes.
Casey laughed, but she slowed when Lincoln didn’t laugh along. “Not old enough on your ID? What, since you’re such an ‘old soul’? Darryl always said that about you.”
“Um,” Lincoln mumbled. Against his better judgment, his voice became very small as he added, “No. Like… my other life—the simulation. Sometimes I forget.”
“Oh. Right,” Casey said. Last weekend, Link had tried to explain some of it to her over a game of gin rummy without spilling too many painfully personal details. She didn’t even really seem to get the whole virtual reality speedrun thing, though. “And the, uh, Titanic, right?”
Link swallowed. “Yeah.”
“You could definitely drink if you were that old,” Casey joked.
“I think I’d be dead by now.”
Casey shuffled in her seat. “Right.”
“I’d be…” Lincoln took a moment to try to do the basic addition and subtraction in his head before caving and reaching for his phone’s calculator app. “135-ish.”
Rubbing her face, Casey took a deep breath and a long swig of her beer.
Link thought back to his high school US history class, plus all the late-night Wikipedia browsing sessions he’d had while imagining all the ways his life could have been different. “I would’ve grown up in the Prohibition era,” he realized aloud.
“Whoa,” Casey said. She leaned forward on her elbows, seemingly put at ease. “That’s wild. So no drinking for you, anyway, huh?”
“I guess not.” Really, it would’ve depended on how well-off he was. His odds were probably good, having been on a ship full of wealthy Europeans, but he also didn’t exactly fit the bill of a wealthy European in the 1910s.
Neither did his biological mom, if Lincoln remembered correctly. From what he had seen of her, lying face-down and motionless on the deck, she looked a lot like him.
He didn’t like to picture her for too long.
Still, he couldn’t help but think of her. Their lives back then probably wouldn’t have been easy, but it wasn’t like being magically whisked away to a semi-apocalyptic world on another plane of existence more than a century later had been any easier, Lincoln thought bitterly.
He shook his head and took another sip. The flavor was kind of nice, actually. He glanced at the label so he could make sure to get the same one next time. “Do you talk to Grandma a lot?”
Casey’s eyes widened. “Carol?”
“Yeah.”
“I mean, not a lot . To be honest, we never got along that great. But yeah, I guess, more since Darryl… Are you okay, kiddo?”
Lincoln frowned and swirled the drink in his hand. “You probably talk to her more than I do.”
“Link…” Casey trailed off. She seemed like she was at a loss for words. The momentary silence was nice. Lincoln liked that she didn’t always have a calculated, therapeutic response to everything he said. “You could always call her… or one of your friends. I bet they miss you, too.”
Homesickness wasn’t the problem (although he still wasn’t sure what was), but calling his friends did sound nice.
But Scary was on tour with Butthole Ricochet, Normal had all but fallen off the face of the earth, and Taylor… honestly probably wasn’t doing much but hanging out with his mom.
Lincoln couldn’t blame him, though: Taylor’s mom was really cool.
Scary’s mom was sweet, too, and, while Normal’s mom was a little weird and had an extremely confusing moral compass (or lack thereof), she was a kind person and a forgiving substitute teacher, and she carried Red Vines in her tote bag.
It was nice that they were able to revive her. No son should have to see his mother die in front of him.
Raising the bottle in his hand, Lincoln looked just above the male silhouettes on the beer label to study his reflection in the orange-brown glass—the width of his nose, the angle of his eyes—and tried to picture those features through time, on other faces.
“Alright,” Casey said, amused but serious as her hand wrapped around the other side of the bottle and pulled it away, “come on. I know you’re not that much of a lightweight.”
“Huh?” Link came back to himself and glanced down at the surface of his great-aunt’s dining table. Why was it wet? There wasn’t any condensation on—oh. He wiped under his eyes with the back of his hand. “Sorry,” he said, and now he noticed the watery sound in his voice. Weird; he hadn’t even cried talking about Chris last weekend. “I’m not drunk.”
Casey cackled. “Obviously not. It’s been five minutes.”
“I don’t know what’s up with me,” Lincoln said, although he wasn’t sure that was the truth, either. He rubbed his eyes until they stung.
“Aw. It’s, uh, okay,” Casey said a little awkwardly, reaching across the table to give him an uncertain pat on the arm. “Your dad used to be a crier, too.”
That only made Lincoln tear up more.
“Link—”
“I’m gonna text him,” Link said, clearing his throat. “It’s not… Well, a lot of it is his fault, but…”
But it wasn’t his fault that Lincoln didn’t even know he wanted a mom until he saw her dead. If there was one thing Grant couldn’t have prevented, it was that.
Before Lincoln had the chance to overthink, he typed a quick goodnight message, sent it off, and rested his forehead against the tabletop. “Ugh. Maybe I should’ve been raised during Prohibition,” he said with a sigh.
Casey’s laugh was cut short by the ding of a new text and a little melody of beeps playing from the laundry room.
Link elected to ignore the former for now. He could check back later, he thought, taking one last glance at his reflection in his phone screen. His dads would still be there. “Are those my sheets?”
“Should be,” Casey said, pushing herself up and out of her seat with a huff. She turned to grin at Lincoln. “Come on. I’ll show you how to clean out the lint trap, you freeloader.”