Page 65 of Remember Us This Way

It’s so unbelievably Linc.

Everything is right where it was. His clothes. His messy desk. His empty glass sitting on his bedside table. And instead of feeling that crushing agony I always assumed would come, I feel peace. Happy almost.

I smell him in here, even after three years. I feel his presence, the good times and the bad. The divots in the wall from when our play flighting turned a little too serious. I can still see us racing in here, Linc screaming as I barreled in behind him, intent on whooping his ass after he talked shit about Zoey for the first and only time. He sure as fuck learned that lesson quickly.

Making my way deeper into his room, I scan over the crap on his desk, the things he’d been scrawling into his notebook. He was a bit of an artist, but not the good kind. He liked street art and was just shy of stealing a few cans of spray paint and tagging his name across the living room wall. He didn’t have the balls to actually graffiti a wall outside of our home, but I don’t doubt that it was coming. He would have taken Hazel to be his lookout, and the two of them would have thought it was great.

Among all the chaos of his desk, I see a photo half hidden under the notebook, and I pull it out to see the four of us. Me, Zoey, Linc, and Hazel. It must have been taken maybe six months before he died, and seeing the cheesy grin on his face now has a matching one spreading across mine.

I’ve gone out of my way not to look at photos of him, but seeing his face now . . . fuck.

I fall back onto his bed, clutching the photo like a lifeline as I sit at the end, my gaze locked on his face. God, I miss him so much. The hell we would have raised together, with Zoey and Hazel too. The four of us would have been the best kind of trouble. Then I never would have pushed her away, and things never would have had to change.

I hear someone at the door and glance up to find Mom leaning against Linc’s doorframe, looking in and watching me as though I’m about to break. “I don’t think I’ve seen you in here since—”

“I haven’t,” I admit, not forcing her to finish that sentence. “It’s not what I expected. I thought it would feel different.”

Mom strides into the room, moving in beside me and peering over the photo in my hand. “He loved that photo,” she tells me. “He used to call you guys the four musketeers.”

My brows furrow. “Really? I don’t think I ever knew that.”

“Yeah,” she laughs. “He only said it around me. He didn’t want to risk not sounding cool in front of his big brother.”

A fond smile pulls at my lips, and I clutch the photo just a little bit tighter, loving that even after death, I’m still learning new things about my little brother. But he was right, had I known he’d called us that, I would have teased him relentlessly. Then he would have told Zoey, and she would have put me right in my place before forcing me to apologize. She was the glue that kept us all together—kept me together.

“Sounds about right,” I tell her before letting out a heavy sigh. “I wish I was better to him. He always wanted to hang out, and I always told him to go away. If I’d known, I never would have—”

“I know, my love,” Mom says, squeezing my shoulder. “But while you may have regrets, just know that Lincoln was the happiest little guy I’ve ever known. Even when you were busy with Zoey, he was still living life to the fullest. He had Hazel, and they got up to even more mischief than you and Zoey ever could.”

A barking scoff tears from the back of my throat. “Okay. Now I know you’re lying.”

“Say what you want, but right after that photo was taken,” she tells me, glancing down at the picture of the four of us in my hand, “Linc talked Hazel into shoplifting for the first time.”

I gape at her, not sure which part of that to pick apart. The fact that they shoplifted together, or the fact that she said that was their first time, implying it happened more than once. “How the hell didn’t I know that?”

“Ha,” she laughs. “Like I was about to put that idea into your head. Knowing you and Zoey, the two of you would have tried to outdo them and would have come home with a whole jewelry store and a convoy of police cars behind you.”

A stupid grin stretches across my face. She’s probably right.

“Oh, God,” she says with a heavy sigh, her gaze lingering on the photo. “I do miss the four of you together.”

My gaze sails over Zoey, taking in the wide smile she has for the camera, but when I glance at myself, all I’m smiling at is her. “I, um . . . I was wondering if we were going to head out for our usual Friday night dinner with Zoey’s family?” I ask, getting up and striding back over to Linc’s desk, sliding the image back under the notebook exactly where I found it.

“Huh?” Mom grunts, her face scrunched up as she watches me, a deep suspicion flashing in her eyes. “Why? I ask you to come with me all the time, and I get the same big whopping ‘No’ every single time. Besides, you’re well into the football season now. You usually head out to some ridiculous party on a Friday night.”

“Yeah,” I mutter, making my way to the door. “You’re right. Forget I asked.”

“Noah Ryan, you get your stubborn ass back here and tell me what the hell is going on,” she says, making me pause in the doorway and turn back. Then as I meet her curious stare, she prods a little further. “Why do you want to go to dinner all of a sudden?”

I shrug my shoulders and give her a stupid grin. One I know she can see right through. “Because Erica makes a kickass lasagna.”

Her eyes start to sparkle as if she’s figured something out. “Erica’s lasagna tastes like the cardboard box it came out of, and you know it,” she says, her gaze narrowing. “Unless there’s another reason you’d like to go.”

I press my lips into a hard line, trying to keep the smile from stretching across my face. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“OH, NOAH!” she squeals before throwing herself at me, her arms flying around my neck and squeezing me so tight I think I might pass out. “About damn time.”

“Ugh,” I groan, rolling my eyes, but I can’t manage to wipe the smile from my face. “Come on, Mom. Be cool.”

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