Page 16 of 16 Forever

“Okay. Excellent. Thank you.” Lincoln smooths his foreheadcurls down to the side. “So: Terrell and I are in the same a cappella group.”

I want to laugh. I desperately want to. But I calmly say, “You? You’re in an a cappella group?”

“Yes.”

“Like one of those singing groups that isn’t accompanied by any instruments?”

“Yes.”

“Where the singers make instrument sounds with their voices?”

“Sometimes, yes.”

“Which means you sing now?”

“I do.”

“You’re a singer.”

“I am.”

“Even though I’ve maybe heard you sing twice in my entire life? And both times you were so quiet it looked like you were lip-synching without a track?”

“Yes! Okay? Yes! I sing now, get over it!” Lincoln throws his used napkin at me. I catch it and hurl it back, but he dodges to the left, and it bounces off the shoulder of a thirtysomething guy behind him. Lincoln gasps and covers his mouth. The guy is looking at his phone, though, and doesn’t even realize it happened.

We both crack up.

“Yo yo yo!” a tall guy Lincoln’s age says, appearing next to our table. He has a ridiculously long brown beard that extends down to his neck. “What’s so damn funny?”

“Ohmigod, hi!” Lincoln says, getting up from the table to give the tall guy a hug. “I didn’t know you were back yet.”

“Literally just got home a couple hours ago.”

“Me too!”

“Yo, Carter, what’s good, man?” The tall guy extends a hand my way.

“It’s Prateek,” Lincoln says, clearly sensing I have no idea who we’re talking to.

“Holy crap,” I say. This hairy ogre of a man is the little pipsqueak who was over at our house all the time? WTF. Like, seriously.

“Oh shoot, it’s reboot day, isn’t it?” Prateek asks.

“’Fraid so,” Lincoln says.

“Sorry, Carter.” Prateek pats my shoulder, his beard lightly bouncing. “So what happens now with M—”

“Mom!” Lincoln shouts, cutting him off. “And Dad! What happens with Mom and Dad? Well, same thing that happens every year, I guess. We start over, try to make it work as best as we can. But it’s not easy. For them. For me. For all of us. But most of all, for Carter.”

“Truth,” Prateek says. “Anyway, speaking of moms, gotta go eat with mine.” He points to a woman standing twenty feet away, who waves. “But let’s hang soon.”

“Definitely,” Lincoln says, waving back as a hostess leads Prateek and his mom to a table. I can’t stop staring at Prateek.

“You all right?” Lincoln asks.

“He got huge,” I say. “What is he, like, in a jam band for sasquatches now? That was so disturbing. Aren’t you disturbed by that?”

“I’m... not. But it happened more gradually for me.”