He looks back sometimes and can't believe how close they always were. A flowery scent that he wouldn't know until years later belonged to her, a whisper of her name before it was the only thing he could ever remember, and of course the hint, a shadow really, of the face that would become more important to him than even his own.
Tracy always says it starts in the weeks before the Miss Hairspray pageant, but Link knows it began before that, back when he was more than a little selfish, before he cared about what was right. He says it started in Jr. high, when his mom died and his dad began to waste away in well lit room with his cigarettes and his scotch and his distilled memories. When Link learned that being noticed ment winks and girls and a swivel of his hips. When the shadow of his mothers pearls began to fade and was replaced with an empty kitchen and a quiet house. It starts then because thats the first time Link remembers a thin whisp of her face, nothing big just a shared lunch, a simple excuse about her mom packing to much and even though he should have been use to the way no one ever packed him anything anymore. It never became normal or easy and seemed only to become more confusing with the vastness of empty time. So now when he thinks of it he's embarrassed that he promptly forgot the curve of her face and the tilt of her smile. Though he never could forget the richness of her eyes.
There are of course moments between then and now, but to Link they are rushed together and hazy, like she were nothing more than a ghost. How her name came up ever now and then especially with Amber gossiping about anything that was different or new, but he had stopped caring when his father did, had stopped trying when the smell of old imported booze was more comforting than his poor dead mothers' pies.
The years between his mothers death and the day Tracy Turnblad caught his eye in detention were like dreams, he remembers them but they are years of blueish haze and everything looks too bright and contrast to be real. Tracy woke him up, she changed more than the face of television, she changed him. She taught him to be a man, not a boy playing rock star. The way there lives worked out was nothing like he had imagined years ago, but somehow it was all the better. So when someone asks how they met he lets Tracy tell it but when she's through and the guest leaves or the asker drifts away, he always retells the tale, just so she'll know. She may have seen him first and loved him first, but she was a part of him for just as long.