Take Care, Sara

hair behind her ears, she put the earrings in her lobes and pushed the silver-leafed ring on the middle finger of her right hand.
    She stared at the image looking back at her, noting the smudges under her eyes and the hollowed-out part below her cheekbones. Sara didn’t recognize the face; it wasn’t the one she remembered. The features were the same, but the look; that was something new. Continually beaten down, but still standing; that was the look in her eyes; that was Sara. You are strong, she thought, her brows lifting at the truth of it. Sara blinked; a little piece of herself given back to her with that realization.
    ***
    She found him in the woods, surrounded by blooming trees and newly born grass. The earth was back to life. Sara envied it. The air was cool, crisp. Birds flew past, singing their joy. It smelled like fresh grass and Sara inhaled deeply, feeling like maybe she was looking at a form of perfection.
    Lincoln wore dark jeans and a gray tee shirt. Sara’s heartbeat picked up at the same time her stomach swooped. Something inside her, maybe all of her, sighed at the sight of Lincoln. She dug her hands into the pockets of her light jacket and stopped beside him. Lincoln didn’t look at her, but Sara knew he knew she was there. His body slightly shifted toward hers, unconsciously pulled to her.
    “I love you, Sara.”
    The air was stolen from her lungs at that admission. “Lincoln—“
    “I love you so much it hurts.” He turned his head toward her, his eyes glaring the truth at her, demanding her to see it. “My heart literally aches when you’re not around, even when you are. My throat tightens and there’s this horrible pressure in my chest. Because you’re not mine and I want you to be, and even if you were, I don’t know that this fucked up feeling would go away. It’s…it’s… part of me .” Lincoln muttered something, wearily running a hand through his dark waves as he looked away.
    Again she tried to speak and he cut her off with a steely look. “I think of you all the time, I see your face in my dreams, I even feel you in the wind. I know it should be wrong, I know it shouldn’t be happening. It shouldn’t have happened, but it did. Or maybe it was supposed to happen. I don’t know. But now…” His throat convulsed. “Now I just love you and it’s all I can do and it’s all I’ll do. Forever. I’ll just keep loving you.” Lincoln turned shiny eyes from her to stare through the wooded forest.
    Sara’s followed his and she saw her husband waiting for her in his black tuxedo, his eyes lit up with happiness, a grin on his lips. The vision of their wedding day faded and it was a forest of trees once more, but the sorrow stayed. It always did. Such a powerful thing: sadness. It had the power to wipe out happiness in the span of one second. Sara knew.
    “He’d want you to be happy. Cole wouldn’t want you to be pining after him for the rest of your life, scared to live, scared to love again.”
    “I know,” she said quietly.
    “But you’re going to keep hiding, aren’t you? You’re going to keep denying yourself, denying us, until everything we have, or could have, is gone. Because you’re scared.” Lincoln faced her again, his eyes too bright. “You don’t think I’m scared too? Every breath I take is full of fear, but I keep breathing. I keep hoping, even though it scares the fuck out of me. Because the thought of losing you, of not having you at all, scares me more.”
    It was happening. She was falling, being torn apart, and this time, it was in the anguish she witnessed in Lincoln’s eyes. The pain she’d put there.
    “I don’t know what to tell you, Lincoln,” she whispered. “There are things I don’t understand, and one of them is how I feel about you. I know I think about you all the time, I know I miss you when we’re not together. But what it all means…I don’t know. I have to learn how to move on without him and I’m stumbling right now. I have to learn how to accept that he’s gone and even though it’s not okay, I can still be okay. Somehow. I have to do this on my own, Lincoln. Otherwise…” Sara took a deep breath. “Otherwise I’ll never be okay. Not for myself, not for you, not for anyone.”
    Lincoln exhaled noisily, squinting into the sun. “I know what you’re saying, I do. But…it doesn’t stop the way I’m feeling. Ya know, I always wanted to be like him. But not this time. This time I want nothing to be like