Take Care, Sara

in the head, Sara,” he whispered raggedly, his breath tickling her ear. “So unbelievably fucked up.” Lincoln’s shoulders slumped and his head dipped lower, his forehead grazing her shoulder. “I thought I was okay. I thought I could do this. But I’m cracking, unraveling. I’m being an asshole and I want to stop and I just… can’t .” The pain in his voice was like a laceration against her soul; hot agony that grew instead of lessening.
    “I don’t understand what you’re saying, Lincoln. I don’t understand any of it.” Her voice was high, breathless.
    He pulled back so that he could look at her. “Just…let me talk, okay? Just let me talk.” Lincoln drew in a ragged breath, his body tightly coiled and yet trembling all the same. “I don’t even know what I’m trying to say. I’m just…I’m angry and I’m sad and I just…I want to forget. I wish I could forget. Forget him, forget you, forget it all. I’m sick of feeling the way I do. I’m twisted inside. Knotted.”
    Lincoln gently touched his forehead to hers. “I want to stop being this way. But I can’t. Because only one thing can make it better and it’s the one thing I can’t have. And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Sara.” The misery, the self-loathing she heard in the tremble of his voice; it was aching to hear. Her ears would bleed from the pain of it if they could.
    Sara didn’t know what Lincoln was talking about, or maybe she did, but she didn’t want to know. Her pulse raced at an uncontrollable speed. This Lincoln was different; this Lincoln wasn’t the one she’d known for years. He was altered, changed. He felt more, hurt more. Could it be this was the real Lincoln and she was only now seeing him?
    Had that teasing young man with the easy grin been an illusion and was Sara now seeing past the illusion to the real man? And who was Lincoln then? She’d thought she’d known him, but maybe she hadn’t really known him at all. The thought made her stomach knot up. Sara studied the face she knew almost as well as her husband’s that was so very different from his; the high forehead, the angular cheekbones, the square jaw. There was beauty and strength in that face and mysteries stared at her from stormy gray eyes. What truths did Lincoln keep locked inside, for him alone to know?
    “Who are you?” she whispered. What was she asking him? Sara didn’t even know.
    Lincoln stared at her, his long eyelashes lowering to hide his eyes from her as he answered, “I’m me, Sara.”
    But who are you ?
    “I’ve always been me,” he continued.
    The air was thick with unspoken truths and enigmas; it was riddled with shadows and murkiness. Sara felt like she wasn’t seeing something; there was something glaring her right in the face and she couldn’t see it. Her eyes were veiled; because they had to be, for her sake. She opened her mouth to tell Lincoln to move, but he was already dropping his arms and turning away. Sara exhaled loudly, her nerves jumbled and shaken. Her eyes refused to go to him; she couldn’t see his face, not now.
    “I think…maybe I should go,” she said, her mouth and throat dry. Sara grabbed the cup and filled it with water from the faucet. She gulped it down so fast it hurt her throat.
    He stilled. “Do you want to?”
    She looked at him then. One look at Lincoln’s face and the answer she was going to say disappeared and was replaced with another. He looked lost, young. He stood tall and proud, and yet there was frailty to him she’d never noticed before.
    “No,” unconsciously fell from her lips, surprising her. Didn’t she? Why didn’t Sara want to go?
    He tried to hide the relief on his face from Sara by looking away, but she caught it, something inside her twisting at the vulnerability he didn’t want her to see. “All right. I got ‘National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation’ queued up. Sound good?”
    “Perfect,” Sara said, trying to smile. The tension was still there, though she was trying her hardest to pretend it wasn’t.
    “I’m zero for two.” Lincoln got two plates out of a cupboard and loaded them with pizza.
    She gave him a quizzical look, taking the plate with four slices of cheese pizza on it. Sara would maybe eat half of that.
    “This was my idea. I said we had to talk about happy stuff. I screwed it up twice now,” he said as he walked into the living room, turning on a lamp. Days were shortening now and dusk was already approaching, turning the inside of