Hey Baby

Loneliness? It's All I've Ever Known

When we were seventeen Lincoln showed up at my house fuming.

His cheeks were stained with tears, blotchy, and his lips bitten raw. I saw it in his eyes then, the agony, the pain, the hurt. I hadn't ever asked what caused him to be so upset, I could smell that liquor on his breath and his current state was not one to try and get an answer out of. I had never found out what had upset him so bad that night; but sitting in the car beside him now, close to midnight, I could see hints of that same distraught boy sitting in the driver's seat. His cheeks were red, his eyes trained straight ahead would occasionally shift to me for a millisecond in guilt, then redirect themselves to the road. He was a mess and this was without even a drop of alcohol in his system. When I had returned to his table, the glass sat untouched on a coaster and he just stared up at me, as if he were prompting me to say something, anything.

"I know I'm an idiot, alright?" he said gruffly, grasping the steering wheel. "I just have a lot of shit going on right now and Mom wouldn't shut her Goddamn mouth for two seconds so I could try and think."

"Lincoln."

"I understand that you're going through crap too. I don't. . . I shouldn't have said what I did. But I need your help, Ellie. One last time. Then you'll never have to see me again."

"Lincoln."

He shook his head, breathing out shakily. "I'm so fucking sorry, Ellie."

"Lincoln, breathe." I said quietly. "Getting yourself worked up while you're driving is not going to help either of us."

He nodded, considering my words, then straightened and gripped the wheel tightly again. I leaned against the cold window, ready to slap a hand against my stomach when it started growling. My hope that it would have been a repeat of the kitchen earlier this evening when nobody had batted an eye vanished when he switched over to the turn lane and pulled into the line outside of the Whitney's drive-thru. "Don't even try and tell me you're not hungry."

"I don't have any cash on me and left my card at home." I whispered, but the wonderful smell of a fresh double cheeseburger immediately drew me into a hunger enhanced daze.

"Don't worry about it. It's on me." he offered a weak smile that didn't meet his eyes.

Once he'd ordered and gotten our food, I had already gotten threw half my burger by the time he pulled into a parking spot on the other side of the lot. The last couple weeks of nausea was nothing compared to the insatiable huger I felt-and would likely regret in the morning when this baby decided it didn't like what I'd eaten.

"I swear you're still like a garbage disposal." Link joked, munching on some fries. "I always thought it wasn't fair that you could eat an entire grocery store and not gain a pound."

Almost in unison we both looked toward my stomach, obviously both coming to the same conclusion; that fast metabolism was long gone now.

"Thanks." I said, waving my second burger in front of me. "I was starving."

He cracked a smile but waited until he was halfway through his own chicken sandwich to break the surprisingly comfortable silence. "Did you think about it? What I said back at the banquet hall?"

"You mean before your mother overheard me say I was pregnant?"

"Once this blows over and she's over the fact we broke up, I'll tell her the baby was never mine." he shrugged a shoulder. "She's too self-absorbed to care too much."