Two days after Rob officially became an employee of Kinnetikcorp, Justin told me he was quitting his job.

It seemed like any other day. I'd been at the office from nine in the morning until after six in the evening, and I'd come home to dinner on the table, exactly as I did most nights. Even during the school year, Justin got home two hours before I did, which caused the cooking responsibilities to fall to him the majority of the time. On that particular night, he'd made Debbie's lasagna -- which he did on occasion because it made us both feel like she was still here with us -- and it was every bit as delicious as I remembered. He'd brought home a bottle of wine that I was sure was much more expensive than his usual, more frugal choices, leaving me wondering if perhaps we were celebrating something -- if there was some important date I'd forgotten.

We were halfway through dessert -- sharing a gargantuan slice of cheesecake from the deli on the next block -- when he said it.

“I called Michelle today to let her know I’m not coming back in the fall.”

The way he said it was so nonchalant, like it was nothing at all -- like it was something he’d been planning for a while. Like we’d had prior discussions about it, even though we hadn’t had a single one. I stopped chewing and studied Justin for a moment, but his countenance was every bit as casual as his tone.

I was still trying to figure out what to say when he started speaking again.

“I think I’d like to concentrate on my art for a while, you know?” He paused and took another bite of the cheesecake, while I continued to stare at him, evaluating him. Then, before I could find a way to respond to the bomb that had just been dropped in the middle of our dining room table, he changed the subject. “I’m so glad Rob gave me Debbie’s lasagna recipe. I really thought no one would ever get it out of her, but every time I make it, I’m so grateful that she gave it to him.”

The sudden shift in topic did give me pause in the moment, because it made Justin’s statement about his job seem even more random. But I chose to focus on the positive -- Justin was going back to doing his art full time.

I remembered what a huge deal that had been for him -- for both of us -- when he’d resigned from his graphic artist position at Kinnetik years ago. How exciting it was. How it was like Justin was embarking on a new frontier. A new stage in his life.

Before everything changed and we got thrown into a totally different dimension.

It’s funny how life works sometimes -- in cycles, repeating the same themes in different ways with different situations. Leaving it up to us to recognize a familiar situation and call on our past experience to get through it.

But sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees.

While, on one hand, I was happy for Justin -- that he’d decided to spend more time on his art -- on the other, I was surprised because it came completely out of the blue.

He loved his job. Loved the kids. Came home every afternoon chattering away excitedly about his day. From my perspective, it looked like he had the best damn job in the whole world.

So why was he quitting?

Looking back, I should have known right then that something was wrong. But I didn't.

Maybe I didn't want to.

He'd come so far -- overcome so much to put his life back together and find a new way to make a living and feel fulfilled. Maybe I just didn't want to entertain the possibility of setting so much of that progress back to start.

But I felt justified in not seeing it as a big deal because in the beginning, he hadn’t wanted to take the job in the first place. Sure, he did, and he loved it, but perhaps it had just been a stepping stone -- something to validate him and help him feel like he was doing something worthwhile, while he tried to find a comfortable place in the art world again. So maybe it was time to move on. I just wanted him to be happy, and this seemed like what he wanted.

He seemed happy, too. At least, back then.

We spent the rest of the evening together, finishing the wine and talking softly to each other as we caught up on a couple of shows on our DVR. Justin was tucked into my side with his head resting on my shoulder, and everything was normal. He asked me how things were going with moving the team from GoodLife Robotics into their new office space, and I asked him about his latest sculpture project. It was just another comfortable night in our home, in our married life. The sort of marital bliss that I would have pretended to be allergic to twenty years before, that had become something I really enjoyed and couldn’t imagine living without. The progression of life changes a person, though, I suppose. I know it’s changed me, and it’s changed Justin, but we’ve gotten through it all together, in one way or another.

We fucked in the shower and fell asleep with our bodies pressed against each other, Justin’s fingers brushing idly over my back the way they did most nights, tracing the scar that runs the length of most of my spine. I always wondered why he did that, because it seemed to be unconscious -- like his fingers just naturally wandered to that spot, perhaps because, on some level, it reminded him of what I survived, the same way that the barely-visible scar on his own temple had always reminded me of how strong he was, and still is.

But strength doesn’t preclude struggle, unfortunately. Particularly not where traumatic brain injury is concerned, with its unpredictable, ever-changing ways. And, unbeknownst to me -- to both of us -- we were about to enter one of the most significant struggles of our marriage.

I woke up the morning after Justin’s big announcement to find myself alone in our bed, and I could smell eggs and bacon cooking in the kitchen. By the time I made it into the living area, Justin was plating up breakfast, humming quietly to himself. He greeted me with a smile, then gave me a hug and a kiss after he’d placed our plates on the table. He had plans to work in the studio that day, and he seemed excited to get started on a couple of ideas he’d been rolling around in his head for a while.

A couple of hours later, we left the apartment together, then went our separate ways on the sidewalk out front -- Justin headed to his studio, and me to Kinnetik.

The next several days looked exactly the same -- every bit as predictable as my old routine of work, Woody’s, Babylon, and an anonymous fuck. Everything was fine; no reason to worry.

The shift was so subtle that I thought nothing of it at the time, though now, with the benefit of hindsight, it feels like I should have seen the flashing lights and heard the sirens. I wish I had, just because I could have saved him so much pain. But there’s no changing that now.

It started with a headache, and Justin with his face buried in his pillow groaning at the morning sunlight as it filtered through the blinds in our bedroom. I got up and closed the blackout curtains we’d had installed after Justin’s accident, when debilitating migraines became a regular part of our lives. I got him his meds and a glass of water, and I made him his favorite tea, but he didn’t drink it. I called Cynthia and told her I wasn’t coming in that day, ignoring Justin’s mumbled pleas that he was fine and I should go to work anyway.

He slept most of the day, while I worked from our living room via my laptop. I ordered us lunch and cooked us dinner, but he wasn’t interested in eating. When I went to the bedroom to tell him dinner was ready, he said he felt sick and rolled over and went back to sleep. The next morning, his headache was gone, but he was exhausted, so he stayed in bed while I went about my morning routine and went to work. When I came home, he was gone, and he’d left me a note on the kitchen counter that he’d gone to his studio.

Justin didn’t get home until well after nine o’clock, but that wasn’t unusual for him when it came to working in his studio. When he really got absorbed in an art project, he would lose all sense of time and space, and I was used to that, so I left him alone, vowing to myself that I wouldn’t worry unless he gave me a reason to. And at that point, he’d given me no reason.

So I took a long, hot shower, which I desperately needed because I’d been having a flare-up of some of my chronic pain, thanks to a couple of stressful months at the office. Everything worked out in the end, but that didn’t stop my body from reacting however the fuck it wanted. When I got out of the shower, I found Justin in our kitchen, sitting at the bar, eating a sandwich, with dried paint all over his face and hands. But he didn’t seem happy, and he wasn’t ready-and-waiting to tell me all about what he’d been working on, like he usually would have been. Instead, he was obviously frustrated, and the aggressive way in which he was eating his sandwich showed it.

“Everything okay?” I asked, pushing myself into the kitchen for a glass of water.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he muttered, without even looking up from his plate, where he'd practically just thrown down the remaining half of his sandwich.

Normally, I would have at least tried to find out what was frustrating him -- and he would have told me without much pushing on my part -- but that night, I was too tired and too uncomfortable, and all I really wanted was to medicate and go to sleep. Still, I couldn’t deny that paint on Justin’s skin always has been and always will be a turn-on for me, and sex is still one of my default modes of stress relief.

“Missed you tonight,” I said, getting closer to Justin and slowly running a finger down his arm, across the small splotches of acrylic paint that dotted it. When I got to his hand, I brought it to my lips and kissed it, hoping he’d start to return my affections so we could go to bed and work out all of our pain and frustration together.

But instead of leaning into my touch, he pulled his hand away and continued looking down, pausing for a moment to rub his temples, which I knew probably meant his headache was back, or otherwise threatening to do so.

“Come to bed,” I said in a low, seductive tone as I rubbed my hand across his back, where I could feel the tension radiating from his muscles. “I’ll give you a massage.” Even in my own state of discomfort, the last thing I wanted was to see Justin hurting, and if that meant delaying my own relief to help provide him with some, I’d do it, no questions asked.

But he leaned forward, away from my touch, and ran a hand over his face. “Not tonight,” he mumbled.

“Come to bed,” I said again, this time without the sexual undertone. “Just to relax. I promise I’ll keep my hands to myself.”

Justin didn’t move and didn’t engage -- he just sat there with his eyes closed. It was obvious that he wanted to be left alone, but that was close to impossible for me to do because I wanted nothing more than to take his pain away and make him feel better. I couldn’t keep my fingers from reaching out again to make contact, to try and soothe my partner, even if I had no idea why he was upset. But this time, he took his resistance one step further.

“I need to take a shower,” Justin muttered, pulling away from me as he stood, turned and walked back toward the bedroom without so much as a backward glance, leaving the plate with his partially-eaten sandwich on the countertop.

I watched his back as he retreated down the hallway, disappearing into our bedroom. I fought the impulse to follow him -- to press and try to get him to let me in, tell me what was wrong. Instead, I picked up the plate and threw away what remained of his sandwich, then placed the empty plate in the sink. I heard the shower turn on, and I hoped the warm water would bring Justin the small sense of relief it had brought me a few minutes before.

Turning off the lights in the kitchen and living room, I made my way to the bedroom, sliding my body into the bed and watching my legs shake to work out their own tension before they settled back into their now-familiar stillness. I downed the small handful of pills I’d already laid out for myself on the nightstand, then leaned back into the pillows and closed my eyes, trying to relax my mind as well as my body -- telling myself Justin would talk to me when he was ready. We didn’t keep things from each other anymore, and I was sure this would be no exception.

I chalked up his odd behavior to being tired and probably still dealing with the remnants of a migraine, and tried not to think much of it as I pushed myself over onto my stomach to prepare for sleep, and it only took a few minutes before I was starting to feel the effects of the medication I’d taken. Soon, I was falling into a dreamless slumber as I listened to the sounds of water spattering on the tile in the adjacent bathroom, hopefully washing away my husband’s pain.