I awoke the next morning with Justin’s arm weighing heavily across my upper back and his face inches from my own, eyes still closed, sound asleep. I hated to disturb him, so I laid there and watched him for a few minutes, relishing the sense of peace that had overtaken his features and replaced the previous night’s turmoil, before I had to find a way to slide out from under him or else I’d be late for work.

I tried to do it as carefully as possible, but when only half of your body works, sometimes being sneaky is a distinct impossibility, particularly when it comes to getting in and out of bed. So, I wasn’t surprised when Justin’s eyes fluttered open as I pushed myself up so I could roll over.

“Sorry,” I said. “I was trying not to wake you.”

“S’okay,” he mumbled, the tone of his voice matching the still-sleepy look in his eyes as he pulled his arm back and slid it under his pillow instead.

“Go back to sleep,” I said as I pushed myself over and into a sitting position. “Lucky you, now you can work on whatever schedule you like.”

Justin hummed and blinked, which wasn’t really the reaction I’d expected, but given the way the past few days had been for him, I decided to overlook it.

“Need the bathroom before I go do my thing?” I asked, mostly because ‘do my thing’ meant a nearly one-hour sequence of tasks just to get ready for the day, most of which had to be done in our master bathroom. Sometimes I miss being able to roll out of bed and be ready for work in fifteen minutes or less. But it is what it is. After thirteen years, I’m used to it. It doesn’t piss me off anymore, but sometimes it’s still inconvenient.

Justin shook his head, still on the pillow, giving me a small smile as his eyes slid shut once again. The smile was a good sign. Maybe he was okay after all.

Once I’d completed my morning routine -- which I had to remind myself used to take me more than two hours instead of not-quite-one -- I went into the kitchen, where I found Justin making breakfast, and coffee already on the table. That was a good sign too -- something normal.

“Sorry about last night,” Justin said, as he brought me my breakfast -- oatmeal, healthy carbs that I needed to be eating according to my doctor, and that my public-service-announcement, rule-following husband was determined to be sure I ate. He’d stirred cherries into it, and offered me dark chocolate chips, which I passed on, because no way in hell am I turning breakfast into a dessert. However, Justin wasn’t the least bit shy about dumping a generous portion of chocolate into his own bowl.

“It’s okay.” I shrugged and offered Justin a reassuring smile. “Believe me, I know what it’s like to have a bad day that just won't quit.”

Justin snorted and stirred his oatmeal. “You can say that again. I should have never said yes to this commission, but I figured it would probably be good to make some money, since I quit my job and all.”

“You know you don’t have to worry about money. I’m not worried about money.”

“I know, but… I don’t want to be a kept man, you know?”

“You’re not. You do plenty. You don’t have to take on commissions you don’t like to make money we don’t need.”

Justin sighed and took a bite of his breakfast, and I knew exactly what he was thinking, even if he’d never say it. He’d always insisted on pulling his weight somehow, no matter how many times I told him that I didn’t mind supporting us both.

“Remember, you can always pay me back with sexual favors,” I said, grinning, trying to lighten the mood, though it seemed to have the opposite effect where Justin was concerned. Instead of laughing like I’d expected him to do, he looked down and bit his lip.

“I’m sorry about that too, last night. I just wasn’t in the mood.”

“Stop apologizing,” I said, really wanting to pull out my old line of ‘sorry’s bullshit,’ but not sure how Justin would take that in his still-odd mood. “It’s fine. I can go a night without sex, I promise. We’re good.”

“I just get frustrated sometimes,” he said, still not looking at me. “When I feel like I should be able to do something, and I can’t anymore. It’s like sometimes I forget. That I’m… different now.”

“I know.” My words were a short and simple acknowledgement, but my brain almost immediately went back to a night almost thirteen years before, when I’d said those exact words to Justin about myself in Debbie Novotny’s living room.

“I know you know. And that’s why I hate complaining about it to you.”

“Hey, what have I told you before about that? There’s no comparison. There shouldn’t be. You feel how you feel. Just do what you can. Remember, they hired you, didn’t they? You’re still you. Even if what you do now is different, it’s still your work, and that’s what they asked for. And if you need someone to sell it, well...”

Justin snorted. “I don’t need my husband coming to my rescue, even if you could sell ice to someone living at the South Pole.”

“Well, I have faith in you. You’ll get it.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“Who do you think you’re talking to? I’m always right,” I smirked, this time succeeding in making Justin laugh.

“Don’t I know it,” he said, shaking his head a little as he looked down at his bowl.

The rest of our breakfast conversation was much lighter, and by the time he kissed me goodbye and I went to the office, everything seemed to be status quo. I knew we were still feeling out a new normal and a new daily routine, but Justin was at least talking to me and telling me what was frustrating him, so that helped me feel better about things.

Of course, now I know that it was a false sense of security, but we all know what they say about hindsight. I’ve tried to keep that in perspective -- to not feel so guilty about where we ultimately ended up -- but it’s hard. I keep going back over everything in my mind, trying to find all of the little things I missed that I shouldn’t have. I know it won’t change anything -- and Rob has told me that ad nauseum -- but I still can’t stop.

The next week or so added to that false sense of security, with Justin and I continuing to fall into a comfortable routine, though it hardly ever involved me coming home to a home-cooked meal anymore. I didn’t care about that though -- what I cared about was Justin doing what he wanted to do. If that meant we ate takeout or I had to dig into my own bag of cooking tricks, that was fine.

We got Gus moved into his dorm at NYU and played host to Lindsay and Melanie for a few days, and during that time, Justin seemed to be okay. Normal, even.

Then came another subtle shift.

I remember that it was a Tuesday. I’m not sure why I remember that, but I do. Rob had a staff meeting with his crew at our usual lunchtime and Cynthia had a client meeting, so that meant I was on my own, and I decided to surprise Justin by bringing him lunch at his studio. I stopped by the cafe he always wanted to go to whenever he came by the office, and I got him his favorite thing -- the club sandwich -- and picked up one of their giant brownies for good measure. Balancing everything carefully on my lap, I made my way to the subway and rode the several blocks to SoHo, where Justin’s studio was.

But when I got there, what I found wasn’t exactly what I was expecting.

I knocked lightly on the door and got no answer, but that wasn’t surprising because Justin often worked while wearing a giant pair of noise-canceling headphones to block out distractions, regardless of whether or not he actually used them to listen to music. So I dug my own key out of my pocket and unlocked the door, opening it slowly so as not to startle my husband.

My eyes immediately fell on an easel by the largest workbench, where there was a half-finished canvas, covered in bright colors that formed an abstract pattern that looked almost floral. But Justin wasn’t working on it. Instead, he was sitting just beyond the workbench, in the armchair in front of the window, asleep, with his feet pulled up into the chair and an arm wrapped around his knees.

I pushed myself into the room, looking around at the three other empty easels scattered throughout the room as well as the workbenches, which were nearly as empty, serving as a home to only a couple of half-finished sculpture projects. It wasn’t at all the typical state of Justin’s studio, where artwork normally filled every wall and every surface.

He’d been spending a lot of time in his studio, so that made it even more surprising that there were so few works in progress. I knew that the piece on the easel was the commission piece he’d told me about more than a week before, intended to hang above the bed in the room of a little girl whose parents clearly had a lot of money, because Justin isn’t cheap. Even it, though, appeared to be nowhere close to done, and the nearer I got to the canvas, the more I felt like something was just… off.

The strokes didn’t look like Justin’s careful, confident ones. They looked… shaky. Unsure. Almost muddied, which was a stark contrast to Justin’s usual work. Even right after his accident, his work had never looked like this. Don’t get me wrong, the piece was good, but it just didn’t seem to be Justin.

I looked across the room again to my husband, curled up in the chair by the window, still sleeping soundly. Looking just as peaceful as he usually did when he slept. But I also knew it wasn’t like him to sleep in the middle of the afternoon. Even when his brain injury had forced him to take almost daily naps in the months after his accident, he wasn’t exactly willing. He did it because his doctor told him he had to, and he was desperate to recover whatever he could, but it wasn’t his favorite thing, and the only time he’d taken any naps in recent memory was when he had a migraine or was sick.

That thought left me wondering what was wrong, because the scene before me was so not like Justin. Not at all.

Our lunch still sitting in my lap, I pushed closer to Justin, gently laying my hand on his forearm. It took him a few seconds to come back to consciousness, and when he did, his surprise at seeing me in his studio was palpable, but it was also layered with something else I couldn’t quite identify. Looking back now, I think it was shame, and that hurts to think about, because there shouldn’t have been any shame in the way Justin felt. Not at all.

But he’d kept it to himself, and tied my hands behind my back in the process, leaving me unable to be the support he needed, simply because I didn’t know the full breadth of what he was feeling.

Again, fucking hindsight.

“I brought you some lunch. The club sandwich from that cafe you like by the office,” I said, hoping to see that familiar sunshine smile spread across my husband’s face, but it never came.

Instead, Justin grunted a nonverbal response that I wasn’t sure how to interpret as he untangled his limbs and stood, walking past me and over to the easel, where he regarded the canvas with a critical eye.

“It sucks, doesn’t it?”

His words were the ultimate self criticism -- harsher than I’d heard from Justin before, even when he was being unfairly hard on himself. In his tone, I could hear the dejection layered with the frustration and condemnation. He still wasn’t looking at me. He was staring at the canvas like it had offended him somehow, but even in my denial-prone state, I couldn’t ignore the fact that he also looked lost. Of course, in my mind I blamed it on the fact that the piece was a commission he’d never wanted to do in the first place. How could he expect to feel inspired by something he wasn’t emotionally connected to?

Now that I look back, I know exactly what was standing before me in that moment -- my husband, feeling like he’d been “caught.” Like he should have had something to show for all of the hours he’d spent in his studio, but having almost nothing at all. That he wouldn’t look at me because he was embarrassed, and some dark corner of his mind was telling him that I would judge him. Inadvertently, I’d entered into his private struggle, uninvited and unwanted, by the simple act of bringing him lunch.

I tried to play the part of the supportive spouse, telling him about all of the good things I could see in the painting, and doing my dead-level best to ignore the flaws that I was fairly sure were a big part of the reason Justin was being so critical of the work. I know that’s not my typical style, but Justin didn’t need criticism in that moment. He needed support. Even in my willfully ignorant state, I recognized that. But Justin was having none of it. He wouldn’t listen. Wouldn’t look at me. He just stared at the canvas with narrowed eyes for several more seconds, then went back to his chair and slumped down in it, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.

“Maybe you just need a break,” I said, keeping my voice gentle. I looked at him over my shoulder as I placed the bag containing our lunch on the workbench, then turned and went over to him again. “Why don’t you try to eat something? Maybe go out and get some fresh air? At least, as fresh as it can be here in good ol’ Manhattan.” I grinned at him, hoping I’d be able to break through his mood with a little sardonic humor, but my attempt was unsuccessful. Justin didn’t move. Didn’t look up.

Finally, after a long silence, Justin mumbled, “I’m not hungry.” Still looking at the floor. Uttering what was perhaps the most un-Justin-like statement he ever could have uttered. And still, I clung to the idea that everything was fine -- that Justin was having a bad day, or in a bad mood, or maybe he was getting another one of his headaches.

Still, I refused to see what was right in front of me.