That was the phone call that finally got me to push aside my own apprehension and ask Justin if everything was okay, because he sounded so guilty and so… dejected… when he told me he needed to take care of something at the studio and asked me if I'd be okay on my own for a few hours. Of course I'd be okay -- I was a grown ass man -- but it just wasn't like Justin to not be hovering over me in an unusual situation like the one we'd found ourselves in. Not that I particularly enjoyed the hovering, but it was just what Justin did. And Justin staying so distant when I was stuck in bed with an injury was just plain fucking weird.

So I asked him.

Silence took over the line for a beat, before Justin said those two little words that had been my own mantra for so long: "I'm fine."

I'm not sure why I expected him to say anything else. After all, he'd learned from the best.

He was pretty damned convincing too -- going on to tell me that he had some projects he was working on for his show that he really needed to get finished, and sounding so much more like his normal self when he told me that. I know I should have questioned him more, but again, I didn't want to accuse, and I didn't want to make Justin any more uncomfortable than he already sounded. Add to that the fact that I was bone tired because I'd barely slept at all, and we had the perfect storm -- one that I now realize allowed me to keep my head in the sand when it came to Justin's obviously-off mental state, and at the same time allowed Justin to keep up whatever charade he was putting on, pretending to be okay when he wasn't.

I came home to an empty, quiet apartment, with Justin already gone to his studio to take care of whatever he needed to take care of. It was too quiet, and it had been too quiet for a while. I missed Justin's idle chatter about his students at the dinner table and hearing stories about some of Jennifer's more unusual (or just plain weird) real estate clients, and the quiet way we would often catch up with one another on the couch after a long day at work. None of that had happened for far too long. Instead, it was like we were moving in two separate worlds whose paths almost never intersected.

I sat for a moment between the living room and the kitchen, debating whether or not to make a pot of coffee in an effort to keep myself awake so I could get some work done, or if I should attempt a nap first. I really hated being out of the office when Cynthia was out of town. Even though I knew our employees were perfectly capable of getting things done on their own without me looking over their collective shoulder (and I’d been trying to embrace that concept more) being forced to stay away made me feel like I wasn’t doing my part. Working from home was always an option, of course, but it wasn’t the same as being there in person.

A pulse of pain working its way up from my toes to my hip brought me back out of my thoughts, and the yawn that followed made my decision for me. I didn’t need coffee; I needed sleep. But first I needed to check in with what was going on at the office.

Once I had myself settled in bed -- which took much longer than I would have liked -- I opened up my laptop and started a video call with Maurice, the account manager I’d hired a couple of months back who had been saving Cynthia and me a hell of a lot of trouble ever since. Normally, his job was to act as a liaison between us and our clients or to iron out logistical needs like scheduling photo and video shoots or lining up contractors to fulfill other needs we couldn’t take care of in-house, but that day, I needed him to also be the liaison between me and the rest of the office.

However, what I didn’t expect to hear when Maurice answered the call, was Cynthia’s voice in the background. It turned out that Rob had called her the day before to tell her what was going on, and she’d chosen to cut her vacation short and take a redeye back to New York so she could pick up my slack. I wasn’t sure how I felt about any of that, but Cynthia quickly shut down my objections by telling me it was fine -- her mom would be visiting New York in a month or so anyhow, and she was only cutting her trip short by two days.

“Someone has to keep you from running off all of our employees,” she said, grinning, once I’d hung up with Maurice and started a call with Cynthia instead. “But seriously, I know you too well. And I don’t mind. So stop feeling guilty, put your laptop away, and get some sleep. You look like shit.”

“Thanks a lot,” I groused, trying to sound insulted, although I knew Cynthia probably wasn’t off-base, and I could feel the brain fog that came with lack of sleep quickly catching up with me. My body punctuated the sentence with a yawn, just in case it wasn’t already clear how tired I was.

“I mean it,” she said, her expression softening a little. “You’re officially off for the rest of the week, and I’ll see you Monday. No phone calls, no emails. Don’t make me do what I did last time.”

“I’m not sick this time. I’m just stuck in bed. Or wherever else I can elevate my damn foot. There’s a difference.”

“Rest is rest, Brian. Your body is healing. It needs some rest so it can get started with that. And working is not resting.”

“Yeah, yeah.” I rolled my eyes, knowing full-well that Cynthia wouldn’t hesitate to have Damon, our IT guy, block my access if that was what it took.

“So, get some sleep, spend some time with Justin, and I promise I’ll catch you up on everything on Monday. Goodnight.” Cynthia smiled sweetly and waved goodbye to me, then disconnected the call, effectively cutting me off before I could object.

I sighed and closed my laptop, then set it on the nightstand and settled back into the pillows. I knew I needed sleep, and I really wished I could spend some time with Justin, but that apparently wasn’t happening. Instead, I was lying in our bed, alone, having a hard time getting comfortable because after thirteen years of being a stomach sleeper (since it helped me get off my ass for a while) sleeping on my back felt strange. And lying there by myself, not knowing when Justin was coming back, felt lonely, but I needed to push that thought out of my head because I didn’t like the way it made me feel. Closing my eyes, I tried to let exhaustion take over and carry me off into dreamland, but the dull ache pulsing through my legs -- my body’s own version of the throbbing I was sure I should have been feeling with a broken foot -- kept me hovering just on the edge of sleep.

While I was definitely glad that I wasn’t feeling the full breadth of the pain I knew I should have been feeling -- paralysis does have some benefits, I guess -- it was frustrating to be so damn tired but to feel like I just couldn’t get to sleep. Maybe on some level, my body was still feeling every last bit of the discomfort, and that was what was keeping me awake, even though my brain wasn’t registering it because the signals weren’t getting through. Regardless of the cause, it was seriously fucking annoying, and it gave me a lot of time to think -- probably too much time.

I drifted back and forth between full and partial consciousness for a long time, trying out a lot of different positions to hopefully find comfort while also keeping my foot elevated. I had to admit that the strange set of symptoms I had been experiencing were better when I had it propped up, and I was sure that the couple of hours I’d spent in my chair that morning were a big part of the reason for the pain I was feeling. I knew it was going to be a long few days, because I’d never been fond of resting or staying in bed for reasons other than fucking -- especially not when there was work to be done. Still, I knew the doctors were right, and Cynthia was right -- working wasn’t what I needed.

While a part of me wanted to be mad at Rob for calling Cynthia without telling me he’d done it, another part of me was grateful he had, because it meant I had less to worry about at the office. And, honestly, I knew why he hadn’t told me -- because if he had, I would have stopped him. So he’d done what needed to be done without any input from me, proving just how well he knew me.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, I found a comfortable position and managed to drift off into a deeper sleep. I was in the middle of a slightly bizarre dream about purchasing real estate -- in fucking Cleveland of all places -- when my phone started to ring, jarring me out of the sleep I so desperately needed and yanking me back into the present. I groaned and rolled over, and my initial thought was that I wanted to kill whoever was on the other end of the line. But then I saw it was Justin, and my thoughts shifted to hoping that nothing was wrong.

“Hello?” I mumbled, my voice only working about halfway as I tried to blink my vision back into focus.

“Hey,” Justin said. Even though he’d only said one word, I could hear how uncomfortable and unsure he was, and it made me wonder what he was about to say or ask. “Were you asleep? I thought you might be working.”

“Got kicked out of the office again for a few days, and Cynthia has officially barred me from working from home,” I said, trying to sound more awake than I actually was. “So you’re stuck with me. What’s up?”

“I wanted to see if you’d mind if I stayed at the studio for a little while longer.” Justin paused and took a breath, and I heard what sounded like the shuffling of various art supplies. “I’m having a lot of trouble getting something exactly the way I want it.” The same frustration that had become a common thread of every single one of our evenings lately was clear in Justin’s voice, and the distance he’d been maintaining from me was discernible as well -- he even sounded distant. Distant and distracted. “Dammit,” he muttered under his breath, just loud enough to be audible on my end, along with the sound of something either falling or being thrown.

“Is everything okay?”

“Yeah,” he sighed, still sounding like his mind was anywhere but our phone conversation. “Like I said, I just can’t get this to come out right. I was hoping you wouldn’t mind if I stayed here and worked on it.”

“Stay as long as you need to. I’m fine.” I stifled a yawn as I looked up at the ceiling, still fucking exhausted, wondering when in the hell I was going to be able to get a few hours of uninterrupted sleep.

“Thanks,” Justin said, once again sounding preoccupied, continuing to shuffle things around on the other end of the line. I heard something drop, and again, I wasn’t sure whether it had fallen, or if it had been thrown. “Shit. Goddamn it,” he murmured. “I have to go.”

Then, before I could ask Justin again what was going on, my phone beeped three times in my ear -- the signal that Justin had ended the call, without even giving me a chance to say goodbye. My first instinct was to try to call him back, but I stopped myself with my thumb hovering over the screen, because I knew Justin probably wouldn’t answer anyway. Frustrated and confused, I let the phone drop to the bed, sighing heavily as I let my eyes close. Once again, I was back to wishing that Justin would let me in and tell me what the fuck was going on, because it was obvious that he was keeping me in the dark, but every time I tried to ask a question, he would head me off with one of my answers: “I’m fine.”

Maybe this was payback for all of the times that I’d uttered those words when they’d been anything but true.

I still felt like I was missing something, but I didn’t know what it was, and I wasn’t sure how to go about figuring it out when it seemed like Justin simply did not want to let me in. If anything, it seemed more like he wanted to be alone, and quite frankly, I wasn’t sure what to do with that, because it wasn’t like Justin at all.

We supposedly didn’t keep things from each other anymore, but I sure as fuck felt shut out -- left on the wrong side of a wall Justin had constructed around himself, for reasons I couldn’t figure out. Walls weren’t Justin’s thing; they were mine. Justin had found his way inside my walls, whether I wanted him to or not, and after a while (and a lot of perseverance on his part), I ended up being glad he was there, because life was a lot easier -- and its never-ending challenges were much easier to deal with -- with a partner by your side to share in the pain, or give advice, or help you with whatever you needed, without judgment. It took me a long time to get there, but I did it. And I never would have expected to find myself on the wrong side of any wall constructed by Justin Taylor.

But there I was -- alone in our bed. Wondering what was happening in Justin’s world and why I wasn’t a part of it.

Why was Justin keeping his distance from me at a time when he would ordinarily be playing the part of Florence Fucking Nightingale, constantly in and out of our bedroom to check on me and make sure that I had everything I needed? Normally, Justin would almost drive me insane with his constant worrying about me, and his simultaneous need to reassure himself that I was okay. And he’d be all over the internet, researching the best foods to eat for bone healing and spending most of his day cooking those exact foods. But this time, Justin wasn’t doing any of that. Instead, he was staying away from me. Not totally, but much more than usual, and it was enough to make me wonder. I could still see shades of Justin’s “normal” anxiety in his actions, but it was different. It seemed like it was about something else completely, and not just whether or not I was alright. It was like there was something he needed to tell me, but he either didn’t want to or didn’t feel like he could, and I had no idea what it could be.

Was there a problem with us or our relationship, and Justin was too scared to tell me I’d fucked up or that he wanted something I wasn’t giving him? At the time, I didn’t know, and Justin’s self-imposed isolation was more than enough to reignite my old insecurities, no matter what Michael had told me back in Pittsburgh to reassure me that Justin and I were simply meant to be. However, the situation I’d found myself in told me something completely different, and it was hard not to buy into those doubts, particularly while under the influence of increased pain medication, which always seemed to make me emotional (by my standards, anyhow), or morose, or both.

Unpleasant as they were, those were the thoughts that ushered me back into sleep as exhaustion claimed me again, allowing me to slip back into unconsciousness for a few more hours. When I woke up, finally feeling at least a little more rested, I hoped that Justin might be home, but he wasn’t. Not that I was surprised, because I did know how absorbed he could get in his art, to the exclusion of everything else around him. Most of the time, he had no idea how much time he’d spent painting or sculpting, even if hours had passed.

Of course, I also knew that if he’d lost that much perception of time, he probably also hadn’t eaten, which motivated me to place a call to Nick over at Monetti’s to have Justin’s favorite dish -- fettuccine alfredo with grilled chicken -- delivered to his studio as a surprise from me. It felt a little like an effort to make sure he knew I still gave a shit, but I did, and I was worried -- though not nearly worried enough, as I would find out soon. Regardless, I wanted to take care of him, and that was why I did it.

When my phone started ringing about forty-five minutes later, I expected it to be Justin, but it was Nick, calling to tell me that his delivery person had just called to double-check the address, because he wasn’t getting an answer at Justin’s studio. Nick assumed that Justin must have come home, and I wished that was the case, but it wasn’t -- at least, not yet. We made arrangements to have the food dropped off at the apartment instead, and I figured it wouldn’t be long before Justin came in the door. Perhaps the delivery driver had just missed him.

However, as the minutes crawled by and turned into an hour, long after Justin’s fettuccine alfredo had been delivered to me and put in the fridge for safe keeping, with no sign of Justin, I started to get worried. I convinced myself I shouldn’t be, though, because Justin was known to take the “scenic route” home, especially if he was thinking about art, which was most of the time. He often made at least a couple of unscheduled stops to pick up new inspiration for paintings or sculptures, or to take a picture of something he found interesting. So I told myself that was what he was doing, and I had no need to be concerned. He’d probably be home soon, with a phone full of photos of the harbor or some kids playing at a park or something.

As the second hour wound its way to an end, still with no Justin, I was finding it much harder to convince myself that everything was fine. I tried to call him three times, but he didn’t answer, which wasn’t at all helpful in my efforts to not worry. Although most of the time, the lingering effects of Justin’s brain injury were minor at that point, there were still times when an unusual situation would get the best of him and leave him virtually paralyzed, unable to sort out his thoughts to make a decision, and I’d end up finding him in the throes of a panic attack as he struggled against the chaos in his mind. There were also the headaches, and he’d been having a lot of those in recent months. A sudden migraine could easily force Justin to stay exactly where he was until it passed or until I came to get him, because when the headaches got bad, there was no way he could get home on his own. We’d been there, and we’d done that -- more than once.

I was pulling my leather jacket out of the coat closet, already having made up my mind that I needed to go out searching, when the door to our apartment opened and Justin walked in.