I’ll never forget that morning for as long as I live.

It was a Saturday. Thor and I had stayed up late the night before, sipping on wine around a bonfire in our backyard until the ruby red embers faded to black. For a while, we were both silent, getting lost in our thoughts as our eyes fixated on the fire. Well, I wasn’t thinking that much. I always could shut off my mind and get absorbed in the moment. Thor does not—did not have that same luxury. I recall looking over at him and studying his face. He had that look I’d become familiar with after knowing him for so long. It was the one where it seemed as though he was struggling to solve an equation in his head. His wheels were always turning. The warm glow emphasized the deep creases between his furrowed brows and the edges of his downturned lips. The tips of his blond hair were washed in orange and looked as though they were flickering like flames. They conjured up an image in my mind of Heat Miser from that old movie The Year Without Santa Claus I grew up watching. His mind was working so hard that I wouldn’t have been surprised if smoke started coming out of his ears.

I’d never asked what he was stewing over, but it will always haunt me. We’d had a small argument over our plans for the next day before we slipped into silence. I wanted to meet up with some old friends, but he wanted to stay home and spend some time together.

“It’s never just us, anymore, Sarah. You’ve always got to invite someone. Even tonight we couldn’t have a nice bonfire to ourselves. I wanted to tell you about my day, but you got on the phone with your sister as soon as we sat down. It’s like you can’t stand to be alone with me anymore.”

Those were the last words he’d said to me. I had opened and closed my mouth a couple of times searching for a response, but I ended up looking like a fish that wasn’t getting enough oxygen. I realized that he was right and there was nothing I could do to defend myself. It’s not that I didn’t want to be around him. It had gotten to the point where I didn’t know how to be around him. More accurately, how to be me around him. I’d recently turned fifty and was going through a sort of mid-life crisis, reconciling who I used to be with this new, older-looking version of myself. That night I hadn’t been self-aware enough to realize this and I’d resorted to my coping mechanism of ignoring my feelings and turning off my mind. In retrospect, however, I know that was the source of my pushing him away. I was afraid he wouldn’t love me anymore.