December came in cold and certain, and I noticed the slippage before I had a word for it.

It started with small things. Eli texted me a photo of a holiday sweater in a store window, the kind with a reindeer doing something undignified, no caption because he knew he didn’t need one. I laughed at my phone alone in my office and then, without thinking about it, saved the photo. I noticed I’d done it and told myself it was just a funny picture and moved on.

He started bringing things when he came over. Good coffee, not the gas station kind he usually grabbed on his way somewhere,...