Winter came to New York like an unwelcome guest, bringing with it deadlines and doubt. My community center project was approved but on a drastically reduced budget, which meant redesigning everything from scratch. I spent eighteen-hour days at the firm’s office, surviving on coffee and takeout and increasingly terse text messages.

Ethan, meanwhile, had finally agreed to his gallery owner’s request for more commercial work, a decision that was eating him alive. I could see it in the tight lines around his eyes, in the way he attacked his canvases with something close to violence.

“Come to bed,” I said one night, finding him in his studio at 2 AM,...