Your hair becomes knotted when you get sad, and by the end of your first year of adjuncting, you're so matted that your face will be drenched in tears any time you gather enough courage to attempt to brush out the tangles. At this point in your relationship, you'll have expected infidelity but lack any proof, so instead you will cry more and your hair will become more matted, and so on. One night, he will treat you with kindness you haven't seen in years, asking you to lay your head on his lap as he sprays detangling spray on small sections of your hair, working from the bottom up on each row with such care, with such a gentle hand, you feel like maybe the change in his behavior, the way he's looked at you with contempt, is all in your head. In this moment, you feel an impossible safety you will never want to shake, even in six months when you learn about the affair, about his second apartment where he also somehow paid rent with his meager teaching stipend. When you think of that night, your head in his lap, you'll remember how you stepped outside for a break and stood by each other in the dark, and he told you about finding a kitten by the road on his way there, how its legs had been run over, acting it out with his hands, the limp legs. You'll remember the way he breathed out smoke and told you of holding the kitten, saying a prayer before breaking its neck. You'll remember the ache in the pit of your gut as you listened, how, even then, you knew he would never have given you the same grace as he did that broken, mangled tabby.

.