She doesn't understand how it all fell apart so fast. One minute, they were perfect, then suddenly it was all over. She can't comprehend how she's suppose to show up every day to this job she used to love and pretend like it's all the same and that its alright. How can she possibly be expected to do her job without him by her side? How can anyone possible think that her world has not been turned upside down?
She tried to be okay at first. She came in just like any normal day and went along about her business. That's the way it was for the first couple of weeks, until she noticed it. His desk. The desk that sat in front of her for twelve years, full of photographs and messy paperwork, coffee cups and his pens, was empty. Overnight, they had cleared out his desk and boxed up his paperwork. That's when she fell apart. That's when it all came crashing down. When she realized that he really wasn't coming back. This wasn't just a temporary reassignment or a few vacation days. This was an adjustment that was permanent.
Permanent. She hated that word. She hated change. She had lived long enough to realize that change was never good. Everyone tried to make the most of it and say that everything would eventually be alright and you'd "adjust" but nothing was ever the same and nothing was ever the way it should be again. That's what happened with her mother, her brother, and now him. The one person in her life she thought she'd never lose. The one person that she let have the power to hurt her. The one man in her entire life she had given everything too.
And honestly, if she got down to the meat of it, it was the little things that hurt the most. The fact that she would now just be buying coffee for one. The fact that she'd be eating alone in the break room. Or that every time someone said something funny, she'd look around to see if he was laughing too, just to discover he wasn't there. Although, she decided, what hurt most of all was that she had lost her support system.
She needed him. She hated that it was true but she did. She needed him to be there for her when she was going to fall apart. She liked to consider herself wonder woman and say that she never actually fell apart, but he knew that wasn't true. And that was just it. He always knew. He always knew when she was hurting or when something wasn't quite right. He knew her better than she knew herself sometimes and she had gotten so accustomed to having that comfort and safety with her everyday that she wasn't quite sure she'd know how to go on without it.
She just wished everything would go back to before. Before he said he wasn't coming back, before he decided he couldn't do it anymore, before the terrible shooting, just before. Back to when it was the two of them against the world. Back to when she had him. Back to when everything felt right. She had decided she didn't think she could do it without him and honestly she didn't even want to try.