The Week Is Not a Pause
You are not waiting. That is the first thing to understand about the seven or so days between a man asking you to consider him and you giving him your answer. Your body is running calculations. Your memory is curating. Your nervous system is doing something that looks like rest but is closer to a full audit.The mind, when it is genuinely uncertain about a person, does not sit still. It pulls up every moment from the meeting, the way he laughed at something you said, whether he listened or waited for his turn to speak, the particular quality of silence between the two of you when the conversation paused. You are not remembering these things consciously. They surface the way old feelings do: suddenly, while you are doing something unrelated, while you are rinsing dal or staring at a ceiling fan.
