It was a reasonable answer. I heard it as a refusal to be romantic. A few days later I showed him a video of a boyfriend covering his girlfriend's apartment in roses after she announced she was leaving him. Donovan watched the clip and asked why the woman had wanted to leave in the first place. I said that was not the point. He looked at me, honestly confused, and asked what the point was supposed to be.
"He fought for her," I said. Donovan gave the phone back without criticizing either person. "Maybe," he answered. "Or maybe she needed him to listen the first time. I don't know enough about them to say." I took his reluctance to judge strangers as proof that he did not understand the depth of feeling I wanted from him. Now I recognize that he had been trying to understand a complete human situation while I was asking him to admire its most theatrical thirty seconds.
My closest friend, Kendra Morrison, noticed the change before Donovan did. Kendra and I had met in college and worked together briefly before she became a respiratory therapist. She had a dry sense of humor and a habit of asking questions nobody enjoyed answering, which made her invaluable and occasionally infuriating. Over brunch one Saturday, I complained that Donovan never seemed jealous when another man spoke to me. She stirred her coffee and asked whether he had any reason to be jealous.
"That's not what I mean," I said. "Sometimes I want to know he wouldn't be okay losing me." Kendra set her spoon down. "Samantha, he wouldn't be okay losing you. That doesn't mean he has to act like a hostage every time you're insecure." I laughed as though she had misunderstood a joke, then changed the subject. The truth was that I did not want her to be right.
I started making small experiments out of ordinary interactions. I waited longer than usual before replying to a message, hoping Donovan would send five more. He sent one asking whether my day was busy and another, hours later, reminding me that he had left soup in my refrigerator because I mentioned feeling sick. I hinted that a man at work had complimented my dress and watched for his reaction. Donovan smiled and said the man had good taste, then asked whether my presentation had gone well.
None of these responses fit the script I was inventing. Instead of recognizing that he trusted me, I told myself he was taking me for granted. I ignored how often he rearranged his schedule for us, how he learned the names of people important to me, and how carefully he kept promises that nobody else would have remembered. I treated his inability to read my mind as evidence that his feelings were shallow. I had made reassurance impossible because every reassuring act became ordinary once it arrived.