Suffice it to say she had significant doubts when he did not show up to her reading.
She felt a bit like an ass thinking like that. You know, here was a man who had cooked her dinner and cuddled with her at night and was proud to show her on his arm hither and yon. And yet. And yet. There she was, soul bared, and he wasn't aching to see it.
And all the reasonable questions and arguments ran through her head: that he knew her. HER. Not some character on stage. Not some presentation. He couldn't be expected to like her creations. That was a matter of taste. Or maybe, even, he had something far more important to do than see her present a facet of a life he was actually absorbed in.
She just didn't know. And yet it seemed strange. Strange in the same way she wasn't the first to hear his demo. Strange in the way that he only seemed so concerned if she even liked his music.

It is odd how people get to know eachother. Some people shake your hand and then go home and comb the internet for every evidence of your existence. They read every word you tweet and stare at pictures for signs of what lies beneath the surface.
Others can be handed your diary and not even be curious enough to crack it.

Does this reflect a lack of curiousity, or simply a different modality of knowing? Do they smell your scent and look in your eyes and know all they need to know? Do they not play over your words for inflection? Do they simply absorb what they are given and know something you may never not?

Some people. So curious. Others: content and absorned in the macro they are given.

I've never really understood it myself. I am a comber. A searcher. I listen closely. I consider words and how they are articulated. I wonder at their patterns. I replay chords to grow deeper into a human. I stare at their art, trying to find the intent, the logic. I find people's bodies, these shells they inhabit, difficult to see through, opaque and confusing. Too unclear. I'll take any hint. I know others are not like this. I know others exist in a far different realm. More in texture than detail, more in the sublime than the subtext.

And so I insisted on comforting her with the always honest reality that people are different.

And that it's hard to discern, sometimes, one persons contentment with their context versus an actual lack of curiousity about who you might truly be, what you might honestly think, ponder or feel.