He knew the pause meant she was thinking, and he could not sit in the pause. Four seconds of her quiet face and he was already generating — a summary of what she'd just said, a reframe, a suggestion, a joke to lighten the moment. He heard himself talking and couldn't quite stop. A part of him saw, from far away, that she had been about to say something important and now would have to start over or let it go. But the silence had felt like a failure of him, and speaking was easier than feeling the failure. He watched her nod slightly and the unsaid thing retreat.
