silence because.

She watched him as he sat there unintelligibly. He was overly cautious of the need to perfectly pretend that he was not aware of being beneath the gaze of another. He untangled a knot, laughed at the television—all the while being entirely consumed with the importance of appearing attentive elsewhere and on something other. She looked at him—or rather, the side of his face that he had angled to be seen—and truly tried to look within. For so long she had felt the need to believe that his eyes were centered within his self—that his silence spoke for a personal situation where he was spending social time retreating within his own interior. But now, she no longer knew what to see to believe. After time away from him, she came back and saw him differently and perhaps, the distance had decided this. Watching him now, she found an alternate reality that could be possible. He was not looking deeply into thought—he had fewer thoughts than she had originally given him credit for having—he was looking into nothing. He existed for her passively. And this—this very being—annoyed her. But he stuck around because his presence occupied time that would otherwise be spent singularly in the seclusion of the mind. She began to know less of him though, which was no help in understanding any more of him, and she became silent more often because of it.