Zayne, The Weather App Has Given You Away

Zayne adds the heroine's business trip destination to his weather app, then behaves as though this is a perfectly uninteresting thing to have done. Oh, of course. A little recreational meteorology. Nothing to do with the woman currently asking whether he missed her. He simply developed a fondness for conditions in Chansia while she happened to be there.

An interest in travel weather. How convenient.

Business Trip is very good at making his restraint a nuisance I want to keep watching. The heroine comes home hoping for a little evidence that her absence mattered. He gives her a lift, a dry remark about her usual souvenir shopping, and enough conversational resistance to make a straightforward question feel ambitious. She is fishing for affection. He appears determined to make her obtain a permit.

I do enjoy a difficult answer when I can see the answer struggling to get out. That's the crucial pleasure here. I don't want to invent an entire romance from somebody remembering my postcode. But once a man volunteers that he has been checking the weather in a city he isn't visiting, I think I'm entitled to become slightly unbearable about it.

You added the city, Zayne. Yourself. Nobody made you.

The detail gets under my skin because it is such a small thing to keep. Her trip has become part of his ordinary phone use. Somewhere among the practical information he needs, there is now information that matters because she is inside it. I like that more than I would like an enormous speech about being unable to function without her. Please function. I find functioning quite attractive. Just allow me the pleasure of discovering that your day has acquired a small, unnecessary attachment to mine.

And unnecessary is part of why it works. She could presumably find out whether it was raining by looking outside. He hasn't solved a problem she couldn't solve herself. He's given his attention somewhere to go while she isn't there, which is a much more interesting admission than he seems prepared to make out loud.

A welcome home can use actual words.

Naturally, I would still like the admission out loud.

There is a limit to how much detective work I want with my welcome home. If I've been travelling, I may be tired. I may have a bag containing one leaking bottle and a jumper that has somehow become damp despite never touching the bottle. This would be a poor moment to require a brilliant interpretation of your feelings. A simple indication that you are pleased would help enormously. We can admire your subtlety after I've unpacked.

The weather app is charming because the scene gives us more than the weather app. Once they're inside her home, Zayne hugs her. Finally. The affection gets to take up actual space instead of hiding in an exchange she has to keep nudging forward.

I like the relief of that moment. He doesn't need to become a different man to make himself understood. A quiet person can still do something unmistakable, and I would rather have that than another five beautifully restrained minutes in which everyone is privately having an emotion and publicly discussing logistics.

Of course, a food delivery interrupts them. I have considerable sympathy for the delivery person, who has arrived with exactly what was requested and somehow become an obstacle to romance. An impossible profession. Too late and the food is cold. Too early and you've interfered with Zayne. There is no safe arrival time in this household.

Nobody came for the university documentary.

The attempted movie afterwards makes me even fonder of the heroine. She chooses a history of Neva University while they're both behaving as though watching something is the point. What a wonderfully unhelpful contribution to an already evasive evening. I support her right to be a little annoying when he has spent this much time being difficult to read.

Their teasing works better for me when she can make things inconvenient too. I don't want her solemnly appreciating every crumb of affection as though she has been admitted to an exclusive institution. Let her have a bad movie choice ready. Let her return some of the trouble. She's allowed to want him and still enjoy making him work for an easy evening.

By the time he switches the television off and questions whether they're really there for a movie, I'm perfectly willing to forgive the route they took. I enjoy the restraint so much more once he lets it give way. He wants the time with her. Good. We can stop asking the forecast to speak on his behalf.

I won't pretend this means every evasive answer is secretly romantic. Sometimes an unhelpful conversation is just an unhelpful conversation. Business Trip earns my indulgence by letting his interest become visible, then giving her enough room to answer it with some mischief of her own.

Still, I would absolutely keep bringing up Chansia. Casually. At inconvenient moments. Has he checked the humidity? Does he have strong opinions about the weekend outlook? I can be very interested in weather when properly motivated.