He treats what she says as if it were ___________. She hears what he says as if it were __________, though she wishes __________.

She thinks it is always _________ and always __________. He thinks it is never __________ and always _________.

Some evenings they __________ to themselves, but somehow _________ never __________. It would be the same, she thinks, if they __________, despite the fact that they __________.

Looking back later on, it was clear that __________ had __________ all along. All along what he’d really been saying was __________. But at the time, she had no __________ and thus couldn’t have __________ even if she had __________. It was just __________. It was just __________.