The seat he takes without asking
Third dinner, a small place with a wall of bottles and four tables too many. You head for the booth and he lets you pick your side first, then slides in sideways with one arm along the backrest, facing the door. On the way out he takes the curb side of the pavement without a word.
Ask him later and he will say he likes the view. The view was a fridge. What he was really doing was putting himself between you and whatever might come through that door, a habit that has nothing to do with the menu.
Short texts that are never late
‘Got it.’ ‘Sure.’ ‘Made it home?’ His messages could fit on a matchbox, and you have started timing them anyway. Forty seconds on a Tuesday, in the middle of a work call. Twelve minutes on a Sunday, when he is clearly under a car.
A serious man does not draft paragraphs to sound interested. He answers, every time, and then adds one small question at the end. Your friend calls that dry. You have noticed that nobody else gets the question at the end.
His jokes get worse the moment you walk up
On the steps outside the building he is dry and quick with everyone. Then you arrive and the line lands half a beat late, or he laughs at his own punchline before it finishes. The neighbour from 4B noticed. He did not.
That fumble is the most honest thing he will offer for weeks. A man who has run meetings, fixed pipes and buried a parent does not trip over a joke for no reason. Something just changed in the air for him, and his timing paid for it.
A half second on your mouth
You are mid-story, something about the rental car, and his eyes drop to your mouth for what feels like half a second. Then they go to the wall, the window, the exit sign. Gone before you can be sure it happened.
He will not repeat it, and that is how you know. Men who flirt for sport hold the look so you catch it. This one glances away fast, rubs his jaw and asks what happened with the rental car. You will replay that half second more than once on the way home.