It started one night about a month after we’d met, when he said something funny and I didn’t react quickly enough. He was staying at my place, a one-bedroom house I was renting in the Mojave Desert. The space between his joke and my late laughter had felt awkward. What if he thought I didn’t “get” his sense of humor? He didn’t seem to notice, so I tried to brush it off, but later, when there was another lull in our conversation, I started to obsess. Maybe he felt our connection was waning.