After a while he stopped listening. His ears took in only the rise and fall of her voice, the elaborate, familiar, endless rhythm of it; but from lon… - Richard Yates

And he was afraid she might be taking this much too seriously, so he reached out to stroke or tousle her hair, but that didn't work because she'd just been to the hairdresser and didn't want to get it messed up.

exchanging agreeable remarks for no other purpose than to keep silence from closing in.

Or was it possible that nobody's reasons could be all that clearly defined? Maybe men and women came together in ways as random and mindless as the mating of birds or pigs or insects, so that any talk of "reasons" would always be vain, always be self-deceiving and beside the point. Well, that would be one way of looking at it.