When you had to win again

It'll happen. You'll be tired, and they'll say Wednesday, and the calendar will be out before the questions have arrived, and you'll win, and the temperature will drop, and you'll remember the book on the sofa afterwards.

One win isn't the marriage. The list from chapter 1 will show a month with more drops in it than any month before, and one calendar is one line. What happened is that the habit is old and the questions are new, and speed goes to the old one for a while.

Drop it late. It still works after the calendar. "That was a stupid thing to argue about, I'm sorry, I don't know why it mattered to me." Said on the sofa, that's a drop, and it does something a win in the moment never does, which is show your partner that the calendar isn't the last word any more. In my observation, the late drop lands harder than the early one, because it costs more and they know it.

Work out which belief got through. Was it "I'm just being accurate", at a moment when you were sure? Then chapter 3, and the calendar goes in another room for a fortnight. Was it a memory, with no record and total certainty? Then chapter 9. Was it a subject that's always a win for you, routes or dates or what their mother said? Then that subject gets the two questions written on a card until they come on their own.

And notice what the slip was made of. It was almost certainly tiredness, a subject you're sure about, and a partner who said the wrong thing at the wrong moment, and the three together outran the questions. None of that is character. It's conditions, and the conditions will come round again, and next time the questions will be a beat faster, because they've been used, which is the only way they get faster.

No streaks. Don't count evenings without an argument. Count drops. One win in a month of drops is a month that's gone differently from every month before it, and the score, if anyone's still keeping it, has changed direction.