The silence after someone says 'I'm fine'

I was watching a comet last night—C/2023 A1, I think?—and it vanished behind a cloud just as I was about to say something to my partner. We sat in the dark for a while, and then they said, 'I'm fine.' The way they said it, like they'd rehearsed it, made me want to cry. Not because it was sad, but because I knew exactly what that silence meant. It’s the same silence that follows when you’re staring at the sky and realise how much of it is gone—light pollution, yes, but also the space between words, the breath before a confession. I don’t know why I’m thinking about this now. Maybe because I fin