I stopped replying with a cheerful thumbs-up.

Sam's third cancellation arrived while the kettle was boiling. I sent a thumbs-up, then stood in front of two mugs feeling unlike a person who had just sent a thumbs-up. The kettle clicked off. Even the appliance had finished responding more honestly than I had.

The first cancellation had been unavoidable. The second sounded difficult. I did not know enough about the third to judge it, and I did not especially want to conduct an investigation. I wanted to see my friend. I also wanted to stop arranging afternoons that evaporated after I had turned down other things.

For a while I composed a message containing the phrase "every single time." It was inaccurate. Sam had reliably appeared at many events, including the afternoon he helped me carry a table upstairs and then discovered I had measured the wrong doorway.

I described this week, not his character.

I waited until I could write something I meant. "I know things have been difficult to arrange. I was disappointed today because I had kept the afternoon free. Can we talk about what would actually work?" It was less satisfying than the speech I had rehearsed in the kitchen. It was also more likely to get us somewhere.

He called that evening. I asked whether the plans were too much, whether the timing was wrong, or whether he simply did not want that kind of visit at the moment. I tried to make the last option sound like an answer I could hear.

He said he kept agreeing to long weekend plans because he wanted to want them. By Saturday he was behind on family things and tired, and then he felt embarrassed about cancelling. The embarrassment did not, unfortunately, arrive early enough to be useful to my kettle.

I told him that. He laughed, then apologised properly. I said I did not need his entire weekend, but I did need to know whether to keep mine open.

We changed one thing.

We agreed on a short walk near his home after work the following Tuesday. No booking, no meal to prepare, and a time to confirm before I travelled. If he could not make it, he would suggest the next option rather than leaving me to start the same conversation again.

I resisted adding a complicated cancellation policy. We were friends, not a small events business. I did tell him that I would stop holding whole afternoons without a confirmed plan. He did not have to like that arrangement for it to be something I needed.

On Tuesday he messaged before I left. We walked for half an hour, bought milk at the corner shop because he needed it, and talked about something other than our calendars. It was good to remember that we had subjects.

One good visit did not settle everything.

We did not become people with perfectly coordinated lives. The next plan changed too, but he told me earlier and offered another day. That made a difference I could actually describe: I could use the time I had kept free.

If the same pattern had continued, I would have needed to make fewer plans with him. I did not announce that as a threat. It was simply the practical limit of being available for something that kept not happening.

A few weeks later he came over for tea. I got out the two mugs. "Very confident," he said. "You are standing in my kitchen," I told him. "I have adjusted my expectations to the available evidence."