Yup, pretty much what I figured. Or she doesn't know what she's doing right now and is preoccupied with personal things and figured she might want to keep me open as an option.

Entire situation is a bit confusing for me... Just to recount it for my own sanity and to get everything off my chest.

Have 4 or 5 great dates in the span of two weeks. She's messaging me absolutely glowing compliments; "so thankful I met me", "you're amazing", "you're a gem", "I'm gonna miss you travelling", "I feel like myself again" (apparently, I was a rebound after a nasty relationship), "thank you for being there, it really helps", etc... Along with some long form more personal stuff.

Then she goes travelling for 6 weeks. Flirty texts nearly daily. She comes back. I cook her a fancy dinner. We sleep together. This hangout session feels a bit awkward, but I figure that's to be expected since we haven't seen each other in so long. She sends me some nice, extremely positive messages after. Conversation peters out in the morning due to me getting busy. I restart it the next day and she's instantly responsive and flirty... And then a day goes by without a response (which is atypical of her).

And that's when she starts getting slow to respond (~1 day). She's starting a new job and just got back to town, so I'm not too worried. Her messages stay flirty. I ask her out a couple times. She says she has plans (which was true) and seems genuinely apologetic and inquires about what sort of date she's missing out on... But no reschedule offer (though that's sort of typical of her).

Then I wait two days for a response. It's flirty. Then I wait four days for response. Also flirty and very apologetic; "personal life frustrating bullshit came up"... But ends on an, "argh, I'm so busy for the next few days, it sucks" note (like implicitly saying, "I don't have time to hang out"). But now I'm travelling and annoyed and I take four days to respond. She starts responding quickly the next few days, but now I'm being the slow responder (overwhelmed with work and travel). And then she suddenly stopped responding altogether.

Which brings us to today.

I guess what chuffs me is the first 8 weeks we knew each other, things seemed to be going so well. And then we have one date when she gets back and I was excited to have at least a few more and the floor seems to just fall out from under everything without a clear reason (from my perspective).