He plans things in the future tense

Casual interest lives in the present. It is comfortable with 'let's hang out sometime' and vague references to doing things together 'one day.' Real interest leaks into the future with specificity. 'There's this restaurant I want to take you to in October' — even said offhand — is him picturing you still in his life months from now. That kind of future-casting doesn't happen by accident; it happens because the brain is already running simulations where you're still around. Pay attention to verb tenses. They reveal more than vocabulary. A man who talks about you in the future tense — who assumes your presence in plans he hasn't fully formed yet — is operating from a baseline assumption that you'll still be there. That assumption is only comfortable if he wants you to be. The day those future references start appearing, something real has shifted.