My ex FaceTimed me the other night, although “FaceTimed” feels generous. Their name dropped onto my screen and immediately disappeared. My phone didn’t even ring. Apparently, whatever we were doing now came with a free trial of less than one second.
We hadn’t FaceTimed in over a year. That seemed relevant. This wasn’t someone sitting at the top of my recent video calls, waiting for an innocent thumb to ruin an evening.
There was also some history behind my sudden interest in touchscreen mechanics. After what felt like pretty blatant mixed signals, I’d told them I missed them. They turned me down. Fair enough, except afterward they started posting songs that struck me as questionable, including “Whiskey River.” A song is a song, obviously. Still, I noticed.
Then, a few days later, their name flashed across my phone.
My first theory involved a screenshot. Maybe they were looking at our old messages, taking a picture of the conversation, and accidentally tapped where they thought a screenshot confirmation button would be. This required them to be looking at our messages, which was already doing quite a bit of work for my curiosity.
But I remembered screenshots going straight to the bottom-left corner now. And when I checked the FaceTime routes I could think of—messages, contacts, search—I kept running into what looked like a second step. Tap FaceTime, then choose how to call. My accidental-tap theory was developing administrative problems.
Of course, I don’t know what they were doing, which screen they were on, or whether a thumb can accomplish more chaos than I’m giving it credit for. I only know the call appeared, vanished, and stayed in my call log.
They’d already told me they didn’t miss me the way I missed them. Now there was this tiny interruption sitting underneath that answer. Was it an accident, or had they meant to call and changed their mind before my phone could make a sound?
