Today I got an apology from a number I didn’t recognize. The sender said she’d been busy with midterms and labs. That explained where she’d been. I was still trying to establish who’d been there.
I’d been using dating apps for a few months, and a handful of conversations had just stopped. I had a vague feeling this might be a woman I’d matched with on Hinge who’d gone quiet for a month or so. I’d moved on and deleted the old texts, though, so there was nothing on my phone to help me out. I asked, “Who is this?”
She wrote back, “K.”
I told her I genuinely didn’t know who I was talking to and asked her to remind me. She figured out I’d deleted our conversation and said that if I’d done that, I didn’t deserve to be reminded of her name. By then we’d exchanged several messages about whether I should know her name. I still hadn’t been given a name.
Naturally, that was when I started to remember her. Something about being told I didn’t deserve a reminder did more for my memory than the apology about midterms and labs. I replied “lmao,” and she gave the message a heart reaction. That was it.
I’d already lost interest when the conversation went quiet, so there wasn’t much for me to pick back up once I placed her. I could’ve left the last message alone instead of sending “lmao,” but up to that point I really had just been trying to figure out who was texting me. Was there a better way to ask?
