Breaking News: Your Ex Just Called

Your ex calls out of the blue at 6:17 on an otherwise perfectly respectable evening, and within seconds your inner newsroom is fully operational.

Until this moment, you were doing something deeply unhistoric, such as deciding whether you wanted pasta. Then his name appeared on your phone.

Well.

Dinner can wait.

And immediately, somewhere inside your head, a newsroom goes live.

You answer with a voice so beautifully casual it deserves professional recognition. “Hi.”

Hi?

An extraordinary choice. Light, breezy, almost as though this man did not once occupy approximately seventy percent of your emotional life.

He says, “Hey, how have you been?”

And immediately several analysts lean toward their microphones.

Why how have you been? Why not how are you? “Have been” covers a longer period. Has he been thinking about the longer period?

Someone please replay the greeting.

We Are Receiving New Information

The difficulty with an ex calling unexpectedly is that almost nothing he says is allowed to remain an ordinary sentence.

“I was just thinking about you” and the newsroom erupts: Thinking about her! Since when? How often? In what context?? Was he alone when the thinking occurred?

Meanwhile, you are still on the phone saying, “Oh, that’s nice,” with the composure of a woman discussing a new supermarket.

He asks about your life. You tell him a few things. He laughs at something you say and, annoyingly, it is the old laugh.

We know that laugh.

Several people in the studio are now sitting up straighter.

Then comes a pause — not a particularly long one, possibly two seconds, three at most — but unfortunately your newsroom has already commissioned a special report on it.

Was the pause emotional?

Did he almost say something?

Was there something sitting behind the pause holding a tiny sign that said I STILL LOVE YOU?

Nobody knows, but coverage will continue throughout the evening.

And this is where one phone call can become wonderfully oversized. He has technically done very little. He dialed a number, asked how you were and mentioned a restaurant the two of you used to like.

Your mind, meanwhile, is preparing graphics.

One “I Miss Talking to You” and We Are Live

Then he says something slightly warmer.

Maybe: “I miss talking to you.”

Oh dear.

Regular programming has now been suspended.

Of course, missing someone is a wonderfully slippery little statement. You have missed restaurants you would never eat at again. You have missed old apartments while remembering exactly why you moved out.

But nobody in the newsroom is interested in property history tonight.

He misses talking to you.

Your imagination takes this modest sentence and immediately upgrades the story. Maybe he has changed. Maybe the breakup finally landed. Maybe all this time apart has made him realize what he lost. Maybe he has spent months meeting perfectly lovely women and finding, to his private disappointment, that none of them are you.

That is possible. It is also possible that he was driving home, heard a song and called, although this theory is received with very little enthusiasm.

For now, though, you are still talking. And because he knows you, the conversation can feel surprisingly easy. Old jokes still work. Familiar rhythms return. For twenty minutes, the two of you sound almost like yourselves again, which is terribly inconvenient when you had been doing such a good job becoming somebody who no longer checks his social media before breakfast.

Then he says he should go.

Excuse me?

You cannot simply restart an entire emotional broadcast and then announce that you have an early morning, but apparently you can. He says, “Good talking to you,” you manage a perfectly respectable “You too,” and the call ends.

Now the real coverage begins.

By Morning, It Was Just a Phone Call

Morning will be much more sensible about all this. Unfortunately, you are not there yet.

Afterward, you may stare at the phone for a moment as though it contains further instructions.

It does not.

So naturally, you replay the conversation.

His tone seemed softer.

He asked whether you were seeing anyone.

He remembered the thing about your sister.

He said miss.

Very important word, miss.

Your friend receives a summary and asks the one question no newsroom wants to hear.

“What did he actually say?”

Why must she ruin everything?

Because what he actually said and what has been discussed internally for the past ninety minutes are beginning to look like two very different broadcasts.

Maybe he does want you back. Exes do sometimes return with something real to say.

Or maybe he was lonely. Nostalgic. Curious. Bored in traffic. Wondering how you were. Missing the comfort of someone who once knew exactly how he took his coffee and why he hated February.

One phone call is terribly bad at behaving like a full answer.

This is unfortunate because the newsroom would greatly prefer a headline.

By morning, though, half the staff seems to have gone home. The dramatic pause has lost some of its sparkle. “I miss talking to you” has returned to being one sentence rather than a six-part series.

The phone is sitting where it always sits. Your life is still your life. Nothing has actually changed simply because his name briefly appeared on a screen.

And this may be the funniest part of all.

For one evening, the analysts assembled, special coverage rolled, and a two-second pause received more attention than certain international events.

Then morning comes, you make coffee, and your phone remains completely ordinary and completely silent.

And somewhere inside you, a very tired presenter straightens her papers and says:

This concludes our special report. You may now go back to your life.