The Wrong Number

The message arrived on a Tuesday: "Aunty, the tailor says your blouse is ready but he is closing at 6 so send someone sensible."

Sana was not Aunty. Sana was a 26-year-old graphic designer who had never once been described as sensible. She should have typed "wrong number" and moved on with her life. Instead she typed: "What happens if I send someone unsensible?"

The reply took four minutes. "Then the blouse stays hostage and my mother blames me at the wedding. Who is this?"

"The wrong number. Who is this?"

"Rehan. The son who was supposed to type his mother's message and clearly typed it to a stranger. I apologise on behalf of my whole family."

It should have ended there. It did not end there, because Sana replied, "Did the blouse get rescued?", and by Thursday she knew the blouse had been rescued, the wedding was his cousin's, the food had been average but the jalebi excellent, and Rehan told stories in text messages the way some people tell them around a fire — badly punctuated and completely alive.

They never exchanged numbers, because they already had them. They never followed each other anywhere. For five months, the entire relationship lived in one chat window between two people who had never seen each other's faces — job interviews narrated live, a fever nursed by emoji, one enormous fight about whether rain is romantic or just weather, which he lost.

Then in December his messages stopped for six days, and Sana discovered that a person you have never met can leave a hole the exact shape of a Tuesday.

On day seven: "Sorry. Phone fell in a bucket. Long story. Aunty update: she found out about you."

Sana's thumbs went cold. "Found out WHAT about me?"

"That you exist. She read the chat while my phone dried in the rice. She has one question."

"...ask it."

"She wants to know if you can come to the tailor on Saturday. She is getting a blouse made. She says, and I quote, 'this time send someone sensible, and also let me meet the girl who argues about rain.'"

Sana went on Saturday. The blouse was beautiful. The son was better. And the first thing she ever said to him, out loud, face to face, after five months and four thousand messages, was: "Wrong number."

"Right one now," said Rehan.

More short love stories like this

If you like romances that build from something small and accidental — a text, a note, a shared habit — try these next:

• The Plant Sitter — two neighbours who fall in love one balcony at a time
• The Crossword War — an enemies-to-lovers story over one newspaper puzzle
• Friends-to-lovers stories — the whole trope, free to read