I was on the bus, practically in tears after a breakup. My heart felt like it had been put through a paper shredder, and my head was spinning with all the things I should have said but didn’t. I had just lost my old phone in the chaos of moving out of my ex-boyfriend’s flat, so I was using a cheap burner I’d picked up an hour ago.
New phone, so I dial my mom from memory, needing to hear her voice tell me that I wasn’t a total failure at thirty. Suddenly, the phone of the guy sitting right in front of me started ringing. It was a loud, jarring ringtone—some upbeat pop song that felt totally out of place with my miserable mood.
He picks up with a quick, practiced motion. I hear his “Hello” on the bus, and I’m confused because I’m hearing the same voice coming through my own earpiece. My thumb was still hovering over the end-call button when he turns around and looks at me with wide, shocked eyes.
He wasn’t an older man or a stranger who had somehow stolen my mom’s number. He was a guy about my age, wearing a worn-out denim jacket and holding a phone that looked just as cheap as mine. We both stared at each other as the bus jolted over a pothole in the middle of North London.
I was still sobbing, mascara running down my face, clutching my burner phone like a lifeline. He slowly lowered his phone from his ear, his mouth slightly open in disbelief. “Are you… looking for a woman named Martha?” he asked, his voice cracking slightly.
I just nodded, too stunned to speak, as the realization began to sink in that I had dialed a wrong number by one single digit. But the fact that the recipient was sitting right in front of me felt like a glitch in the universe. He looked at his screen and then back at me, a strange, sad smile touching his lips.
“My name is Simon,” he said softly. “And I think you just called my late mother’s old phone line.”
The bus continued to hum along the rainy streets, but for a moment, the world inside that vehicle felt completely still. Simon explained that he had kept his mom’s phone active for two years after she passed away because he couldn’t bear to let the number go.
He had finally decided to switch the SIM card to a new device today, literally ten minutes before he boarded the bus. He had wanted to see if anyone still called it, perhaps a long-lost friend or a relative he didn’t know about. I felt a fresh wave of tears, but this time they weren’t about my breakup.
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