The Phone Call that Should’ve Been You

The phone rang at 2:17 a.m.—that strange hour when the world feels hollow, when silence becomes heavier than sound. I wasn’t asleep. I hadn’t really slept in weeks. My body lay in bed, but my mind lived somewhere between memory and hope, in that fragile space where you still believe someone you lost might suddenly return.

For a moment, I didn’t recognize the ringtone. Then I did.

It was yours.

I froze.

I had never deleted your contact, though I pretended I had moved on. Your name still sat in my favorites, right between my sister and the pizza place we ordered from too often. I kept it there the way people keep old keys—useless, but too painful to throw away.

The phone kept ringing. And every ring was a heartbeat I wasn’t ready to feel.

My first thought was so irrational, so desperate, that I almost laughed at myself:

Maybe it’s you.

Maybe you were calling from a new number. Maybe you remembered something you forgot to say. Maybe you realized what we could have been.

Because hope doesn’t die all at once.

It fades like a candle, trembling until the last flicker.

I answered on the fourth ring.

“Hello?” My voice cracked. I hated that it cracked.

But it wasn’t you.

It was a wrong number—a man asking for someone named “Leila.” He apologized politely when I told him he had the wrong person. He hung up. The whole call lasted seven seconds.

Seven seconds that wrecked me.

Seven seconds that reminded me of every conversation we never got to finish.

I stared at my screen long after the call ended. The recent-call list looked like a cruel joke: the unknown number glowing right under your name.

And suddenly, all the feelings I’d packed away in boxes and shoved to the back of my mind came spilling out again.

I remembered the last time you called—how I almost didn’t pick up because I was annoyed, tired, rushing. I thought we had more time. I thought our small arguments didn’t matter because we’d always find our way back.

But life doesn’t wait for people to “figure things out.”

Sometimes it ends a chapter while you’re still writing the next sentence.

I sat there in the dark, holding my phone like it was a lifeline, wishing you were on the other end of that call. Wishing you had dialed my number one more time. Wishing I had been there for you in the moments I didn’t know you needed me the most.

A single tear slid down my cheek before I even realized I was crying.

It wasn’t the wrong number that hurt.

It was the reminder of your silence.

You see, when someone leaves your life, it’s not the big memories that haunt you. It’s the ordinary ones. The way you used to say my name. The way your laugh softened when you were trying not to smile. The late-night phone calls when we had nothing to say but didn’t want to hang up.

People talk about closure like it’s something you can schedule, something you can check off a list.

But closure isn’t a door you close.

It’s a ghost you learn to live with.

And sometimes, that ghost rings your phone at 2:17 a.m.

I put the phone down eventually, but sleep didn’t come. I lay awake imagining an alternate version of my life—the one where the call was you, where you finally called to say the things, we never had the courage to say.

Maybe you would’ve apologized.

Maybe I would’ve forgiven you.

Maybe we would’ve laughed about the stupid things that pulled us apart.

Maybe you would’ve said you missed me.

Maybe I would’ve told you I never stopped.

But that’s not the world we live in.

We live in the world where the phone rings, and it isn’t you.

Still, a part of me hopes—quietly, foolishly—that one day my phone will light up with your name again. Not because I expect it.

But because some connections don’t die just because people walk away.

They linger in old ringtones, in late-night silences, in the ache of a call answered with the wrong voice.

The phone call wasn’t you.

But the pain?

That was undeniably you.