It’s kind of brilliant if you think about it.

A moment later another voice message pops up and his voice fills the kitchen again.

“I didn’t wake you up, did I?”

No, I text back. I was just eating chocolate cake.

I get another incoming voice message almost immediately. “Chocolate cake? At 2 a.m.? Weirdo.”

I laugh and text him back.

What did you expect?

“At 2 a.m.? That you’d either be sleeping and we’d just talk in the morning, or that you’d be racing to meet a shipping deadline,” he responds.

Who is this person that he thinks he’s texting? The middle of the night “you up?” text immediately points toward someone he wants to hook up with. But nothing else has been especially flirty. Not even his tone. In fact, I don’t think he’s drunk.

No work tonight, I text. Just cake.

“Ugh. Why are you making me read at this time of night?”

I blink and listen to that voice message one more time. He doesn’t like reading texts? I guess that explains why he’s voice-messaging me. I type a few replies, but I delete each one. Because each one is a lie or evasion, and that’s not really my style. Instead I press down on the voice-record button. No way out but the truth.

“Because I figured once you heard my voice, you’d realize that you were texting the wrong person.” Whoosh, I send the message.

I get another voice message almost immediately.

“Oh, my God. I’m so sorry. I texted the wrong person.”

“Yup. I figured. Have a good night.”

I send that last voice message with a sigh. Well, that was fun while it lasted. Four minutes of tepid texting with a guy who has me confused with someone else has unfortunately been the highlight of my month.

The sad thing is that not only do I want to talk to him, I really just wanna talk to anybody. Before that voice message, it had been almost twelve hours since I spoke a word aloud, and that was a simple “thank you” to Miss Laura in 5C when she dropped off the chocolate cake that almost took my life a few minutes ago. With Pops in the care facility, I’m alone almost all the time. Well, except for work, but that doesn’t count. My general demeanor doesn’t exactly foster small talk, and I don’t know anyone well enough for them to actually check in on me.

I hop down and dump the rest of the cake in the trash, because if I don’t, I’ll just keep eating it, and it tastes like a sponge someone used to wipe up some cocoa powder. I think she forgot the sugar.

I’m sudsing up the plate when my phone dings from the counter. I blink.