Rejected

Dumped

Milo glanced down from the mirror and saw that the message light was blinking on his phone. He put down the razor, dried his hands and tapped the home button. The notification window showed that it was from his girlfriend Kendal. He touched the message.

Sorry, it said. Not u. Me. Milo's eyebrows went up, suddenly more awake. He tapped the icon to call Kendal, picking the phone up, placing it to his ear and smearing the screen with shaving cream. The call rang twice and then went straight to her voicemail. "This is Kendal. Thanks for calling, but I only text. Be clear so the speech to text app can do its thing." Beep.

"Kendal! It's Milo. Call me. What's going on?" Milo was not sure that his speech was clear but kept going anyway. "Dinner last night was great. And after. What happened?" He was flustered and a small part of his brain was worried about how to get shaving cream out of the microphone hole. He hung up, put the phone screen to sleep and toweled off both the phone and his own face. He looked at himself in the mirror expecting to see a change from a minute ago: blisters or warts or a rash. Something visual connection to his panic. Instead he saw the same normal, slightly round face, brown eyes and short, tattered brown hair. Not fat but... soft? Despite an uneven shave, he did not look remarkably different than every other morning. Maybe his eyes were wider, his skin paler than its usual office dweller pastiness.

Picking the phone back up, he swiped in a quick response to Kendal's text: ??? WTF Call me. It took until he had finished dressing (golf shirt and slacks with a belt that just fit around his waist) before she responded. U R sweet. Need more space. More space? Milo screamed in his mind. What was she talking about? They saw each other maybe once a week and most of that time she spent texting on her phone. The rest of their relationship consisted of bouncing messages off of each other: comments about each other's co-workers, strings of hearts, cat pictures. The usual. There were maybe thirty or forty of these back-and-forths a day. And that was it. No hanging out. No going to a bar with friends. No voice calls and certainly no video calls. Once a week for a quick bite and some sexy fun time. Everything else was messages. He had complained about their overly electronic relationship once, maybe a month ago. She had smiled and said that this was who she was. He had nodded. They had both retreated to their screens. Now, without warning, she was breaking up with him. Milo picked his phone up and started typing while his espresso machine did its thing.

Milo: More space?? We barely c each other! Call me. Want to talk.

Kendal: We r talking. This is the problem. U dont c this as talking.

Milo: It is. Want more. Please call.

Kendal: I dont. Thats it. Sorry. Bye.

This exchange flustered Milo enough that he could not properly make his latte. The milk would not froth and his hand shook too much to spoon it onto the coffee. He bowed his head, checked his watch as he left his apartment. He had just enough time to get something from the corner cafe if the line was not too long.

"Sorry," he said. "We think the two of you were very nice together. She should have called."

"Huhn?" he replied.

"Kendal," Jules said. "She should have called you to break up. Not message. That was a bit rough."

"Wait," said Milo. "How do you know about this? It happened less than an hour ago." To his knowledge, he and Kendal had never been in this cafe together.

"Oh." Jules pulled a face. "Um. It's all over Facebook."

"It is?" Milo pulled his phone out and started tapping furiously at his screen. He had thirty-seven notifications on his wall. A quick glance showed that most of them were of the 'hang in there' type.