If there’s one thing I’ve learnt in life, it’s that the universe waits patiently for you to have three glasses of Sauvignon Blanc before it pulls out the comedy script of your personal doom.
It all began on a Friday night that had already gone wobbly. My best friend Tara had convinced me that six months was long enough to mourn the death of my last relationship—or at least the apparent death, since my ex and I hadn’t spoken since the spectacular “we-are-done-forever” argument in his parking lot. The “forever” bit had been mostly my declaration, punctuated with some very dramatic finger-pointing and a refusal to accept his final text: “Take care.”
Anyway, Tara had decided that the cure to heartbreak was online introductions via friends, and thus she casually lobbed a WhatsApp number my way, belonging to some bloke called Rohan. Mutual friend of a friend. Apparently tall. Apparently single. Apparently normal—though I’ve been tricked by that before.
I had exchanged precisely two messages with him that week:
1. Hi, this is Kiran. Tara gave me your number.
2. Hello! Nice to meet you.
Riveting stuff. Pulitzer-worthy romance-in-the-making.
Then came the Friday wine. And then came my 1 a.m. phone scroll, because of course nothing good ever happens after midnight on a mobile.
Somewhere between the tipsy self-confidence of “I am an independent woman, hear me roar” and the loneliness of scrolling through other people’s engagement photos, I decided to compose a little flirty message for Rohan. It was not obscene, I promise, but it had the faint aroma of “I might like you, and also I’m drunk.”
The message read:
"So… do you ever meet people like me and think, hmm, this could be fun? 😏”
Cheeky. Suggestive. Utterly non-Kiran in daylight.
I hit send.
It was only two seconds later, with the cruel clarity of a spinning bedroom ceiling, that I realised I had sent it to the wrong chat.
My thumb, in its drunken wisdom, had selected the name right above Rohan’s.
My ex-boyfriend.
Who hadn’t heard from me in six months.
I froze. Then, because I was drunk and human, I laughed—a little hysterically, like a woman watching her career-defining PowerPoint catch fire.
Within a minute, the double blue ticks appeared.
Then… nothing.
I stared at the phone like it might start smoking. I considered throwing it out of the window, as though smashing the hardware could erase the shame. Then came the reply:
"Kiran. What the hell?”
The words of a man equal parts bemused, offended, and maybe just a little entertained.
At this point, my panic brain took the wheel. I typed:
“Oh my God. That wasn’t for you. Ignore. Please. Ignore.”
Then, because I am a fool, I tried to over-explain:
"I was messaging someone else. Someone new. It’s complicated. I’m drunk. Also, hi.”
Yes. I ended my disaster message with “hi”. As though we were casually bumping into each other at Tesco.
There was a long pause. A long pause. Enough for me to mentally relocate to another country, preferably one without Wi-Fi.
Then his reply came:
“Well, I’m flattered to know I could ‘be fun’ after six months of silence.”
I buried my face in a pillow and squealed into the void. Tara, woken by the sound of my existential collapse, stumbled into my room and demanded to know why I was making noises like a wounded dolphin.
When I told her, she laughed so hard she nearly fell over my laundry pile. “This,” she gasped between hysterics, “is the rom-com energy you needed. The universe ships you two.”
I did not feel shipped. I felt like someone who had just shown her knickers to the entire neighbourhood by accident.
By Saturday morning, hangover in full bloom, I checked my phone expecting a block notification. Instead, there was another message from him:
“So, who’s the lucky guy you meant to send that to?”
I briefly considered lying. But really, what was left to lose? So I told him the truth, about the friend-of-a-friend, about trying to move on, about the universe and the Sauvignon Blanc.
Then came his reply:
"I see. Well, in case you’re wondering… yes. I did think once or twice that you could be fun.”
Reader, I nearly died. Six months of silence, broken by a drunken misfire, and suddenly we were bantering like teenagers again.
Later that evening, he called. I apologised profusely. He teased me about the emoji. We talked about life, about my daughter, about his new obsession with home workouts. By the end of the call, he said the words I hadn’t expected:
“So… coffee sometime?”
I said yes.
Rohan, the new guy, eventually got a proper message from me too. We met once, and it was perfectly fine, but there were no sparks. Meanwhile, my ex and I had the most hilariously awkward coffee of our lives, during which he whispered, “I’ll never see the smirk emoji the same way again.”
Moral of the story? Never trust late-night wine with your thumbs. But if you must, at least make sure your accidental confessions go to someone with a sense of humour—and maybe a lingering crush.
Because sometimes, the wrong message might just end up being the right one.
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