On This Day

My phone made a video about us. I didn't ask it to.

It popped up on a Wednesday afternoon. "Memories: Us." Soft piano, slow zoom, the whole thing. Apparently, AI doesn't know about breakups. It only knows you took a lot of photos with the same person.

Her name was Ava. Eighteen months. I never thought of myself as the guy with a camera roll full of someone, but there she was. Ava eating chips. Ava in my hoodie. Ava mid-laugh, hair in her face, yelling at me to stop filming.

I hit pause at one point and just looked. We looked so stupid-happy. Like we had a lifetime of Wednesday afternoons.

We split because I stopped showing up. Not for big things. For the small ones. Her cousin's party. Her dinner reservations. Her "can you pick up a lemon?" I always thought there'd be time to make it up.

I kept watching, because I'm a masochist, and the video was forty seconds of her.

Then the last photo came up. One I'd never seen.

Me. Asleep on the sofa, mouth slightly open, arm hanging off the cushion. Taken from above, so soft it must've been midnight. Smiling in my sleep.

She took it. She kept it. It was in my own phone because we shared the album.

Ava had a whole camera roll of me looking happy.

I looked happiest in the photos where I didn't know she was looking.