Deleting the photos was the easy part

The photos: deleted. The follow: gone. The jacket he left behind, the toothbrush, the spare charger — all of it into a box, taped shut, pushed into the corner. Two months. The room is clean. Not a trace left. She thought that was the end of it.

Deleting a photo takes less than a second. Tap, confirm, gone. Clearing out a room takes an afternoon. She did all of it, and she did it neatly, the way you clean a house before a holiday. Then that evening, at 10:30 exactly, her hand picked up the phone. Nobody told it to. She hadn't meant to. The hand just did it.

10:30 was when they used to video call. For a year and a half, the screen lit up around then. Now the phone is quiet. It has been quiet for two months. And still her hand reaches over, still flips the screen up to check — as if nobody has gotten around to telling it. She puts the phone down and goes back to the movie.

10:35, she picks it up again. Still no call. Of course there's no call. This time she laughs — not a bitter laugh, not a laugh to move past it, just the honest kind you make at yourself. Come on, you. Then she turns the screen off and picks up her tea.

A year and a half of habit. It won't delete fast. It fades.

Not today. Probably not this month either. But some evening at 10:30 her hand won't reach for the phone, and she won't even notice it happened. Is there a habit you're still keeping for someone who already left?