One Second: This person is in love/lust with you or is feeling guilty for something minor they did that you may perceive as major, or is in some way extremely needy on a cellular level. Could also be auto-reply.
Ten Seconds: This person is a major friend, or perhaps work underling who admires you. It could also be a person who is in love/lust with you who was pausing slightly to encourage you to believe, for one moment, that they are not as much in love/lust with you as you might think they actually are. If work underling—they clearly envy your job and would like to have it.
Thirty Seconds: This person is a major family member or someone else who dislikes you and does not want you to have ammunition to hold one over on them since you might actually do so if they did not respond in a more timely fashion.
One Minute: This is most likely your boss who wants to be perceived as helpful. It could also be someone who dislikes you who was in the bathroom or something (see above). Or it is a person in love/lust with you who has to find the appropriate reply, in that your text was probing and/or awkward.
Two Minutes: This is a secondary friend who might want to become more of a primary friend if you are open to that.
Three Minutes: This is a primary friend who might want to become more of a secondary friend.
Five Minutes: This is your mother or father.
Ten Minutes: This person despises you.
Twenty Minutes: This person is, perhaps, secretly sleeping with your significant other, if you have one. If you don’t, this person is passive-aggressively attempting to be closer to you.
Half an Hour: Cousin, great aunt, ex-colleague.
One Hour: This is an Ex.
Two and a Half Hours: This is your significant other. If you don’t have a significant other, it is a sibling. If you don’t have a sibling, we are out of ideas.
Three Hours: Underling who you pissed off by making them do extra work on a Saturday.
Four Hours: Tangential boss who doesn’t really know you but wants to make sure this shit gets taken care of before the end of business hours.
Five Hours: Wrong number.
Seven Hours: This person is in love/lust with you but doesn’t want you to know it or think that they are desperate or needy in any way, so they make you wait. This could also be seventeen hours or thirty-five hours.
Twelve Hours: This person doesn’t really want to see you, can’t stand you and thinks you are annoying but they are giving you a courtesy response because you are in the same social circle and they certainly do not want to appear petty or sniping in any shape or form.
Fifteen Hours: This could also be your significant other, if you are heading into couples therapy. Or they lost their phone. This last option is unlikely.
Seventeen Hours: Step-father or mother.
Twenty-Three Hours: You once severely wronged this person and you aren’t even aware.
Twenty-Four Hours: This is a tertiary friend who would like you to move on down the road.
Twenty-Six Hours: This is a person you used to be friends with but who now considers you a pest and would rather not have you in their life at all.
Twenty-Nine Hours: This person thought about blocking you0 but decided it is too much trouble.
Thirty-Nine Hours: This is the person who got you fired from your last job.
Forty-Four Hours: You had an emotional affair with this person, until you ghosted them for a week on the basis that it was “just too time consuming.” Now you feel guilty. You have no idea what they feel any longer.
Fifty Hours: This is a stranger or neighbor or asking a random question about whatever.
Fifty-Seven Hours: This person actively hopes for your death.
Sixty-Four Hours: This also could be your significant other. Or a telemarketer nudging you to vote. Or it could be the colleague whose clementine you ate from the shared fridge.
Seventy Hours: This person is in love/lust with you. They are pissed at something you said or did and want you to think about what that might be. Don’t be a moron.
One Week: This person had better be in the hospital or doing anthropological work in the Amazon basin.
Two Weeks: Your grandfather turned his phone on.
————
Nathan Leslie won the 2019 Washington Writers’ Publishing House prize for fiction for his satirical collection of short stories, Hurry Up and Relax. He is also the series editor for Best Small Fictions. Invisible Hand (2022) and A Fly in the Ointment (2023) are his latest books. Nathan’s previous books of fiction include Three Men, Root and Shoot, Sibs, and The Tall Tale of Tommy Twice. He is also the author of a collection of poems, Night Sweat. Nathan is currently the founder and organizer of the Reston Reading Series in Reston, Virginia, and the publisher and editor of the online journal Maryland Literary Review. Previously he was series editor for Best of the Web and fiction editor for Pedestal Magazine. His fiction has been published in hundreds of literary magazines such as Shenandoah, North American Review, Boulevard, Hotel Amerika, and Cimarron Review. Nathan’s nonfiction has been published in The Washington Post, Kansas City Star, and Orlando Sentinel. Nathan lives in Northern Virginia.