Story code: ST-000616
Part 3: Just Point to the Button
Nobody moved for a second after Tessa said it.
Just show me one step.
Grant gave a laugh that was too soft for the room. “That’s what I’ve been trying to do. Every time I touch something, it turns into a whole thing.”
Elaine kept her hand next to the phone. “Then point,” she said.
I should have stepped out then. Instead I stood at the doorway with the coffee pot against my hip, because I could see the phone from there and because everyone else in the room had gone still around it.
Tessa slid Elaine’s phone exactly three inches toward Grant but did not let go right away. “Not the whole profile,” she said. “Just the part about message settings. You don’t even have to save anything. Show me where that screen is.”
Grant looked at the phone, then at his water, then back at the phone. “Tess, that’s not how these apps work. You click around and suddenly it updates stuff in the background.”
“Then don’t click around,” she said. “Open the path you already know.”
His smile thinned. “I said I’ve seen it before. That doesn’t mean I know it cold.”
Elaine’s glasses were low on her nose now. “A minute ago you knew opening message filters first could lock the draft if location services were off.”
Grant looked at her and spread one hand. “Because I remember weird warnings. Not because I know the layout.”
Tessa let go of the phone and folded both hands in her lap. “Fine,” she said. “Don’t explain it. Do it once. No save. No guessing. Just get to the screen.”
That landed differently.
It took away every excuse except his hands.
He sat there for two beats, then pulled the phone toward himself with two fingers, as if he were doing them a favor. “When this goes sideways, nobody say I didn’t warn you.”
Elaine did not answer.
He unlocked the screen on the first try without asking where she kept the code. Then he hesitated, maybe realizing he had done that too quickly, and said, “Okay, so, profile first, I think.”
But his thumb was already moving.
Profile. Edit. A small downward swipe. Preferences. Another tap. He did not hunt. He did not squint. He did not back out once. He moved like somebody following steps he had repeated before.
Tessa’s chair made a faint sound against the carpet when she straightened.
Grant reached the message settings screen and stopped with his thumb hovering over the shield icon. There was a row there for age filter and another for who could message first. He had found it in less than five seconds.
No one spoke.
Then, in the same motion, maybe from habit more than caution, he tapped the age range field, adjusted the lower number with one quick swipe, adjusted the upper one, backed out, hit the message filter, and toggled it on. The profile now matched exactly what Elaine had said she wanted.
He stared at the screen.
He had done the whole thing.
Not pointed. Not guessed. Completed.
Tessa said, very quietly, “You said you couldn’t find preferences.”
Grant’s thumb stayed on the edge of the phone. “I got lucky.”
Elaine held out her hand. He did not give her the phone right away. He looked at the screen once more and then said, “See? This is what I meant. Once you’re in there, it’s easy to hit the wrong thing if you move too fast.”
But his voice had changed. The loose joking tone was gone. He sounded like somebody explaining work he knew too well.
I set the coffee pot down on the sideboard because my hand had started to slip on the handle.
Elaine took the phone from him and looked at it through her glasses. She did not scroll wildly or test random buttons. She checked the age range. She checked the message setting. Then she touched the prompt line under My simple pleasures and looked back up at him.
“Finish this one too,” she said.
Grant leaned back at once. “No. Absolutely not. That’s different. That’s writing as you.”
Elaine kept the phone in her hand. “You already fixed the settings you said you couldn’t find.”
“That was mechanical.”
“Then do the mechanical part.” She turned the screen toward him. The prompt box was open now, cursor blinking in the blank line. “Put the sentence back the way it was before you changed it.”
Tessa looked from the screen to her brother. “You remember it, don’t you?”
Grant opened his mouth, then closed it.
On the phone, above the blank line, the app showed a faded suggestion from the saved draft history: Loves early coffee, flea markets, and… The rest was cut off.
Grant looked down at it once, and his face changed in a small practical way I had seen all night only when he forgot to act confused.
He knew where to press next before anyone said a word.