One Shot Romance - A Collection of Short Stories

Jet-Lagged Hearts

                                                               Jet-Lagged Hearts

12:00 am. Midnight.

He sighed and rolled over onto his side, staring outside of the large open windows of the hotel room. The sky was dark; a sheet of velvet black stretched out as far as it could extend. The opaque sky was only interrupted by a few scattered stars, twinkling like little diamonds in the sky. The wind blew the curtains away from the window, making them billow around like transparent white ghosts.

He sighed again and moved onto his back, staring up at the ceiling.

What city was he in now? Santa Fe? No, that was last week. Las Vegas? No, that was next week. Silently cursing his inability to remember, he closed his eyes.

Los Angeles. He was in Los Angeles.

Groaning, he pulled the pillow next to his head into his arms. He reached for his phone, which was glowing on its charger by the bedside.

"I said I wouldn't do this..." he muttered to himself, typing in the code to unlock his phone. His finger moved to the little icon that showed a green phone and he found himself pushing it. "...at least not this soon..." he continued, pressing the white number one. His thumb lingered over the green phone button uncertainly. But his desire overcame him and he pressed down on the screen.

Calling Mila Newton.

He waited anxiously, watching the little dots at the bottom of the screen light up and go away as the call went through. The seconds ticked by and then the dots stopped lighting up and fading out. The call had connected.

His heart rate increased in excitement as he heard the tone of the rings. Pick up. Come on, Mila. Pick-up.

A thought occurred to him as he waited. What if she was asleep? It could be possible. If his timing was thrown off by just a few hours, there was no doubt that hers was, too, especially since she was half-way around the world. A country and an ocean away from one side and an ocean and a continent away from the other.

What time zone was he in? What time zone was she in?

Suddenly, he wanted to end the call so that he could look it up on his phone. What if she really was asleep? Then he would be disturbing her. And he had promised not to call so soon.

But he had to know.

He counted the tones as they rang. Rrring. Rrrring. One, two. Rrrrinng. Three.

She wasn't going to answer.

But on the fourth one, the tones stopped. She had answered.

"Ollie?" he heard her voice say. She sounded groggy, like she had just been awakened.

"Hey," he replied, putting the phone to his ear.

"You couldn't last at least a week?" she asked, her voice soft and quiet, a sound he missed so much.

"I wanted to know how things were going," he replied.

"It's going to take some time," she said. How much time?

"Have you mentioned it yet?" he asked, feeling his heart sink.

"Like I said, it's going to take some time," she replied.

"What time is it over there?" he asked.

"It's seven in the morning," she replied.

"It's a seven hour difference, then?" he asked.