Try Again Later

Sarah stared at the raindrops dripping down the window as she took a sip of her now-cold coffee. Her heart felt as cold as the coffee and the weather outside. It was a dark, dank morning and there was a slight twitch in her stomach that refused to go away. She pressed a finger against her temple and picked up her phone again.

With a small frown, Sarah glared at her phone as if it might grow horns and become her own personal devil of doom. But it wasn’t the phone itself that scared her; it was the numbers stored within it, especially one in particular.

She stared at the long line of unanswered messages and unattended calls. Where did he go? She felt like an obsessed stalker, but she didn’t care.

She took a deep breath and pressed his number once again. Of all the numbers on her phone, there were only two she knew by heart: his and her mother’s.

After a beep, a sweet, mechanical voice repeated the same message once again: ′The person you are trying to reach is not accepting calls at this time... Try again later.′

Sarah felt like hurling the phone away in frustration, but she stopped herself as she glared at the phone.

“I’ve been trying again and again,” she hissed, slamming the phone down on the table. She picked up the book on the table, the one she had been trying to read for a while now, but she couldn’t concentrate. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t immerse herself in the story. She was too distracted to read a single word.

She closed the book and sighed as she stared through the wet windows that had finally stopped shedding tears. The rain stopped. The sun was peeking out, but she didn’t feel its warmth. She only felt the cold. A deep and immense cold that seemed to permeate every part of her being. What the hell was wrong with her?

“Where are you?” She whispered as she leaned back against the couch with a sad smile. “Where did you go? Are you coming back?”

It wasn’t like her to obsess over a few missed messages and phone calls, but he had never not answered her call in a single ring.

Something felt off to her. Just off. She didn’t know why.

She kept staring at her phone and then it rang as if someone had heard her prayers, the phone rang, but it was some stupid telemarketer on the other end. She almost cursed the woman out loud. With a grunt, she hung up and glared at the phone before putting back on the table.

Sarah had been in love so many times and had her heart broken over and over again, but this time... this one person... it hurt like hell even to think about losing him. She couldn’t do that to herself right now. This wasn’t doing her any good.

She had cried a lot over lost loves, or more like crushes, but this time, it felt different. It felt big, life-changing. It was somehow more. And she knew, deep in her heart, she wouldn’t be the same if he left her. Nothing would be the same without him.

Maybe this is true love, but where is he? Why is he not answering? Maybe I am over thinking this, she thought with a frown. Maybe he is just busy.

But the problem was, he had never been busy enough to not talk with her for a day.

She had the problem of ruminating. Sometimes, you just had to stop, but she never knew when to stop her thoughts. She built webs upon webs until it was all one big, gnarly mess she couldn’t untangle.

As her thoughts tried to ping and pong in the directions she feared, she sighed and closed her eyes, trying not to think too much about him. She should think about something else, something that wouldn’t make her stomach twist and turn, something good.

A small smile slipped past her lips as she thought about all those times she had madly fallen for someone over little things. Even after so many heartbreaks, she had willingly fallen for guys, without ever regretting the lost loves of the past.

Those times, those memories, they were precious, even now, even after years had passed.

She started to think about her past loves to distract herself from the present.

“Oh...” She sighed as she traced the cold window with a finger.

It automatically made her feel a little bit better.

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