It wasn't my alarm that was going off, so it took me a moment to figure out why Alex had thrown the pillow at me. “Either pick it up or ignore it,” she groaned, and I realized that it was my phone ringing which had apparently woken both of us up. Usually, I tried to keep the thing on silent during the night, but I must have forgotten to do that the night before after a late study session in the library.
I frowned at the caller ID; it displayed an unknown number, calling me at—I squinted at the screen—5:30 in the morning. The frustrating thing was, I had actually decided to take the day off from running so that I could get a little extra sleep before this major history test that I had. Apparently that wasn't going to happen, though.
As Alex made another, angrier-sounding noise, I quickly picked up the call. “Hello?” I asked. I didn't always answer calls from unknown numbers, but I always worried that I was going to miss something important if I didn't answer calls at weird hours like this. Hopefully it wasn't just a telemarketer on the other end of the line, though, or I was going to really lay into them…
“Hey, is this Rachael?” a voice on the other end of the line asked. There was a little laughter and background noise, but I could easily tell who was calling me, with that heavy British accent. I blinked, pulling away the phone to stare at it for a moment.
“Ben?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “Good morning. Where are you?”
“I'm...in bed,” I said groggily, even though I actually was getting up out of bed so I could move out into the hall, pausing to toss Alex her pillow back as I went. “Why are you calling so early?”
“Is it early? Shit, sorry. Time zones always fuck with me...”
“Where are you?” I asked, curiosity getting the better of me. And if he wasn't in the same time zone, what was he doing calling me? It wasn't like he was going to show up and take me for breakfast…
“I'm in Thailand with some mates,” Ben said.
“Oh,” I said, frowning. “Don't you have classes or something?”
There was a pause. “I'm not a student,” Ben said, sounding perplexed.
“Oh! Sorry, I just assumed...” I mean, he looked college-aged, and he'd been near the university when we'd run into one another. In retrospect, I guessed that was a pretty stupid conclusion to draw. But I'd expected he was doing a study abroad program or something like that. Evidently not. I scrambled for something else to say. “Why are you calling me?” I finally asked outright.
There was another pause. “To be honest, I'm not 100% sure,” Ben admitted. “Like I said, I'm here with some mates, and we spent the day drinking on the beach, and maybe I've had one too many or got heatstroke or something like that...” He trailed off and coughed lightly, sounding embarrassed. “Sorry I woke you up.”
I shook my head, feeling miffed. “It's all right,” I said.
“So what are your plans for today?” Ben asked right when I was about to say goodbye and hang up the phone.
“Maybe get a little more sleep,” I said, even though I knew there was no way that was going to happen now. “And then I have this huge history test at 10 that I'm pretty sure I'm going to bomb...”
Ben snorted. “I'm sure you'll do fine.”
“You don't know me,” I retorted. “How would you know if I'm going to do fine?”
“Gut instinct,” he said. “Anyway, I'm going to be back home on Friday, and I was wondering if maybe you'd like to get brunch Saturday morning. You know, since I still owe you and all.” He laughed a little sheepishly. “I didn't want you to think I had forgotten about you or that I wasn't going to call or anything like that. This trip was...kind of a spontaneous venture.”
“How spontaneous?” I asked curiously.
“Got drunk with my mates, woke up in a foreign country,” Ben said. “Had a bunch of work meetings that needed to be...rescheduled. My dad was less than pleased.”
I laughed incredulously. I couldn't even imagine having the kind of money to throw around that I could just blow off work and disappear to Thailand for a while with some friends. Hell, I was still trying to figure out how I was going to pay for the next semester of school.
“Yeah, bit of a lack of foresight there,” Ben said. “But...Saturday brunch?”
“I'm sure you're going to be jet-lagged and-”
“And then it'll be good to have your company to distract me from that fact,” Ben interrupted smoothly, a smirk in his voice.
I shook my head, still not sure what was happening here. “Sure, okay,” I finally agreed, feeling a bit dazed.
“Great, I'll pick you up at ten,” Ben said. “You live on campus?”
“Yeah, in the Rosewood dorm,” I told him.
“See you out front at ten,” Ben said. “Now, I guess I have to get back to my friends, but...” He trailed off like there was something else he wanted to say, but whatever it may have been, he didn't voice it.
“Yeah, see you Saturday,” I said. “Safe trip.”
I hung up the phone feeling confused. Finally, I shrugged to myself and went back into the room to change out of my pajamas and into my running gear. At this point, I was up early enough for a run anyway, and maybe it would help clear my head a little.