mamma mia | jeremy jordan

30. the part

Ana somehow made it through the workday with a hang over and less than 4 hours of sleep. By the end of it, she was ready to fall into bed and sleep the entire weekend away. She was going in the right direction with this idea, too, but she had been sleeping for only three hours when her phone began ringing.

She opened her bleary eyes and searched around for the device, which was somehow still sitting in the back pocket of her gray slacks. Ana read the name on the screen and sighed.

"Hello?" She tried to make her scratchy throat sound less than annoyed, but she couldn't help it.

"Hey," Ben cheerfully spoke from the other end. "Were you napping?"

"Uh," Ana rubbed at her eyes and pulled herself up to lean against her headboard, "yeah. But it's okay, I was just waking up."

Ben hummed in response, "That's good... What are your plans for this weekend?"

"Sleeping."

Ben chuckled, a loud sound that made Ana pull the phone away from her ear. "So, if I invited you to take a train to Pittsburgh overnight and meet up with my brother in the city, you would say no?"

Ana furrowed her eyebrows, wondering if she would be up to such a feat. "I don't know, Ben. I've had a very stressful two weeks at work and i was hoping to just relax this weekend. Could we do it next Saturday?"

She heard him scoff, but clear his throat to cover it up, "I understand. Tomorrow is actually his birthday, so I'm still going to go up to see him. We can, of course, go next weekend if you really want to."

"It's up to you."

A long silence rolled under the crackling noise in Ana's ear until Ben finally said, "Okay. I'll probably get home early Monday morning, so we can't do anything Sunday. Maybe we could get dinner on Monday?"

"Uh, we'll have to see because I have a photo shoot scheduled for 2 o'clock and it seems like it's going to be a long one," Ana was beginning to wake up more as the conversation went on, so she stood up and to take off her work clothes.

She was wrapping a bath towel around her body when Ben said, "Yeah, okay. Just call me when you want to see me again."

Ana opened her mouth to ask what he meant by what he said, but Ben hung up on her. She was too tired and stressed to deal with what would probably be an argument if she messaged him, so turned on Do Not Disturb, shuffled her music, and began filling up the bathtub.

Ana poured herself a large glass of water and set it on the ground beside the bathtub. When it was high enough, she dropped in a bath bomb and dipped her body into it.

Ana soaked in the tub for a while, long enough for her fingers to prune up, and then she stood and, while the water was draining, she did her usual routine.

There were goosebumps covering Ana's skin when she completely shut off the shower. She quickly wrapped her hair up in a towel and tied her robe around her waist.

Ana didn't know where Laura was: she barely remembered anything they had talked about last night, but there was a possibility that she had said she was going on a date. So, Ana kept her music playing as she walked around the apartment in her bathrobe.