Falcon Song: A love story (6 page)

As Kate drove, she made a mental note to buy more iron. And maybe some B complex as well. Her eyes did look bad and her energy level was in the basement for how she usually was. Maybe it would help the perpetual emotional roller coaster as well. Just now, she was sunny as a new spring day. It had been great to surprise her mother with their strong financial status. She made another mental note to pre-register for next semester’s classes. There was a marketing class that would probably be great for both the restaurant and the band.

The next morning, she didn’t feel so good and rolled over and buried her head in her pillow with a little groan. Maybe that was why her eyes were hammered. She was probably coming down with something. She pushed her foot down to a cooler spot on the sheets and hoped that whatever it was, it was short lived. Jason would be home in less than two days and she couldn’t get him sick. Colds put a professional singer out of commission in a hurry.

An hour later, her mom came in to check on her. She put a cool hand to Kate’s brow and gave a grimace. “No fever. I hope you’re not coming down with the flu. They say it starts with a sick stomach. If you aren’t feeling better in a while, you’d better not go into the restaurant this afternoon. It’d be a shame to take a germ there.”

Actually, by around noon Kate felt fine. A fever had never materialized and her headache and sick tummy were gone, so she went into work as scheduled and it was a good thing she did. The pastry chef didn’t show and one of the computers went on the fluey and it took everything she and the assistant manager had to smooth out the resultant riffles.

She didn’t make it home until after midnight and slept in again when the bug hit the second day in a row. At ten o’clock in the morning, she ruefully looked at herself in the mirror as she gagged brushing her teeth. Maybe she shouldn’t have gone in last night. It would be a shame to slow up the restaurant’s momentum with negative press from some outbreak.

Thankfully, she was feeling fine again by the time she picked Jason and Cody up from the airport on Monday. He greeted her with a searching look and then a long, sweet hug and kiss. It was heaven to be back in his arms. He did
always
come home to her. She hugged him back, feeling almost a bit silly that one person could control her happiness the way he could. Sometimes it seemed like nothing in the world could go wrong when Jason was with her.

They spent the afternoon together before Kate had to go into work and she thoroughly basked in having him back. She had missed him more than she ever remembered missing him.

When things were going smoothly at the restaurant she decided to leave and surprise Jason with some unexpected time in an evening for a change. Being a restaurant manager didn’t often facilitate that. After the dinner rush, she left it in the capable hands of her assistant manager, and headed to find him. It had been too long of a separation to waste the first night he was home working. Their time together lately was so limited anyway. It wasn’t fair to him to leave him tonight to work if they weren’t desperate for her. As she drove, she decided that maybe having well trained assistant managers would turn out to be a really, really good thing.

Jason wasn’t at his apartment and she drove by Cody’s to see if his car was there. It was and she parked hers, turned off her phone and went to the door, looking forward to seeing him.

She could hear their music from clear outside and assumed they were jamming, which wasn’t unusual, but they did usually try to tone down the amplifiers at this time of night. When no one answered the door, she figured they just couldn’t hear the bell which wasn’t unusual either and let herself in. Cody was so laid back that even if he wasn’t completely dressed it wouldn’t bother him a bit.

When Kate opened the door, she was taken aback. They weren’t jamming. Their music was coming from Cody’s humongous flat screen across the room and they were apparently watching a recording of one of their recent concerts. There were what seemed like hundreds of people in Cody’s apartment and about two thirds of them appeared to be female. In fact, slightly scantily clad, somewhat tipsy females.

No one had even noticed Kate coming in the door and she shut it quietly, feeling that old familiar knot in the pit of her stomach. She hated parties like this. She knew groupies were just a part of this business, but she wasn’t sure she would ever get used to it.

Looking around to see where Jason was, she saw girls of every shape, color, race and figure draped around various pieces of furniture and the guys who were in them. None of the guys appeared too upset about that to speak of. As she looked around, Kate took a canned Mountain Dew from a nearby tub filled with ice and then stepped back into an open spot near a cluster of partiers where she could watch what was going on without being too conspicuous.

She resumed her search for Jason, but couldn’t see him anywhere and her attention was caught by the video on the big screen. The guys did put on an awesome show. She found herself tapping her foot to the heady backbeat as she watched the love of her life on that stage, singing his heart out at ten billion decibels with what looked from the camera’s perspective like another ten billion fans screaming in the audience in front of them.

The guys looked good there in their seemingly casual, but incredibly sexy jeans and boots and muscle shirts. Jason was by far the most subtle, and the most heart stopping. At least as far as she could see. Of course, she might be just a touch biased, but then again probably not. He was definitely breath taking. She watched him on the big screen for another couple of minutes and then dragged her eyes away. He had to be here somewhere.

She was about to step around the group she was standing by, when the video caught her eye again. Jason was on the very front of the stage and obviously singing and dancing to the girls in the audience right below him. Her breath caught in her throat as she watched and the sick knot in her stomach doubled in size. She focused on inhaling, telling herself it was just the industry and that Jason was simply being what he was. An entertainer. He didn’t care for those women; he was simply playing the concert game.

She hadn’t half convinced herself when Jason began to make some moves that were suggestive enough that they were pushing the very edge of the acceptable envelope. Holy cats! What was he doing? Jason wasn’t like that. Was he? She felt like she couldn’t breath, but she couldn’t look away either. Something was knocking on her brain and asking if she even knew Jason, really. From what she was seeing on that screen, she certainly didn’t.

The song ended and Jason winked and kissed toward the girls below him and as the crowd went nuts, Kate tried to calm her heart rate and looked around for him one more time. There was still no sign of him, but suddenly Kate’s sick stomach raised its head again and she knew she needed to make it to Cody’s powder room fast. Something about what she’d been watching combined with the Mountain Dew that she didn’t particularly care for anyway, and it was a deadly combination that she knew without a doubt was not going to stay down.

After she was sick, she rinsed her mouth several times, wiped her face off and then snooped in Cody’s drawers until she found some mouthwash and borrowed it. For a moment or two, she leaned her forehead against the cold tile wall of the edge the shower and took deep breaths. Man, this was a random bug. Sometimes she felt fine, and sometimes she definitely didn’t.

Knowing that there were tons of partying people out there who would need to use this room, she dumped her soda down the sink, discarded the can and let herself back out into the hot, loud, over crowded room. Maybe it hadn’t been the soda that hadn’t agreed with her. The air in here was definitely a little gamey.

She shoved the window behind her open and took several more deep breaths as she once more scanned the rooms for Jason. This time she found him. He was over near the hall sitting on the arm of Cody’s couch with a Pepsi in his hand and lazy smile on his face. He didn’t seem to mind the heat or the smell.

As she watched, he joked with a guy who was standing next to him and then turned to a leggy strawberry blonde who was seated on the couch on his other side. He laughed at something she said and then reached out to catch a girl with short platinum blond hair who tripped over someone on the floor as she went to walk by him. She’d almost landed in his lap and he smiled as he pushed the woman away and then brushed something she’d spilled on him off of his pant leg.

At his smile, the platinum blonde came closer and wrapped an arm around his shoulders as she laughed. Kate hoped she was apologizing and she willed her to get her hands off of her boyfriend.

To his credit, Jason continued to smile, but then very politely removed the girls arm and once again pushed her away.

Kate took a deep, stabilizing breath and then prepared to foray through the horde to reach him. She’d only raised her foot to step when another blonde girl approached Jason and offered him some little finger food from the small paper plate she had in her hand. Jason accepted with a smile and Kate felt the knot in her stomach turn over as the girl laughingly fed what him ever it was she was offering and then leaned in close to him with a sultry smile to wipe a bit of it off of his mouth.

Just as the blonde touched Jason’s mouth, a man who had been standing beside Kate watching the video turned to her and gave her an appraising look up and down that under the circumstances, she hardly even noticed. He asked her something, but with the noise and her focus across the room, she didn’t hear him. She absent mindedly tipped her head to him and said, “Excuse me. What was that?”

He was starting to say it again when the girl across the room fed Jason another bite and Kate made a sudden decision to leave. She didn’t belong here. And apparently Jason wasn’t having the lonely night Kate had worried about.

To be polite, she tried one more time to tip her head to hear the man beside her and then instinctively smiled as Cody rounded the corner beside her with a roll of paper towel. He gave her a surprised grin. “Hey, Kate! I didn’t know y’all were here. Make yourself at home.” He waved the paper towel. “I gotta go, -bean dip on my couch.”

He waded back into the crowd and Kate gave the man beside her a tight smile and turned for the door. She still hadn’t heard what the guy was trying to tell her.

When Cody’s door shut behind her, she woodenly walked to her car out on the curb. Even from there she could hear the music. It was Jason, singing her song.  

On auto pilot, she climbed into her car and started it up. Country music came on and without thinking, she pressed the button on her steering wheel to turn it off. She pulled away from the curb and had driven who knew how many miles before she gave a thought to where she was going. Giving a tired sigh, she realized she had no idea where she was, not that it made much difference.

With another sigh, she ruefully thought,
not only that, but I have no idea where I’m going either. In my car, or in my life
. For that matter, she didn’t even know who her best friend was. The man she’d lived beside for almost twenty years now. Well, not twenty. He’d moved to his own nearby apartment a few years ago. But his parents still lived next door, and he was just a couple blocks away.

A couple blocks and a million miles. She thought back to the way he’d been dancing on that screen tonight. Was it really as bad as it had seemed at the time? It had definitely been suggestive. Just thinking about how good he had looked made her stomach do flip flops again. Yeah, it had been over the top. Sensual as all get out, but definitely over the top.

Her thoughts went from the dancing to the way he was with the other women around him. He hadn’t really done anything that bad. And he hadn’t been the one making the first moves, but Kate hadn’t been able to stand there and watch him literally eat out of another woman’s hand. She pulled on to the freeway and flipped on her blinker to merge.

As she drove, for some reason, she began to pray out loud as if God was sitting right there in the seat beside her. She had never felt so out of her depth in her life as she voiced, “Father, I know I’ve made some pretty gargantuan mistakes in my life lately. And I’m so sorry. Please forgive me and help me to do better. Oh, I’m sorry; I forgot to say thanks first. I’m so grateful for… For everything, Father. I have a great life and I know it. And I’ve been so blessed with so many gifts. I’m truly, truly grateful. Please don’t misunderstand me. But oh, man, I am so lost right now.

“You know about me and Jason. He’s been my best friend for so long. Heck, he’s been my life for forever. But lately, I’m bothered by so many things. In some ways, I want to run to him like when I was little, and in some ways I want to run away from him and back off from so much confusion.

“He’s a good man, Heavenly Father. I know he is. And I know this man. Sometimes I can even tell what he’s thinking. Sometimes I even know what he’s
going to
think before he thinks it.” She paused in thought and then continued, “At least I thought I knew him Heavenly Father. Sometimes lately, I’m not so sure.”

Tears began to course down her cheeks as she went on, “He wants to get married, God. And I’m definitely in love with him. And I’ve always respected and admired him. He’s so talented and strong and kind and wise and… Well, you know how he is. You made him. Anyway, he wants to get married, and I really want that too, but I’m having such huge doubts lately about some things. Actually, about nearly everything. I feel like we should wait until he’s sure he’s not going to regret me. But then what if he does find some flavor he likes better and leaves me? That would kill me, Heavenly Father. I can’t imagine life without him.”