Free Falcon Song: A love story by Kristin Cross

make excuses, she had to face facts. They were on different pages here. He may have been the love of her life, but tonight he hadn’t been acting like Kate was the love of his. Good men who had decent values didn’t behave the way he had on that stage when they were committed to someone. They just didn’t. Here in the quiet privacy of her car she could face that matter-of-factly. How she saw their relationship and how he did were definitely not in sync. It was awful to face, but it was what it was. Still, she almost wished that she was still naively unknowing. Happy and hopeful didn’t hurt as much as this harsh reality.
    The anxious knot that now threatened to stick in her stomach on a permanent basis left no doubt that things were very much amiss in her world. This hadn’t been her imagination lately.
    Her gas light came on and she absent mindedly changed lanes and took the exit to fill up. Somewhere in the back of her brain, it registered that she was just about to the Texas state line. She glanced at the time as she put the nozzle in. It was after eleven. She’d better head on home. If she got home too late, her mother would worry that she was out being a fool like she’d been the last time she was late.
    She was trying to be stoic and analytical, and really look at this mess objectively, but in light of it all, the thought of how intimate they’d been that night made her heart want to shrivel up and die. She was so stupid. Stupid, and foolish, and the worlds biggest small town sucker. Here she’d been worried about getting married and having kids and then becoming a statistic. What she should have been worrying about was becoming something on an even lower level than that. A lot lower level. The proverbial cow that had been milked without ever being purchased.
    On auto pilot again, she got back in the car and headed back toward Wye. She still had no answers, but life had to go on. She needed some sleep before going in to work tomorrow.

 
     
     
    Chapter 5
    Jason looked around the crowded room and then next to him to the even more crowded couch and decided he just wanted to go home. He was friendly by nature, and he didn’t want to be rude, but he’d tried to back this same skinny blonde off like seven times now, and she had her hand on his thigh again. He looked around, wondering where his music folder had gotten to. That was the reason they’d come here tonight. At least supposedly.
    They’d been going to play. But then they’d decided to watch the video of Friday’s concert and go over it critically. Something hadn’t been right there and they wanted to fix it. No one was even really sure what the problem was, but several of them had come away from the venue that night feeling less than satisfied.
    He glanced around the room again. How that idea had snowballed into this rodeo he had no idea. Cody came up beside him, gave him a pointed look and whispered in his ear, “Man, if Kate sees that girl all over you she’s gonna be one hot little number. You’d better watch yourself.”
    Jason turned to stare at him. “Kate? Kate had to work. What are you talking about?”
    Cody shook his head and leaned in close. “Kate’s here, Jason. At least she was about twenty-five minutes ago. Hasn’t she talked to you?”
    Jason shook his head, wondering what was up and Cody shrugged his shoulders and moved on into the noise. Jason began to look for Kate, but she was nowhere in the apartment. He even checked the restroom. He finally sighted his music leaning against Cody’s microwave and fought his way to it and then pushed his way to the door.
    He hadn’t seen Kate and he couldn’t imagine her being here. She hated parties like this, thank goodness. But Cody wouldn’t have been mistaken. Where did she go and why hadn’t she talked to him if she was here? He didn’t know the answers to those questions, but just asking them made him worried. They were already on such thin ice lately. That’s all he’d