Kate groaned and put a hand under the blanket to find that she was missing a lot more than just her shirt. She licked her dry lips and started to cry, trying to be quiet enough not to wake Jason as she rummaged under the blanket to see if she could find her clothing. There was no way she was going to pull that blanket back to look for them. She was such a fool. Such a complete fool. Man, she felt awful.
She suddenly remembered that Cody and his obnoxious woman had been here last night and she almost panicked as she looked around. Thankfully, there was no one in sight and she quickly pulled her shirts on and then shrugged into her pants. She hadn’t found all of her lingerie and she gave up looking with an angry sob and slipped on her sandals, thinking only that she wanted to get out of here and never have to face Jason or Cody or that small brained Ryanna again in her life.
As she stood up in the pitch darkness, her head began to pound with an even meaner throb and she struggled to stifle the urge to throw up as she began walking back up the gravel road toward town. She had the worst morning breath she could even imagine.
Once out of hearing of the burnt out fire, she dialed home and struggled to control her tears as her mom picked up on the first ring. “Katie, are you okay?”
Kate groaned and bit back her tears. “No, Mother, I’m a complete idiot.”
“What happened? Are you hurt?”
She sighed and couldn’t help the tears that overflowed as she said, “I’m fine, just incredibly, amazingly stupid. Would you come and get me please? I’ll be walking your way on the gravel road out by the river.”
“Where’s Jason? Is he okay?”
“He’s fine. I think he’s fine. I’m not waking him up to find out. I honestly never want to see him or talk to him again in my life. Just please come get me. I’ll explain when you get here.”
There was a pause and then her mother sighed. “Oh, Kate. I hope you didn’t forget who you are. Stay with Jason and don’t go walking alone. I’ll be right there.”
Kate pushed the end button and slid the phone into her pocket. She wasn’t even sure what had happened last night, but she suspected she’d more than forgotten who she was. She started to cry all the harder and then went to the side of the road to deal with her uncontrollable urge to vomit. Geez, she was a disgusting mess. Why in the world had she ever agreed to try his champagne? She’d known better even though she’d always trusted Jason’s judgment in the past. Yeah, sure it wasn’t really alcohol. Who were they trying to kid?
She kicked at a rock in utter self loathing. Her, of course. She was who they were trying to kid. And it had worked beautifully. She’d never really thought she would turn out to be such a sucker. She knew better. She’d known better since she was a little, tiny girl. She was pitiful. She swore again and swiped angrily at the tears on her cheeks. What in the world had they done?
On the one hand she was furious with him for helping to fool her into such a big mistake. On the other hand, he would be just as sad as she was when he woke up to realize what had happened and she wished she could somehow take it all away before he found out. He would never have let this happen if they hadn’t been drinking. Neither of them would have. They’d tried so hard to stay morally clean for so many years. They weren’t like this. They really, really weren’t like this.
As she walked along in the dark, she thought back to that sweet evening by the lake when she and Jason had made their pinky promise to stay virgins. In a fresh bout of sadness, she didn’t see a pot hole in the road and tripped and twisted her ankle and the pain made her cry even harder as she whispered, “Oh, Jason, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to, I swear it.”
Not only was she bawling, but she was limping terribly too when her mother pulled up beside her in the gravel. Wordlessly Kate got in and her mother turned around and headed back the way she had come, the only sound in the car Kate’s heart wrenching sobbing.
Back at home, she looked her mother in the eye and then dropped her gaze and said simply, “I blew it, Mom. I let them talk me into drinking champagne, because it wasn’t really alcohol.” As she said this last, she made quote marks in the air with her hands.
She shook her head again and wiped at the tears on her cheeks. “I knew better. In fact, I was furious at first. But I’ve always been able to trust his judgment and then when it was just Jason and me by the fire I had a sip of his. It must have affected my thinking right from the start. I don’t know how much I ended up drinking. I was so tired and it only made me worse. I’m so sorry. It’ll never happen again. I promise.”
“What’ll never happen again, Katie?”
Kate crumbled into sobbing again. “Oh, Mother, I don’t even know for sure. I don’t even remember. I just know I woke up with a splitting head and not nearly enough clothing.” For a second she couldn’t even speak. She turned away from her mom and headed for her room as she repeated, “I don’t even remember. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Thank you for coming for me. I’m supposed to be at the restaurant at two. If I’m not up by one will you please wake me? Otherwise, let me sleep and not think about what a fool I am. I’m so sorry. I love you. Good night.”
She’d made it to her room when she had to turn and rush into the bathroom to throw up again. Wiping her mouth, she reached to brush the compounded sour taste from her mouth. And she’d thought her head hurt when she woke up. It felt like it was going to burst after hurling.
Reaching into her medicine cabinet, she shook out two aspirin and tossed them back and then groaned from the pain of moving her head too fast. She pulled the shower water on to warm up and stripped off the clothing she had found and tossed it into the garbage and then threw toilet paper in on top of it to hide it. That had been her favorite shirt, but she didn’t want to ever remember it again.
After showering, she pulled on a pair of plain white panties, cut off sweats and an old t-shirt and limped in to literally fall into bed. With any luck, she’d kill over from this headache and not have to wake up and remember what an incredible, blithering fool she’d been. There was no question that she couldn’t say her prayers tonight. God was well aware of what had happened, but she couldn’t face him. What in the world had she done?
***
When the sun shining in Jason’s eyes woke him up to find himself alone and sans clothing, he knew he was in a lot of trouble.
He had no idea where Kate was and the first thing he did was try to call her phone and check and make sure she was okay. It went straight to voice mail and next he tried her parents’ house. Her mother answered and while she was polite, and told Jason that yes, Kate had come safely home at three twenty that morning; she was definitely not the pleasant, welcoming mother she usually was.
When he asked to talk to Kate, Laura politely told him Kate had asked not to be woken. He paused wondering what to say to this woman who was nearly as close to him as his own mom and finally just asked, “When she wakes up, will you tell her I called, please?”
After saying goodbye, he lay back down and covered his eyes with a groan. Yeah, he was in a lot of trouble.
Lying there, he was chilled and he threw back the small blanket to see where his clothes had gotten to. They lay in a wad under the blanket and he tried to shake out the wrinkles as he thought back to last night.
Kate had been right; the champagne had been a really bad idea. He’d known Kate was drinking a lot, but he’d somehow bought into the story they’d been telling her that it wasn’t really alcohol. And even that was a terrible excuse. He’d had some to drink, but he certainly hadn’t been wiped out drunk like Kate was. Just weak. Weak and tired, and enchanted to the bone. Between the three of those things, he’d broken the most important promise in his life, and in the process done what he hoped wasn’t irreparable damage to their relationship.
He knew Kate. Knew she was the most honorable, Godly, pure woman on the planet. And if any other guy had propositioned her, she’d have insisted that he take her home and not call again. What she’d think of Jason,
after much more than a proposition was yet to be revealed, but the fact that she’d left without telling him goodbye and wouldn’t take his call this morning didn’t bode well.
And he deserved every bit of it.
Standing up, he walked to his car barefoot to dig out some gum. His morning after champagne breath was horrendous. Going back to the scene of the crime, he reached down and picked up one of the blankets and shook the grass off of it, folded it up and then started on a second one. One of his socks fell out and then a lacy, little tangerine colored bra and he bent to pick it up, wishing that he was only feeling guilt and not remembering how incredibly exquisite she’d been last night.
As much as he regretted things this morning, last night had been the culmination of a lot of years’ dreams. Now he just hoped he could talk Kate out of telling him to hit the road because of it. It was awful that they’d taken something so precious and turned it into a negative. All these years, he’d dreamed of waking up in Kate’s happy arms after their first time being intimate together and he’d messed it all up royally. And yeah, he needed to shoulder the blame for this one. Kate had been kind of out of it, thanks to his encouraging the champagne, but he hadn’t. Just weak. Weak and stupid.
He folded the bra and put it in his pocket, wondering what to do with it. It was pretty much a given that Kate would never want to see it again if he knew her very well. He cleaned up the various odds and ends lying around the campsite and resisted the urge to smash the champagne bottle to bits against the fire pit rocks. He should have listened to Kate on this one. He really should have.
When the only thing left to pack away was his guitar, he glanced around the small clearing and wondered where Cody and his obnoxious date had gotten to. He didn’t even remember them coming back to camp. It was anybody’s guess how they had gotten back into town.
He picked up his guitar, but instead of putting it into its case in the trunk of his car, he sat back down on the stump and started to idly pick a few cords, wishing he could magically conjure up powerful enough notes and lyrics to somehow undo last night so he could start all over again. It had certainly turned into some celebration. He shook his head and sighed.
Bending over the instrument, he closed his eyes and began to hum a soulful, plaintive melody that went along with his somber, regretful mood and then whispered, “Oh, baby, I’m so sorry.”
He was so caught in his thoughts of Kate and his music that at first, he didn’t even hear Cody and Ryanna laughing as they walked back up the river path. In a way, he envied them their devil may care attitude about what they had been doing, wherever they had been doing it. But not really. Kate was too precious and too rare a treasure to ever cheapen with casual sex. Even if he’d been that kind of a guy. Which he definitely wasn’t. Intimacy with her would never be casual for him to the day he died. Granted she ever wanted to see him again. Just now, that was definitely on the down side of iffy.
Ryanna laughed her cackle as she reached into the back seat of his Jeep to take a small hair brush out of her purse and attempt to tame her straggling, brassy hair. Jason looked up and met Cody’s eyes and saw him glance around for Kate. When he didn’t see her and looked sadly back at Jason, Jason knew that he wasn’t unaware of what a mess Jason had made of his and Kate’s friendship with that stupid bottle of sparkling wine and his uncontrolled desire. The regret in Cody’s eyes, in spite of his forced smile, spoke volumes to Jason and depressed him still further.
He looked away, unwilling to let even his closest friend see how deeply his frail humanness troubled him. He leaned back over his guitar. Oh, baby, I’m so, so sorry.
Kate never called and after waiting all morning and into the afternoon, Jason went in search of her. Her car was gone from where she normally parked it in front of her parents’ house and he flipped a uie and headed for her parents’ restaurant. She usually managed it on Saturdays, but typically not until after three o’clock. Maybe she had gone in early.
Her car was there and he pulled his to the curb and tried to see if he could see her through the big front windows. It would be a good thing if he could get a feel for what she was thinking before he actually approached her. She was nowhere to be seen and he hoped that meant she was in her office in the back where they could have a modicum of privacy.
As he went to reach for the car door handle, he paused and wondered if he dared pray and ask for help in this situation after what he had done to cause it. Deciding at length that this was definitely one of those mistakes God had hoped His children wouldn’t make, Jason held to his faith that his Father in Heaven loved him no matter how much he messed up and he humbly bowed his head anyway. Kate was too important not to ask for divine help with if there was any possibility he could get it.
When he walked past the hostess’s stand and through the dining room, both waiters he met looked at him hesitantly and it made him wonder how bad of shape Kate was in. He hoped she wasn’t horribly hung over on top of being completely disappointed in her boyfriend.
Kate looked up as he approached her office and she stood and walked right out the back door of the office and out into the parking lot behind the building, pulling the sunglasses that sat on top of her head down as she stepped off the small porch. She set off up the sidewalk at a brisk walk that held a definite limp and Jason had to practically run to catch up with her. In her business slacks and heels, she looked like a million bucks, but her sunglasses effectively covered every vestige of what she was really feeling.
Falling into step with her, he walked along beside her for a couple of minutes before she finally stopped and turned to him. Or turned on him, which was the impression he got from her posture. She didn’t say anything, just looked at him and he looked back at her in return and at length reached over and gently pulled off her sunglasses. He had to see her eyes to know what she was thinking.
What he saw made him want to wince. As beautiful as she was, her eyes looked like hell. She looked positively ill, as well as appearing to have spent a great deal of the last ten hours crying her heart out. The headache must have been a corker. Her forehead creased and she was nearly squinting from the glare. And she’d been limping. Geez, what had he done to her?
Unsure of what to do, he just stood there until he finally stepped forward and tried to all but swallow her in a close hug. He pulled her tight against his chest and she hid her face and began to cry like her world had unraveled in one, horribly misdirected evening. Oh, how he wished he could take it all back.
She clung to him and sobbed until his shirt was plastered to his chest and a tear overflowed his own eyes and slid down his face. He wiped at it before it dripped into her hair and put his mouth down close to her ear to whisper, “Oh, Kate. Baby, I’m so sorry.” He stroked her back and ran his fingers into her hair and pulled her even closer. “So sorry.”
When the tears didn’t appear to be slowing at all, he slid a hand under the short, fairy curls at the back of her neck and gently squeezed the muscles that were so tense she felt like she was going to break and spoke to her again softly, “Kate, do you think you can ever forgive me? What are you thinking? Please say you’re not going to leave me. I know I messed up abysmally. I know I did. But please don’t give up on us. Please.”
After several more minutes, she finally, finally appeared to be winding down and he pulled back to look at her. “Are you okay?”
She shook her head and swallowed, unable to speak as more tears dampened her face and he pulled her close again to whisper, “We’ll get through this, Kate. We will. I know I can’t ask you to trust me, but I promise we’ll get through it and end up okay.”
Her teary, bloodshot eyes looked up into his for several long moments, and while he searched them almost desperately, for the first time in nearly his whole life, he couldn’t tell what she was thinking. He tried again to reassure her. “We will, babe. What we have is strong enough to handle even this.”
He pulled her back close and almost rocked her for a second and then to
ok her hand and began to lead her away from her restaurant as he asked, “Do they need you desperately in there right now? Or can I have you for a few minutes?”
She put her sunglasses back on and begrudgingly said, “I have a few minutes, but only a few. There is a ton of stuff to do before the dinner rush.”
They walked for another couple of minutes before he stopped and tugged her to a nearby bench where he kept her hand in his. Hesitantly, he asked, “Why are you limping?”
She sighed and quietly answered him without looking up, “I twisted my ankle walking last night.”
After a pause, he asked, “I didn’t do it?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Is it okay?”
Still without looking up, she said tiredly, “My ankle’s fine.”
He played with her hand, stroking the back of it with his other hand while he thought about what she was implying. Finally, he softly asked, “How is your heart?”
She started to cry again and then when she could, she said haltingly, “Wiser. Wiser than it was yesterday.” She stood up. “And sad. Incredibly sad. I need to get back.” She dropped his hand and began walking away.
Getting up from the bench, he caught up with her and tried to take her hand once more, but she pulled it away. Frustrated, he said, “Don’t Kate. That only makes it worse. We can make it through this.”
At that, she stopped and turned on him again and the tears were momentarily gone as she ground out, “Of course we made it through it, Jason. Were here, aren’t we? We made it through it. We just did a lot of damage in the process.”
“We can fix the damage, Kate.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes. Really.”
“Tell me something Jason. What did we do last night? Did I lose my virginity under that meteor shower?”
Falcon Song: A love story Page 3