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realization he was going back to her was a weight slowly crushing the very air out of Alex’s lungs.
    The clock in the hallway chimed. Has it really only been fifteen minutes? It already felt like Dallas had been gone months. Glancing at the clock on her dresser she knew exactly where they would be on the highway, knew what properties they would be passing, knew how much closer Jack and Dallas were to the airport. Stupid damn airplanes, one taking her brother to New York, another taking Dallas to California. In just a matter of hours, those damn pilots would have taken her two best friends away from her. She wasn’t sure she’d see the one headed west ever again.
    Swiping at the one tear she’d failed to keep from falling, Alex let out a sigh of relief when the last line of the song faded into silence. She could have tapped the screen on the iPod in her hand, moving on to the next song, but she never did. This song, these lyrics, these notes told her story. She never managed to move past it. Instead, it was a crutch, the lyrics a twisted sort of self-torment, yet they gave her comfort in an unexplained way. The exact way they described her life was a comfort. She hung on to it like a lifeline, hoping that like the last line of the song, her destiny would in fact be what she’d known all along.
    If there had been a knock, Alex hadn’t heard it with her headphones on. It wasn’t until Tasia reached out to touch her Alex even noticed she was in her room, and she about came out of her skin from shock. Blinking rapidly, it took a long second for Alex to pull the ear buds out. “Tasia?”
    Dallas ’s sister was holding Alex’s purse in one hand and her running shoes in the other. “Let’s go.”
    Momentarily silenced, Alex’s eyes darted to the nightstand by her bed. Luckily, the notebook was closed and even upside down. The iPod in her hand was still playing and Alex turned it off laying it aside while she waited for Tasia to explain further. It had only been fifteen minutes since he’d left, but Alex’s world had had flipped upside down and nothing was as it should be. She knew Jack had to get back to classes, but she hadn’t been prepared for Dallas to leave yet. To leave—early. She’d spent the time since shocked, her emotions stilled. At some point she knew, probably sooner than later with the temper she’d inherited from her mother, anger would replace hurt, but she hadn’t gotten to that point yet.
    “Where?”
    “I’m not letting you sit here…alone.”
    “I’m not alone, hon. My parents are around here somewhere.” At twenty-three, she hadn’t moved out of her family home, and unlike most young adults her age, she had no desire to. For her, it was as much a practicality as it was anything else. Her days were spent trackside, her nights, in her office at the academy. The school and the track were both located behind her grandparent’s home, all of which was only a few acres away. She may still live at home, but it wasn’t like she mooched off her parents. She was rarely ever there, except for when her head hit the pillow long after ten each night.
    At the moment though, even though she wanted solitude to lick her wounds, her parents were still near, still close enough to hold her if she fell apart.
    “You know what I mean. Let’s grab dinner out somewhere. Maybe go to a movie or something. What do you say? If you want, we could even dress up a little bit?”
    Tasia’s hopeful face was almost enough to garner a smile. Almost.
     
    ~~~
     
    After half-heartedly following Tasia in and out of the boutiques, they wandered into the upscale bar and grille in the Wells District of town. New blood and even newer money moved in, renovating the brick buildings that at one time housed old clothing factories and such. Life had been breathed back into the old neighborhood. The once broken windows, graffiti-laden walls and dark streets were all new again. The expensive lofts above the boutiques and