46 - Merry F--king Christmas

“To your new home.”

“To my new home,” Jon echoed Delaney’s toast as their stemware chimed delicately together.   

After swallowing, she gently placed her glass on the butter yellow placemat.  “Chardonnay is supposed to go with kung pao chicken, but I wasn’t really sure if you drank it.  Hope it’s okay.”

“I have favorites but will drink anything.  Literally, anything.”

She shot him a condescending look over the food that caused her stomach to clench with hunger pangs.  Her hectic schedule hadn't had room for meals today.  “I’m starting to think you’re a high-functioning alcoholic.”

“I plead the Fifth.” 

The playful jab was only partially in jest.  Jon held his wine well, but they’d shared enough of it in the last week that she’d learned to spot the subtle signs of his drinking.  High cheekbones lit with a pink hue when he hit the sweet spot between relaxation and drunkenness, and his smile took on a different tilt. He spoke more readily about nothing in particular and was freer in sharing random thoughts. 

That’s the place she wanted to get him to before bringing up her morning delivery, so Delaney passed the time by indulging her curiosity. 

“So, can I ask you a question?”

“You technically just did, but yeah.  Anytime, as long as you know I may not always choose to answer.”

“Fair enough.”  She twirled zucchini noodles around her chopsticks, not looking at him when posing, “Why are you paying for a hotel in the city instead of staying in your New Jersey house?”

Petra’s demanding questions the other day had gotten stuck in Delaney’s head, taking root and growing until Delaney’s curiosity was inspired.  It did seem strange to spend whatever he was spending on the Four Seasons, when he had a home just outside the city.

“Who wants to know?  Mou or Petra?”

Was she that transparent, or was he just that astute?  “Petra may have planted the seed, but I’m asking for me.”

Jon nodded and set the chopsticks down in favor of his wine.  He was again abandoning most of his meal, and if she hadn’t seen him do it every time they ate, Delaney might have had qualms about her cooking.  The man kept his trim waistline by eating like a bird and filling his stomach with alcohol.  That habit carried the potential to be worrisome, but she told herself it was too soon to make that judgment.  It felt like they’d been together for longer than reality and the calendar said they had.

“The house in Jersey is inconvenient for me and she doesn’t want it, so we’re selling.  I was actually thinking about giving Avery the listing.”

Selling the famed house on the Navesink?  That was something akin to sacrilege in Delaney’s mind, not only from a fan’s perspective, but….  Well, that house was a huge part of his life.  His history, in fact, and he’d always struck her as a man who thrived on tradition.

She tilted her head, eyebrows knitting with confusion.  “I’m sure she’d love to have it, but why?  You have a studio there.  It’s your kids’ home.”

“My kids are New Yorkers,” he countered.  “Jake and Romeo were raised there more than Jersey, and the other two have chosen the city.  We haven’t been at the house for more than holidays in a few years, and as far as the studio goes, it’s just a studio.  I can always build another or there are lots of places who'd like my business.”

“I don’t get it,” was Delaney’s sighed admission when taking up her own wine.  “Maybe it’s just the fan in me talking, but that house….  It symbolizes you as much as Superman, your smile, the long-haired baby pictures from the eighties.  Even freeping ‘Wanted’ or ‘Prayer’.  How do you give that up?”

Having drained his glass, Jon reached for the bottle to replenish it.  “I’ll take you over there sometime and tell you what I see in my dining room.  My office.  Maybe then you’ll understand.”

“I’d love to see inside, but I’m not sure I’ll ever understand.”  If she’d had the option of keeping the home where her daughters grew up, Delaney would’ve pounced on it.  There were memories embedded in every wall, window and floorboard.  Now that she’d lost both girls, living with the physical reminders of those memories might not make the loss so painful.

Or it could be more painful.  You don't know.  Not really.

“But you’re keeping the house in the Hamptons?”

“For now,” he acknowledged with a slow nod.  “I get that, she gets the Greenwich condo and we’ll sell the ones in Jersey and Florida.  Maybe after this year, the Hamptons place will get sold, too.  I’ll have to see how it goes.”

“And you’ll just have the new apartment.”

“Maybe, maybe not.  I want an actual house someplace.  Just one without as many reminders attached.”

“I gotta tell you…”  Her head slowly shook with incomprehension.  “I never dreamed you’d be the one wanting to escape reminders.  You seem so rooted in history and tradition that it baffles me.”

“History and tradition, yeah, but I don’t like making mistakes.  I sure as fuck don’t like being reminded of them, so that’s not the history I wanna preserve.”

The chardonnay was over half gone now that he’d poured himself another glass, and the telltale flush darkened his cheeks.  The segue and the timing were never going to get any more perfect. 

“I went to see Dorothea today.”

Surprised pinpoints of blue locked on her, but he didn’t seem perturbed when asking, “Yeah?  What for?”

Shrugging one shoulder, Delaney pulled one foot onto the chair seat with her, loosely draping her arms around it.  “Wanted to clear the air on the off chance this thing between you and me continues.”

“Stop right there,” came the abrupt command along with an upheld hand.  “Since I did such a shitty job earlier of saying I’d keep my dick in my pants and might have created some ambiguity, let the record show I want this to continue.  This friends and lovers thing is working for me.”

“It’s working for me, too,” she agreed with a smile.  He was a pretty cute wino.

“Good, because I’m gonna want your pussy for dessert, friend.”

Her insides clenched with both delight and dismay at his crude candor.  He hadn’t proven himself to be suave, and charming her panties off wasn’t the way he operated.  The man wanted what he wanted and wasn’t shy about demanding it. 

Oddly enough, that didn’t offend her.  Delaney appreciated not having to second-guess him and liked his unabashed way of expressing desire for her.

“You want whipped cream with that?”

The smoldering gaze that had sidetracked her from the conversation went molten as one corner of his mouth kicked lazily into a sexy leer.  “Nah.  It’d just spoil the taste.”

“Discussing oral sex at the dinner table?  You’re a dirty man, Mr. Bongiovi.”

Her heart thumped erratically when his eyes met hers to taunt, “And you like it.”

What was it she’d just thought about him not charming off her panties?  Wrong.  He just had his own unique brand of charm, and it had her squirming in her seat.  If she didn’t get back to the topic at hand, he’d have her naked on this table.

“I do, actually.  Just not when I’m trying to have a serious conversation with you.”

“Then talk.”

She blatantly ignored the hand that disappeared beneath the table at the same time he shifted on his chair.  The hard-on might not survive this little chat, but she’d make sure he got it back later.

“I made it clear to Dorothea that there was nothing going on between us before Monday and that I was as shocked as the rest of the world over your divorce.  She was good to me the day I got plowed by the bike messenger, and I didn’t want her thinking things that weren’t true.”

“And?”

“And,” Delaney addressed his lifted brow.  “She believed me and offered some advice.  Very curious advice.”

For the first time since she’d brought up Dorothea’s name, he appeared unhappy.  The curved lines between his eyebrows became more pronounced with a frown, and his movement on the wooden chair had nothing to do with arousal. 

“Tell me why you’re getting divorced, Jon.”

Well, fuck.

He’d known this moment was imminent.  In all honesty, he should be grateful she hadn’t demanded it three days ago.  Jon probably would be grateful if he’d found any means of sugar-coating this so that he didn’t come off sounding like the asshole that he was. 

Instead, his gratitude lay in the belief that Delaney saw him as a normal man and had only put him on a short pedestal.  Jon was about to take a nosedive off that fucker, and with any luck, a good tuck and roll would keep him intact.    

Keep this relationship intact.

After throwing back a final bracing drink of wine, he sighed and gently set the glass next to what remained of his dinner. 

“There was this girl that went to high school with me and Dorothea – Angie Nunzio.   She wasn’t a particularly nice girl, mostly because she got off on fucking other girls’ boyfriends.  Did it to Dorothea once, before I came along, and to her best friend at least twice.  To say that she didn’t get along with Angie is like saying the Pope is a little Catholic.”   

Jon shifted his attention from the chopsticks in his restless fingers to the row of houseplants along the kitchen window sill.  “Graduation came and went, and I was too busy trying to establish a music career to think about anybody from high school, including Dorothea for a while. 

“We broke up for a few months in the early days of the band, because she didn’t like everything that came along with the musician life.  It pissed me off, but whatever.  I had a career to build.

“During that break, Angie managed to get herself backstage at one of the shows.  I was drunk, and she was shoving her tits in my face, so I screwed around with her a couple times.”

Not his proudest moment, but not his worst, either.  Not even his worst in this story, and he risked a quick glance in Delaney’s direction to see how she was receiving it so far.  What he found was an expression devoid of any discernible expression, and he counted the absence of disgust a win at this stage. 

“Dorothea found out, and when we reunited, she made me swear I’d never go near that ‘putrid whore’ again.  That was the only woman she ever explicitly told me not to touch, so I agreed.  I didn’t like the girl that much, anyway.”

Now came the fun part.

“Fast forward almost four years – March 1, 1993 – and Angie Nunzio somehow finds her way into my hotel room in Kalamazoo fucking Michigan.   I still think it was Sambora that had her poppin’ out of a big fucking cake to wish me a happy birthday.  She was half-naked, I was beyond half-drunk, and Richie was pushing me at her.  Drunk as I was, I knew it was a shit idea, but à la ‘Bed of Roses’… I woke up with her still in my bed.”

“Oh, Jon.”

“I know, I know,” he growled at her pitying tone while agitatedly spinning the wineglass on its base.  “Dumb fucking mistake, but I managed to keep it quiet.  There was only one time the cat almost jumped out of the bag, and that was when Sambora bringing up her name at the goddamn hospital the day Stephanie was born.  

“Dorothea heard ‘Angie’ and gave me a look that should’ve lasered my balls off.  When they stayed attached, she demanded to know if it was that Angie.  All those years later, and that’s still the first person that comes to her mind.” 

Shrugging defenselessly without looking toward his hostess, Jon confessed his greatest sin.  “I told her no.  What am I gonna say?  She’s about to have our first child.  I’m not going to admit what a motherfucking idiot I was. And when she asked again later, it was a little late to be changing my story.  I also didn’t see the point in pissing her off for something that was never going to happen again.”

Pushing back his chair, he picked up the empty wine bottle and moved toward the kitchen.  “Do you have more someplace?”

“In the fridge,” she instructed as he dumped the empty in the trash.  Opening the refrigerator rewarded him with a cold bottle of Hampton Water, and he pulled it out while Delaney asked, “Did it happen again?”

“No.”

Jon popped the top and poured without bothering to rinse the leftover drops of chardonnay from his glass. It wasn’t about taste at this point.  It was about having something to do with his hands while numbing his conscience. 

“But she found out anyway, I’m guessing?”

“Despite my denial at least a couple more times over the decades,” he confirmed dryly, dropping back into his chair with a temporarily full glass.  “Fast forward almost another twenty-five years to last Christmas.  We’re all gathered at the house in Jersey – my family, her family.  Everybody’s sitting around the dining room table when there’s this knock on the front door, and Dorothea goes to answer it.”   

“Oh, God.  Was it Angie?”

He gulped a huge drink of wine and once again focused on the window plants. 

Angie may have been preferable.  He could’ve called her crazy to her face and bullshitted his way out of the ensuing mess.  Instead, he had to stand in the foyer with Dorothea behind his right shoulder to hear the young woman identify herself.

“Not Angie.  Her daughter – claiming she’s my daughter.”

He could still see the girl’s big baby blues going all watery when saying that cancer had taken her mother the month before.  He could still plainly visualize the tears trekking down her cheeks when apologizing for the intrusion, but her mother’s dying wish had been for Jon to know.

Never in his life had he felt so badly for cursing a dead woman, but he’d called Angie Nunzio every name in the motherfucking book on that religious holiday. 

“You’ve got to be kidding me!”  Delaney gasped, hand coming to cover her mouth. 

“I wish.”  Jon’s snort was both painful and pathetic.  “It was her mama’s dying wish for the girl to meet her daddy.  Me.”

"I..."

"Don't try and say anything.  There are no appropriate words," he assured her tiredly.  "It's fucked up any way you look at it.  Just let me get to the punchline.”

An elfin chin dipped in deference to his wishes, and Jon leaned both forearms on the table to meet her eyes and bring this train wreck to the final point of impact. 

“The whole family is hanging out of the dining room, shamelessly eavesdropping.  Every last one of ‘em is wearing a ‘holy shit’ expression on their face, so Dorothea drags me and the girl into my office, where I proceed to deny my ass off right up until the minute the girl announces her birthday.  December 1, 1993.  Exactly nine months after my Kalamazoo cake visit."

Jon’s eyes slid boldly to Delaney’s, prepared to accept whatever judgment he may find there.

“And that was the end of my marriage.  Merry fucking Christmas.”