88:Hit List

Never before had thirty minutes been so long. 

Despite her cocky text message, anticipation made Charlie uncharacteristically antsy and uncertain.  Jon had never even shown her around his house, and here she was waiting for him in nothing but a nightie whose spaghetti straps meant that she was only covered from breasts to mid-thigh, with side slits exposing a little more.  She fully expected him to like the lace-edged lingerie, since men usually went for that kind of thing, but there was still something about waiting for him in his bed that made her twitchy. 

That’s why she was wasting time by fidgeting around and trying to find the best position in which to greet him.  Sitting up in bed with her legs under the covers?  On top of the bedspread with her legs folded to the side so that the gown’s lace trim came almost to her knee?  With her knees bent up in front of her to give him a glimpse of what he’d be uncovering?

Smoothing the simple sheath of cool satin over her hip, she instead stretched out on her side and propped one hand beneath hair that had been brushed until it shone.   Just her ankles hung off the side of the mattress, and she crossed them while swiping a gentle finger beneath her left eye to remove any eyeliner smudges. 

She’d used a heavy hand on the cosmetics tonight, thinking that emphasizing her eyes and cheekbones might carry more of a seductive impact.  For every minute that ticked by, however, it began to feel more silly and overdone. 

Silk and seduction weren’t two words that correlated to the girlfriend Jon left behind almost a month ago.  When he walked in the room and found her trying to carry off both, the odds were fifty-fifty – he could either laugh or pin her to the mattress.  It all depended on how horny he was or how crude he was feeling.

What she did know was that, if he didn’t get here soon, she was going to make herself crazy with conjecture and speculation.  She was fortunate that the thought materialized almost at nearly the same time his footsteps did

Grateful that she was going to be put out of her misery, Charlie took a deep breath and looked toward the open doorway with a smile stealing over her face.  Little did she know it was going to be short-lived.

When he entered the room, his face was anything but smiling.  As he dropped his bag to the floor and shrugged out of his jacket, silently tossing it onto a chair, the thought came that she hadn’t seen him this angry since their first showdown in the Hamptons.

“What’s wrong?” 

Her gown slid up as she scooted off the bed and toward the man whose jaw was as rigid as his spine, and it was that inflexibility that halted her bare feet before she got past the end of the bed.  Biceps bulged under the sleeves of his black t-shirt when he folded his arms and attempted to shred her to ribbons with a look that held the edge of a machete.

“I’ve spent the last half-hour figuring out how to make this a civil conversation, but seeing you…”  He waved a hand up and down, signifying her appearance.  “Makes me too fucking mad to be civil.  What’s wrong is that you fucked Tico.” 

Charlie leaned her silk-covered rump against the bed’s footboard with a wince.  The hurled accusation took his machete-sharp look and divided it into a handful of razor-sharp daggers that pierced her chest like gunfire. 

Ancient history was now late-breaking news, and she had only herself to blame.  She should have had the common courtesy to disclose this part of her past once they moved past the sex-only phase of their relationship.  That would’ve given her the chance to control the spin of how it was presented so that he wouldn’t be this infuriated by however he’d found out.

At this point, there wasn’t much she could do other than say, “It was a long time ago.”  

“I don’t give a goddamn how long ago it was!  He’s one of my best friends, and you should have told me!” 

He was livid.  Nothing was going to appease him until he got it out of his system, which obviously involved screaming it to the rafters.  That was fine.  Charlie could expedite this process by screaming right back, because in the end, she knew this didn’t change anything.  Jon was just venting, and he was entitled, just as he’d been entitled to tear into her over his divorce.

With a bed behind her instead of a guest house, she could only hope this ended as well – or better.

“I didn’t even know you at the time, Jon!”

He took two long strides to point an accusatory finger in her face.  “But you knew you fucked him back on Martha’s Vineyard, when you wouldn’t tell me your musician hit list!”

Smacking his finger down, Charlie was forced to ignore the sizzle of electricity that zinged through her at the touch.   She still got more turned on by fighting with him than foreplay with anybody else.  “You were nothing more than a fling then!  I didn’t owe you shit!”

“What about now?  Huh?” he demanded, taking another step to get down in her face for his next menacing question.  “Am I still just a motherfucking fling?”

“You know you’re not!” 

“Then why didn’t you tell me?!”

Planting both hands in his chest and shoving, she went on the offensive.  Charlie was the one getting in his face now, and it was hard for her to look past the harsh lines carved there by both anger and fatigue.  He should be in his bed, plastered so tightly against her that light would have trouble finding its way between them, not arguing about inconsequential factoids from 1993.

“You can’t seriously be this mad over something that happened more than twenty years ago!  That’s right up there with me being pissed over you sticking your dick in Diane Lane or any of the other three hundred women who slithered through your bed in 1988!”

Jon’s mouth flattened and his eyes narrowed as he retreated, fists clenching in the air between them.  The gesture made Charlie think that he was trying to keep from choking her.

“I’m fucking-well mad because you didn’t tell me, just like you haven’t told me any other fucking thing!  Owen told me you were married.  Your brothers told me about 9/11.  Tony told me you had a fight with Owen on 9/11.  Luke told me about you seeing a psychiatrist.  And now, Tico indirectly told me you fucked him!”

This again.  Charlie couldn’t understand why he was so adamant that she didn’t tell him anything.  He was the only one who knew about the Bar Exam and Caleb – things that had been kept hidden from her family for years and years.  Things that were more sensitive than who she’d bedded before going to law school. 

Did that not count for anything with him?  It sure as hell did with her, and besides…

“Don’t act like you’ve been so open and forthcoming, Bongiovi!  You tell me how to get you off and what to do with my life, but beyond that, what have you said?  I have no freaking idea what’s inside of you!  Hopes, fears, dreams.  None of that!  So until you start doing your part in this sharing game, don’t expect me to apologize for shit!”

The floor space between their feet was eaten up in a flash when he advanced, putting his face within inches of hers for the next phase of this tirade.

"You wanna know what's inside me?" he roared.  "You!  You're inside me, because I fucking love you!  And the way these secrets of yours keep popping up left and right, my fear is that one of these days I'll get hit with something that's gonna rip out my goddamn heart!"

Charlie’s breath hitched as he spun on his heel to snatch his leather bag from the floor.  With knuckles white from his fierce grip on its straps, he strode into the walk-in closet and slung it into something.

All of that was just background noise to what was playing in the forefront of her auditory memory. 

He loved her.

Love. 

The warmth that single word carried only reinforced her belief that this whole thing wasn’t a deal-breaker.  They would work through it, and they would do it now. 

With that intention firmly carved in her mind, Charlie stalked into the closet after him, saying, “Hey!  You don’t get to say something like that and walk away from me.”

“And yet I did,” he retorted sarcastically, withdrawing a fist full of clothes from his duffel and throwing them at the hamper. 

“Goddammit, Jon!”  She hooked her hand into his bent elbow and yanked with the intention of spinning him so that they were face to face.  All she ended up doing was throwing him a bit off balance, but his body still angled toward her.  “What do you want me to do?  I’m sorry somebody else beat me to it, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t intend to tell you those things!”

“That’s easy to say now.  How the hell do I know you would’ve ever done it?”

As he looked away from her at the row of shirts hanging from the top rung of the closet, fatigue, anger, resentment and even a little bit of hurt were evident in his profile and they tore at Charlie.  She loved him.  She didn’t want to see him like this.  She didn’t want to be responsible for him being like this, and that meant doing whatever was necessary to fix it.

Including telling him something else that he would be the only person privy to.

Sliding close, she lifted a hand to his cheek, using a gentle pressure to coax him into finding her eyes. 

“Martin Rotsey.  Andy McKinney.  Jerry Marotta,” she recited quietly, registering the initial confusion and subsequent understanding as it dawned on him what was happening.  “Dave Pegg.  Eric Bazilian.  Eric Brittingham – twice.  Some guy named Kevin from an opening act whose name I don’t remember.   And Tico.  That’s it.  My complete professional musician ‘hit list’, as you put it.  Plus Owen, if you count him.”

“I don’t.”

She smiled at his surliness, and the hand that guided his face now stroked the whiskers that had spiked. “There are things I want to tell you, Jon.  Things I’ve been waiting for the right time to tell you, and I will, but none of them have the power to rip out your heart.  I promise.”

“Why should I believe you?”

Charlie was relieved to see that it was out of his system now.   The anger was gone, leaving behind a softer, if wary, Jon whose petulance tugged at her heart.

“Because I’ve never lied to you.”  She placed a hand on each of his shoulders for balance, stretching to touch her lips to his and whispering against them, “And because I fucking love you, too.”