38:Running

August 14

His feet pounded against the hard packed sand of the shoreline and, with three other pairs of feet pounding along with him, they sounded like a herd of buffalo raging along the coast.  He, Matt and the counselor’s two boys were into their third mile, and beyond some casual greetings in the beginning, they were all lost in the driving beat of their sneakers and the ocean. 

It was one of the few days that Jon might have liked some idle conversation to distract him from the thoughts that muddled his mind.   His list of things to accomplish in the next week was as long as his arm, but he couldn’t seem to focus on rehearsal schedules, flight times, fan club events or party dates. 

His mind was a needle stuck on the scratched record of that fucking kiss from last night.  Over and over it played, and every frigging time he could taste the memory of it like… like… honeysuckle on his lips, for lack of a better analogy.

In the moments when he managed to nudge the needle out of that groove, it stuck in another on the same track.  The words that had come beforehand were almost as sweet as the damn kiss – and reeked of sincerity.  Maybe it was because he was still floating on an orgasm at the time, but he actually believed that quiet “I’m going to miss this”, and it twisted him into a weird knot of discontent.

In those few seconds, he was fully introduced to a woman whom he’d only seen through a fog of lust before now.  Chiara, who breathed air instead of fire, felt contentment instead of anger and was warm enough to melt her own cold heart.

And needed to hear that she was wanted.

During the actual bartering for kisses and verbal confirmations of desire, he had considered the whole thing just another version of her argumentative foreplay, a la Charlie.   Meeting a Chiara who wasn't on the verge of orgasm had put a different light on it.   She was the one that had him drinking in the middle of the night, reviewing what had been said, and speculating whether there was more meaning there than he’d originally suspected.  When he didn’t come up with any answers that he liked, he’d taken the benefit of his wine and moved on to wondering how many traits she shared with the counselor – where the line was between the two women.

Trying to find a line had merely smudged the two more indistinguishably together and ended up being too convoluted for his tired and slightly inebriated mind to process.  That’s when he went to bed and dreamt of nothing for three hours before getting up for the run that was kicking his ass.

If he hadn’t been determined to hold his own with his running mates, who were all considerably younger than him, Jon would’ve gone back to the house two miles ago.  As it was, he was out here proving himself in this as he did everything else – balls to the wall until he dropped.

One more mile, and they were back to their starting point with everyone sweating and breathing heavily.  The least winded of them was Caleb, and Jon complimented the youngest member of their group. 

“You’re in good shape, kid.  You kicked an old man’s ass.”

Flashing a smile as he wiped the sweat from his brow, the counselor’s younger boy was polite enough not to gloat.  He sure as hell didn’t get that from his mama.  “Nah.  You’re a good motivator.  You even got Noah out here, and he hates to run.”

“I don’t hate it,” his brother contended after slugging back a hearty drink of water.  “I just prefer the weight room, and it wouldn’t kill you to hit it once in a while, rubber band arms.”

Grinning at his own little brother, Jon asked, “Sound familiar?”

“Hell, yeah!” Matt wiped his face and then tapped Caleb’s elbow with the back of his hand.  “He used to do the same thing to me, so I decided to make him eat his words.”

Both boys eyed the bulky biceps that were as big as Jon’s thigh and made appropriate awestruck comments as the group trudged into the parking lot from the beach.  Caleb didn’t say it, but Jon could see him mentally making plans for Noah to eat his words, too.

He liked these boys.  They worked hard, seemed well adjusted and were respectful with just enough hell-raiser simmering under the surface to keep them from being drones.  The counselor had done a good job with them.

“When do you guys head out for school?” he inquired, lifting his hat and pushing the drenched hair away from his forehead before snugging the hat back in place over his sunglasses.

The boys were lifting their bikes out of the rack and Noah took the lead, “We’re leaving for Canada on Wednesday to spend a few days with our dad.  Then we’ll move into the dorms the weekend after that, which I hate.  We tried to convince Mom to let us get an apartment, but no go.”

Manners had Jon asking, “How come?”

“My fault,” Caleb stepped up.  “Freshmen are required to live on campus and she wouldn’t fight with the campus housing people to get me out of it.”

“And she’s not paying twice what the dorm costs for just me to have a place,” Noah supplied.  “It sucks.”

That was interesting to Jon on a couple of levels. 

One was that the counselor wouldn’t fight with someone.  That was damn near shocking, actually, in his limited yet volatile experience with her.  She lived for that shit. 

The other was that they boys talked strictly about their mom paying for it instead of both parents.  Maybe it was simply because she had all the divorce settlement money and doled it out accordingly, but it still stirred questions about the dad they were going to visit and his role in their lives.  

On a more personal level, it suggested how easy it could be to lose the details of your kids’ lives after a divorce.  That bugged him and added a call to his ex-wife to today’s agenda. 

Money wasn’t particularly an issue in their case, but Jon didn’t want to be left out of those kinds of decisions simply because the two of them weren’t married anymore.  He was still the kids’ father – and financier – and expected to be included if for no other reason than as common courtesy.   Dorothea surely knew that, but he wanted to make damn sure he didn’t find himself on the outside looking in when he least expected it. 

“I always heard dorm life was pretty cool,” Matt remarked off-handedly.  Like Jon, neither of his brothers had gone to college to earn their living, so Matt was shooting in the dark to find a bright spot.

Noah swung a leg over his bike and grinned broadly.  “Only sometimes.”

There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that those "sometimes" where when dorm rules were getting broken - or heavily bent - and they all laughed at the implication.

“Okay.  You guys take care,” Jon instructed once they were both in the figurative saddle.  “When you get back to New York on Christmas break or whatever, give Jess a call.  Come see us.”

With vague promises to do just that, the brothers pedaled up the road toward their cottage while Jon and Matt trudged the half a block to his house. 

“You realize you just made future plans to see Charlie’s kids?”

Oh, God.  Were they back to this again?  He was not mentally rested enough to deal with this now, especially considering the unexpected appearance of the Chiara who looked and attracted him like Charlie, without acting like her.  That whole train of thought made his right eye twitch behind his sunglasses.

“You realize her kids are adults and friends with my adult kid?” he retorted dryly.  “I like them, he likes them and this has nothing to do with Chiara.”

Matt’s eyebrows jumped above the upper edge of his sunglasses.  “Chiara?  Not Charlie?  Not bitch from hell or Ms. Del Vecchio?  Chiara?”

He’d made that unconscious nametag decision long enough ago that Jon forgot it wasn’t common knowledge to the rest of the world.  Hell, he’d only used her first name half a dozen times in total and mostly behind closed doors.  She was more often than not “the counselor”, except for last night in the hallway with Luke.  Jon suspected it hadn’t fazed him because that’s how he’d introduced her in the first place.   

His brother had to make a federal case out of it, though. 

“That’s her name, dumb fuck.”

“Nobody else calls her that.”  Matt could be an obnoxious S.O.B. when the mood struck him and, if he didn’t back off, the mood wouldn’t be the only thing striking him.

“Not my problem.”

“Fine, ya stubborn prick.” He was entirely too cheery for Jon to believe that was going to be the end of it.  “You and Chiara have a nice time last night?”

“I know you didn’t just ask me that, legitimately expecting an answer.”

He might be a forthcoming about certain things with his brothers, but his sex life hadn’t been a topic for discussion with anyone in a very, very long time.  Even if he was one of those guys who didn’t mind detailing his conquests to anyone who would listen, this was a unique situation and would still be exempt. 

Jon didn’t understand why she turned him on, their weird penchant for argumentative foreplay, or his inexplicable physical reaction to both.  He sure as hell wasn’t going to try and explain it to somebody else.

“Nope,” Matt acknowledged as they passed through the gates on the driveway.  “But I figured, what the hell?  You gonna see her again before she leaves?”

That damn kiss of Chiara's had shell-shocked into a moronic state.  If he wasn't mistaken, his response to both it and her comment about missing it was something along the lines of, “Yeah, it was fun.” 

Things hadn’t gotten any better after that.

The counselor had eased off him and, without saying much else, gathered her clothes while he put on his shorts and grabbed his phone.  He checked email while she dressed, and when she was done, he stood and patted her ass, saying, “Be careful on the wet grass when you go out.”

She said she would and that was that – as awkward as the end of any junior high school date imaginable.  He had no desire to suffer through that shit again. 

“Nope.  I'm not gonna see her.”

“Not even when you get back to the city?”

Twisting the front door knob, he scowled over his shoulder.  “Can’t you and Tony share your gossip so I don’t have to repeat it?  No, I’m not.  Done, over and don’t bring it up again.”

“Bring what up again?”  Lilah’s smile was as bright as the rhinestone-studded coffee mug in her hand. 

If Jon didn’t have enough sleep under his belt to deal with Matt, he sure as hell didn’t have enough to deal with the snoopy psycho.

“Giving cars away as door prizes in Vancouver,” he boldly lied and passed by her to climb the stairs.   “I’ll give you a hundred dollars if you bring me a cup of coffee.”

“Who?”  One male and one female voice simultaneously asked for clarification.

“Whoever gets it to me first.”

He would actually take two if they both brought them.  With rehearsal for the Apollo show today, the phone call to Dorothea, Vancouver confirmations, scheduling syncing and a thousand other things to do, it was going to be a busy day. 

Way too busy to think about a woman with dual personalities.