90:History

“You’re getting rid of the goddamn tattoo,” he quietly decreed into the top of her head.

The bedside lamps still glowed softly at this late hour, but she’d been lying on his chest in silence for some time now and Jon’s voice surprised her.  His arm was so heavy around her shoulders and his breathing so even that Charlie had assumed him to be asleep.

Angling her head to find heavy-lidded eyes peering back, she thought that even exhaustion couldn't detract from the masculine splendor that only improved with age.  From the inception of Bon Jovi, he’d had an appeal and charisma that caused millions of hearts to skip a beat.  It was just as true now, and love only intensified it for her.. 

“I am, huh?” She inquired with a muted smile.  “What do you suddenly have against my tattoo?”

 “That’s what Tico remembered when he heard the name Charlie,” he told her dourly.  “The woman with the Tinkerbell tat that you couldn’t see until she took her pants off.”

Wincing at the thought of how that scene might have played out, she reclaimed her spot on his chest to look at the far wall.  “I’m sorry.  That was probably… not good.”

“That’s the motherfucking understatement of the year.” 

At least the lazily drawn out words weren’t rife with anger, and it gave her the incentive she needed to ask, “What did you say to him?”

“Nothing.  I’m not happy knowing he’s seen my girlfriend naked, but I hated to confirm he had.”

Taking the arm that she had draped over his waist and extending it, she laced the fingers of that hand with his.  “Am I supposed to have plastic surgery, too, so he doesn’t recognize me?  Or are you just going to make sure we’re never in the same place at the same time?”

His chest rattled with a grunt of displeasure.  “I hadn’t gotten that far yet.”

“I see.”  A pensive thumb stroked the length of his as she considered her options.  The timing was ideal, as far as opportunity went.  There would be no other situation that offered such a natural segue from this into…  “Are you completely wiped out from the trip?”

“Mm.  I’m tired, but lying here with you feels too damn good for me to sleep.”

The answer led Charlie to believe it was time to share the initial events that brought them together.  “Feel like listening to me talk for a while?  About some of that stuff I’ve been waiting to tell you?”

“Chiara,” he objected wearily.  “Don’t make me fight with you anymore tonight.”

“I’m not.”  Sliding free from him, she scooted to sit upright against the pillows, pulling the sheet along with her.  “This is just… details that might make some things clearer.”

Jon rolled onto his side, using one hand to prop up his head and regard her warily, as though he wasn’t quite sure he believed that.  “Okay, I guess.”

It was with an absent smile that Charlie brought a hand up to run through his hair, pushing it away from his forehead and fingering the soft texture.  “I met Tico in February of 1993.  In a bar, after a Bon Jovi show in Philly.”

“You sure this isn’t gonna piss me off?”

“I’m sure,” Charlie soothed his skepticism with quiet confidence.  More or less, anyway.  There was one direction he could take this and be mad, but she didn’t think he would.

“Alright.”

“I’d seen the band at a show in Jersey a couple nights before and had been watching him.  I obviously knew who he was, so I approached and offered to buy him a drink.  He accepted and, after we lost count of how many drinks we had, I ended up in his hotel room.  It was… good.  Good enough that when the band came to The Garden in July that I made a point of getting in touch with him and we hooked up again.”

God, all of this was so long ago.  Even at twenty-two, she had been such a baby back then.  So many years later, as a grown woman who would cringe at the thought of her own children going through the same thing…  All of this felt as though it happened to someone else.  Or perhaps that’s just what she needed to tell herself.

“From the sound of your hit list, you’ve got a thing for older men.”

Turning her head at his dry observation, she smiled somewhat sheepishly and admitted, “I do, actually.  Always have.”

“But Owen isn’t older.”

“No.  He’s about a year younger.”  Yet one more thing that had made him different.  “Anyway, the band was back in Philly about a week after The Garden and I found Tico yet again.  That night, we ended up drinking so much that we both fell asleep before doing anything other than talking about art and music.”

When she looked up it was to find Jon frowning.  “So, really, you were with T three times, not two.”

“I had sex with him twice,” she reiterated.  “And probably would’ve a third time, a couple years later.  Except that when I managed to connect with him at the Jones Beach show in 1995, he told me he was going to marry Eva.”

If she closed her eyes, Charlie could picture the sympathy on Tico’s face when trying to let her down gently.  She’d actually appreciated it because his actions implied that what they’d shared meant a little something to him.  If not, he would’ve brushed her off without bothering to explain or care how she felt about him marrying a leggy blonde model.

Ironically, it wasn’t until then that the size of her crush on him became obvious to Charlie – how much she’d taken their encounters and idealized them into a goal for herself.  She aspired to find a musician Prince Charming who could talk about art and a million other things as well as please her in bed. 

“I wished him well and went away more disappointed than I should’ve been,” she admitted to Jon, sliding down in the bed and settling on her right hip to look him in the face.  “But I’d made the trip and paid hard-earned money for my ticket, so I stayed for the show.”

This brought Charlie to the pivotal point in the story – the one where things got a little screwed up in her head both now and then. 

Extending easy fingertips to smooth away the furrows from his forehead, she quietly revealed, “This is where you come into the picture.”

“What the fuck do I have to do with this?”

“You, Stud, are a fucking rock star,” was her affectionate response to his indignation.  “And you were on fire that night.  So full of energy, bouncing around and running the stage like a mad man.”

Handsome features mugged a look of disgust.  “Speed, no doubt.  I thought I needed it to do a show back then.”

“Well, whatever it was, your smile and excitement enraptured every girl in the place.”

“Including you?”

“No.”  She assumed lopsided smirk at his arrogantly cocked eyebrow before qualifying that answer with, “Not until you stopped right in front of me, pointing and saying you bet that I gave love a bad name.  Then, yeah.  I was enraptured and, with half a dozen beers under my belt, I was instantly horny.”

His arrogance spread to encompass a wide grin.  “Fuck.  We had chemistry even then.  It’s a shame I was too jacked up to realize it.”

Charlie hadn’t made that connection, but she couldn’t deny that it was plausible.

“I guess.  Even so, knowing that you were married and had thousand other horny woman available to make you forget that, meant that sleeping with you wasn’t a consideration.  Circumstances made me believe I was in the market for a drummer and, on my way to the bathroom, I found one willing to take care of my horniness – a very potent one who get me pregnant in one shot.”

All traces of Jon’s smile evaporated and his eyes hardened.  “Owen.”

“Yeah.”  Sifting lazy fingers through his chest hair, she focused on the crisp texture under her fingers rather than facing his censorious gaze.  “He was playing with a small Canadian band at the time, since that’s where he’s from.  Turned out he wasn’t much interested in staying a Canadian, so the whole thing worked out well for him.  A pregnant American Catholic gave him a wife, which thereby allowed him to stay in New York to seek citizenship.  Only once he realized what a pain in the ass the citizenship process is…  Let’s just say he was content enough with his situation that he didn’t pursue it, and that’s the reason he wants me to stick around.”

“For fucking citizenship?  Couldn’t he have had that already?  How long have you been married?”

“Twenty years next month, and yes.  He started blackmailing me for citizenship that he could’ve had at least twice over, if he’d bothered with it.  That became secondary after I started earning a good living.  He likes the lifestyle to which he has become accustomed.”  Charlie let her hand fall to the mattress, eyes drifting up to find his gaze and hold it.  “Again, this is where you come into the picture.”

“Now wait just a goddamn minute-“

“Just listen,” she beseeched as he pushed to sit upright and, no doubt, argue that he had nothing to do with Owen or any of the related nonsense.  “I’ve wanted to tell you this for weeks now, so please don’t stop me when I finally get to the moral of the story.”

There was a muscle ticking in his jaw, but he nodded once, giving approval to continue.  She briefly wondered if the gesture meant that he didn’t trust himself to speak, but didn’t bother asking.  While he was feeling compliant, she needed to get this out. 

“Based on a ridiculous number of conversations with Izzie, we’ve determined I have unhealthy and unresolved issues revolving around musicians, some of which are warranted and some of which are not.  Owen is warranted.  Maybe even Tico.  You are – were – the source of unwarranted issues.  I sort of unfairly held you responsible for Owen and the screwed up twenty years that followed, simply because Tico was your drummer and you made me horny that night.  Then I used you as a voodoo doll for what I’d like to do to Owen in a divorce.” 

That muscle was still ticking away in his jaw, and his eyes had shuttered so that she couldn’t decipher what he was thinking as the silence stretched.  It was starting to look as though she may have been premature in assuring him that this wasn’t going to make him mad.

“Now you understand why I’m a little obsessed about being indebted to you for the house,” Charlie carried on to make his lack of response less obvious, with the hope that more words would make it better instead of worse.  “I was wrong, Jon.  You and Dorothea should’ve had exactly the divorce terms you agreed upon.  I was a complete bitch during your settlement, but I hoped you might understand that, however irrational, there was a reason for my actions.”

He still wasn’t talking, so she tipped her chin up and asserted, “I’m not a blood-thirsty lawyer or a vindictive person by nature.  I’m just...  My thought process about certain things has been messed up for a lot of years, but I’m working to fix it now.  That’s all I can do.  So I’m asking you to please accept my apology this time, and recognize how sincere it is.”

Jon’s face settled into a mask of concentration, with blue eyes squinted and brow creased with thought as he brushed her cheek with the barest touch of fingertips.  “That part of what you’re talking to the shrink about?”

“Yes.”

“What else?”

The lack of commentary on her fifteen minute monologue was disconcerting, but she chose to believe he was processing it in his own way.  If anger was the forerunning emotion, he wouldn’t be showing such an interest in her therapy visits.

“The boys.  Coming up with a bunch of possible reactions to the news and role-playing my way through them so that I’ll feel better equipped to do what needs to be done.  What has needed to be done for a long time.”

“Does that mean you’re not going to wait four years?”

“It means I probably won’t wait four months.”

“Good.  You need this.”

She needed this, huh?  Not them, and he still hadn’t said anything about the other stuff.  “Tell me what you’re thinking, already.  Please.  Don’t pull any punches, just say it.”

“I’m thinking that I’m tired,” he sighed, dropping his hand to the mattress between them.  “That means I’m probably not going to say whatever it is you want to hear.  I accept your apology, but that’s all I’ve got tonight.”

Charlie would be lying if she said she wasn’t disappointed, but there was no faulting him for his honesty.  While it would’ve been nice to have him assure her that it was all water under the bridge and the future was so bright that they had to wear shades, it wasn’t a realistic expectation. 

Jon wasn’t exactly Prince Charming, but he was real and had said he loved her. 

“I’ll take it,” she accepted with a smile and a kiss before reaching behind her to snap off the bedside lamp.  “Thank you.”

After he extinguished the lamp on his side, Jon met her back in the middle of the mattress where they adjusted pillows, blankets and limbs until he was curved around her back.  Charlie slid her fingers into the hand that was draped over her waist and sighed with contentment. 

He was back and in her bed. 

That’s all she needed for now.

Almost.

“Jon?”

“Mmfph?”

“Remember earlier when you were talking about scorching away the memory of anybody else?”

His lips touched her neck in a soft kiss. “Yeah.”

“You did that the first night.  Against the guest house.”

From that point on, he’d consumed her thoughts, owned her body and, eventually, become the only man to ever claim her heart.  Everyone before him ceased to exist.

Now, Jon pulled Charlie close and sighed into her hair, “Love you, Counselor.  Now go to sleep.”

With those words starring in her dreams, she would.