132: Happy Commitment

It was a day with its ups and downs, but at the end of it, Jon had no complaints as he flicked off the bathroom light.  If he were pressed to come up with one objection, it would be that the time had come to pay the piper – or the counselor.  She’d deferred her questions from earlier in the day and now awaited him in bed, probably with a mental notepad filled with them.

Then again, she may give him a pass. 

There was more than once during the day when he found her forehead furrowed over troubled eyes.  When he asked, she told him the boys were weighing heavy on her mind, but she didn’t say anything after that.  If Jon spoke or even touched her, she wiped away her thoughts with a smile and became present in the moment. 

He’d known when she first agreed to this extension of their trip that she was doing it because he asked rather than having a genuine desire to stay, and he wasn’t sorry she had.  That whole conversation about rings had cheered him right-the-fuck up, and when they went off to the Millennium Mall with its high-end retailers, Jon was a man on a mission.

They went their separate ways at her insistence.  Chiara told him that selecting a ring and a bracelet together felt more like grocery shopping than anything else.  Since he got to choose her bracelet, she was choosing his and expected him to do his own ring choosing, too. 

He found her parting smirk to be mocking, which insulted him a little bit.  She was probably remembering that he’d recruited Millie to pick the bracelet and wondering what in the hell he would come back with when left to his own devices. 

That was fine.  She could underestimate him all day long.  Jon simply considered it another irresistible challenge and headed out to find the damnedest ring she’d ever seen.  What he’d come up with was nothing short of perfect, and he couldn’t wait to see the look on her face when opening it. 

They’d decided to also save the jewelry exchange until bedtime, and there was a very good chance he was getting laid tonight.

After the fucking questions.

It was okay, though.  Since speaking to Tico, he was marginally better equipped to answer them.  A little confused but feeling more at ease about the whole damn thing now.  They’d get it over with, swap a ring for a bracelet, have gratuitous sex and enjoy their last night away from the real world. 

“It’s about time,” his girlfriend huffed, putting her phone on the little fold-out desk at her side of the bed.

“And you say I’m the impatient one?  Ha.”  Sliding under the covers with her, he nodded to the iPhone.  “Were you texting?”

“Yeah.  Telling the boys I was looking forward to seeing them tomorrow night.” The dark shadow was fleeting in the lamplight, but he caught sight of it as it passed through eyes that were leaning toward troubled. 

Caleb and Noah both had class until noon, so the plane was scheduled to leave California shortly after one o’clock tomorrow afternoon.  That left them arriving in New York sometime just before midnight, and Jon knew Chiara would wait up for them.

“it’s going to be a long day for us,” he remarked while stretching out on his left side and using one hand to prop his head up.    

From her position propped against the cherry headboard, she cut him a glance that ended up holding his eyes.  “Thank you for the ‘us’, but I wouldn’t expect you to-“

“Stop.”  Jesus, she annoyed him by always offering him an out when it came to the hard stuff.  “How many times do I have to remind you that you’re not flying solo anymore, Counselor?  Unless my job interferes, we face the good, the bad and the ugly together.”

“Even if we’re not married?” The quiet inquiry told him that the deferral period on her questions was about to expire. 

“Even if we’re not married.”

Gentle fingers came up to brush the hair back from his forehead and tunnel through it.  “Want to tell me again why you quasi-proposed this morning?”

“Not really.”

“But you said you’d answer questions.”

“I just did,” he pointed out with a tilted smile.  “Not my fault you ask questions that don’t produce the answer you want.”

There was a sharp tug at his hair that drew a grunt, prompting him to take her hand and tangle it into his on the mattress his as she peevishly intoned, “Fine.  What had you scared enough to utter the dreaded ‘m’ word, as you called it?”

The mental image of her teary eyes...  The memory of her trembling against him…  Her nearly dead-weight in his arms…

Jon’s stomach knotted with the recollection that still had the power to create doubt in his mind, and he held more tightly to her unadorned hand.

“Honestly, I thought I fucked up.  Seeing your physical reaction to his death…  I thought I fucked up.”

“But how?  You didn’t do anything.”

Wanna bet?

Shifting his attention upward from their twisted fingers, he spoke boldly into her eyes.  “I made a call to see about having him killed.”

“You did what?!”

When she wanted to completely retreat, he clung like a leech to the hand that struggled for freedom.  “It didn’t happen because of me, Chiara.  I swear to God it didn’t.”

There was no possible way that he was responsible for Owen’s death, because no action had been taken after that last text message.  During a phone call today, Tico unapologetically revealed that he sat on the order, giving Jon the time and opportunity to “make a better decision”.  

Jon wasn’t happy about having his wishes ignored, but he was unbelievably fucking grateful for the older man’s wisdom in ignoring them.  Tico had spared him a lifetime of looking at Chiara’s sons while guilt rattled in his bones.

Now, though, Chiara – the counselor, rather – was looking at him in an effort to rattle his bones with fear.

“Tell me.”

He finally allowed her hand to go free, enabling her to glare at him from above folded arms.  Actually, he let it go so that he could palm her blanketed thigh and squeeze, randomly thinking if he covered more square inches, then…  Hell, he didn’t know what.  He just knew that touching more of her seemed like a better idea. 

“I couldn’t stand the thought of you suffering through another three years of his shit, not knowing what ways he’d find to manipulate the situation and maybe even the boys.  So I called Tico, who used to know some shady guys.”

That was all it took to make come away from the headboard with her spine held stiff.  “Wait a minute.  You’re telling me that Tico had a hand in this, too?”

“Tico saved my ass,” was the definitive rebuttal.  “He listened to me, told me to think about it before I made a final decision…  And when I did, he sat on it and did nothing because he thought it was a shitty idea.  So Owen’s demise has nothing to do with me, you or anybody else but God and Owen.”

She didn’t seem to care that God’s will had been served and that it favored her.  The counselor was more interested in fileting a very wide strip out of his hide, and shoved an agitated hand into her hair.  It was all scraped back from her forehead before she released it to slither free. 

“Jon, I just can’t believe you would be so stupid as to risk… everything!  Did you even think of what would happen if it was traced back to you – or to Tico?!  Your ass would be the one rotting in a jail cell.  How is that better than waiting for a technicality to resolve itself?  How?!  Because you’d have to figure out a way to tell that to your kids.”

The last time he’d been this thoroughly chastised was right before his parents decided it would be better idea for him to go to public school rather than the all-boys Catholic school.  The brothers there liked to remind him on a daily basis of his shortcomings, and he hadn’t liked it any more when he was fourteen than he did now, at fifty-three – especially considering that she was right.

“I did it for you.”

“No, you did it for yourself.  You were the impatient one who couldn’t stand the thought that I technically belonged to someone else.”

He couldn’t even deny most of what she said.  Impatience, yes.  Couldn’t stand the thought, yes.  He was guilty, but…

“I did it for both of us.”

Chiara wilted back into the pillows at his unrepentant insistence, long waves of hair swaying as she slowly shook her head.  “I don’t know whether to be overwhelmed that you would go to such idiotic lengths, or furious that you were such an idiot.  If it wasn’t for Tico…”

Jon knew how that sentence ended because he’d thought the same thing earlier today.  Once again, he’d had a lucky horseshoe over his head – and a loyal Cubano at his back.

“Awed has my vote.”

“But-“

“It was an isolated, once-in-a-lifetime incident,” he spoke over her while pushing into a seated position.  “An aberration and anomaly that resulted in absolutely nothing and will never happen again.  Could we fucking move on with the closing statement that I’d do anything for you?  Including spending way too much time in jewelry stores lately.”

Jon twisted at the waist and reached for the handle on the nightstand drawer.  He’d much rather have her fawning over the abso-fucking-lutely perfect ring than busting his balls.

“Here.”  He tossed the black velvet box lightly into her lap, causing her to jump.  “As Lilah said ‘happy commitment’.”

Yeah, so it wasn’t quite on par with a bed of roses, but it was another instance where he’d acted first and considered the consequences later.  He was a little too edgy for moonlight and romance, but it didn’t mean he loved her any less.

“Take it back and try again.”

“What?”

She picked up the box and tossed it back to him.  “If that’s a ring and you expect me to wear it, you’re gonna have to do better than ‘happy commitment’.  The bracelet got more hype than that.”

Busted again.  “Millions of women in the world, and I have to fall for an argumentative lawyer.”

“Argumentative artist.  And you might want to remember that this is as close to a wedding as you’re going to get.”

Maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t.  He didn’t feel like debating the point at the moment, but Jon knew that today had added a couple more tick marks to the ‘pro marriage’ column in his head.  The horses, the assmunch in the concession line and the way her legal expertise dovetailed with his professional life had added to the tally.

He rolled the square box over in his hand, trying recreate the thoughts that had prompted the selection of this particular ring.  Those thoughts were more probably more of what she was looking for than "happy commitment", and truthfully, more appropriate for this scenario.  She just made him a little nuts sometimes, particularly when she was right about him being an idiot.

“Alright.  That was a dick move, even for me,” he acquiesced with a deep sigh.  “I looked at a lot of rings, but this one summarized so much that I would’ve wanted you to have it, even if it wasn’t about commitment.  It’s you and the Hamptons in a nutshell:  artistic and graceful, swirled with vines and waves, dotted with lilacs, sun and sand.”

He flicked open the lid and turned the box so that she could see the ring of platinum curlicues paved with little white diamonds and the larger, pear-shaped diamonds that weren’t quite yellow, nor chocolate.  They were the perfect shade to be either the sandy beach that had proven his physical attraction to her for a second time, or the sun that he’d likened her to the morning they watched it rise. 

Brown irises lifted from their perusal of the ring, and he saw that they were shining brightly with appreciation and maybe a hint of tears?  He couldn’t be sure, because all she said was, “Much better.  Thank you.”

God, what a pair they were, he thought with a snort while removing the ring from its bed.  He passed it to her with a dry, “Does that mean you’re going to wear it?”

“Yeah,” she confirmed, accepting it to slide onto her left ring finger.  With a twist of the hand this way and that, she inspected the half-inch wide ring occupying most of the space below her knuckle.  “Although I think you picked this so nobody could accidentally overlook it.”

“That didn’t hurt, but the rest came first.”

When she grinned back, it soothed the ego bruised by her belittlement, and he warmed inside.  He really did love her – all of her.  Chiara, Charlie and the counselor each held a special spot that, when blended together, comprised majority ownership of Jon’s heart.  Not something he’d planned or expected to happen, especially so soon after the divorce, but only a moron would refuse a commodity as rare as love.  Jon was just an idiot.

“Okay, now you.”  She leaned over to grab a black, flat box from Cinderella’s desk and tossed it at him.  “Happy monogamy.”

“Oh, hell no.”  He immediately flicked the box back to land squarely in her lap.  “If it’s not good enough for you, that shit isn’t good enough for me, either.”

She fought to curb the smile that quivered at the corner of her lips, but was only half-successful.  One corner slid up with humor as she lifted the lid, and he caught a flash of black leather and light-colored metal before she closed the bracelet inside her hand. 

“This…  Well, it spoke to me the same way the ring spoke to you, I guess.”  Her left finger wiggled, causing the diamonds to sparkle before she went back to his gift.  “It has a nautical feel that reminded me both of the Hamptons – our night on the boat, in particular – and... anchors.  You once said you needed me to be one, and this is the tangible proof that I want to.”

Her fingers uncurled, revealing a bar of dulled silver that was fashioned into a double-strand of rope that was looped on the ends.  Black leather knotted through each of the resulting holes and ultimately connected with shinier silver clasp. 

When he picked it up and flipped to the backside of the rope, Jon found the simple block inscription that he’d been expecting – Team Monogamy – but there was no anticipating the two anchors it was nestled between.

“You’re my anchor too, in a lot of ways,” Chiara answered his questioning look.  “So I thought two was appropriate.”

“Very.”

As he looped it around his wrist and admired the understated masculinity of it, she took a quick breath to say, “I swore to myself that I was never going to ask this, but was Dorothea an anchor for you?”

It was a fair question, in a female sort of way.  She wanted to know how she compared to his ex-wife and had phrased it in a way that meant Jon didn’t have to think about the answer, because he’d known it for years.

“Not my anchor.  My rock.  Always there, holding things down while she waited for me to come back.  I appreciated that more than I can say, but I discovered a long time ago that what I really wanted was someone to hold me down – an anchor.”  Jon reached out to stroke cup her cheek, stroking along the softness of it while searching eyes that studied him solemnly.  “That answer your question?”

“Yeah.  It does.”

“That mean we can consummate this commitment now?”

Rosy lips curved softly as she stretched forward to touch them against his.  “Yeah.  It does.”

A sigh of contentment filled Jon from the tip of his head to the soles of his feet.  The only thing better than fucking the counselor was the intimacy he found with Chiara.

Okay, maybe not better.  But it was comparable.