Monday, March 31, 2014
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Saturday, March 29, 2014
Friday, March 28, 2014
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Monday, March 24, 2014
Sunday, March 23, 2014
Saturday, March 22, 2014
Thursday, March 20, 2014
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Chapter 83 - We'll Raise A Toast And I'll Pretend
She cried so hard and so long, she finally exhausted herself
and fell asleep. She knew that in her
dreams she would see him and that everything would be okay between them, it has
to be okay.
In Texas, Jon arrives at Paul’s, to be greeted with big
smiles and warm hugs, “Welcome my friend, come in!!” Paul says to Jon when he sees his friend
walking to the door. Jon seen his old time and dearest friend and felt right at
home.
“Hey, how are ya?”
Jon asks, “What’s been going on?”
Jon sets his bag inside the door and follows Paul into his warm and
inviting home. “I forgot how nice it is
down here, I really need to come more often.”
Paul says, “Yeah, yeah, yeah – sit down.” He points to a bar stool, one of 6 at the
bar. “Wine? Or do you need the hard stuff?”
“Hard stuff please.
And make it a quadruple.” Jon
gives his friend a fake smile.
Looking at Jon and knowing that there is something going on,
he comes right out and says it, “What is going on with you?”
“Paul, I don’t even know where to start.”
“Start back at why you called me. I can only recall that happening twice in our
relationship.”
Jon wiggles in his chair, gulping the scotch that Paul
poured for him, “I just had something snap or a switch was flipped, I don’t
know.”
“What happened when you snapped or that switch flipped?” Paul has an idea of what might be going on,
but he can’t say for sure, he’ll wait and see what Jon has to say.
“We had that party for Beth the other night.” He starts.
“Yep, I was there, remember.” He chuckles a little.
“Well, when Beth and I learned that she was pregnant with a
girl she disappeared. She left the table,
boIting again. Long story short, she
disappeared and by pure luck I was able to find her at the cemetery.”
“Okay….”
Jon wiggles some more, he really hates sounding, much less
feeling weak – but this is Paul. “She
always takes off when shit gets hot and I have had enough of it.”
“Jon…” Paul attempts
to talk, Jon just keeps on going.
“I really think that she forgets that I lost children
too. I never had the option of burying
my head in the sand and not dealing with it.
I had to keep being a dad, taking care of business and doing my
job. She promised me this last time that
she would never do it again, and she did.” He has to stand up, he’s getting too
heated to sit and talk. In true Italian
fashion, he starts flailing the arms as he talks and the wrinkle in his brow
gets deeper. “I know she only went to
the cemetery, but god damn it, she bolted again. Leaving me at the Met to take care of
everything and explain her irrational behavior.”
Paul nods, letting Jon know that he’s listening, waiting for
his turn to talk.
“When I thought to look for her at the cemetery and found
her there, we stayed there all night, through that storm and everything. As we left that morning, we passed some
graves that she thought deserved her attention.
So, we had to buy flowers, three thousand dollars worth of flowers to
take back to the cemetery and leave on random graves.”
“That was very nice of her to do.”
“I know.” Jon
snaps. “And I won’t discredit her for
that at all. We both know how loving and
generous she is.”
“We do.”
“SO, as we’re there, Beth happens to be at the graveside of
a baby, a baby that lived like 8 weeks.
Anyway, while she’s there, the mother shows up and now they’re best
friends.” Jon says with a snideness that
Paul has only rarely heard.
“I have yet to hear a problem.” Paul states, as he refills
Jon’s glass.
“She has been with this lady since they met, practically.”
“Are you jealous Jon?” he looks at his rock star buddy with
a cocked eye, seeing what’s really going on.
Jon turns around and looks at Paul, “Jealous? Have you ever known me to be jealous?”
“Then what’s going on?”
“I’m fucking pissed because we found out that we’re having a
girl and since that moment in time, it’s been about her, what she needs, what
she feels, what she wants………..and gives less than a fuck about Jon.”
“Have you tried to talk to her?” Paul knows the answer, but
he had to ask the question.
“Yeah.”
“Oh, really. What did
you say?”
“Yesterday she went out to dinner with Dani and after she
was gone for over 5 hours I called her and told her that I needed her, that I
needed to talk about it and she had the nerve to call me needy.” Jon could see Paul’s eyes get a little buggy.
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. Now am I
supposed to put up with that? I needed
her and I told her that I needed her and she fucking called me needy. I never do that to her, I never would.”
“So you came here.”
Jon walks over to the window and takes a sip of his scotch,
he can see Paul reflection in the window, “Where’s the family?”
“Disneyland for the week.”
“You’re home alone?”
Paul laughs, “Yep, left to fend for myself for a week.”
“Nice.”
The men were quiet for what felt like forever to Jon. His thoughts are all over the place again and
he’s pissed that he’s letting himself feel like this, he’s pissed that he’s
pissed at Beth.
“Does she know you’re here?”
Jon walks to the bar and sits back down, “Yeah, I sent her a
text.”
“You haven’t called her?”
“No. When I woke up
this morning, I left without waking her.
When I got here I just shot her a text.”
“How did you leave things in New Jersey?”
Jon takes a deep breath and tries to rub the stress from his
face, “I seen her yesterday when she left for dinner with Dani, haven’t seen
her since, other than sleeping.”
“You got on a plane and came here with bad blood between you
two.”
“Yes I mean No, I left because I’m sick of being treated
like I don’t matter and that my feelings need to be just that, MY
feelings. Paul, she has no idea how I
feel about what’s going on. She doesn’t
ask what I think, fuck she can’t even bother to ask me how the fuck I’m doing.” He slams his fist on the bar, “Can’t she see
that I’m dying inside?”
Paul can see that Jon is having a minor crisis and lets him know
that it’s okay to snap, crack and pop. “When
we lost Katherine, I thought that Nancy was going to die from heartbreak alone. Greif is a tough thing to gauge, everyone is
different.”
“I remember how she was and I can sometimes compare her
actions to Beth’s, even though their situations are different, they both had to
deal with the initial loss alone. You
were in New York and I was in New Jersey.”
Nodding his head, Paul adds, “But it doesn’t hurt any less.” He walks around the bar and sits on the stool
next to Jon, “I can only imagine how she feels, honestly. She carried two babies and they died in
her. And she may lose the one that she’s
carrying too? I feel for her, I feel for
both of you.” He puts his hand on Jon’s
shoulder, “I know you’re hurting and if there was anything I could do to take
your pain away, trust me, I would bear that burden.”
“I know you would.”
Jon looks at him, “At what point will I stop being so pissed?”
“When you two realize that your pain should be shared, it’s
not your cross to bear on your own.” He tells his friend, his boss. “You two need to stop being so stubborn, you
are what you’re hurting by being that way.”
“We were doing so well, it’s like I said, something just
snapped.”
“You said you left this morning, what took you so long
getting here?” Paul asks, it had finally
hit him what Jon said about leaving in the morning, why was he getting to Texas
at 11pm?
Jon shakes his head a little and then lets it hang low, “I
had an event with Dot this afternoon.”
“And Beth didn’t go?
She always goes for that stuff, well most of it.”
“She didn’t know about it.” Wincing, he waits.
Paul takes a moment to process what Jon just told him, “What
do you mean that she doesn’t know? Jon,
tell me you’re kidding.”
Jon just looks at him.
No expression.
Paul is quite irritated by that and really can only think of
one thing to tell him. “You better get
your ass back home; you know how this is going to play out, don’t you?”
Resting his head in his hands, he mumbles, “She sent me a
text that asked how my afternoon with Dot went, so she found out somehow.”
“Jon…..”
Jon gets up and starts to pace, “I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t make the words come out of my
mouth. It was like I was trying to get
even with her or something, it’s very hard to explain.”
“Why do you feel the need to punish her?”
“Punish her? I would
never do anything to hurt her, you know that.”
“That’s why she didn’t know about the event today,
right? Cause you would never hurt her.”
His fingers go through his hair as he gives Paul the stink
eye, “You know what I mean. I only found
out about the event two days ago, and with her party and all that, I just
couldn’t tell her that I needed to go spend time with my wife, while I bitched
to her about needing time with her.”
“How do you think she found out?” Paul asks, knowing it
could have been several ways. “Was the
press there?”
“Yeah.”
Paul gets up and walks to his friend, he can see that Jon is
at war with himself and he’s only seen this one other time; that was when Beth
left when she was pregnant with the twins.
Jons heart wanted to go after her, but his mind didn’t let him and
lately he’s been punishing himself for that.
He’s wondered if he had gone after her, could they have avoided the
whole Dalton situation and everything terrible that has happened since then.
Jon can’t keep it together any longer, Paul sees the tears
well up in his eyes and comforts his
friend, understanding the craziness that’s been going on in his head. Paul has lost a child, Paul did things to
protect Nancy that later backfired and proved to be more hurtful than helpful,
Paul has had to get on with life, and he knows that Jon has to, too. “You need to go to her and talk this
out. Or have her come here, she is more
than welcome. Maybe time away will help?”
“I’m not going home and she doesn’t need to come here. I NEED TIME AWAY, I need my time.”
“Is now the time for you to take time away? She’s pregnant with a girl Jon, one of two
things could happen and do you want to be 2500 miles away from her if something
does?”
Through the tears and through the sobbing he says, “The baby
is fine, she’s strong.”
Paul holds his friend until he pulls away, it was killing
him to see him in this mood, but he obviously needed it. Paul is quickly seeing where some of his
current writing is coming from. Tommy
and Gina aren’t priority any more, he’s moved onto Iove, loss and the afterlife. Paul thinks of Seat Next To You, he had assumed that came from the passing of Mr.
Sambora, but it’s evident to him now – it could mean any situation that either
band member has been through.
Jon takes his glass off the bar and finishes his drink, “I
gotta get to bed.” He tells Paul,
suddenly a little wobbly on his feet.
Paul gets him settled into his room and leaves him to get
himself into bed, Jons pretty drunk and hasn’t been drunk in a very long
time. Dropping his jeans on the floor,
his shirt wasn’t far behind. He took his
phone out of his jacket pocket, hoping to see something from Beth, and there
wasn’t anything new. Scrolling through
pictures of his family, he too, cries himself to sleep.
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
Monday, March 17, 2014
Friday, March 14, 2014
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Chapter 79 - I Guess We'll Always Be
Beth loved jogging through the golf course, especially on a
day like today. The sun is shining and
there is a cool breeze coming in over the river. She loved the smell of the freshly mowed
grass. She pays no attention to anyone
as she makes her way through, waving back at a few old men that waved at
her. They always made her smile and if
she ran with Jon, they wouldn't wave to her.
Sunday, March 9, 2014
Friday, March 7, 2014
Thursday, March 6, 2014
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
Monday, March 3, 2014
Chapter 74 - I Get So Numb Sometimes
With his towel and bottle of water, Jon walks into their office and plays the phone messages that they haven't checked in two days.
The first few are friends congratulating Beth on the opening of her investment firm, a few are from management keeping him updated as to what they were doing and the very last one was from a woman, that the voice didn't sound familiar to Jon. "When your baby dies, I know you'll call me. You'll need a shoulder to cry on." His gut tells him that it's a friend of Dorothea's making the sick phone call for her, but he can't believe that Dorothea would or could be that cold. He plays it again, still having no idea who it is. Checking the caller ID, he sees that that call is the only one that came from a number that was blocked. ERASE. All messages are gone. Finished in his office, he goes to find Beth. She was just stepping back into the shower, ready to get her day going. "Hurry up, I'll wash your back." she says to the rock star standing there looking her up one side and down the other. "No time for gawking, let's go."
The first few are friends congratulating Beth on the opening of her investment firm, a few are from management keeping him updated as to what they were doing and the very last one was from a woman, that the voice didn't sound familiar to Jon. "When your baby dies, I know you'll call me. You'll need a shoulder to cry on." His gut tells him that it's a friend of Dorothea's making the sick phone call for her, but he can't believe that Dorothea would or could be that cold. He plays it again, still having no idea who it is. Checking the caller ID, he sees that that call is the only one that came from a number that was blocked. ERASE. All messages are gone. Finished in his office, he goes to find Beth. She was just stepping back into the shower, ready to get her day going. "Hurry up, I'll wash your back." she says to the rock star standing there looking her up one side and down the other. "No time for gawking, let's go."
"Where's the fire?" he laughs at her. "What's your rush?"
"Well, I want to get flowers for the cemetery, visit the twins for a minute and then go get the k...." she stops. "Whoa!" she looks at Jon, putting her hands on her stomach. "I think she likes that idea." Jon steps into the shower, shoes and all to feel his baby move again. He's promised himself, no more missed opportunity. When he was with Dot and she was pregnant, he missed a lot of the pregnancy stuff with being on the road day after day, month after month - it was the price of fame, he thought. But not this time. His days are numbered and he was going to be there, at everyone. His hands are on her belly and he can feel the baby kicking, "She's pretty tough." he's so happy that his smile reaches his eyes, Beth smiles at him and they stand there in the running shower until the baby settles. When she does, Jon undresses and hops into the shower with his baby mama.
At the florist, Jon is glad that they brought the Denali because Beth was on a flower mission. She bought all that was arranged and then a bunch that weren't. Jon didn't question her, he just did what he was told. Once they loaded the Denali and were on their way, he asked, "Why are there $3000.00 worth of flowers in here?"
"Because" she says as she reaches over and rests her hand on his thigh. "I need to go clothes shopping too, my pants and shorts are getting tight."
"When do you want to do that?"
"Oh, I don't know. I'll take Rose and do that. Unless you want to go maternity clothes shopping."
"Take Stephanie." he winks at her, and then he asks again, "Why all the flowers?"
"I seen many bare graves and I thought we could brighten it up a little bit."
"Leave it to you to think like that." he takes her hand in his and kisses it, "Always thinking of others."
Beth looks over at him and says, "It's important that we are good role models and just good people, I believe in that K word and feel that we've had enough. We could use some good ju ju right about now."
"Agreed."
"I seen a head stone as we were walking out and it was a baby. There were no flowers or anything." Beth tells him and that makes her sad. She was away from New Jersey for so long after they split up, she hoped and prayed that Jon visited Rowan and Spencer, and when she found out that he did - she felt better. But she knew that she couldn't go back to New Jersey after Melissa. she can't believe that it took her a year to go back east.
"So, we'll put flowers on that one - how many others did you scope out?" he kind of picks on her, he knows how she is and that is one of the reasons that he loved her so much. "Do we need to go back and get more flowers?"
"Watch it smart ass, or you'll be paying for the whole cemetery to get fresh flowers everyday."
He laughs, not putting that passed her, and if she did it and it made her feel better, he would gladly pay that bill every month. "That could get expensive."
"You make enough."
They pulled into the cemetery driveway and down the winding road that leads back to the Bongiovi plot. Passing people scattered here and there, paying their respects to their lost ones, they paid no attention. It was a beautiful summer day, people were out and about. As they crested the hill that went down into the plot, the group of cars concerned them. Jon slowed down and eased the car forward, and within seconds they were able to see that it was reporters and what they guessed to be fans. "Fuck!" he slams his hand on the steering wheel, stopping them about 500 feet from the first vehicle. When those people seen the Denali stop, they all ran toward it.
Looking at Jon, "What do you want to do?" They both have sunglasses on and the windows are tinted enough, they would be limited on what they could see.
"I'm calling the cops." he takes out his cell phone and does just that. Dispatch assured him that a car was in route and they should be there within minutes. He thanked them and told Beth what was going on. "They are sending a car, they'll get them out of here for us. Do you want to wait here or come back."
Now Beth is pissed. She feels a little frisky and a little rebellious, angered that there are people standing between her and her children. People that don't belong there. Her door opens and out she hops. In a mad dash, she greets the group that was heading toward her car. Jon sits there for a minute, knowing that she can hold her own. He watches her fly into action, "Get out of here!" she screams to all of them. It was only a second before the TMZ camera is in her face. "Beth, we heard that you and Jon are having a girl. Can you confirm that?"
She pushes passed them and walks to the girls' grave, making sure that no one has disturbed them or their site. The fans stand back, all in shock that they are seeing her in person, knowing Jon was in that car. When Beth is satisfied that the girls are okay, she turns around and addresses the crowd. "Please leave, this isn't a place for you to hang out."
"Is this your baby?" the TMZ reporter holds up a picture. Beth sees it and snatches it from his hand.
"Where did you get that?" she asks as the reporter starts to get in her face. At that point, Jon is out of the car and on her defense.
"Whoa buddy, you better back it the fuck up." he demands, putting himself between Beth and the reporter that got up in her face.
"Is that your baby girl in that picture. Is it true that Beth cannot carry girls, won't the baby that she is pregnant with in fact, die?" Jon saw red and without thought or feeling, he just reacted. He is not a violent man and has only been this mad one other time in his whole life, so mad that he wants to hurt someone.
The reporter is now picking himself up off the ground as the police car pulls up. The crowd gathers around Jon and Beth as they talk with the police officer. The police offer assures them that they will make the crowd disperse and the reporters will also leave. The cemetery is public property, but not to be used the way that they were using it. Not only that, the Bongiovi's have a status in Monmouth County, helping them avoid going to jail for assault. The reporter pushes the issue of arresting Jon and the officer just dismisses him. As far as the officer is concerned, the reporter had it coming.
"Is that your baby girl in that picture. Is it true that Beth cannot carry girls, won't the baby that she is pregnant with in fact, die?" Jon saw red and without thought or feeling, he just reacted. He is not a violent man and has only been this mad one other time in his whole life, so mad that he wants to hurt someone.
The reporter is now picking himself up off the ground as the police car pulls up. The crowd gathers around Jon and Beth as they talk with the police officer. The police offer assures them that they will make the crowd disperse and the reporters will also leave. The cemetery is public property, but not to be used the way that they were using it. Not only that, the Bongiovi's have a status in Monmouth County, helping them avoid going to jail for assault. The reporter pushes the issue of arresting Jon and the officer just dismisses him. As far as the officer is concerned, the reporter had it coming.
Sunday, March 2, 2014
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