48 - We Can Work it Out

We're BACK!  :D  Thanks for your patience and understanding during the brief sanity break!  

“She didn’t do it,” Jon declared to his guitarist for the second time in as many minutes.  “I don’t know who did, but it wasn’t Sheridan.”

It had been a long evening, and it wasn’t over yet.  Returning home to find his kids rattling the bars on their cages from proclaimed near-starvation, he’d shoveled out pizza and then delved into the bags from Macy’s.  Jesse had strung the lights in Jon’s absence, so they got right to the ornaments. 

Really, he sat back and watched with amusement while Stephanie supervised her brothers.  She even made Jesse hang some of them when he showed more interest in his cell phone than the family bonding time. 

After Romeo had been lifted to stick the angel on top of the tree, Jon had tucked the boy under his arm and dropped him on the sofa while the rest of the brood went to their rooms.  It had taken a bit of time, but Jon thought his youngest finally understood that he wasn’t going to be abandoned in a puddle of wine. 

His current phone conversation was enough to make him consider drowning himself in a bottle of wine. 

“Jesus, man, since when do you think with your dick?  There IS nobody else!  This is probably her way of getting back at me, the prim and proper bitch!”

“Watch your mouth,” he snapped, jerking a green glass bottle out from under the bar and thunking it onto the counter.  Alcoholism-bound or not, he needed a little relaxation in this evening from Hell.  “And why would she want to get back at you?”

“Miss Holier Than Thou got all offended when I told her she smelled like sex after fuckin’ you in my guest room.  I’m sure she ran and told you.  That’s why she high-tailed it out of the kitchen so fast when I hit the floor.”

Jon frowned briefly as the base of the wine glass connected with the counter.  Sheridan hadn’t mentioned that. 

“Yeah, she ran out so fast you had a bag of frozen peas on your back when I got there.”  Sarcasm dripped from each syllable.  “All she told me was that you fell, so I seriously doubt it affected her enough to be revenge-worthy, dumbass.  There has to be another explanation.”

“I’m not on the fucking detective squad.  So I don’t have the right motive.  Who cares?  She still had to be the one.”

“Richie…”  Jon fought for restraint, but his friend was seriously pissing him off.  Curving his fingers around the rim of the wineglass, he lifted it to his lips and drank before finishing his sentence.  “I’ve had your back for thirty goddamn years.  I’ve still got your back.  Sheridan didn’t do it, now let it go.   Forty-eight hours and it will be a distant memory if you’ll just calm the fuck down and ignore it.”

“I still want to know who’s responsible,” his friend bitched.  “So I know when to look for knives in my back.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, stop being a drama queen!  Go run on the damn treadmill or fuck somebody to get rid of your aggression.  I’ve had enough for today.  I’ll call you if I find out anything else.”

Peeved, he disconnected the call in the middle of whatever Richie was saying in reply.   He palmed the phone with one hand and his wineglass in the other and drifted toward the stairs with an annoyed shake of his head. 

Thinking back over the call, he wondered why Sheridan hadn’t told him about what Richie had said.  If it had bothered her that much, she surely would have mentioned it.  What it sounded like to him was that Richie, backed into a corner, was grasping at straws. 

You’d be doing the same damn thing if it happened to you, and you know it.

Appointing both the phone and the glass to his bedside table, Jon padded to the closet, pulling his shirt over his head and reaching for the button on his jeans.  He let the elastic on a pair of comfortable pair of lounge pants snap around his waist, wondering about Sheridan. 

It had sucked leaving her earlier tonight.  Taking her to bed and pretending this whole mess didn’t exist would’ve been far preferable to having another guilt/innocence debate with Richie. 

Throwing back his comforter and dropping his butt on the bed, he swung his feet up and settled the covers around his waist.  Another swallow of the wine went down easily and Jon reached for the extra pillow to bunch it behind his head before dialing her.  They couldn’t be together tonight, but he still wanted a taste of that connection they shared and, if he were being honest, to reassure himself it was still intact.

“Hello?”

He felt the muscles in his shoulders unknot a little and a lopsided smile curled one corner of his mouth.  “Hi,” he greeted her quietly, tucking his left foot between the back of his right knee and the mattress.

“Hi.”

“Did you get your wrapping finished?”

“Some of it.  Did you get your kids fed?”

“Some of them,” he mimicked, pleased at the soft chuckle filling his left ear. 

“Hopefully the younger ones.”

“Yeah.  They bite at my ankles if I don’t feed ‘em.  The teenagers can fend for themselves.”

“So…”  She was going to broach the subject that he was already tired of.  Jon didn’t want to talk about it anymore and was set to interrupt when she beat him to it.  “How are you doing?”

Okay, she didn’t take the road I thought she was going to.  That’s good.

“I’m okay, Kitten.  How are you?”

“I’m okay, too.”

This awkward thing wasn’t them.  It wasn’t what they did, and he wasn’t going to let it start happening now.  Part of the beauty of their relationship so far had been the natural comfort of it.  He refused to sacrifice that for some damn tattle-tale television show.

“Talk to me, baby.  Tell me what you did after I left.  Nice bubble bath?  Soft music?  Thinkin’ about me?”

“Mm.  No.  As nice as it sounds, I didn’t do that.  I…  Well, you know I got some wrapping done, but that was after…”  She sighed.  “I called my friend, Bridget.”

Something about the way she said that had those recently unknotted muscles bunching right back up.  His spine didn’t stiffen, but it definitely found more impressive posture as he asked, almost warily, “Bridget?  Who’s that?”

“She’s the friend I called from Richie’s house.   The one who works at Star magazine.”

Jon easily recognized the name of one of the more popular celebrity gossip magazines.  He’d escaped its clutches for the bigger part of his career, but Richie had been one of their… victims on multiple occasions. 

“I assume you’re going to tell me why?”

“Yes,” was her quiet assurance.  “I convinced her to use her resources in helping us track down the source of Richie’s leak.  She’s checking with some of her contacts and will get back to me as soon as she finds out if they know anything.”

Nearly sagging with relief, he managed to sound nonchalant when responding, “You didn’t have to do that, but thank you.”

“You asked me to help,” she said simply.  “It was the only thing I could think of.”

Sheridan’s vision glided over the iPad lying on top of the duvet that she was tucked under so cozily, recalling the remainder of her conversation with Bridget.  Butterfly wings, on the verge of anxiety, flapped against the confines of her stomach. 

Now would be a good time to tell him, Sheridan.

Reaching for the small, electronic tablet, she pulled her knees up and propped it against them.  A push of the button and a swipe across the screen was enough time to reaffirm her decision. 

“Jon?  Could I have your email address?”

“What for?”

“If I don’t forward an email from a dying child in Swahili to ten people within the next hour I’m going to die.  Right now, I only have email addresses for nine people,” she drawled with a healthy dose of sarcasm to mask her nervousness. 

“Jesus…” he huffed with a gusty snort.  “When did you become such a wise-ass?”

“Sorry, but I thought it would be obvious there’s something I want to send you.”

“Gonna tell me what it is?”

Nope.  It’s one of those things you have to see to believe.

“It’s easier just to send it to you,” she told him truthfully.  “But after you get it, you can call me back if you want.  Doesn’t matter what time it is.”

“Yeah, okay.”  With that unenthusiastic acceptance, Jon rattled off the requested information, and Sheridan tapped it into her iPad. 

“Thank you.  I’ll send it to you when we get off the phone.”

“Okay,” he repeated disinterestedly, changing the course of their conversation.  “Richie told me something I didn’t know about that night, by the way.”

“Oh?”  Distracted with putting an attachment with her message, she couldn’t imagine what it would be.  “What’s that?”

“He seems to think he…  offended your sense of propriety, I guess.”

Her heels slid down the mattress, unbending her knees and she shoved the iPad onto the duvet beyond her left thigh.  “Oh, that.”

“Yeah, that.  Why didn’t you tell me?”

Now that the tablet’s screen had gone black, the only light in her bedroom was coming from the several hundred stranded lights looped around the Christmas tree.  The ornaments were indecipherable in the shadows, but the lights glowed vibrantly, intensity doubled by their reflection in the terrace doors.   

Sheridan’s eyes danced from the tree to its two-dimensional likeness, loving the warmth it exuded.  It made the absence of Jon’s heat beside her a bit less bleak.

“He was drunk.  I assume he wouldn’t have said anything so crass under normal circumstances, so I didn’t think it was worth mentioning.”

“What exactly did he say, anyway?”

She pulled an unpleasant face, not really wanting to relive the moment.  Rolling over, she cradled the phone under her head and pulled her knees into a fetal position, the Bon Jovi t-shirt she was wearing, riding up over her thighs.  “I don’t remember exactly.  Does it matter?”

“Nah, I don’t guess.  He just seemed to think it was bad enough that you might want to get back at him, so I wondered.”

“I really hadn’t given it another thought.  Something about me doing the wild thing in his guest room and smelling like sex.   Which, embarrassingly enough, I probably did.”

“Mmm…” His thoughtful sound was like a lion’s purr.  “I like the smell of sex on you.  It's something I'd like to smell right now, as a matter of fact.”

Sheridan laughed softly, pushing a hand through her loose hair.  “We both know that’s not going to happen.”

“No, dammit, it’s not.”

Unsure as to what might be a befitting response to that, she chose to remain quiet.  There probably wasn’t much more to say, but she wasn’t willing to be the one to initiate the end of their call.  Silly as it sounded, she missed him, and the evening they’d been through only compounded it.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t stay longer.”

What?  Is he reading my mind now?

“That’s okay.  Your kids come first.  I may not have my own children, but I get that and I respect you for it.”

“I’ll make it up to you.”

“There’s nothing to make up, Jon.  I’m happy to be a part of your life now, but I don’t expect to be your whole life.”

There was a faint glugging sound, as though he was swallowing something, and then he asked quietly, “Did you wash off the marker?”

Sheridan’s hand was still buried in her hair, and the wrist-in-question was directly in her line of vision.  No, she hadn’t washed it off.  In fact, she’d taken great pains not to get it wet when washing her hands earlier.  ‘John Bongiovi’ was in the same condition as it was when he left several hours ago.

“No.”

“Good.  Don’t.”

The line went still again, until Jon sighed and reluctantly said, “Kitten, I should probably go.  Jake and Romeo will be up early.”

His pet name had her burrowing her cheek into the pillow with a happy smirk.  “Mm.  Okay.  I’ve got an early day tomorrow myself.  I’m going to send you that email then get some sleep.”

“Yeah.  I’m curious about that.  Don’t screw around.  Send it now.”

Laughing lightly, she promised, “I will.  Good night, Jon.”

“’Night, Baby.”