Ch 66 ~ Late For The Gate

“Nice of you to grace us with your presence,” Jon greeted with a mammoth dose of sarcasm when his guitarist came strolling casually into sound check.  Since he hadn’t bothered to show for about half of the London sound checks, it was almost alien to see him onstage without the audience behind him.

Not that Jon was truly bent out of shape over it.  It annoyed him, but it wasn’t a deal breaker.  Still, it would’ve been nice to have his musical memory in the form of Richie here yesterday, to help with last night’s ‘blast from the past’ set list addition.

Richie smiled carelessly, totally unconcerned that the ‘boss’ was giving him hell.  “Quit calling pointless rehearsals and I might do it more often.  You don’t need me for that shit and you know it.  ‘Garageland’ went off without a hitch last night, thanks to your trusty monitor.”

The monitor.  Yes, he relied on it pretty heavily at times, because he couldn’t remember the damn lyrics to his own songs.

“Swear to God I’m gonna have Alzheimer’s by the time I’m sixty.”

Jon had a legitimate defense that had nothing to do with his memory, per se.  It was more the fact that he’d written an unfathomable amount of lyrics throughout the years.  By the time he got rough drafts, then final drafts and then revised final drafts of those lyrics, he couldn’t remember which ones he’d decided on half the time.  His memory was fine.

Mostly.

“Don’t forget your friends and family, man,” Sambora laughingly cautioned with a salute of his cup.  “We’re the ones who will be changing your diaper when you shit your pants.”

Jon threw up an unperturbed middle finger and went back to studying the lyrics for “I Got the Girl”, one of tonight’s set list oddities.  While it saved him a hell of a lot of travel time, this playing in the same venue night after night had its ups and downs – like dredging up long-forgotten songs.

“Yanno, speaking of friends and family, where’s your girl?  She off having tea again?”

Unhappy eyes landed briefly on the other man before Jon lifted his tea mug to his lips.  “She hadda go home this morning.  Work shit.”

And Jon wasn’t the least bit happy about it.  In fact, he’d pretty much shown his ass when she told him she had to leave as soon as possible due to a work crisis that couldn’t be handled by anyone else.  Yeah, they’d worked it out so that when she left for the airport – to catch a commercial flight because she refused to use his jet when she could write a commercial flight off as a work expense – he had moved on from being a dick to being pouty. 

Jon couldn’t help it.  He just could not understand why in the world she couldn’t simply quit her job and keep him company – and grounded – while he zipped around the world on tour.  It was a completely new and foreign desire to have his woman coming to work with him every day, but he found that he’d really enjoyed their time together.  He liked ending his day in her bed and waking up to a routine made more comfortable and interesting by her and her damned tour book. 

Things had been different with Dorothea.  They’d had kids at home and traveling all the time wasn’t the way either of them had wanted to raise those kids, so his family had only made hit and miss appearances on tour.  With Rachel, however, they didn’t have kids.  It was just the two of them and they were free to do anything they wanted to do whenever they wanted, outside of his work schedule. 

And hers, apparently.

He was still annoyed that she went running when that cocksucker, James, snapped his fingers.  She didn’t need a job, and she definitely didn’t need a job working for that douchebag ex-lover of hers.  The whole thing made Jon’s skin crawl. 

Here he was, a multi-millionaire, who was ready, willing and able to support her without a second thought and she was making a mad dash back to California to save some deal on a little two-bedroom cottage.  That shit made absolutely no sense to him.

None.

Zero.

Nada.

Zilch.

“So...”  Richie put down his coffee and twirled his pinky ring around, which was a nervous habit of his.  That, in turn, made Jon nervous.  “She go home alone, then?”

Jon’s forehead furrowed unpleasantly.  He didn’t like the way that question made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.  “If I’m here, who else is she gonna go with?”

“I dunno,” Richie said casually, still spinning his ring like a screw-top bottle of wine and shrugging.  “The guy she had tea with yesterday?  That asked her to marry him?”

                                                               ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Please call me as soon as you can.  Don’t calculate time differences, don’t try and figure out if I’m in sound check or on stage, just call.  Please.”

“Rachel, I need to talk to you.  Now.  Call me.”

“You had better fucking call me the minute you land.  Do you understand me?”

“Hasn’t that fucking plane gotten to mother fucking New York yet?  Turn your damn phone on and call me!”

Rachel’s heart raced with so much panic after listening to the fourth voicemail that she didn’t bother to listen to the fifth and sixth that she also presumed were from an increasingly agitated Jon.  She frantically stabbed at the glass screen and tried to imagine what could possibly be so urgent that he had called her six or more times while she was in the air.

Most of the scenarios that she manufactured in those frantic seconds involved death or dismemberment.  The most cheerful crisis that she could envision was a horrible explosion at the O2 or hotel, without injuries, and even that had her breaking into a cold sweat.

“Rachel, we only have twenty minutes to catch the San Francisco flight.”

Impatiently nodding and waving James away, she put a finger in her left ear to block out the noisy bustle of travelers in transit and silently beseeched Jon to answer his phone as it rang across the Atlantic. 

Come on, baby.  Pick up.  Let me know you’re okay.

“It’s about fucking time,” growled the voice she’d been longing for.  Was he aggravated because he was in pain and she hadn’t been there?

“Jon, what’s wrong?  Are you okay?  Tell me what’s going on and hurry before I go into cardiac arrest from worry!”

“No, I’m not fucking okay,” he volleyed without hesitation.  “Why the hell didn’t you tell me that you saw that rat bastard sonofabitch James yesterday?  Better yet, why didn’t you mention the mother fucking fact that he asked you to marry him?”

Rachel’s mouth fell open, then snapped shut and fell open once more, like that of a fish out of water.  Her mind couldn’t shift gears quickly enough from death and devastation to intelligently interpret what Jon had just spewed at her with as much anger as she’d ever heard from him. 

“Answer me!”

“I...”  It took her another breath to even find her voice and she used it to relay her utter annoyance with his dramatic histrionics.  Talk about making a mountain out of a molehill.  “I didn’t tell you because by the time I got to the arena, you were completely focused on show prep and, afterward, you were more interested in arguing about the fact I had to leave.  All that was before you decided you wanted an all-night sex fest as compensation for the inconvenience.”

In reality, she had wanted the sex fest as much as he did, needing to be as close to him as possible before having her trip cut heartbreakingly short.  Rachel had counted on those last few days together in order to mentally prepare for separation from the man whom she had become attached to at the hip while in Europe, and they had been ripped from her with only a moment’s notice.  No matter what Jon thought, she hadn’t been any happier about it than he.

In this particular instant, however, that logic was irrelevant.  His psychotic dick-dom overrode it all and was continuing to trample it with every word.

“So you’re not denying it.”

“Denying what?” she huffed, becoming more frustrated as she tried to wind her way amongst a throng of people who were determined to block the path to her next flight. 

“That you kept it from me that you met James for tea.”

Oh for the love of...

“In the interest of getting to my gate on time, I am not going to rip you a new one over technical details.  I will simply say that no, I’m not denying that I met James for tea yesterday.”

But oh-ho-ho how she wanted to rip him a new one... 

Maybe she was still asleep on the plane?  Maybe it was the mob of people in La Guardia confusing her?  Maybe the mushrooms on her in-flight meal were magic?  Those were the only reasonable explanations for this surreal conversation she was trying to have while James kept glancing over his shoulder with impatient irritation as he sprinted the length of the terminal.

“What about the fucker asking you to marry him?  What the hell is that all about?”

Rachel’s eyes zipped to the broad shouldered man acting as a trailblazing guide to Gate 42, and her stomach convulsed into knots. 

“I don’t have the foggiest idea what you’re talking about.”

Yes she did.  There wasn’t a doubt in Jon’s mind that Rachel knew exactly what he was talking about.  He could tell by the way her tone had gone from righteously indignant to slightly tremulous, and it made him physically ill.

“Don’t fucking lie to me.”

“Jon, I... I don’t know where you’re getting this crazy idea from.”

He rubbed a frustrated hand through his hair, pacing in front of his dressing room sofa for the millionth time since Richie had left.  Was this what it was going to come to?  She wouldn’t marry him or travel with him, but she was going to go running every time this schmuck snapped his fingers?

A wave of uncertain apprehension rolled over him.

Was James why she was cool with not marrying Jon?  So she could keep a little something-something on the side? 

“It doesn’t make a shit where I got it,” he informed her flatly.  “What matters is whether or not you left here because of work... or because of James.  So which is it, Rachel?”

“Rachel, sweetheart, if you don’t move it right now, we’re going to miss our flight.”

There was no mistaking that masculine dickwad voice, even if he wanted to.  Not only was she running when the fucker snapped his fingers, she was running with him.

Son.  Of.  A.  Bitch.

“You know what, Rach... nevermind.  I think that answered my question.”