Ch 13 ~ Run It Off

“Oh Goddd...”

Rachel’s mouth tasted like the bottom of a mold-infested apple basket. Her limbs felt like they were weighted down with the heft of eighty-two five pound weights and her head....?  She tentatively touched the place where her hair ached the most.  Her head felt like a balloon that had been jammed with half-set Jello which was threatening to firm up and crack her skull like an overripe watermelon on the sidewalk.

Overripe apple is probably more appropriate.  With nasty caramel slopped over it.

Her stomach rolled a little. 

There were only two things she could be certain of in her current state of hung-over-ed-ness.  One, There would never be any occasion on which she’d go near a vile caramel apple martini again. 

She shuddered, turning the Jello into lethally sharp daggers behind her eyebrows.  Rachel squeezed her eyes shut and tried not to think of the repulsive concoction that was responsible for the bed spinning beneath her.

The second firm thought in her mind was that this quest for ‘fun’ wasn’t working out the way she had imagined it. 

Even waking up with the beaches of Miami just outside her hotel balcony didn’t compensate for the way she felt right now.  In fact, the thought of the waves rolling in and out added a heavy dose of motion sickness to her current post-inebriation suffering. 

The only single positive ray in the painfully glaring Florida sunshine was that she didn’t have morning meetings.  That meant she could safely cover her eyes, burrow down in the comfy bed to seek solace from the throbbing that drilled straight through from her forehead to the back of her skull. 

If she was perfectly still and took only slight, shallow breaths...  she had a modicum of reassurance that she wasn’t going to die.  In fact, if she could just focus on the darkness and breathing it was almost tolerable enough to maybe go back to sleep...

The harsh vibration of her phone against the wooden nightstand jerked her body from the recuperative world of ‘tolerable’ and flung it head-first into ‘hangover hell’.

Jesus!  Or as the local Latinos would say... Hay-Zeus.

She had no idea where that thought came from, but it gave her a moment of amusement in the agony.  It also prevented her from cursing like a sailor at whoever was on the other end of the phone that she couldn’t ignore.

Damn business trips and ethical obligation to be available for actual work.

Groping blindly in a valiant attempt not to move her head, it took about five pats of her hand to find the demonic little device whose vibrations were rattling her eyeballs.  She clutched it in her palm, putting it directly over her face and squeaking  one eye open to see what the blindingly bright screen had to say. 

Jon? What the hell?  What’s wrong?

It seemed that one part of her brain was working just fine – the part that could do math on the fly even in a semi-comatose state.  Like everybody else, she had that weird ability to calculate the number of times she could hit the snooze button before really having to get up and hit the shower before she knew her name in the mornings.  She knew it was that part, because she automatically calculated the time difference between Miami and the West Coast, coming up with six a.m. Pacific Time. 

He’d had a show last night, so he should’ve been sound asleep.  Something was wrong.

When she pushed up elbow, separating her head from the pillow, she no longer cared what was wrong on the West Coast.  She flopped back down on the pillow, far more concerned with the ferocious Jello spears that were determined to split her skull open in forty-eleven different spots.

More by feel than sight, she swiped her finger over the phone screen and brought it to her ear.  “H’lo?” she croaked.

“Hey.  Did I wake you?”

Unfortunately, no, but could you not scream at me?  Yikes!

She draped her forearm over her eyes and endeavored to carry on a quietly coherent conversation.  “No, I’m awake.  Why’re you up so early?”

“Kids.  You know how it is.  They don’t really care what time zone you’re in if they wanna talk.  Romeo called before he left for school and I haven’t been able to go back to sleep.”

She was relieved that nothing was wrong, naturally, but that still didn’t explain why he was calling.  Short and to the point would be much appreciated, but she still managed to play nice. 

“I remember the urgency of little ones, so yeah… I get it.  Any particular reason you called?”

“Do I need one?” he teased.

“No.  I’m just checking.”  Rachel did her best to muffle the sickening groan that escaped as she shifted positions.

“You don’t sound like you feel well.  You okay?”

“No.”  She fluffed and stacked the pillows so she was in a semi-upright position and began rubbing the back of her neck.  “I have a wicked hangover.”

 “You’re boozin’ it up on a business trip?  That doesn’t sound like you.”

“Not really,” she denied, wincing at both the pain in her head and his incredulity.  No, it didn’t sound like her at all.  “James and I went out on the town a bit last night and I had a little too much to drink.  This morning, I’m paying for it.”

His disapproval was more and more evident as the silence grew longer.  The only thing she didn’t know was exactly what he disapproved of – the drinking or her drinking companion.

Great.  Because I don’t already have a big enough headache.

“Is he… there?  Now?  I mean… is he with you right now?”

Her eyes flew open and a jolt of terror shot through Rachel that corresponded with the jolt of pain in her head as she whipped it to the left.  What had happened with James?  She had a cloudy, vague recollection of kissing him.  Maybe.  Or was that just a long-ago memory? 

Scanning the other half of the king-sized bed, she found it mussed, with the pillow dented, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything.  She’d become a restless sleeper since leaving Jon.  It was as if she was searching for him even in her sleep, rolling to the other side of the bed and onto the pillow. 

No matter how adamantly she commanded her pained brain to cough up the details of how her evening had ended, she couldn’t come up with the answer. 

“RACH!”

Ah, this she could remember.  Jon’s impatience, personified by his barking when the answers he wanted weren’t forthcoming.  In her current state of misery, she didn’t find the personality trait particularly endearing.

Her head thunked lightly back against the wall and she scrunched her eyes shut, pinching the bridge of her nose and wishing for a magical hangover cure. 

“What?!  Geez!  Give a girl a break, will ya?  I’m dyin’ here.”

“Are you alone or is he still there?” he asked a second time, this inquiry coming in at a much more civilized and palatable volume. 

Thank you Hay Zeus.

“Of course he’s not still here.”

The ensuing silence only served to provide an opportunity for those few words to echo back in her head, much as they must be echoing in his.  Chances were good that he was making a whole bunch of conclusions in the midst of that echoing, too.

 It was crazy, really.

Here they were… two people, alone in hotel rooms on separate sides of the country, trying to figure out if there might still be something left between them and he wondered if she had another man in her bed while talking to him.  And while she had given him the “correct” answer, it was only marginally correct.

“Not still.  Never.  He hasn’t been here at all.” She pinched the bridge of her nose harder and sighed, her heart knowing what her mind wouldn’t cop to.  James hadn’t been in her bed.  More than likely.  She just couldn’t imagine that she’d do that...  “Crap.  I don’t wanna start my day this way, Jon.”

“Sorry,” he grumbled contritely.  “I… I just got a visual of you drinking with him and, well... I don’t really know what’s going on with you and him…..”

Now not only did she feel physically bad, she had a guilt-dipped cherry on top of her hangover sundae.  Jon, who did everything with conviction, actually sounded unsure of himself.  Rachel hated that – hated being responsible for it.

“I don’t really wanna get into it.  Can we just skip this part of the conversation and I’ll ask how your show was last night?”

“Rachel, c’mon, babe… I’m trying not to blow a gasket here.”  He took a very audible deep breath as his voice tried to creep up a few decibels and reigned himself in.  “You’re in Florida with your ex-boyfriend, who wants to be your next husband while I’m stuck on the other side of the country.  Here I am tryin’ to persuade you into seeing me again, but I don’t really know if there’s some other guy on the scene or if he’s just fantasizing about you.  Throw me a bone, will ya?”

He had a valid point, but her mental faculties weren’t alert enough to appreciate it.  She didn’t want to argue or be a bitch; she just wanted her headache to go away.

“I’m not trying to be evasive, Jon, it’s just that I’m just barely functioning .  And, as you pointed out, you’re in Arizona and I’m in Florida.  It’s not exactly a prime opportunity for us to reconnect and work out our mountain of problems.”

“I’m doin’ the best I can – from California, by the way – when it sucks here without you.”

“Yes, well, I appreciate that, but I need to figure out a way to get rid of this screaming headache so I can conduct my business this afternoon.  That’s about all of the mental taxation I can handle right now.”

His soft chuckle should’ve pissed her off, but it sounded so much like the gentle laughter she’d heard when he shared her bed, that she couldn’t stop the fond smile from creeping onto her pained face.  There were things about him that drove her crazy, but there were also so many things she’d missed about him.  That laugh was one of them. 

“Tell ya what.  I’ll give you the guaranteed hangover-get-ridder if  you’ll meet me in LA this weekend for some uninterrupted ‘us’ time.  And trust me, honey…. I know how to get rid of a hangover.  Deal?”

Someone was taking pity on her.  Someone up there was having mercy on her overindulgent aftermath.  It was the only viable explanation, because this was a side of Jon that didn’t exist.  The Jon she knew wouldn’t have let go of the James subject until he had the answers he wanted or they had a knock-down-drag-out fight.  But this man...  he was willing to let it go until there was a better opportunity. 

Maybe things can be different this time...

That glimmer of hope made her remorseful when she was forced to decline his offer. 

“It’s unreal how much I want that hangover remedy, but I’m sorry.  I can’t meet you in LA.  I won’t get home until Friday night and my niece’s bridal shower is on Saturday.  She and Robin would tar and feather me if I miss it.”

There was the briefest of silences, leaving Rachel to wonder if he was going to have a fit because she couldn’t scratch all her plans to run to wherever he was.  That would be the old Jon she knew.  Was there a chance of ‘new Jon’ being a real person instead of a one-time anomaly?

She held her breath and waited.

“But if you didn’t have other obligations...  Would you come to LA?”

The pressure between her eyes actually eased just a fraction.

Well, well.  Hello New Jon.  I’m Rachel, and it’s a pleasure to meet you.

“Does your sharing the secret hangover cure rest on my answer?” 

“It might,” he laughed.

The sound of Jon’s morning voice and unguarded laughter was a warm balm to her healing heart.  Things between them might still be up in the air, but just talking to him this morning...  It felt right.  It gave her hope that what could’ve been might actually come to be. 

Someday.

In fact, Rachel was growing more and more disappointed that she couldn’t spend the weekend with him.

“I would….consider it.  How’s that?”

“Huh.  You’d consider coming to see me?  Well...  I’d call that progress.  In fact, I’ll take it and make you a very generous compromising offer.  You can have my super Secret Squirrel hangover antidote if... Wait for it...  I know you’re dying here...”

Despite herself, she laughed.  “Dammit, Bongiovi, stop being a drama queen!”

“Ha!  Got your attention though, don’t I?” he chortled back at her before his voice went soft.  “And that’s all I really want.”

Rachel’s muzzy mind was having trouble comprehending that this was the man who had caused her such misery and grief.  If he’d only been this man in New Jersey...

Then you still wouldn’t have dealt with shit you needed to deal with.  You can’t change the past.  Move on. 

She hadn’t even formed an appropriate response before he cleared his throat and moved on without it. 

“You can have the cure if you have dinner with me tonight.”

That jarred her out of her stupor.

“Huh?  Dinner with you?  Tonight?  What, are you planning on hopping a plane to Florida?”

“I wish.”  The two simple words rang with utter sincerity, applying a bit more of that healing balm.  “I was thinking more along the lines of Skype and room service.  At least we can see each other while we talk.  How’s about it?  Is it a date?”

At the moment, the thought of curling up in her pajamas and having a club sandwich from the room service menu sounded heavenly, but it wasn’t the pajamas or the sandwich that was appealing.  It was the idea of having time set aside at the end of her day to be spent with Jon.  Just this crazy casual ‘date’ reminded her how the long days had been so much easier when she knew her nights would be spent with him.  Rachel suddenly missed their relaxing, intimate evenings with a fierceness that she was unwilling to admit.

“You know...” she lightly pretended to consider the offer.  “I would agree to dinner with the devil himself if he’d rid me of this damned headache, so yeah… It’s a date.  Now give it up, Secret Squirrel.  What’s the magic remedy?”

“There are very few people that I’ve given this information to.  Not that I don’t trust you, but I need to know you’re going to guard it with your life.  Scout’s honor and all that shit?”

“Oh for heaven’s sake, yes!  Just tell me, already.”

“Okay, okay!”  His voice dropped to a whisper, as though to prevent anyone from overhearing his privileged bit of wisdom.  “The only thing that’s gonna help is to run.  Just run it off, baby.  ”

Oh you have GOT to be KIDDING me....

“That’s IT?  You lousy sonofabitch!   THAT’S your secret cure to a hangover?  RUN?”

“Trust me on this Rach,” he laughed so evilly that it could have been from the devil himself. “This is the voice of experience talkin’.  There’s nothing to do but hit the beach and sweat it allllllll out.  I promise you’ll thank me later.”

Two hours later, Jon reached for his phone when the text alert sound woke up from his reclaimed sleep.  There were only a handful of numbers set to always ring through, so if his phone was chiming, he needed to take it. 

A slow, shit-eating grin slid across his stubbled face and into the cheek that was resting on the mattress. 

This was so worth being woken up for. 

The picture message that roused him was a pair of feminine tennis shoe-clad feet standing on wet sand with the surf washing up against the soles.  Even better than that, the photo was accompanied by a brief text that made him laugh like he hadn’t in months. 

08:07 RACH:  I hate you.