Ch 40 ~ Looking Back

Dorothea inserted the key into the door of the apartment, letting her children push by her and scurry to their respective parts of the home.  She smiled and indulgently shook her head as Romeo and Jake tried to one-up each other with insulting names like “Fart Head” and “Jerkwad”.  Normally, she wouldn’t allow them to call each other names, but it had been a good day, so she let it slide with nothing more than a soft snuffle of laughter. 

It was always a good day when her children were happy, and Jon’s presence in town was almost guaranteed to inspire it.  To be honest, she wasn’t all that unhappy herself.   Yes, they were divorced, but that didn’t mean that she didn’t care about him.  In fact, she was quite proud of the fact that the two of them remained close, even in light of her relationship with Ted. 

She and Jon had decided during their breakup that their inability to live together as husband and wife was secondary to giving their children an unbreakable sense of family.  That meant they carved out time together to be a family – Mommy, Daddy and children as one cohesive unit.  It was more important to her that the kids not suffer for problems their parents couldn’t overcome, so they all took trips and family vacations, still, as well as having run of the mill days together. 

Like today, for example.  With the tour on this side of the continent and Jon’s presence a given for the next few days, their day hadn’t been any different than that of thousands of other families.  They’d shuttled the kids between sporting events for much of the day, eventually ending up at their favorite place for dinner before returning back to her upper-east side apartment. 

“You coming in?” Dorothea asked her ex-husband over her shoulder as she passed through the entryway.

“Yeah.  I need to talk to you about the trip before I take off.” 

She frowned ever so slightly, wondering what they needed to go over.  Passports stayed at the ready.  Hotel reservations had been made months ago, as had air travel. 

It wouldn’t have even registered as a concern under normal circumstances, however, he’d been a little odd today, she thought when he took her coat and hung them both in the foyer closet.  Not that he wasn’t mentally present with the kids, but he’d been… distracted. 

He’s in the middle of a tour.  Since when isn’t he distracted in the middle of a tour?

She nodded in agreement, once again speaking over her shoulder as she stepped into the kitchen for a bottled water.  “The kids are really looking forward to it.  So am I, for that matter.  A little time with my feet in the sand sounds like heaven right now.”

“Yeah,”  Jon’s fingertips crammed into his front pockets as he leaned in the kitchen doorway, and his shoulders bunched up around his ears.  “It’s always fun to hit the beach and I need some time to catch up with them, so I’m lookin’ forward to it, too.” 

He paused, rubbing the stubbled chin that she noticed he hadn’t bothered to shave before coming over this morning.  It made him less recognizable when combined with sunglasses and a hat, which was typical when he was out and about, so it was a look that Dorothea was well-familiar with. 

“I… “  he uttered haltingly, eyes flicking from the far window to her eyes and locking there.  “You remember Rachel, right?”

She gave a single dip of her chin in acknowledgement.  One of Jon’s hook-ups.  The one that had lasted long enough to meet the family.  Nice enough woman, but she’d gotten tired of Jon’s crap a few months ago, as Dorothea recalled. 

“Well, I kinda asked her to come on vacation with us.”

She felt her eyebrows slip upward on her forehead for a split second before asking, “Kinda?”

“Okay, not kinda.  I did.  I’ve asked Rachel to come with us on vacation, and I wanted you to know before we all got on a plane together.”

Wow.  Just…  Wow.

Betrayal punched her in the sternum with the same effect as a round-house karate kick.  He’d invited his… girlfriend into the private sanctuary of their family.  And he wasn’t asking Dorothea’s opinion, he was presenting it as a done deal.   

She was unable to do anything more than stare at the man she’d shared her entire adult life with, as though she’d never seen him before.  Up until that very moment, she would’ve sworn Jon couldn’t ever break her heart again, but he had.

How could he do that to her?  To their family? 

“Why?” she asked softly around the lump in her throat, when the words would finally come.  “Why would you do that?”

But the reality was they both had other people in their lives now, their marriage had been legally over for a couple years and it was time to make the transition into the next phase of their life. 

“I did it because I love her.”  He reached out and stroked the side of her arm, and Dorothea flinched away from his touch.  He couldn’t tear apart their family bonding and then pet on her as though they were still married.  “And I’d like to think I’ll be smarter this time around than I was with you.”

“We agreed…”  Dorothea swallowed hard, silently cursing the lump in her throat.  She didn’t do tears.  That wasn’t her thing, but dammit if she wasn’t trying to keep them at bay.  “We agreed that we would keep time set aside to be together with the kids.  To keep the family intact so they had those memories, especially for Jake and Romeo.”

“Babe,” he reasoned softly, stuffing his rebuffed hand back into his pocket.  “We’re still going to be together with the kids.”

“Along with another woman,” Dorothea pointed out the obvious.  “Who I thought had moved away or something.  I didn’t think she was even on the scene anymore, and now she’s back?  You can’t parade a bunch of women in and out of these kids’ lives, Jon, it’s just – “

“I’m not parading a bunch of women, Dottie,” he interrupted, “It’s one woman.  The only woman I’ve had around the kids, and you know that.  We parted ways for a little while, but now she’s here to stay.  She’s part of the family now, and I’m not willing to put her on the back burner while I vacation with my ex-wife and our kids.”

“You can take her on another vacation, Jon.  This is supposed to be time with our family – what’s left of it anyway.  Is it really too much to ask that you devote a few days of your time to these kids?  Could you not put them first just once?”

“That’s not fair.  Well… maybe it is fair, I dunno.”  Jon raked his fingers through the top of his hair, and it gave her a slight sense of relief to know that he was a little bit flustered now, too.  “I wasn’t always the perfect husband, I know that, God knows you’ve told me enough.  But you can’t question that I’m a good dad – always present when I’m with them.  I put them first, Dottie.  You can’t deny it.”

“You put them on your calendar, Jon.  You always have.  Your time with them is penciled in like any other appointment.  That’s just the way it is, and that’s also why our time with them is so important.  You can’t start bringing women along on our family vacations.  We agreed to make sure they had time with us so they wouldn’t forget....”

So our children won’t forget that we once were a very special family. 

The shadow crossing his face told her that Jon heard the unvoiced thought, and he took the two steps between himself and Dorothea, pulled her into his chest.  She put her hands between them, to keep a distance.  Her feelings were hurt, and he didn’t get a pass just because he knew he’d hurt them

“I’m sorry.  I’m sorry I wasn’t the man I should have been when we were together.  I’m sorry for letting the dream die…sorry for it all.   I’ve loved you all my life, Dottie, and that hasn’t changed.  It’ll never change.  We’ll always be family.” 

“It’s not the same.”

“No.”  He shook his head sadly, but determinedly.  “You and I both have other people in our lives now.  I don’t know where things are with you and Ted, but I know Rachel has a permanent place in my future.   I won’t exclude her from any part of my life.”

Jon had truly moved on.  It was a bittersweet realization for Dorothea, but she didn’t begrudge him.  The truth was, she had moved on in her personal life, too.  She just hadn’t included him in the Bongiovi family vacation.

“I could’ve invited Ted along, you know,” she told him.  “But I didn’t, because I’m trying to keep memories for our kids.”

“Hell, invite him.  I think that’s a great idea.  Our kids don’t need the illusion that we’re still married.  They need to know that they come first, even though their dad was a jackass who couldn’t keep his marriage together.”

She chuckled quietly and pushed away from him with a reluctant grin.  “You are a jackass.”

“Guilty as charged,” he accepted with a wide smile.

He seemed happy.  It had been a long time since she’d seen the lightness in his eyes.  If Rachel was responsible for that, she deserved a little bit of respect. 

Maybe this won’t be so bad.  Kinda like a modern-day Brady Bunch, where Carol is doing Sam the butcher and Mike is doing Alice.

“Alright,” she announced, holding up a single finger.  “Bring your... girlfriend.  I’ll invite Ted and we’ll try to make this work.  But if I get the first inkling that our kids are being emotionally scarred...”

“Sweetheart,” he laughed and patted her on the cheek.  “If our kids are emotionally scarred, you don’t think we can seriously blame Ted and Rachel.  Do you?”

She swatted his hand away.  “Probably not.  But I have no problem blaming Sambora.”