Ch 52 ~ Jacuzzi Jeopardy

Jon eased his naked body into the outdoor Jacuzzi with a soft groan of appreciation as the water swirled around him.  His head thunked gently back against the edge and he thanked God that he had five days of nothing but Rachel ahead of him. 

Dinner with her sister and brother-in-law had been okay – particularly after Robin had said her piece – but it was still someone else to deal with.  Someone else that he had to focus on.  Someone else he had to engage with. 

With Rachel, he could just be himself.

Jon closed his eyes and grinned to himself. 

My horny, insatiable self.

Unfortunately, Robin’s words were niggling at the back of his mind and putting the hoodoo on his mojo.

“Do you realize she’s never visited their graves?” her voice repeated over and over.  “Do you know that Lauren and Tyler’s rooms haven’t been touched since they died?”

In his defense, Jon hadn’t known Rachel had never been to the cemetery, but had he been deluding himself?  Was Rachel really a psychological mess drowning in denial instead of the self-confident woman who seemed to have it all together?  Had he only been seeing what he wanted to see?  Turning a blind eye to anything but his own happiness?

You know the answer to that.

Completely unintentional, but that’s exactly what Jon had been doing.  Just this morning, he’d noticed Lauren and Tyler’s rooms, but had barely paused because Rachel had been hurrying him along to something she’d done make him happy.

And he’d followed along like an eager puppy without stopping to focus on the missing pieces.  Time and time again. 

Something else Robin had said stepped to the forefront of his mind, pushing the cemetery and kids’ rooms aside.  “She can’t accept their deaths, Jon – or Nick’s.  And until she can do more than go through the motions, she has no business starting a new life – with you or anybody else.”

That could very well be true.  Probably.  What the hell did he know about losing a spouse and kids?  Abso-fucking-lutely nothing.  Yet he was the one in a position to… do something.  To help pull Rachel out of denial so she could finally either banish the ghosts or learn to happily co-exist with them.

The patio door snicked softly shut, alerting Jon that Rachel had come to join him. 

Pulling himself out of his mind, Jon opened his eyes, lifted his head and smiled at the woman who approached him in nothing more than a fluffy white bath sheet.  The moment that plush terrycloth hit the ground, his big head cleared of heavy thoughts so the blood could fuel the little head.

It’s waited this long.  It can wait a little longer.

Extending his hand, he acted as a stabilizer while she first slipped one smooth, toned leg into the water and then the other.

“Mmm… mmm… MMM…,” he admired as she sat adjacent to him and settled her feet onto his thighs.  Sliding one appreciative hand along her silky calf, he murmured,  “You have the most perfect legs.”

“Oh yeah?” she asked with a skeptically arched eyebrow, accepting the glass of wine he offered her.  “What makes them so perfect?”

“What you ask?  Well… They have a foot on one end…” He lightly tapped the end of her French-manicured toe before waggling his eyebrows suggestively.  “…and pussy on the other.”

“Oh for the love of God,” Rachel laughed, trying to pull her feet back, but he grabbed her ankles and kept them put.  “How do manage to keep your crass side hidden from the public every day?”

“Many, many years of training,” he explained, rubbing a thumb along the arch of her foot.  “I have to be ‘on’ when I’m in public.  Fortunately – when I’m with you – I don’t have to be anything other than the crass Jersey boy I was born to be.”

“Aren’t I the lucky one?” she drawled with a little laugh, setting the wine on the edge of the Jacuzzi as she finally slipped her feet free.  He wasn’t too upset about her escape when she straddled his lap and smiled the most deliciously dirty smile. 

Jon’s hands wound around her waist and then slipped lower to cup her phenomenally perfect ass.  “Why yes, you are.  And you’re about to get even luckier,” he predicted, his mouth tipping up to capture her bottom lip.  No matter how many times he kissed her, the taste of Rachel still made him go hard as a rock.  “Hell, after a month together in London, you’ll feel lucky enough to apply for leprechaun status.” 

“OH!” Rachel pulled back from the kiss, her eyes wide.

“What?  You don’t like leprechauns?”

She nudged his shoulder with the heel of her hand and laughed.  “No, dumbass!  I just remembered that I’ve been meaning to ask about your tour break in August.”

He tried diligently to wrap his head – the big one – around the change in subject.  How did women switch gears so fast?  One minute they could be just about to sink onto your dick and the next they were talking vacations. 

Christ.

“What about it?” he sighed, trying not to sound too annoyed.  They had several more days to rut like the animal he wanted to be.  This was just an unscheduled – for him, at least – pause in the action.

“Well, I know you’re spending it with the kids,” she acknowledged, oblivious to the hardness poking into her thigh.  “But I wondered if you might like to bring them out here for part of that time?   It would be nice to acclimate them to my place, and there’s San Francisco, Monterey… All sorts of things they might enjoy.”

His hard-on deflated as the blood returned northward to the big head, and the heavy thoughts came pouring back in with it.

So much for putting this on the back burner.

This conversation was not going to end with him happily rutting away.  He just knew it, even as carefully as he considered his words before speaking them. 

“That’s a possibility, I guess,” he slowly acknowledged.  “But… To be honest, I’m not sure I want to put my kids in a situation that might make them uncomfortable.”  

Rachel leaned back, with a frown so pronounced that it distracted him from the breasts that bobbed in his face. “Why would they be uncomfortable here?”

How did he broach this?  Did he go into ‘on’ mode, and be all politically correct, or did he just blurt it out with all the tact of a mentally impaired hyena?

You just got through saying you didn’t have to be ‘on’ with her, but retarded hyena isn’t going to win you any popularity contest with her.  Why don’t you find some middle ground, dipshit?

He took a quiet, but deep breath and brushed a thumb over her cheek.  “Because Lauren and Tyler’s presence is so prominent here, Rach.  Both of their bedrooms are pretty much shrines. In fact, Robin told me tonight that the sheets on the beds are the same ones the kids slept in the day they died.”

“So that’s what you and my sister were talking about while you were supposedly helping her clean up?”

Any traces of lingering lust had completely disappeared to be replaced by annoyance, and she scooted off of Jon’s lap onto the seat across from him.  

“Among other things, yeah,” he admitted, sitting up straighter and angling toward her.  “Look, I understand why you might wanna leave their rooms somewhat preserved.  I do.  But I don’t want my kids to feel like they can’t be at home here because they might offend you if they moved Lauren’s teddy bear off the bed or played with Tyler’s Legos.” 

His soft tone apparently didn’t do anything to soften Rachel’s pique.

“I would never make your kids feel anything other than welcome, Jon.  That’s ridiculous and you know it.  I can’t believe you and Robin huddled up to talk about whether or not I’ve changed my kids’ beds since they died!”

“C’mon, baby… it wasn’t like that,” he defended.  “Robin’s concerned about you, that’s all.  She feels like you’ve got some unresolved issues because you haven’t gone to the cemetery and that, with our past problems, you might be vulnerable.  I kind of wonder if she isn’t right, Rach.  Maybe it is time to deal with it, huh?”

As quickly as she’d riled, her displeasure fled just as quickly.  Rachel sighed at the same time her shoulders slumped wearily.  “You know…  I’m tired of there being something new to deal with every time we’re together, Jon.  Really, really tired of it.  Can’t we keep this week drama free and just enjoy each other?”

Jon slithered through the warm waves to join her on the other side of the Jacuzzi, and pulled her across his lap.  She immediately settled against him, giving him a warm feeling right in the center of his chest.  “I enjoy this.  I enjoy anything when we’re together and there’s no drama.  We’re just talking, Rach.  Don’t make a big deal out of it.”

“I’m not the one who brought it up,” she mumbled into his shoulder.

“Maybe not, but if I hadn’t we would never talk about this.”  He dusted his lips over her bare shoulder.  “You’ve really never been to the cemetery?”

“No.  The grave thing has always seemed so final.  I live with the reality that they’re never coming home again, but seeing their names etched in slabs of granite with their lives represented by nothing more than a little dash...  I just don’t know how torturing myself with it is going to make any difference.  I won’t love them any more or less if I don’t see their headstones.”

“It will be hard,” Jon conceded.  “But you’re a strong woman, Rachel Braden.  You’ve proven that time and time again.”

She didn’t realize that she’d already done the hardest part.  Living without them all this time, knowing they would never walk through the front door.  That was the hard part – not going to look at grave markers.

“Yanno, Rach,  I’m not really a funeral or cemetery kinda guy but, if you’d go, I wouldn’t mind tagging along with you.”

She lifted her head, face wrinkled with confusion when she asked, “Why?”

“Because they were your whole life.” He shrugged.  “I feel like I should be man enough to acknowledge that and pay my respects.  This little visit might be good for both of us.   Or, if you’d prefer to have a little privacy, then I’ll respect that.”

“No.”  she murmured demurely, studying his eyes in the dim light before coming forward to rest her head on his shoulder once more.

“No, what?”

“I don’t think I want to go alone.  I’m not sure I want to go at all, but somehow the thought of having you with me makes the idea feel less…terrifying.  I’ve always sort of been afraid of what will happen if I went.  What if I get there and I just lose it?”  Rachel slipped her hand between them and pressed it to her chest before blowing a long breath over his shoulder.  “My heart’s racing just thinking about it.  I guess I’ve always subconsciously believed that staying away somehow keeps me protected from the horribleness of it all.  The finality.”

He couldn’t begin to put himself in her shoes.  Would he be the type to stand vigil at a gravestone to be closer to his kids?  Or would he do the same thing she was doing and hide from the pain?

Jon hoped he never had to find out. 

Taking the hand from her chest, he softly kissed the palm.  “Whatever happens, whatever it is that you feel… I’ll be there to talk you off the ledge.   I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“I know,” Rachel nodded and wound her fingers through his, squeezing until he thought she would break either his fingers or hers.  “I love you, Jonny, for a thousand reasons.  I might cuss you during and afterward, but I especially love you for this.”

He chuckled softly.  “If you need to cuss, baby, then let ‘er rip.  I might even let you in on some of my personal Jersey-crafted super filthy swear words if it helps.”

“I might hold you to that.” Finally, that smile he loved so much tipped up the corners of her mouth.  “I should probably get this over with before I lose my nerve.   Let’s go tomorrow, okay?”

She could’ve picked in the dead middle of Halloween night or the crack of dawn.  It wouldn’t have mattered.  If she was willing to go, he’d smile and be thrilled with whatever time she chose.  The important thing was that she was finally facing her past.  When she did, they could move onto the future.

“You bet, baby.  We’ll go first thing in the morning.”