49 - Girls on Film

It was still dark outside on this Thursday morning, but the current text chime was the fifth during the past ten minutes.  Someone obviously wanted Jon’s attention, despite his intention of sleeping until the goddamn sun was up, and he smacked a hand over the offensive device.  Palming it, he then pivoted his wrist until it was face up and squinted one eye at the screen. 

It was 5:45 and of the eight text messages showing, three were from his publicist, Ken Sunshine.  Two were from Dorothea, and three had come in late last night from Dave. 

Of those messages, the ones from Ken were most concerning.  It had been a long time since he’d gotten any of the early morning emails, calls or messages that usually indicated damage control, and Jon couldn’t think of anything that could have blown up enough to catch Ken’s attention.

Unless Richie’s got something going on and Bon Jovi’s catching the fallout.

Jon levered up on one elbow and swiped his thumb across the screen to find that was not the case.  This had nothing in the world to do with Richie.

[5:40 AM]KEN: These are on AP this morning. Who is she?  They don’t have her name.

Above the typed text were two pictures of Jon and Cassidy, both taken outside the restaurant last night after they’d left Clay.  Each could be perfectly innocent but, after manipulating his fingers to blow up the first one, he found it unlikely that anyone was going to willingly make that assumption.

When Cassidy had stumbled, her plunging neckline had plunged a little deeper than was socially acceptable, and it had taken a moment for her to right it.  This photo had her standing on her own two feet, but Jon still had both hands around her waist and his eyes were obviously riveted to the overexposed cleavage.  He’d never seen desire on his face before, but he figured that’s probably what it looked like.

Moving on to the second one, he damn well knew that’s what desire looked like on Cassidy’s face. 

This picture was an immortalization of the moment when she had smiled so sweetly up at him with so much want brimming in her eyes that Jon feared she was going to kiss him.  That fear didn’t come through the camera lens, though.  His reciprocal smile was… wolfish?  Horny?  Lecherous?  Something well-beyond business associates, at any rate. 

Whoever snapped these photos had done so at the worst possible moment.  Actually, the photographer had probably gotten plenty of perfectly mundane pictures in that same minute, but only the most damning frames were profitable.

Jon flipped onto his back and saved both pictures to the phone.  He had dealt with far worse, but this was still more than the average pain in his ass.  Yes, he’d expected someone to see them together, but a quiet dinner with a third person in the corner of a busy restaurant wasn’t the same as the two of them, alone, raping one another with their eyes. 

It pissed him off because he hadn’t wanted to publicly link himself to Cassidy.  No public link meant that it would be that much easier to keep their relationship in the shadows.

So much for that. 

You didn’t fuck her on the sidewalk.  Ken won’t break a sweat on this one.  Forty-eight hours, tops, before nobody remembers it happened.

[5:49 AM]JON: New singer Obie & I are working with. She tripped. I caught her & she thanked me. End of story.

More or less.

[5:50 AM]KEN: Do I need to get involved?

There was no way to recall the photos, and there were more condemning ones of him out there, anyway.  The black and whites taken in a hotel bed with a topless girl’s hand down his pants…  Those were the gauge he measured by, and these weren’t even in the same embarrassing ballpark.  Deciding that the only thing his publicist could do was spin the story so it wasn’t detrimental, and since Jon viewed it as an inconvenience rather than damaging, there was no point in wasting the energy.

[5:52 AM]JON: No. Let it run its course.

Flicking back to the list of texts, he tapped on Dave’s to find the same “sweet smile” picture Ken had sent, accompanied by a message.

[1:18 AM]DAVE:  Hottest up 2 the min Jovi news alert I evr got.  Thought u might wanna c how pretty u 2 are 2gether. 

[1:18 AM]DAVE:  U DID make it 2 the room b4 givin her what those eyes beg 4, rite?

Jon grunted with annoyance and ignored his friend to see what Dorothea wanted.  The first message was nothing more than the same picture he’d already seen twice, and he swore silently.  Surely she wasn’t going to pick now to call him out on his questionable actions?  After all these years?

[5:30 AM]DOROTHEA: It’s time for us to have that talk.

Or maybe she was.  That message was so ambiguous that it could go either way. 

“Goddammit.”

He didn’t yell, or even speak as loudly as he did during normal conversation, but the sound was still disruptive enough to rouse Cassidy.  She rolled over and scooted into the circle of light cast by his phone to swipe a concerned hand down his bicep. 

“What’s wrong, baby doll?” was her sleep-husky inquiry as he fired off a message to Dorothea stating that he would call shortly.

The easy – and kind – thing to do would be to blow it off as nothing and let her go back to sleep.  That’s what he should do he always handled his own problems.  Hell, this didn’t even qualify as a real problem, but a nuisance.

However, two things made this time different.  One, Cassidy should be aware that her uncle and cousin would be able see her image on innumerable online outlets, if they were so inclined.  There was every possibility that she wasn’t going to be happy about this, but she needed to know that her undercover life might have been exposed.

Two was more complicated and not necessarily a valid reason for parking his irritants at her doorstep.  Cassidy had been the one to help him handle his real problems when no one else could and, even if she did nothing but continue to glide that pacifying hand along his arm, sharing this with her was going to make him less disgruntled.

He pretended it was more about her need to know than his selfishness.

“There are pictures of us last night,” he mumbled, turning the phone so she could look at the most popular shot.  “I got this one three times – from David, my publicist and my wife.”

“Oh.”  She withdrew the touch that he’d found calming and eased onto her back, snugly drawing the covers over her bare breasts.  “Guess I don’t have to worry about takin’ that keepsake selfie with you now.”

He waited for something beyond the mild sarcasm, but she didn’t seem inclined to offer anything further and his silent swearing became more creative. 

“That’s it?” He put the phone back on the nightstand and snapped on the lamp.  She didn’t sound pissed off, but pissed wasn’t the only antonym for happy.  There was always the remote possibility of grief, and seeing her face might help him gauge which direction she was leaning. 

“What would you like me to say?” she offered politely, blinking up at him without any obvious emotion.  “It’s not ideal for either of us, but your biggest problem is your wife.  Seein’ as y’all apparently aren’t that close, the impact on me carries the potential to be a whole lot more life alterin’ and I’m just tryin’ my best to cipher out an appropriate course of action without the aid of caffeine.  That’s all.”

Her altered life was something that had been niggling at the back of Jon’s mind.  Every time he thought about her hiding from her family, the less sense it made. 

“Explain to my why it could be so life altering,” he bade.  “Because I’m not getting the whole name and appearance change thing, or the refusal to fly when you have a valid ID.  Yeah, you have something they think should be theirs, but if it’s as secretive as you’ve led me to believe, then they aren’t going to involve the police.  As long as you’re not in their line of sight, why all the subterfuge?”

She pushed an agitated hand into sleep-mussed hair, shoving it away from her face before pulling the same hand free to let the locks cascade around her features. 

“It’s complicated.”

Jon was starting to get really sick of that goddamn word.

“Big fucking surprise there,” he responded with flat disdain.  “That pretty much covers everything since the day I met you.”

She turned her head sharply to fix him with an offended frown.  “I didn’t proposition you, nor did I decide I was your muse.  My presence here is strictly at your request, so there’s no need to take that tone with me.”

“That’s bullshit.  If the attraction wasn’t mutual, you wouldn’t be here.”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t attracted,” she bit out in response to his sarcastic petulance.  “But a lot of those complications you’re practically cussin’ about are a direct result of the ring on your left hand.  Don’t blame me for all of ‘em.”

“God,” Jon groaned, fingers digging into his eyes before sliding down his cheeks with a sigh of disgust.   She was right.  They both came with their fair share of complications.  “I do not want to argue with you.”

“Then don’t.”  The simple rejoinder was followed by her tossing the blankets aside and sliding from the bed.  “I need coffee and a hot shower so I can think.”

That was the moment in which he strongly considered that it wasn’t a good idea to pursue a relationship with her. 

Considering his marital status, it was an extremely bad idea.  When factoring in her identity crisis, it escalated to massively bad.  Throwing their professional interaction in there…  Well, rolling all the complications into big, ugly ball brought the final tally on the idea of their relationship to an enormously, monumentally, immensely bad idea. 

He had enough aggravations in his life to drive his blood pressure through the top of his skull.  To intentionally invite another stressor into his life – and ask it to stay – was suicide.

If it was anybody but Cassidy, he would grab his guitar and head back to Jersey without a backward glance – but he hadn’t been coughing up a line of bullshit when saying he’d never met anyone quite like her.  She carried that damn happy cloud even when she wasn’t happy, drawing him like in like a moth to a flame – and he liked it.

He wanted to be with her because she was the calm in the middle of the storm.  She offered him a place to catch his breath and unknot the twisted ball of yarn that his mind had become.  With a gentle smile and some common sense, she was gradually unraveling the whole mess and knitting it into… socks.  Something he could use.

Calm in the middle of the storm and socks?  Stay out of the Hallmark store. 

In a non-melodramatic way, she’d given him his life back.  What had he given her in return?  Her shot at a music career was Obie’s doing, since Jon had nixed any notion of her participation in his band.  Dave had given her practical piano skills. 

Shoes.  He gave her shoes. 

If he actually wanted this thing to continue, he was going to have to do better than shoes. 

Those pictures are obviously a bigger issue for her than you imagined they would be.  Find out why and formulate damage control.  For her.

“You shower,” he instructed quietly while following her maneuver and throwing aside the blankets to slip from the bed.  “I’ll order coffee from room service.”

Framed in living room doorway, she stopped to turn and regarded him over her shoulder with a lifted eyebrow.  “You know there’s a little coffeemaker in the other room that won’t cost fifteen dollars?”

“You know this is me being fucking nice instead of arguing?  Go shower.”

Her hands drifted up in negligent surrender as she shook her head and turned an about-face.  She was on the verge of crossing into the bathroom just as he reached the foot of the bed.    

“Cassidy,” he beckoned.  When her footsteps halted, he approached to slowly pull her into his embrace.  Jon wasn’t sure how welcome it would be, but she allowed him to fold her close and dust her temple with a kiss.  “I willingly complicated my life to get to know you, and I have no regrets.   It would just be nice if something about this was easy.”

Delicate arms slid around his ribs and squeezed.  “Our time alone is easy.”

It was. 

Their time alone was the easiest thing he’d experienced in years.