15 - Things That Go Bump in the Night

The coolness of the cotton was refreshing against his heated skin when Tony crawled between the sheets of his hotel bed wearing nothing more than a pair of boxers.  Folding the arms of his glasses into one another, he placed them on the bedside table and burrowed his face into the pillow with a sigh of resignation.

He spent too much time with Lilah today.  He had too much to drink.  It had been too long since he got laid. Those were the reasons why a simple kiss – two – had left him aching long after she slid inside her hotel room.  They doubled as reasons why he’d been compelled to take full advantage of a hot shower to relieve that ache. 

How else did he explain it?  She sure as hell wasn’t ‘hot’ in the classic sense of the word, and she wasn’t exactly a seductress.  Overexposure and mild intoxication were the only plausible explanations. 

The covers had just been shrugged up over his shoulder when the tinny strains of Train’s “Hey, Soul Sister” blared into the quiet room.  The accompanying vibrations of his phone against the faux-wooden nightstand pretty well startled the shit out of him.

“Sonofabitch,” he mumbled, snatching up the iPhone and squinting at the screen made more intensely lit by the blackness around him.  Not that he needed to look at the screen.  He knew who was calling, and the fact that she was calling at one in the morning was immediately upsetting.

“Dorothea,” Tony answered gruffly.  “What’s wrong?”

“Relax,” was her soothing reassurance.  “He’s fine.  Or he is until I take the Bible out of the drawer and beat him unconscious with it.”

He fell back into the pillow with a gentle laugh.  Jon still hadn’t settled down after the surgery, and his sister-in-law was paying the price. 

“Driving you up the damn wall, is he?”

“Little bit.  Can you be bribed to come and listen to him bitch while I go grab a couple hours sleep?”

“Goddammit, you would be bitching, too, if they impaled one of your joints,” Jon grumbled from the background.  “Tony, get over here before I end up divorced!”

He chortled, imagining the supremely pissed off look that his brother had trademarked many, many years ago.  Dorothea was damn-near a saint, but even saints needed a break when their sinner husbands were on a rip. 

“Shit, I didn’t even think,” she apologized before he could assure her that he would be right there.  “Are you alone?  You’re not still with that strange woman are you?  I didn’t interrupt…?”

Tony’s humor deflated considerably, although he couldn’t say why.  Dorothea hadn’t said anything offensive or inappropriate.  Lilah was strange in the sense that they didn’t know her, so he brushed it aside and answered the simplest of the questions. 

“Yeah, I’m alone.  Gimme a minute to get dressed and grab a taxi.  I’ll come hang out with him a while.”

“You’re a God-send.  Have I ever told you that?”

“No,” he drawled, his relaxed humor restored by the weariness in Dorothea’s voice.  “And, come morning, I doubt you’ll admit to saying it this time.”

A quiet laugh filtered through the phone line.   “Shut up and come rescue me, little brother.”

Throwing the covers back, he blindly reached for his glasses and assured her he was on the way.  The button was secured in the hole at the waistband of his jeans at the same time the front desk answered the request for a cab, and he pushed his head into a t-shirt.  Shoes, socks and a careless hand through his hair had him ready to roll, shrugging into his leather jacket and seating his wallet in the pocket.

Tony turned the doorknob, expecting to emerge into a desolate hall.  Instead of being silent and deserted, Tony heard a little yelp of surprise and spun toward it.  Mere steps away from his door – wearing dark-rimmed glasses, penguin pajama pants and an oversized Jovi shirt - was an obviously startled Lilah.

“What the hell are you doing out of your room?” he growled before stopping to consider his words.  Maybe he’d been thinking about her traveling solo more than he realized, because instinct had him immediately leaping into the role of protector.  “You’re alone and in a foreign country.  It’s not safe to be wandering around at this time of night.”

Her reaction to his protectiveness? 

She laughed,bare toes wiggling against the corridor’s elegantly patterned flooring.  Burgundy toenails stood out boldly against both her pale skin of her feet and the muted gold carpeting.  Her fingers absently fluffed the hair at her crown as she gave him a crooked grin. 

“It’s the Four Season, Anthony, not Motel 6.  It’s perfectly safe for me to get a bucket of ice from the ice machine.”

The careless, blasé attitude as she impudently swung the silver bucket from her fingertips fired up his testosterone – along with the way she used his given name,  “ANN-thuhn-nee”.  Tony jammed clenched fists into his pockets to keep from pushing her against the wall and shaking some sense into her.   It wasn’t his problem if she wanted to be stupid.

Smothering a sigh, he turned toward the elevator.  “Whatever.  I’ve gotta go.  Try and keep yourself outta trouble.”

“Wait.”  A feminine hand curled into the crook of his elbow and the leather squeaked as she tugged to keep him in place beside her.  “Where ya goin’?  Is somethin’ wrong?”

“Hospital.  Nothing’s wrong.”

Her mouth opened to say something, then closed without speaking.  She wrinkled her nose before silently repeating the process.  Finally, he had to ask,  “You got something to say, Bluegrass?”

She saucily tipped up her chin and informed him, “Yes, as a matter of fact I do.  I hope you don’t think you’re gonna try and drive with all you drank tonight.”

Tony lifted an eyebrow, staring down into her determined face and wondering what she would do about it if he did.  Based on the set of her jaw, she was prepared to wrestle him to the ground.

Which I find oddly appealing right now.

Enough so that he softened his stance a little, but couldn’t keep from blandly inquiring, “So it’s okay for you to be stupid, but not me?”

“Dammit Jersey, those are two totally different circumstances.  I’m walkin’ fifteen feet down a hallway and you’re out ridin’ a heavy piece of killer machinery to God to knows where.  Big difference.”

“Not really,” he contradicted quietly, admittedly a little touched by her concern. 

Nobody was involved enough in the different aspects of his life to know when to worry about that kind of stuff.  He had drinking buddies, work buddies, women he fucked, and family.  The women never said a word.  Sometimes work buddies were drinking buddies, but they would never question him that way.  And his family probably didn’t know how much he drank – or when it might interfere with other obligations. 

Lilah had known him all of five minutes and had no qualms about demolishing all those lines.  She was the most peculiar combination of bold and meek.  He never knew which one he was going to get.

“I’m taking a cab.”

“Oh.”  Lilah let her hand drop.  “Good.  I’m glad.”

“Now will you get the damn ice and go back to your room, so I can leave?”

This time she didn’t argue, breezing past him and returning in less than a minute with the cold bottle.  She shoved the key card in her door and was half-way across the threshold when she stopped and swiveled her head toward him.  “Good night, Anthony.  Be careful.”

✧✧✧

The door closed behind Lilah with a quiet ‘click’, and she sank against it, the cold ice bucket tucked against her chest.   There was a now-familiar sensation starting in that spot at the base of her skull, and whirring like a peculiar type of electricity through her shoulders and down her spine.  It was accompanied by a foreboding that rumbled in her stomach like nausea.    

She hated this feeling.

Originally, when she closed the door, she expected to be flooded with humiliation.  Penguin pants and no bra, for Pete’s sake!  Now she couldn’t even make herself care.  Hell, she wished that were the case instead of this… this melancholy that stole her breath.

He’s fine.  You just saw him. 

But was he?  Would he tell anybody if he wasn’t?  He started the conversation fine, as the same Tony she’d spent the day with.  Then, somewhere near the end, the loneliness practically rolled off of him, pulling at her heart.  Did he even realize?  Was loneliness why he drank the way he did?

Lilah Jane, you’ve spent one evenin’ with the man and you’ve got him pegged with a drinkin’ problem. Is that really fair?

She blinked back the prickling of tears.  It may not be fair, but she couldn’t help that his behavior tonight coincided precisely with her… premonitions… about Anthony Bongiovi.

Pushing herself away from the door, Lilah exchanged the little metal bucket for her phone that was on the bedside table.  She burrowed her way under the covers, with it in her hand and plopped it out once she had settled onto her back.  The well-used round button at the bottom of the screen pressed easily under her touch and brought up the familiar logo on her screen.

Did she dare text him?  Could she ever hope to sleep if she didn’t?

A quick swipe replaced the logo with a human image, and Lilah tapped the messaging icon at the bottom of the screen.  It only took a moment to find the newest entry in her contact list, and she stared at the letters until they blurred together. 

The beauty of a text message is that you only need one second – half a second – of courage to poke that ‘send’ button.  Then it’s too late to do anything about it. 

1:45 AM:  Would it be too much trouble to let me know you arrived safely?  Please and thank you… Lilah

Tap the damn button Lilah Jane.  You know your heart is going to explode if you don’t.

She tapped the damn button. 

If he decided she was an annoying pain in the keister, then so be it.  That was entirely his prerogative.  She’d rather know he was okay than worry herself to death.  Backstage wouldn’t mean a hill of beans if he wasn’t there safe and sound.