46 - The Lunch Bunch

“Stop,” Tony ordered with a gentle squeeze of her hand as they exited the elevator.  She may not know what was going on in his head or his true ‘feelings’ for her, but she took pleasure in the way he always reached for her hand when they went out together. 

Lilah’s untethered hair slid sideways across her shoulders when she tipped her face up to his.  “Stop what?”

Holding the door to the restaurant, he quirked that left eyebrow at her.  The one that he used to call her bluffs.  “Stop stressing.  This isn’t the Spanish Inquisition, it’s just lunch.”

That remains to be seen.

“I know,” she agreed sunnily, smiling her thanks as she slid by him.  “And I really enjoyed my lunch here yesterday.  I’m cravin’ another one of those turkey sandwiches.”

“You’re a lousy liar.”  He spoke under his breath in deference to the restaurant’s subdued atmosphere – and their proximity to Jon and Dorothea. 

The other couple was already seated at a table in a sunny corner by the window.  Jon had his back to the room while Dorothea sat facing it, mouth curled up in a tight semblance of a smile.  Their positions at the table meant that Lilah and Tony would also be sitting across from one another, and that Lilah would be sitting beside Jon.

This is gonna be a hoot.  I can just tell.

“Hi guys,” the Queen of New Jersey welcomed affably.

Releasing hands, Tony and Lilah parted to take their chairs on opposite sides of the table.  Before Tony sat, he bent to brush a kiss against Dorothea’s cheek.  “Hey.”  Turning to include his brother in the greeting, he added, “How’s it going?”

“Good, man,” Jon returned before swiveling his head and greeting her personally.  “Lilah.”

Sliding into her seat with a vague smile, Lilah pulled at the hem of her sunshine-yellow top with a demure, “Hello, Mr. Bongiovi.  Dorothea, it’s nice to see you again.”

“It’s good to see you, too.  But you don’t need to call him Mister.  He’s just Jon.  Isn’t that right, honey?”

It could very well have been Lilah’s sexually overcharged imagination, but she could swear a heated look passed between husband and wife before Jon responded. 

“Yeah, of course.  No need for formalities.”

The waitress came and, as they perused their menus and engaged in mundane chitchat, it felt a lot like the Bongiovi version of the polite game.  Lilah didn’t care for it much more with them than she did with Joanna.  It was all she could do to tolerate it and keep up her end of the politeness until they got their drinks and submitted their lunch orders. 

The awkwardness had nothing to do with Dorothea or Tony, seeing as she had shared amicable meals with both of them.  It had any and everything to do with Jon and the way he kept sneaking glances at her – or rather her neck, since he was seated on her right.  Curiosity practically vibrated from him, which she supposed she should consider a welcome relief from hostility.  Regardless, she wanted it to go away.

With that goal foremost in her mind, Lilah took the bull very gently by the horns and met Jon’s eyes when asking, “You seem to be interested in my scars.  Did Tony tell you how I got them?”

“No.”

Her eyes skated to Tony, silently asking why.  When he finished his swallow of coffee, he said simply, “You carry the scars.  You decide who gets to know why.”

It would have been easier if he had told Jon, but the thoughtful consideration was one more reason to be in awe of the darkly handsome man seated across from her.  “Thank you,” she said, willing her heart to deflate enough to fit the confines of her ribcage before turning to the older of the brothers.  “Are you interested in knowing?”

“Lilah,” Dorothea interjected.  “You don’t have to, if you don’t want to.”

Keeping her focus on the Bon Jovi front man, she assured his wife, “I think I’d like him to rest assured that I was a victim, not an executioner.”

He had the good grace to look pained at the veiled reference to his insinuation that she killed Amos – pained enough to eat away a touch of her bitterness.  She’d been striving to keep her tone either amicable or neutral and now it wasn’t quite so much of an effort.

“Oh, I’m sure he didn’t – “

“Yes, he did,” Lilah quietly interrupted Dorothea, Jon’s accusation still quite vivid in her mind.  She smirked wryly at him, knowing that they were on the same page.  “But I didn’t kill my husband, Jon.”

“Then who did?”

“That would be his mistress.  The same woman who tried to kill me.”

Dorothea’s quietly indrawn breath coincided with Jon’s uncomfortable shifting in his seat.  He suddenly found his silverware to be utterly fascinating, and Lilah liked to think he looked a little bit ashamed.  Embarrassed, at a minimum. 

Whatever his state of mind, he still managed to ask, “Why?”

“Bluegrass, you don’t have to do this.”

“It’s okay,” she reassured Tony.  “If he doesn’t like me, at least I know it’s because of me and not some vague detective’s report.”  She pushed forward, not allowing anyone the time to comment on that remark.  “My husband got tired of being a grownup, I guess.  House payments, car payments and yard work weren’t as much fun as poppin’ pills and gettin’ high, and I’m not as young or pretty as his mistress.  Trouble was, he didn’t wanna be grown up enough to ask for a divorce, either, and that made her mad enough to take matters into her own hands.”

Lilah's mouth was inexplicably dry and she stole a moment to wet it from the water glass sitting on the white linen tablecloth, to her right.   Savoring the cool liquid as it sloshed through her mouth, she blotted her lips after swallowing. 

“To make a long story short, she tried to shoot me through the front window of a restaurant.  The scars are glass cuts.”

“What?  Do you have a multi-million dollar life insurance policy?”

Lilah shook her head.  “Just one million, and so did he.  He might not have realized he wasn’t my beneficiary, though.  That money would have all gone to my son.”

“If she wanted him so bad, why’d she kill him?”

Jon’s question was one Lilah had asked herself many times, and there was only one answer she’d been able to come up with.  “Drug users aren’t the clearest thinkers in the world, and I can’t pretend to know what was goin’ through her mind.  Last I heard, she still wasn’t real sure, herself, but I guess she was mad because he made her go through all that and I was still alive.  And mad at me, so she tried to frame me for it.”

“That’s awful,” Dorothea sympathized and genuine remorse was highlighted in every nuance of her facial expression.  “I’m so sorry you had to go through something like that.”

Compelled by that magnetic force that always drew her to him, Lilah delivered her heartfelt response directly to Tony.  “I would say that I am too, but it’s the reason I’m sitting here now.  I find that hard to regret.”

✧✧✧

Tony and Dorothea both looked at Jon expectantly.

“Well?” his brother prompted.  “Do you feel like a total asshole now?”

It was a good thirty minutes of pleasant and seemingly friendly conversation since Lilah shared her revelation, and their plates bore nothing but crumbs.  Citing too much water, she had just excused herself to the ladies’ room, leaving Tony the perfect opening.

Jon planted his coffee cup on the table, a thoughtful frown wrinkling his forehead.  “No.  If you’re waitin’ for me to apologize for being cautious, it ain’t gonna happen.”

“Jesus, you stubborn sonofabitch.  I’m waitin’ for you to apologize for thinking I’m a moron when it comes to people, and to admit Lilah’s not some kind of she-devil.”

“I never said you were a moron when it comes to people.”

“No, you just implied that I think with my dick and am a gullible sap that has no common sense.  I’d like an apology.” 

“You’re a dumbass,” Jon scoffed, swirling the dregs of his coffee in the bottom of his cup.  “I did no such thing.”

“That’s exactly what you did,” Dorothea interjected mildly, admonishing her husband’s denial.  “He deserves the apology.”

“I’m not apologizing for something he thought that I thought, when I never thought it.”  Blue eyes locked on blue.  “And if he tells me he’s gonna take her home after Lisbon, then all of the above applies.”

“What’s it to you if I do?  You’ve spent the last hour with her.  Surely to God you can tell she’s a decent person.”

Big brother wasn’t giving up anything without a fight and ungenerously admitted, “She’s okay, now answer my question.  You’re not thinking about doing something stupid are you?”

Something stupid?  Not likely.  After all, he’d purposefully smothered her declaration of love before it could happen.  Tony might be wrong, but he was pretty sure that’s what Lilah had been going to say last night.  The thought had wigged him out a little, prompting his knee-jerk reaction to jump in before it could happen.  Nothing was more awkward than floundering for an answer to that particular declaration and he had no answer – least-wise no answer that wouldn’t have killed her afterglow buzz.

“No, jerkoff, I’m not thinking about ‘doing something stupid’,” he huffed mildly.  “I like her.  I’m keeping an eye on her.  We’re enjoying one another’s company for as long as the tour lasts.  That’s the full extent of my plans.”

“Tony…”  Now he was on the receiving end of Dorothea’s admonishment.  Turning, he found his sister-in-law’s brown eyes full of skeptical concern.  “Are you sure that’s all there is to it?”

No, he wasn’t sure, but why did he have to be?  He just met her a couple of weeks ago.  Nobody had their future planned out in two weeks’ time.

“That’s all there is today.  I don’t know about tomorrow or the day after that.  I’m just enjoying being with a woman who likes me for me.  Is that a fucking crime?”

Husband and wife were both silent, inspecting him as though they expected his head to explode and an alien to pop out and clear the restaurant with his ray gun, a la “Men in Black”. 

“No,” Dorothea was the first to reassure him, folding her hand over his with a supportive squeeze.  “It’s not a crime at all.  And whether it goes miles further down the road, or ends today, we’ll be whatever you need us to be, because we’re family and we love you.  Isn’t that right, Jon?”

His brother was in no hurry to respond, still inspecting him through eyes slitted with thoughtful speculation.  Eventually though, with only minimal prompting from his better half, he nodded slowly.  “Yeah.  I’m tired of butting heads with you.  If Lilah Bennett makes you feel good, then… let her make you feel good.  Just don’t let her rip your heart out, okay?  Because that will piss me off and then she’ll find out just how much of an asshole I can really be.”

He returned Jon’s lop-sided grin with one of his own and held up a fist.  When the brothers tapped knuckles, Tony drawled, “Don’t worry about my heart.  I think it’s safe.”