65 - Home Cooking

Lilah slowly spun on her heel, spurring a creamy skirt to swirl around her ankles like a chiffon cloud.  What looked to be early-afternoon sunshine beamed through the high windows, dancing with the rhinestones sprinkled over her strappy shoes as she took in the scene with utter bewilderment.

She had no idea where she was.  The room was remarkable, with its brocade curtains and dark, ornate furnishings, making her certain that she’d never been here before.   The stunning mahogany buffet table, the exquisite chandelier dangling above it, the plush Persian rugs… Nothing was familiar, save the peculiar assortment of people milling about in the party-like setting.

Morgan was amiably chatting with Carol Bongiovi and Lilah’s mother while covertly dividing her real attention between ogling Jon and glaring daggers at Dorothea.  Angel had been talking to Matt Bongiovi and two of Lilah’s uncles, but cutely informed them that their height was causing a crick in her neck, so she moved to the other side of the room where Tico and David were smoking a cigar with Lilah’s father.  Andrew and Zach were having an animated conversation with Richie and Hugh while Joanna and her husband, Steve, were passing the time of day with Jon and Dorothea.  Mike Rew and a few of the crew guys were laughing and cutting-up over in the corner with Mr. Bongiovi and a couple of Lilah’s cousins.

Everybody who was anybody in Lilah’s world was here and getting along famously.  The only person that seemed to be missing from the fray was Tony. 

The thought had no more firmed in her mind before she felt a strong arm slide around her waist from behind. 

“You having a good time, Bluegrass?” he inquired softly, dropping a kiss on her nape and following it with a gentle nuzzle of his nose. 

She twisted around at the familiar voice, her heart beating to beat of the band even as she frowned up into his face.  “Jersey?” 

“Jeez, baby,” he chuckled, his other arm producing a cocktail with a bright orange umbrella poking jauntily over the rim.  “I was only gone long enough to get you a drink.  You forgot me already?”

Stepping out of his hold and accepting the drink, Lilah realized that for the first time ever, she was seeing Tony in something besides a pair of jeans or shorts.  Black slacks were joined with a matching open vest and shiny boots.  His creamy dress-shirt was unbuttoned at the top, allowing a tuft of dark hair to be exposed below his throat, and the sleeves were casually folded back to expose his muscular forearms.

In short, he looked semi-formally sexy.  The indulgent smile twitching at his mouth and the humor lurking behind his glasses only served to amplify that sexiness in Lilah’s mind.

She lifted a hand, almost afraid he would disappear if she cupped her palm over his cheek.  “I missed you.”

Lilah’s eyes snapped open and a soft gasp filled the quiet night.  It took on that single breath for her to realize her pulse was going wild for no real reason. 

So it began… So it continues.

In the past year, she’d had more dreams about Tony than she could count.  They didn’t come every night, but there were usually at least two in any given week and sometimes as many as four.  Those dreams quickly became addictive and she came to crave them.  Nearly every one was different and each gave her some new tidbit of insight into the man of her obsession.  She’d ‘learned’ an untold wealth of information about him through those dreams. 

Muffling a sigh, Lilah rolled onto her side.  With a quick sniffle, she buried her cheek into the pillowcase, forcing the bright striped cotton absorb the droplet that leaked from her dampened eyes.

The dream was different this time because, unlike the dreams between HullabaLOU and Europe, she knew it wasn’t intuition or premonition producing the film reel in her head. 

This dream was borne only of yearning and disappointment.

✧✧✧

“So, tell me what all you did while I was away.” 

Lilah slid a steaming plate of Andrew’s favorite chicken casserole on the table in front of him and offered him a freshly baked crescent roll.  Her son had simple tastes and when she’d called earlier today and invited him over for a home-cooked meal, this is what he had chosen. 

After her chat with Richie, she had drug herself out of bed and taken a quick, hot shower.  Dwelling any longer would only stir memories of her last shower – in Europe – and she was already leaning toward melancholy.  Her memories of Tony were supposed to be fond and pleasant, and they would be.  It would just take a bit for the bittersweet to fade enough for those qualities to shine through, undiluted.

In the meantime, it was her objective to keep her mind and jet-lagged body busy.

She’d put laundry in the wash, vacuumed and dusted the whole of her one-bedroom garage apartment in under an hour.  That’s when she’d gotten the idea to cook dinner for her darling only child.  Cooking after a two-month absence meant she needed groceries and Lilah had made the sojourn to her local Walmart to stock the cupboards.

On the way, she went to her favorite car wash and paid an exorbitant amount of money for black beauty to receive a thorough and loving hand-wash.  Joanna’s husband had covered her car as requested, but the pre-existing kitty tracks still needed to be removed. 

Lilah grinned to herself as she hovered over the young man’s shoulder, making sure he treated her car with the respect it deserved.  She needn’t have worried.  If there was such a thing as love at first sight, this boy had fallen for her car.  Hard.

Home again to lug groceries up the stairs and then it was time to cook dinner.  She’d told Andrew dinner would be ready at six, which traditionally meant he would be there at six-thirty.  The knock on the door had come at six twenty-seven.

Familiar comfort at its finest.  It was good to be home.

Liar.  You’d rather be on the back of Tony’s motorcycle or wallerin’ around in a big ole bed with him.

She shushed the obnoxious little voice with a firm hand.  It wasn’t time for Tony memories yet.  She wasn’t ready, willing or able to deal with them and, until she was, the hungry teenage boy gobbling up her simple casserole would receive her full focus and attention – as he should.

“Mmm…” he now hummed with appreciation around the gooey confection of chicken and cheese.  “Oh, Mom…  I forgot how much I love this.”

Lilah laughed as she served up her own smaller portion and joined him at the dinette table in her tiny kitchen.  No matter how often she prepared this dish, he always said the same thing. 

“Nice to know your old Mom is still good for something,” she teased, pouring herself a glass of tea.  “Have you decided which demo you’re going to send?”

“Mm.”  He swallowed his last bite and washed it down with a drink of soda.  “We’ve got it narrowed down to two.  Zach thinks ‘Drifter’ would be more commercially acceptable, but I’m trying to convince him that ‘Underside of the Ink’ shows depth in our style and instrumentation.”

“Well, then, send both.  When I talked to him this mornin’ he said you were welcome to send as many as you like.”

“You talked to him?”

He didn’t look particularly happy about Mommy’s fingers being in his ‘career’, and Lilah didn’t want her fingers to be there, so she wasted no time assuring him, “I just wanted to know how he came by your phone number and thank him.  That’s all.  Whatever happens with your band is between you and him.”

“Oh, okay.  That’s fine.”  Another forkful popped into his mouth and he mumbled around it, “How did he get the number, anyway?”

Now that she wasn’t completely jet-lagged, it was probably time that she gave her son at least a general outline about her European vacation.  This was the best possibly way to ease into her Tony memories, anyway.  She would be able to keep it light and upbeat for Andrew’s sake.

“Do you remember the night I called you from somebody else’s phone?”

“Yeah.  You borrowed it from a friend.”

Nodding slowly, Lilah put the fork down beside her barely-touched dinner and wiped the corners of her mouth with a napkin.  She propped her elbows on the table, and brought her chin to rest atop clasped hands.  “You probably think I went to Europe to stalk Richie.”

“Well…  Yeah.”  One slim shoulder lifted negligently as he shoveled another bite of food onto his fork.    “You’ve had a thing for him as long as I can remember.”

“I have.  I did.  And I still like him, but he’s not the reason I spent two months in Europe.  There was someone else that I was hoping to meet.”

“Oo-kay.  Anybody I might know?”

Lilah gave another slow nod while tucking hair behind her left ear.   “Kind of.”

“Whoa!  What happened to your neck?”

Her hand immediately sought to cover the fading marks left by an unfortunate evening in Istanbul. 

Shit Lilah Jane!  This is why you very purposefully wore your hair down this evenin’ instead of pullin’ it up in this godforsaken August heat!

Kentucky was notoriously hot and sticky in August and she would love to have felt the cool breeze of the air conditioner blowing across her neck, but she hadn’t want any attention drawn to the faint remnants of her scratches.  Now that she’d outed herself, though… 

She ran her middle finger along the thin, shallow trench that had been dug beneath her jawline and then down matching marking that ran perpendicular to it.  It was difficult to decide how much she should tell the son who had had become very protective since the Amos ‘incident’.  She hadn’t wanted to tell him at all, but that was clearly unrealistic.

“I ran into a couple of unhappy people at a bazaar in Turkey.  Wrong place, wrong time kinda thing.  It wasn’t a big deal.”

Andrew’s fork hit the table with an abrupt clatter and the child she could still clearly remember as a cherub-faced little boy glowered unhappily at her.  At that moment, he was almost the spitting image of his father on the day they’d gotten married.

“Dammit!  I TOLD you to take Mace or a Taser with you!”

“Watch your language,” she chastised him blandly, pinching the end off of a crescent roll just to have something to do with her hands.  “I’m still your mother, and I told you that I would have taken something if the airlines allowed me to carry it on the plane.   But they don’t and it turned out fine, baby.  The man I was hoping to meet was almost as unhappy about it as you are.  He was nice enough to…  keep his eye on me for the rest of the tour.  To make sure I was safe.”

“Well, thank God for that, but I’m still not happy with you,” he huffed, now discontentedly stabbing at his dinner.  “Who’s the guy?”

The man I wish I’d found before your Daddy and Amos.  The man who I wished I’d been brave and confident enough to claim without apology.  The one I wish I had offered a child to.

Obviously, none of that was ever going to pass through Lilah’s lips in a conversation with her – albeit mature – teenage son.  Mommies were supposed to be the smart, responsible ones – at least in the eyes of their children.

“Bon Jovi’s video director.  His name is Tony.”

His eyebrows crinkled together and he turned his head at a slight angle, searching his mind for something.  “Wait.  Isn’t he… Jon’s brother?  Seems like you’ve mentioned him a couple of times?”

“Yes, I probably have.  He’s the one I went to ‘stalk’.”

The brief bout of drama had passed, as it so quickly does with teenagers, leaving Andrew snickering and rolling his eyes.  “How did that work out for ya?”

She shrugged, tucking one bare foot under her bottom on the wooden kitchen chair and keeping it casual.  “It got me a temporary body guard.”

“And I know how much you love being told what to do,” Andrew drawled knowingly, while dishing up a second helping of casserole.  “Even if he was a nice guy, I bet you were glad to say goodbye.”

Inhaling deeply, she considered going with the flow and lying to her son.  He didn’t need to know that his mother was pitifully rejected by a man.  Again.  There was something just… pathetic about that.

Maybe not, but he deserves to know you found some happiness.  Don’t you think he wants that for you, after watching you struggling through last summer?

“No, baby.  I wasn’t glad at all…”