70 - Matchmaker, Matchmaker... again

[5:13 PM]LILAH: I’m home and fine.  Hello to you too. 

[5:15 PM]DOT: Are you happy to be home?

She couldn’t just come out and ask the woman if she was miserable since leaving Tony, but Dorothea would wager that was exactly the case.  Whether anyone knew it or not. 

To have survived the events of her life, Lilah had to have a strong spirit.  Not hearing from Tony would likely be one more thing she weathered without any visible fuss, but Dorothea knew that the women who appeared strongest on the outside often had the deepest turmoil buried inside them.   

[5:17 PM]LILAH: There’s always a familiar comfort in being home.

Vague answer.  Exactly what she had expected.  Once again, her gut was right on the money and she was about to go all-in.  Tony might kill her, but seeing as she never interfered in his life, she thought he might give her a pass – particularly if he found a ‘happily ever after’ as a result.

[5:19 PM]DOT: He looks like hell.  I don’t think he’s sleeping.

[5:21 PM]LILAH: I’m sorry?  I don’t know who you’re talking about.

Unlikely.

[5:22 PM]DOT: Tony.  He got here today.

[5:24 PM]LILAH: Oh.  I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say to that.

[5:25 PM]DOT: Do you love him?  Actually, forget that.  Have you told him how you feel?

The answer was so long in coming that she almost knew what it was before reading the text message.

[5:30 PM]LILAH: Um.  Yes.

Now Dorothea was the one who wasn’t sure what to say.  If she understood correctly, Tony had been told Lilah was in love with him and hadn’t done a damn thing about it.  She was torn between sympathy for Lilah and infuriation at her brother-in-law.  Cursing under her breath, she wanted nothing more than to sweep Tony’s legs out from under him and bounce his ass off the floor.  The man was being a thick-skulled moron. 

Or a Bongiovi.

[5:32 PM]DOT:  I’m sorry.  He’s an idiot. 

[5:34 PM]LILAH: Why are you sorry?  He never promised me anything and my primary concern is his happiness.  If he's happy, I can't ask for anything more.  I have to run now.  Nice talking to you.

Sliding her phone onto the glass-topped table, Dorothea stared at it unseeingly while wondering what, if anything, she should do.  So lost in thought was she that her eyes didn’t budge from the darkened screen until Jon returned, dropping into his chair with a bounce.

“Tony went down to the beach to find the kids and round them up for dinner.  You still want me to grill?”

“I want you to talk to your brother.”

Jon slumped back in his chair, his head flopping against the cushion with a woebegone sigh.  “Get off his back, Dottie.  It’s not our business.”

“Oh, now it’s not our business?  When you were playing Mafioso godfather it was your business, but now that I think he needs his ass kicked in the right direction, we’re supposed to keep our noses to ourselves.  Isn’t that convenient?”

“Chrissake,” he breathed, and she saw the defeat cloud his features.  Jon might not want to do her bidding, but they’d been married long enough him to know that, sometimes, it was just easier to cooperate.  Dorothea didn’t give up when she had her mind set and she would make his life miserable until she got what she wanted.  “What, specifically, do you want me to talk to him about?”

✧✧✧

“Where did your mind go?” Joanna asked in her ear, over the bar’s loud music.  “You disappeared for a minute.”

Lilah smiled and gave a slight shake of her head .  “No place really. I was just thinkin’.”

“About Tony.”

Her friend’s response wasn’t eligible to be a winning answer on Jeopardy, because it wasn’t phrased as a question.

“Kind of,” she admitted, twirling the little blue umbrella that had accompanied her mai tai.  Happiness came in the oddest of forms sometimes.  This…  open honesty that she’d embraced with Joanna since returning from Europe kept her from being unnecessarily stressed, and she thought Joanna seemed more at ease, too.  Nobody was waiting for an unexpected shoe to drop-kick them in the head.  “I was actually thinkin’ about his sister-in-law.  She texted me this evenin’.”

“Sister-in-law?  As in Jon Bon Jovi’s wife?”  When Lilah responded in the affirmative, Jo gave her a look of incredulity.  “Doesn’t that feel completely bizarre?  Chatting with Jon Bon Jovi’s wife?”

“It’s not like it happens on a regular basis,” Lilah laughed.  “Just the once and yeah, I guess it is a little bizarre.  More for what she said than who she is, though.”

“And?”  Jo gestured impatiently with her wineglass in the relative quiet between songs.  They were waiting for Andrew and Zach to take the stage, but the opening act was taking full advantage of their stage time.  “What did she say?”

“That Tony looked like he hadn’t been sleepin’.”

Her friend sighed with something that sounded suspiciously like disgust.  “Look, Lilah.  You’ve been home, what, two weeks?  In that two weeks, I noticed that you’ve become very comfortable with who you are.  You don’t doubt yourself so much.  It’s hard to explain, but it’s like you have an inner peace now.”

“Do I?”  Her innards felt anything but peaceful tonight and she was brimming with self-doubt.  Tony looked like hell, according to Dorothea.  Not sleeping.  What did that mean?  Had Lilah done right by keeping her mouth shut or should she have stayed and kissed the life out of him until he started to think he might be in love with her, too?  

It's too late to be second-guessin' yourself now, Lilah Jane.  What's done is done.  Live with it.

“I would almost say you’re the happiest I’ve ever seen you – if it weren’t for that little bit of gloom I catch sight of every so often.  You miss the guy, and I’m startin’ to think you really do love him.”  She upended the last of her wine and cast a meaningful look in Lilah’s direction.  “Call him.”

“I can’t, Jo.  Actually, I can, but I won’t.  He knows how I feel.  If he doesn’t feel the same, then I’m not gonna chase after him like some stray pup.  That’s embarrassin' for both of us.”

“Good evening to all the fellas and lady-fellas out there,” Zach’s smooth voice came over the sound system, cutting off anything Joanna was going to say.  “I’m Zach and this is Drew, Jeremy, Alan, Jed and Mitch.  We are Lord Landcarp and the Guttersnipes.  Hope you enjoy the show.  One… two… one, two, three!”

✧✧✧

“I don’t believe you,” Jake said belligerently, throwing the football toward Tony with only the slightest wobble.  The kid's hands were big enough to get a better grip on the ball nowadays.

It was Tony’s third day in the Hamptons and he was getting restless.  That new car was begging to be driven and he had a serious itch to submit to those silent pleas, even if he was the only one who heard them.  He thought he would hit the road for home tomorrow morning.

Spreading his hands wide, the fingers of his right hand curled around the tip of the oblong ball.  “Not believin’ it won’t change the truth.”

The ball danced an easy spiral to land in Romeo’s open arms.  “Mom said you had pictures,” the youngest of Jon’s children reminded helpfully.  “Can we see ‘em?”

Jon did an impressive dive to catch the ball that was awkwardly flung by his seven-year-old.  Somehow, he even managed to stay upright as he immediately fired it off to his oldest son.  “For God’s sake Tone, show 'em the pictures so we can stop talking about it.”

The boys had been arguing back and forth amongst themselves for a good ten minutes about the existence of an ‘enchanted forest’.  Somebody had made the mistake of letting them watch “The Brothers Grimm” movie the previous night, and its evilly dark forest had made an impression on Jake.  He was now determined that all forests essentially held the pits of Hell.  Dorothea’s refute had been that Uncle Tony had visited an ‘enchanted’ forest, and that it was nothing like that, placing him firmly in the position of Forest Moderator.

“Alright,” he acquiesced on a chuckle, amused at his brother’s withering glare. 

Tony had to admit he sometimes got a kick out of encouraging the kids in their quarrels.  He loved their passionate fury in defending their stance on… whatever.  Blind faith and trust were beautiful things, and since he didn’t really possess those things any more, he enjoyed seeing them brought to life through his nephews.

“Jess, lemme borrow your laptop, would ya, bud?”

The teenager rolled his eyes, but agreed, tossing the ball to Jake as the whole group trooped into the house.   Slamming of doors and squabbling sons drew Dorothea’s attention from the kitchen, where she was slicing fruit.

“What are you doing?”

“Enchanted forest,” her husband sighed.  “Thanks for that, babe.”

“Oh.”  She darted a quick glare at Tony, having been unhappy with him practically since the minute he hit the door.  He didn't like being at odds with the sister-in-law who had been more like a sister his whole life, but she needed to get over herself.  “Are they on your laptop?”

“Cloud drive.  I didn’t bring a laptop.”

She nodded with approval, giving him the first genuine smile in two days.  “Good.  Connect the computer to the TV.  I want to actually be able to see them this time.  Your camera screen was too small to get a good look.”

After instructing Jesse to find an HDMI cord as well, Tony attached the television to one end of the cord and the laptop to the other.  Accessing the internet, he logged into his cloud drive and found the folder marked ‘Enchanted Forest’.  Technically, he should have called it ‘Tree Tunnel’, but the Lilah-esque tag had seemed more appropriate.

The folder opened and thumbnails of every picture filled the sixty-inch television screen.  Tony hadn’t weeded any of these out before uploading them, leaving dozens of images of Lilah in her bright blue Kentucky sweatshirt fully visible to anyone who cared to look.

“I want to see all of them.  From the beginning,” Dorothea immediately ‘requested’, looming over the back of the couch where Tony and Jon sat side-by-side.

Fuck. 

Ignoring her, Tony selected the last photo in the series – a perfect shot of the sun streaming down through the tree tunnel onto a deserted dirt path.

“There’s your enchanted forest, guys.”

“That’s pretty cool,” was Jake’s reluctant admission as Dorothea’s arm snaked between Tony and Jon, one determined finger clicking the mouse button.  They were immediately taken from the last photo to the first, and Lilah’s amazement sprang to life, her childlike wonder flooding every single inch of the huge plasma screen.

Tony’s hand froze over Dorothea’s as his gut seized.

Having not looked at these pictures in almost two months, nor seeing Lilah herself in half that long, he wasn’t prepared to have her crowding into the room, larger than life.  Her eyes were dancing with sheer delight and that gorgeous fucking smile of hers lit the camera frame brighter than the rays of sunshine filtering through the treetop canopy.

His sister-in-law continued to click and Tony mutely watched the pictures come and go, one after the other.  As each one came into focus, he realized that his memories weren’t as vivid as he’d believed, because they didn’t begin to do her justice.   She was stunning with her messy ponytail, sweatshirt and jeans.  Fresh-faced and REAL.

Then they arrived at the shot she’d actually posed for.  The demure smile and finger-combed tresses draped around her shoulders had his gut seizing anew. 

That… That was morning Lilah.  It’s what her hair looked like when she rummaged around the hotel room, deciding on clothes for the day before she padded off to the shower.  It’s what she looked like after a long, satisfying night in his bed. 

Goddammit, I miss her.

“If somebody really loves you,” Dorothea whispered softly so that he and Jon were the only ones who would hear.  “They’ll walk away.  It might hurt like hell, but they’ll walk away because they think it’s what you want.”

Tony shook his head slowly, still enamored by the woman smiling at him from the television.  “I don’t believe she really loves me.  She just thinks she does.”

“Dude,” his brother sighed apologetically after his wife smacked his shoulder in a silent command to ‘do something’.  “I have tried to stay the hell out of this, but for the sake of my happy marriage, I gotta say it’s like you told Jake.  Not believin’ it won’t change the truth.”