12 - Different Kind of Fairytale

“Well, damn.  How many husbands do you have?  I know you guys marry your cousins in Kentucky, but I didn’t realize you married all of them.”

Lilah laughed despite herself, finding humor in the familiar inbreeding jokes that often plagued her part of the country.  Considering the scowl that had darkened his features a moment ago, his deliberate misconception and attempt at light-heartedness were much appreciated.  It put her mind in a different direction, although she wouldn’t mind revisiting the direction that his casually uttered ‘baby’ had taken her a few minutes ago. 

“I have two previous husbands.  Andrew’s father – Walter – was the first.  We were married for nine years.”  She couldn’t contain the bitterness that puckered her face.  “Amos and I were together seven.  No kids.”

“Walter and Amos?”  His curious eyebrow kicked up.  “How old were these guys?”

“They’re both younger than me, if you can believe it with those awful names.  Crazy thing is they were both named after their fathers.  Walter Silas Bennett, Junior and Stanley Amos Spitzel, Junior.” 

“Jesus,” he snorted in disbelief.  “You’re making that up.”

Lilah’s nose wrinkled with distaste.  She’d always hated her husbands’ names.  Walter’s surname was the only bearable one in the bunch.  It was part of the reason she’d gone back to it after her second divorce.  That and it made things less confusing for the schools when she and Andrew had the same last name.

“I wish.  I told Walter there was no way in hell I was namin’ our baby Walter Silas the Third.  Two men bein’ cursed with it was enough.  I told Amos the same thing durin' the brief time we talked about havin’ kids.”

“I assume your next husband isn’t gonna have ‘Junior’ tacked behind his name?” 

“There will be no next husband.  I’m done with marriage.”

No matter how tempting it may be in the future, she knew it was in her best interest to stay away from marriage.  If she didn’t have any better judgment than to choose those two… 

Don't be so daggone hasty to damn your judgment of people.  You knew you shouldn't have married them, but you thought you could make it work anyway.  Besides, Walter was understandable.  Sort of.

They had been young.  She moved out of her parents’ house to live with a couple of girlfriends, and somehow that turned into living with him.  Of course that was after he convinced her to ditch her long-term boyfriend who was now a well-respected doctor, a mistake Lilah relived over and over in her dreams.

The whole thing had happened right before the onset of the Gulf War and, seeing as Walter had been in the reserves, he wanted to make sure she was ‘taken care of’ if he got deployed.  So what did he do?  He showed up at the office where she worked part-time, covered in grease from his own job as a mechanic, and said, “Wanna get married tomorrow?”  Like a silly naïve girl who was afraid no one else would ever ask, she did.  In the end, his ass didn’t go anywhere – including work, most of the time.

She eventually got tired of supporting him and listening to his pipe dreams.  He got tired of her not supporting his pipe dreams.  All in all it was an amicable divorce, even if he did have a woman from Michigan and her three kids moved into their house the same week she moved out.

Amos, however, was another story.  Joanna had actually set them up, and he was Joanna’s husbands’ best friend.  Still, nobody could have predicted what was going to happen with him.

Nobody could’ve predicted that dumbass and his skankalicious whore.

“You sound pretty determined about never getting married again,” Tony commented carefully, lighting another cigarette.

“You’ve been married and divorced.”  Lilah turned the tables on him with a knowing look.  She heard that his wife cheated on him, although she couldn’t be certain whether or not it was true.  “Rumor is that it wasn’t fun for you.  Do you wanna do it all over again?”

He blew a stream of smoke up into the air, so as not to cloud Lilah with it and slowly admitted, “No.  And I don't even have the scars you do.”

But he did.  They were just different than hers, because they weren't readily visible to the naked eye.  Anthony Bongiovi had no idea just how well she could see his emotional wounds and, oddly enough, how strongly they affected her.  Her heart wrenched every time she got a glimpse of one.

“Everybody has scars.”  She shook her hair to settle around her shoulders and tucked both hands under her thighs.  “Some you can see, some you can’t.  The scars you’re talkin’ about don’t have anything to do with my being soured on marriage.”

“So one of your husbands didn’t give those to you?”

Technically - and from a legal standpoint - no, but that didn’t mean she wanted to rehash it here and now.  Maybe some day she would tell him about that train wreck, but not now.  Not when they were having such a good day.

“You know the difference between a regular fairytale and a redneck one?”she asked with a grin, raising her voice a bit to be heard above the noisy laughter of the men at the next table.

His forehead wrinkled and he frowned around his cigarette before shaking his head in the negative.

“Well, instead of starting out ‘once upon a time’, a redneck fairytale starts out ‘y’all ain’t gonna believe this shit’."

His chuckle blended in with those of the neighboring men, and Lilah breathed easier.  "Trust me when I tell ya that particular story has all the makin's of a redneck fairytale.  Why don't we talk about somethin’ else?”

Tony blew out a harsh stream of smoke and flicked the ashes from the tip of the cigarette more animatedly than he normally would.  Suspecting it was one thing, but she’d practically confirmed his belief that some son of a bitch had hurt her bad enough to leave those scars behind.  What kind of pussy had to hurt a woman like that?  It pissed him off to no end, and it would whether it was Lilah Bennett or any other woman.

She was right about scars, but at least he didn’t have everybody in the damn world looking at his and wondering about them.  Whatever redneck thing had happened, she bore the marks that would remind her of it every day for the rest of her life. 

“Tony?”

Blinking, he focused on the unscathed fingers that tentatively touched the back of his hand. He’d gotten so mentally engrossed in beating the hell out of whatever kind of lowlife would disfigure a woman that he forgot where he was for a minute. 

“Yeah.  Yeah, we can talk about something else.”

Needing to take a harsh reality-check, he stepped back from his earlier warmth.  It wasn’t his place to be outraged on behalf of Lilah Bennett, and he harshly revoked his earlier thought about her reasons for being in Europe.

She was a sweet, slightly-nutty fan, but she wasn’t here for him.  That shit just didn’t happen unless the woman was a psychotic stalker with an untreated chemical imbalance.  He was a video guy with a famous brother.  So she didn’t want to meet Jon.  Getting backstage would get her at least a quick brush with Richie.

 “Stop,” Lilah interrupted his conversation with himself, further luring him out of his mind with the soft sweep of her thumb across his knuckles.

Letting his attention drift from their hands to her face, he felt the same eerie sensation as the first night – like she could see inside him.  The feeling intensified when she said, “Whatever you were thinking just now…  You’re wrong.”

Sincerity resonated in her soft declaration, and it was Tony’s turn to shiver.  Was she some kind of mind reader?  How did she know what he was thinking?

She doesn’t, Nancy Drew.  She’s telling you that you can't possibly know about her ex and the scars. 

He didn’t know what else she saw while looking in his eyes, but it made her snatch her hand away and mumble an apology. 

“I didn’t mean to be so presumptuous.”

“S’ok.”  Another big dose of nicotine and he relaxed a little.  “I was the one being presumptuous.  It's none of my business.”

The words of a thousand books swam over her face, dying to be spoken, but she didn’t utter a single one of them.  Instead, she picked up the dessert menu card and scraped her thumbnail along the bottom edge while reading.  The only sound she made was another one of those damn food purrs.

He was thankful for the opportunity to move away from the uncomfortable topic, even if this was likely to be uncomfortable in an entirely different way.

“See something you like?”

Lilah’s left cheek creased with a half-smile.  “Mm.  Bailey’s cheesecake.  I didn’t know somethin’ so decadent existed.”

Tony wasn’t particularly a fan of the Irish cream whiskey, but whiskey flavored cheesecake couldn’t be all bad.   Not that he wanted.  He really just wanted to know if it would prompt any different noises from her than the stew had.  If it did, he might be in trouble, but he it was a risk he was willing to take.

He snuffed out his cigarette and offered, “Want a piece?”

She nibbled thoughtfully on her full bottom lip, capturing his attention as she continued to study the little card.  The nibble turned into a pink pucker as she pondered her answer.

Stop staring at her mouth.

“I’m awful, but yes.  I at least wanna taste.”  The dessert card went back between the salt and pepper shakers.  “Do you wanna share a piece with me?”

No way in hell.

Getting tangled up in her culinary erotica was a crap idea.  It was distracting enough to be across the table while she made orgasmic sounds of food-love, but sharing in it?  Monumentally bad idea.

Why?  Because you won’t be able to stop from wondering if she makes that noise when other things are in her mouth?  If you hadn’t turned her down last night, you would know.

He crossed his ankles under the table, squirming a little on the hard bench.  “Nah.”  Tori wandered by and he flagged her down.  “I’m just gonna have another drink.”