93 - After Midnight

Jon was still feeling good when he got back to Mercer Street around eleven o’clock.  Whistling softly to himself, he slithered out of his puffy black coat and tucked it into the closet before setting the alarm system and shutting off the lights in the foyer.

Tonight had been a lot of fun, and it was a pleasure to know Petey felt the same way.  She fit seamlessly in with his kids, making it feel almost too easy. 

You’ve done the hard stuff already.  Now it’s time to enjoy the fruits of your labor.

Unbidden, his libido reared its sleepy head at that particular thought.  He had wanted to bury himself in her tonight and sleep with her little body tucked up against his, but that wasn’t going to happen with the kids in residence.

The worn soles of his boots were silent as he walked across the kitchen tile, opening the refrigerator door to fish out a bottle of water.  Unscrewing it, he realized it was too soon to immerse Petey any further in their lives than she already was.  In particular, he wasn’t ready to flaunt his sex life in front of his teenagers.

The clear plastic bottle crinkled in his hand when he lowered it from his lips and replaced the lid.  A sneaky grin was hidden under his hand as he wiped the lingering moisture from his lips.

But as soon as the kids were back at Dorothea’s, he was eager to resume an active sex life with his imp. 

Things were different now that the ‘L’ word had been thrown out there, but he hoped she would still be the same adventurous lover that he’d come to know.  Sure, he wanted to make slow love to her sometimes, but a hot round of kinky sex was made all the hotter by a good case of possessiveness.  There was something about claiming a woman as yours, then marking her and proving it in no uncertain terms.  Call him a caveman, but it was the truth.

With any luck, he’d convince Petey to spend tomorrow night with him so that he could do just that.

The thought of claiming had him thinking about that fucking joke of an engagement ring she was wearing when he found her.  If it ever got to that stage of the game for them, he would show her what a real engagement ring looked like.  You damn sure wouldn’t need reading glasses to see the stone in its setting.

Tossing the empty water bottle into the recycle bin, he meandered down the hall to the boys’ room, contemplating a piece of jewelry for her.  Not a ring, but something significant enough so that they both knew she was his.  He would have to think about it.  There was no point in rushing into anything.

Opening the bedroom door of his youngest, he silently thanked his daughter as a slice of light fell across the carpet and allowed him to make out the boys’ silhouettes in the bunk beds.  Stephanie had tucked them in for the night while he took Petey home.

Jake was lying on his face, as usual, and his bare left leg was hanging off the side of the mattress.  With a rueful shake of his head, Jon tucked it back under the covers so the kid wouldn’t slide all the way out of the top bunk and onto the floor.

Romeo was on his right side, curled into a ball.  His mouth was open, snoring softly. 

Jon smiled and scooped up his stuffed Mario that had tumbled from the bed.  Kissing the little boy’s rumpled head, he tucked Mario under the covers with him.  Romey wouldn’t go to sleep without the stupid thing, but he always ended up tossing it overboard a couple times a night.

Little ones taken care of, he moved onto Jesse’s room.

The light was still shining under the door, indicating that his teen son was still awake.  Knocking softly, Jon turned the knob. 

“Jess?”

“Yeah, Dad?”

Pushing the door open, Jon leaned a shoulder against the door jamb and crossed his arms comfortably.  “How ya feelin’ about your date?”

He had to give it to his boy.  Even when Jon accompanied him to deliver Ashley back to her parents, he’d still had enough guts to give the girl a hug and kiss on the cheek.  Jesse also displayed enough poise to thank Ashley for going out with him and ask if he could call her later.

His teenage son was smooth.

Eyes glued to the laptop screen, the boy shrugged.  “It was okay.”

Blasé.  It was uncool to be too excited about these things.  Jon remembered that much.  “You gonna ask her out again?”

“Yeah.  Probably.”

That was a definite yes, with a little bit of ‘as soon as possible’ thrown in, if his teen to adult handbook was up-to-date.  Enough about the boy’s love life, and on to his.

“And Petey?  What do you think about her?”

Jesse’s eyes finally lifted to Jon’s, and his forehead wrinkled as though that was the stupidest question he’d ever heard.  “She saved my butt.  As far as I’m concerned, she rocks.”

Jon chuckled, and nodded with lifted eyebrows.  “That she did.”  He grew a little more serious.  “How about her being my girlfriend?  Does she still rock?”

Disinterest coated his son’s face, and he went back to his computer.  “I told you yes before she went out with us.  Do you really care that much that we have to go through it again?”

“Yeah, I do.  This is my first new girlfriend since the divorce - in more than thirty years, actually – so I want to know my kids are okay with it.  Got a problem with that?”

The teen sighed.  “No.  I guess it’s good that you want our approval, in case she was a heinous witch.”  One bored hand came up to scratch at his chest, right in the middle of the Yankees logo on his t-shirt.  “But dad, seriously.  If we’re okay with Uncle Tony and Mom, don’t you think we’re gonna be okay with Petey?  The Goth wannabe has way less potential for emotional scarring.”

Jon laughed delightedly, his heart light.  Count on a kid to keep it all in perspective.  “Alrighty then.  On that note, I guess I’ll call it a night.”  He straightened himself in the doorway.  “See you in the morning, bud.  I love you.”

“Love you too, Dad.”

Closing the number two child’s door, Jon’s mouth tipped up in a smirk.  He really did love his kids.  They surprised him often, but they were each incredible in their own ways.  He silently thanked their mother, yet again, for her firm hand in their lives while he wasn’t able to be there.

Taking a few more steps down the hallway, he stopped in front of Stephanie’s room, once again noting the light beneath the door.  Knocking once, he poked his head in to find her sprawled on her stomach atop the bed, fuzzy socked feet spinning circles in the air as she absorbedly studied her Kindle, music playing quietly from the iPod dock. 

“Hey, Baby Girl.”

“Hi, Daddy.  Did you get Petey home okay?”

Such a sweet child when she wasn’t doing her Damien impersonation.

“Yeah, I did.  Did you have a good time this evening?”

“Uh-huh.  Did you?”  She slid the Kindle away from her, twirling her body around until she was sitting on her bottom, legs crossed Indian-style.  Her blue eyes were piercing, intent on not missing anything he was saying or not saying.

He nodded slowly, taking up much the same pose that he had in Jesse’s doorway.  “I did.  I really like her Steph.”

“Well, duh.”  His little angel rolled her eyes.  “Any idiot can see that.”

The response confused him a little.  He wasn’t really a demonstrative kind of guy and didn’t think he’d acted out of the normal in any way.  She was just being smug.  There wasn’t anything different to see.  “Oh, yeah?  Why is that?”

She gave him that look as if to ask if he was really that stupid.  “Because you were there the whole time.  You weren’t making business deals in your head, or checking your phone a thousand times.  If you weren’t watching the game or talking to one of us kids, you were completely into Petey.”

He knew for a fact that he hadn’t touched her more than a couple of times, and he certainly hadn’t kissed her in the middle of Madison Square Garden.  They hadn’t even really talked that much, seeing as Jake and Romey commanded most of her attention.

“You see what you want to see, Miss Lonelyhearts,” he teased.  “I was my usual cool self.”

She shook her head in disgust.  “Whatever.  If you need to pretend you don’t know every breath she took so that you can sleep at night, then by all means, do that.”

“Stephanie,” he chided.  “You’re being over-romantic.  We went to a basketball game.  She didn’t even sit next to me for most of the evening.”  His youngest had argued over sitting next to her so much that she’d finally positioned herself between them in self-defense.

“Fine.”  She retrieved her Kindle, remarking casually, “She probably isn’t that into you anyway.  Since you weren’t all that engrossed with her, you probably didn’t notice how anxious she was to get out of there.”

“What?  No she wasn’t.”  Petey had been perfectly at ease and dimply the whole time.  “She was smiling all night and totally relaxed.”  He frowned.  “Except for when she got that text message, but that only lasted a minute.”  She hadn’t told him who it was from, but Jon suspected it had been one of his band mates.  He just wasn’t sure if it was Richie or Dave.

“I rest my case,” she laughed, crawling under the covers.  “You were completely present, Daddy.  When’s the last time that happened?”

“You know,” he offered speculatively as he slid up beside the bed and kissed her goodnight.  “I forgot what it was like to be a teenager and know everything.  Enjoy it while you can kiddo.  ‘Night, Stephie.”

She grinned at him.  “Oh, I plan on it.  ‘Night, Daddy.” 

He was just about to step out of the room when her quiet words found him.  “I’m sorry about the whole Democrat thing.”

Jon executed a quarter-turn so that he could see her, and smiled.  “Thanks.  I admit that I talked to her about it before we left to pick up Ashley.  Petey’s wardrobe and ‘style’ are totally on her now, you will be happy to know.  She’s not going to be dressing to please anyone but herself.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

“I am.”  He resumed his path to the door.  “Now stop being my conscience and go to sleep.”

The little girl giggle warmed his heart.  “As soon as I finish this chapter.”

He quietly closed the door behind him and headed for the stairway, snapping lights off as he went.  Jon was almost to the top of the stairs when the phone vibrated in his pocket with an incoming call.  He frowned.  It was almost one in the morning.  There weren’t many good calls that came at one in the morning when he wasn’t on tour.

The backlit screen showed Dorothea’s name. 

Especially not from her.  She definitely wasn’t calling to chat, and Jon dispensed with any pretense of formality.  “Dottie?  What’s wrong?” 

“Relax.”  The single word was tinged with Dorothea’s usual calm, but there was an underlying edginess.  “Nobody’s sick or dead, that I’m aware of.  I was just hoping that, maybe, you had heard from Tony sometime in the last couple of hours.”

Completing his trek up the stairs, he arrived in the study and dropped onto the sofa there.  “Tony?  No.  Why?  What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” she sighed.  “He left a little while ago acting very strange and won’t answer my calls.  I think it’s got something to do with Carol and John.  He won’t tell me their reaction to us seeing each other.”

In the midst of Dorothea’s explanation, a text message vibrated the phone.  Slipping it away from his ear for a second, he read: 

[12:58 AM] PT:  Didn’t want to wake kids with the bell.  I’m at your front door. Let me in?

His brow puckered, and he returned the phone to his ear, beating it down the stairs.  “Dottie, Petey is at the door.  Lemme let her in and then I’ll see if I can get ahold of Tony.”

“What is she doing there at this time of night?”

“I don’t know,” he answered testily, striding across the shadowy living room to the foyer, a man on a mission.  “She went to the ball game with us and I took her home a couple of hours ago.”

He unfastened the locks and flung the door open, his stomach instantly knotting with fear.

She was wearing the same clothes he’d left her in, but the coat was haphazardly arranged on her shoulders now.  Her previously sleek hair was a disheveled mess, and the little bit of makeup she’d been wearing had run down her cheeks with, what he presumed were, tears.  It was a logical assumption considering the split, bloody lip and beginnings of a bruise across her right cheekbone.  Her pale blue eyes were wide and hunted.

“Dottie, I have to go.”  He disconnected the call and crammed the phone into his pocket before gathering Petey close. 

The anger was running amok through him like a hailstorm of fire.  He had delivered her safely to her front door.  There were paid security guards watching the building – he’d made sure of it when they came back to the city.  What the fuck was going on here? 

“What happened to you?”

Her fingers knotted themselves into the soft fabric at his back, and he could feel the tremors wracking her little body.  Petey’s face was buried so firmly in his chest that he couldn’t make out her mumbled words, so he gently eased her a few inches away.

“Tell me again.  I couldn’t understand.”

Tragic eyes swam with tears and her bottom lip quivered.  His first thought was that she was hurt worse than he could see, and Jon vowed that whoever did this would come to be intimately familiar with the term ‘an eye for an eye’.

With the next breath, he couldn’t think of anything beyond the shaky words that were uttered on a sob. 

“I killed Daniel.”