131 - Diamond Ring

Walking around the hood of his Durango, Tony blew out a breath and watched it swirl in the light of the streetlamp, unsure as to why he was so damn nervous.  He’d hinted at this already and she hadn’t shot him down.  There was no reason to believe she was going to when he actually had a ring in his hand.

His hiking boots grated loudly against the concrete, and the release of the door’s latch echoed in the still air of the January evening.  Offering Dorothea his hand, he gave her an affectionate smile.  The biting wind was battering the curtain of dark hair around her face, and she flicked an impatient hand over it, in a taming effort.

“You couldn’t just run in and get the phone?” she was fussing.  “I have to get out and freeze my ass off, too?”  Her well-bundled body slid to the ground, and he couldn’t resist quickly brushing his lips against hers.  The scratchy wool coat tickled his palms when he turned her toward the front door of the studio by her shoulders. 

Following close behind he improvised, “I’ve been working hard the last few days, and wanted your opinion.  I don’t know that you’ve ever had anything to say about my work.”

“I don’t know that I’ve ever been asked to say anything about your work,” she spoke over the sound of the stomping of her soft-soled boots on the pavement.  She was trying to stay warm while waiting for Tony to unlock the door.  “And if it’s Bon Jovi music, I can’t promise how enthusiastic I’m going to be.”

Reaching inside the door, he flipped a single switch, illuminating a bank of lights around the perimeter of the room.  When Dorothea had joined him inside the door, he closed and re-locked it before ushering her over to his desk. 

“It’s not Jovi,” he assured her, draping his leather jacket over the back of the chair while she tossed hers onto a nearby table.  “Well, not really.”

“Is this one of those bastardizations of their famous songs?  The kind that shows their artistic nature, but pisses off the fans?”

The mockery in her voice made him laugh.  She could be such a bitch sometimes.

“No.”  Tony ran his finger over the laptop’s touch pad, bringing the large, free-standing twenty-four inch monitor to life.  Before he left work today, he’d made sure all the cables and connections had been made for his little show.  Screwing around with cords and restarting the laptop wasn’t going to be the main event tonight.  “Why don’t you be quiet for a damn minute and you’ll find out what it is?”

Falling easily into the high-backed chair, he rolled it further away from the desk and tugged on her hand.  “Sit with me?”

“Sit with you?” she sniffed, flipping her hair.  “You’re lucky I’m speaking to you after that.”

He tugged harder, toppling her onto his left thigh.  “Your bark is worse than your bite, Babes.”  Two thickly muscled arms curved around her waist and he dug his fingers in, tickling her.  “And you like me being bad as much as I like you being bad.  Stop pretending that you’re morally offended.”

Cattily arching her left brow, she looked down her nose at him, even as her arms vined around his neck.  “Don’t get cocky with me.”

Oh, how he wanted to go down that slippery sexual innuendo slope, but it was the opposite direction of what he was trying to build here tonight.  Tonight was about something bigger.  He rubbed a hand down his pant leg, drying the sweat from his palm.

Get the show on the road, Bongiovi.

“Mm.”  He dipped his head toward the laptop.  “Double-click on that icon.  The one on the bottom, right corner.”

Silently disentangling her arms from his neck, Dorothea’s eyes widened briefly when her hand fell to brush across a hard bulge at the back of his waist.  “You’ve gotta lose the gun first.”

Nodding, he waited for her to stand and step aside, shuffling around until he could reach the Glock and secure it in the desk drawer.  He kicked himself for not taking care of it already, because it was a serious mood-killer.  Scooting back in the chair, he patted his thigh.  “Okay.  Try again.”

Rather than reseating herself, she nodded with satisfaction and bent to drag soft lips across his.  “Can I watch this some other time?  Seeing as we’re all alone I’d rather spend the time more productively.”

The front of his pants remained stoically still and flat, and Tony tumbled her back onto his lap with a quick pull at her waist, saying, “Afterward, we can be as ‘productive’ as you wanna be, but spend five minutes watching this first.  I wanna know what you think.”

He was not going to propose while he was fucking her.  Even a blue-collar guy from Jersey had some standards. 

“Since you seem to have your heart set on it, okay.  What kind of project is it, if it’s not Jon’s stuff?”  She leaned forward to click the indicated spot on the screen.

The most important one I’ve ever produced.

He took an inconspicuous deep breath and leaned back into the chair, pulling her back against his chest.  Tony nodded toward the screen.  “Watch, and you’ll find out.”

Settling into him with a soft ‘harumph’, she obediently turned her attention from the smaller laptop screen to the much larger desk monitor. 

There was no formal intro.  There was no music.  The first thing to flash upon the screen was Dorothea’s senior picture, and she snapped her head around accusingly.  “What have you done?”

I dug around in the attic until I found every picture that had a memory of you attached to it.

“Just watch.”

The next photo was a group picture of all of his family, including Dorothea, from 1980.  It was a graduation party for she and Jon.  The whole family was there, Tony included.  Then there was her eighteenth birthday, for his mother had thrown a party for her at the house.  Of course, Jon’s arm was wrapped firmly around her, but Tony was on her other side. 

It was followed by a few more photos taken in Dorothea’s late teens and early-twenties.  None of them were of she and Tony specifically -  mostly family shots – but he was always there in the group.

Once they reached 1984, the photographs became video snippets.  That was the year Tony had gotten his first video camera.  There was footage of various events throughout the eighties:  concerts, family events, parties.

“Jesus, look at my hair,” she muttered, lost in the memories.  "I’m glad big hair is gone.  It required way too many hours of my day.”

He chuckled against her neck, as the images went from young Dorothea, to an older, more mature woman.  There were clips of her with each of the babies – Tony had been at the hospital for each birth.  While he obviously hadn’t been in the delivery room, he'd been hovering outside, waiting for the go ahead to film.  In each snippet, she was exhausted, but exhilarated at the new life in her arms. 

Family events continued to roll by, including children’s birthday parties, a few press events, concerts, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter. 

“Oh God, look at the way the camera is shaking.  I still can’t believe you let Jesse walk around with your brand-new video camera by the pool that summer.  He was only seven.”

The frames wobbled by, and the young operator swung it around to find an encouraging Uncle Tony in the lens, a concerned Dorothea hovering behind him, saying, “Jesse, be careful!  Tony, get the camera before he drops and breaks it.”

“He’s fine.”

There were similar instances with his niece and other nephews, gradually moving through the years.  In each clip, Tony was either somewhere in the frame, or operating the camera.  The montage wound up with a family video from this Christmas, a month ago.  Tony had been, once again, documenting the family occasion, but the focus was clearly different this time around.  This time, he was filming with his heart as much as his lens, and the focus of the camera barely waved from Dorothea, even when she scowled unhappily.

Much as she was now.  “You stalked me with that damn thing.”

The screen went black as the video ended. 

“I did,” he agreed easily, arms tightening around her waist.  “I’d never seen you look so beautiful on camera as I did that day.  For thirty years, I was the guy behind the lens, and I recorded all the stuff you just saw through the eyes of a cinematographer and brother – your brother and Jon’s.  A lot of it was me fucking around with angles and effects, but you were always there.”

Here’s where the shit got deep.  He hoped he could explain this in a way that made sense.  “That last clip wasn’t recorded through the eyes of your brother – it was recorded through the eyes of the man who loves you.  I don’t know if you could tell, but you looked different to me.  So damn beautiful, inside and out that it made my chest hurt.”

God don’t let me sound like a total fuckin’ moron.

“From the time you were sixteen, seventeen years old, you’ve been a part of my life in one way or another.  In the past year, the part of my life that revolves around you has gotten steadily bigger, and become much more significant.  Even so, it's not enough."

Tony’s thumb and forefinger slid into the front pocket of his jeans, closing around the ring he’d tucked there for safekeeping. 

“I want more. I want you to be my whole life, for the rest of my life.”  Lifting a flattened hand, he displayed a simple, two-carat oval solitaire, flanked on each side by two smaller round diamonds.  “But don't worry.  I get that I can’t be your whole life.  You’re a mother first and foremost – it’s one of the things I love most about you – and that's what the smaller diamonds represent.  There’s one each for Stephanie, Jesse, Jake and Romey.  It’s my way of promising that, while you’ll be the center of my world, your kids are right there with you.  I love you, and I love them.”

Her eyes were locked on the small circle of platinum in his palm, and he had to dip his head to find her eyes.  They were suspiciously bright when he finally posed the question, “Dorothea, will you marry me?”

Rather than snatching up the ring with a resounding yes, she looked uncertain.  Hesitant.  "I…  What about your house in California?  Your business out there?” 

Those issues hadn’t been fully resolved yet, but he did have an answer of sorts.  “I’ll sell the house and the business.  The video gig isn’t where my passion lies anymore.  Going on the road with Bon Jovi is something I still wanna do, if Jon will let me, but other than that, I don’t wanna do it.”

Her eyes shifted from the ring to him.  “What do you wanna do?”

“Well…”  A fair question, but she was killing him with this waiting shit.  “There’s a Harley dealership in Long Branch for sale.  I’d like to buy it and maybe expand into classic cars.  Muscle cars.”

“You’d love that,” she approved quietly, tracing a tentative finger around the edge platinum band that bisected his life line.  “Tony, are you sure this is what you want?  Even with all the speculation and talk that are bound to come with it?”

“Hey.”  He hooked her chin with his forefinger.  “Swear to God, I want this and I want you,” he declared gruffly before softening his voice.  "Every time I think of leaving, my gut ties in knots.  I've never left anybody behind before, Dorothea, and maybe I'm a selfish bastard, but I want to know - without a doubt - that you'll still be here when I come back.  Please don't make me get on that plane without putting on this ring on your finger so that I - and the rest of the world - know that your mine for keeps."

Damp eyes released a single tear to trickle free and she swiped angrily at it.  “I should tell you no, just for making me cry.  I hate that.”

He pressed his lips to what was left of the damp trail on her cheek.  “But you won’t tell me no.  Will you?  Because you love me and you want this as much as I do.  Right?”

“Don’t get cocky with me,” she whispered, the words tickling his face. 

Tony grinned, now a thousand percent certain of her answer.  “Say it.”

“Fine, fine.  I’ll marry you.”  She moved to pluck the ring from his palm, but he closed it up and snatched it away.

“Do you know how long I worked on that video?  I just bared my soul here.  You gotta give me more than that.”

Dorothea sighed with feigned disgust, but her eyes were twinkling when she tenderly complied, “Anthony Bongiovi, I love you with more of my heart than I even knew I had left.  You are... a wonderful, wonderful man, and I won't allow you to get on that plane without knowing you're mine for keeps.  I would be honored to marry you.”

His grin widened and the ring found its way onto her finger.  “That’s much better,” he breathed before claiming her mouth with the soft promise of forever.