Chapter 5

"Did you really just ask me that?"  Olivia can't believe what she just heard.  "I've devoted my life to my career, my education and you and you have the balls to ask me that? "

Feeling a little buzz from too many glasses of champagne he replies, "I don't think that's an unfair question, I don't know what you do when you're not with me."

"Seriously? " she sarcastically asks.

"For real, did you cheat on me with him?"

She stands up, "First it's Richie thinking he needs to know my business and now it's you."

  

"Liv, it was just a question."

"That I'm not going to dignify with an answer.  If you have to ask, then you really don't know me Jon."  She takes a few steps away and pauses, "I would have given you everything."  She leaves him in the VIP area of CBGB's and makes her way toward home.  

Jon, still a little buzzed adds baffled to what he's feeling and orders more champagne.   Alone in the VIP area, he can't shake how great Olivia looked and how happy she seemed.  He thinks about it so much, it starts to bother him.  

Jon doesn't want to be alone, so with his glass and the bottle he makes his way out into the bar area and looks for his band mates.  In his search he stumbles upon Richie, a blonde under one arm and a brunette under the other.

Richie smiles, "Hey man."  He can hardly stand, if it weren't for the arm candy he would surely be on the floor.

"Let's toast!" Jon slightly slurs, "To the ones we've loved and lost."

"I'm not toasting to lost love, that's bullshit."  Richie replies, reaching over for Jon.  "Did that Olivia leave?"

"Yeah."

"What is it with you and her?  Clearly,  she is out of your league."

Jon didn't like the sound of that, "And what, these two are?"  His mocking of the bimbos was wasted, Richie was too drunk to catch it.  "I'm out of here, this place is dead."

Richie, firming his stance says, "Take one of these." Referring to the women under his arms, "They can take the dead away."  He laughs because he thinks it's funny.

With a smirk on his face, Jon just simply states, "Or kill me.  I'll pass."  He sets his glass and the champagne bottle on the bar and leaves.   He wasn't in the mood for drunken stupidity or women with low self respect.

Not only was Jon not one of those guys,  he was a one of a kind.  He was taught to treat women with respect and to hold them in a higher regard. One night stands aren't a Jon Bon Jovi thing, but not only that, he was in his own backyard.  

Keeping Olivia a secret as long as he did was tough, but he knew that she was worth it.  There were times when they had almost been caught, but over the years they managed to master bring sleuths.  He was almost to the point that he wouldn't care if he got caught.

Typical night in NYC, if you walk out of any trendy night club or restaurant,  there are a half dozen cabs waiting for their next fare.  Jon steps off the curb and grabs a cab.  Having no plan, he just tells the driver to take him to Central Park.

Olivia makes it home and sees that the light is flashing on her answering machine.  Exhausted, she drops her keys and her pocketbook on the stand and presses PLAY.  Three messages from Mark and two from work. None of them were pressing, so she deletes them and makes her way into the kitchen.  As she's getting her coffee ready for morning, the phone rings.  Looking at her watch, she can only assume that it's work.  She dries her hands and takes the receiver off of the wall.  "Hello."

"You're home? " she hears Mark on the other end, happy to hear her voice. 

"Just walked in the door."

"Did you get my messages?" He asks her, as if it were a test.

"Yep, all three." She snaps.

"Were you going to call me back?" 

Olivia is now a little irritated,  it seems that her night is nothing but questions.  "Did you hear me tell you that I just walked in the door?"

"Why didn't you call me when you listened to the messages?"

"MARK!  I'll talk to you tomorrow,  okay."

"Wait, Liv - will you answer one question for me?"

She rolls her eyes and tosses the hand towel on the counter, "What?"

"How do you know Jon Bon Jovi, by name?  Why did he want to have a drink with you?"

Leaning against her counter, she quickly runs the last 2 years through her mind, knowing that whatever she told him, he could believe to be the truth. But she knows that she can’t tell him the truth, she was contractually bound. With a deep breath she tells him, “He was a patient a couple of years ago and we just kind of stayed in touch, why?

She can hear his hesitation, “I just found it funny that you’re friends with Jon Bon Jovi and you never mentioned it.”

“I’m friends with a lot of people that you don’t know about.”

“But why wouldn’t you mention this one?” he asks her, still very on the fence about her explanation

“It‘s nothing special Mark.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me, if it’s nothing special?” he gets a little louder with each word and she can picture him sitting on his couch, some sport playing in the background and a beer on the table. She imagines that he’s had a few beers and has done nothing but think about the encounter that they had outside of CBGB’s. 
 

Even more exhausted with the many questions that she’s had thrown at her today, she mumbles to Mark, “It was so special, I forgot about it. How’s that?”

“That’s bullshit and you know it.”

“Mark, I’m going to bed and I suggest that you do too. You have surgery in the morning.” she tells him, almost in a mothering tone. “Good night.” She gently cradles the receiver back on the wall. As she makes her way to bed, she makes sure that everything is locked and all of the lights are off. 
 

In her bedroom, she looks out the wall to ceiling windows and is always taken back by the view that she sees. The World Trade Center and the Empire State Building are there for her every night when she goes to bed and every morning when she wakes up. They have never let her down.

　

The yellow cab is about half way to the park when Jon stops him, “On second thought, make it William St and Liberty.” Jon just told the cab driver to take him to Olivia’s place.

He can’t help but think about her, he can’t help but wonder if she’s alone and he can’t help but wonder if they are really over. He doesn’t want to accept it, he wants things to go back to the way that they were, just weeks ago. But in all honesty, he wants things to be better than they were a few weeks ago. 

 He misses being able to see her, he misses being able to talk to her - he misses being with her. Because with her, he was truly himself. She brought out the young Italian gentleman in him and she has shown him that life doesn’t have to be mapped out in pen. It needs to be done in pencil so plans can be changed. 
 

Since she left him at the bar, he could hear her words, he could see her eyes and he can now see just how bad he has hurt her. He sees that she deserves more than he was willing to give her, she deserves all that he thinks that he does, she means that much to him. As the cab made it’s way toward her house, he was getting nervous. His palms were sweaty and his hands were unsteady, with that in mind, he reaches in and grabs a cigarette to calm his nerves.

As he finishes the cigarette, the yellow cab pulls up at the intersection of William St and Liberty. Jon pays the driver and gets out of the car. He stands there and looks up her building, even more nervous now. Before he chickens out, he walks up and rings the buzzer for apartment 1921. After a brief pause her hears, “Can I help you?”

Clearing his throat, he manages to say, “Liv it’s me, let me in.” The butterflies are going crazy in his stomach. He hasn’t been here in months and he has no idea if she’s even alone.

“What are you doing here?” she asks through the speaker.

“I have to see you.” he admits, his heart is about to go on his sleeve, “Please let me in.”

After another pause, he hears the buzz that lets him know to pull open the door, so he does.

When he gets to her door, before he even has a chance to knock, the door opens and Olivia tells him, “I have to get up soon. Why do you need to see me?”

“I can’t let you go.”

“Get in here before you wake the neighbors.” she steps back and lets him in. Closing the door behind him she follows with, “I can’t do this all night, so please say what you have to say. Does Dorothea know that you’re here?” That was one way to start off a conversation, but Olivia wasn’t one that like to beat around the bush.

“No one knows I’m here except for the cab driver that just dropped me off.”

“Why didn’t you go home?”

“To what?” he blurts at her, “A loveless marriage and kids that are sound asleep.”

“I can’t think of better reasons, can you?” Olivia walks away from the door, grabbing a throw off the back of the couch. As she pulls it around her she adds, “You really shouldn’t be HERE Jon.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s over between us and there isn’t anything else to talk about.”

He walks up to her, they are almost nose to nose and he asks, “What’s it going to take for it to not be over?”

“Are you hearing what you’re saying?”

“Yes.”

“We haven’t seen each other in weeks, hell, we haven’t talked in weeks. We bump into one another at the bar and you think that everything is okay? That everything is the way that you want it?” she steps away and walks around the back of the couch, putting whatever she could between them, “What was it? Seeing me with someone else that made you realize that I am no longer here for your beck and call?”

“Was it really that bad?” he wonders, “Was it absolutely terrible?”

“No, but you know what….when my schedule was twice as bad as it is now - you were prefect for me. You fit my schedule and my needs more that I did yours. It was fun, while it lasted but as I started to get through the grueling school schedule and the heavy rotations, I realized I was alone a lot. And I didn’t like it.”

“That can be changed.”

“How do you propose to do that?” she inquires, wondering what gold covered words would fall out of his mouth now. She needed to know what he has to say and how he would change anything, if he would change anything.

He mutters one word, “Time.”

Her hands go up in the air as she laughs, “Time? How much fucking time do you need?” She starts to pace, “Wait, don’t answer that, you had time, Jon. You had 2 years worth of time and have done nothing. So guess what, your time is up.” She is baffled by what he just said, she leaves the living room mocking him time, time, time, time

She’s in the kitchen staring out the window, when he appears and says, “You know, you never really told me how you felt. You never expressed the desire to want anything more than what we had until just a couple of months ago.”

“That’s bullshit, and you know it. I was all the time telling you that I needed more. That I wanted to see you more, go out in public with you - did I need to skywrite it too?”

“You never said any of that seriously, Liv. I always thought that you were kidding.”

“Kidding?”

“Yeah, kidding.”

“So I should have written it in the sky, over your house in New Jersey.” she makes a face at him and that sets him off.

“Look at what you have, because of me. Where would you be living if I didn’t pay for this place? Huh? In Brooklyn somewhere, hoping and praying that you don’t get mugged as you walk to the subway. Oh wait, you don’t take the subway often, do you? That’s right, you drive the Lexus that I bought you.”

“Fuck you.”

“What’s the matter, OLIVIA - does the truth hurt?” he gives her the stink eye and waits for her response.

Olivia takes a sip of water and calmly says to him, “Do you want to know what hurts Jon? It’s the fact that you think that human contact and intimacy can be substituted with an apartment and a car. Or is it that you think so little of me that that is all I will ever get out of you is an apartment and a car!?!?”

He doesn’t know what to say at first, so he goes back to when it all started. “When we met, that day that you treated my foot, I remember the way that you looked at me.”

“And?”

“I have seen that look since then, that look that tells me that you love me.”

“I have never said that I don’t love you, Jon.”

“You never tell me that you do, either.”