Chapter 34

Allegra woke slowly, stretching and wondering at the scent of coffee wafting through the guest house. 

Did someone set the timer on the coffee pot? 

She sat up in bed,  checking her phone before she reached for her robe. 

She had never replied to Jon’s text yesterday, because she didn’t see the point.  What was she going to say?  ‘No it’s not okay that you gave him my number, take it back’?  But ever since, she had been holding her breath waiting for Richie’s angry text or call – neither of which had come yet.  Maybe he was just pissed enough to write her off completely.  Or maybe she should call him and get the waiting over with?

She could make that decision later.  The aroma of the coffee was too enticing to ignore any longer, and she padded out to the kitchen in her bare feet.  What she found waiting there stopped her dead in her tracks.

Now I know why he didn’t call.

Richie was pouring himself a cup of the heavenly smelling brew, and must have heard her enter the kitchen, because he turned to speak over his shoulder.

“Good morning.  I hope you don’t mind that I made us some coffee.”

She nodded mutely, not knowing if what she was seeing was real or if she was still dreaming.  The slight slump of his shoulders and quiet voice radiated exhaustion, but from her vantage point, he still looked good.  His red t-shirt, which she would guess bore the White Trash Beautiful logo, comfortably hugged his torso, and dark wash jeans emphasized the lean length of his legs.  She could see a black jacket draped over of one of the kitchen chairs.

Self-consciously tightening the sash on her robe, she tried to put some order to the tangled mess of her hair.

He turned, glancing at her, and placed two steaming mugs on the table.  “Cream?  Sugar?”

“Please.” 

Richie moved to the cabinet and retrieved the sugar without hesitation, obviously familiar with the layout of the kitchen.  He then opened the refrigerator and produced a small carton of half and half, and placed both on the table. 

“Richie, what are you doing here?”

He picked up his cup, and spoke without answering her.  “Why don’t you doctor your coffee to suit you and let’s sit in the living room, where it’s more comfortable?  I’ll wait for you in there.”

She could do nothing but watching his retreating back and release the breath she’d been holding.  Her stomach wasn’t really feeling up to any visitors right now, but she did as he suggested, adding sugar and cream to her coffee.   Hands wrapped firmly around the mug, she followed his path to the living area. 

He was perched on the edge of the oversized leather chair next to the fireplace, hands clasped between his knees, and looked up as she chose her seat on the opposite end of the sofa.  She tucked herself into the corner, pulling her knees up to her chin and arranging her robe around her.

As though that was too much space between them, he moved to the chair on her end of the sofa. 

Allegra repeated her earlier question.  “Richie, why are you here?  Shouldn’t you be in California by now?”

His eyes took in her face for a long moment before answering.  “The show’s not until tomorrow.  I’ll get there in time.”

“That still doesn’t tell me why you’re here – or how you found me.”

There were a thousand things going on the depths of his deep brown eyes, and she watched him filter through each one before he finally said, “I came to talk.  And apologize.  And to find out why you didn’t tell me.”

Her stomach clenched as she looked for a way to delay the inevitable.  “Can you be a little more specific?  Tell you that I was a virgin?  Or that I was leaving?  Or that my favorite color is orange?”

“I think that goes to prove my point.  You haven’t really told me anything about you.”

“You know as much about me as I know about you,” she pointed out.  “Just because your life is on the internet doesn’t mean I’ve read it.  I told you that, but you still didn’t offer to share any details with me.”

“Allegra, I’ve lived through it so much that I’m tired of thinking about it.  Every day I get up and have to face the effects my actions have had on my life and the lives of the people around me.  I liked that you took me at face value.”

“Yeah, well you’re not the only one.”

The silence hung between them as they each tried to decipher what was going on in the other’s mind. 

She noticed how pronounced the fine line around his eyes were, and the dullness of his irises.  More evidence of how tired he was, and it tugged at her.  He had to have flown straight here after the show last night, and it didn’t look like he’d slept much along the way.

Richie took a swallow of his coffee, cleared his throat and set the mug on the table.  “I guess the easiest place to start is with I’m sorry.  I shouldn’t have raised my voice at you and left without listening to what you had to say.  There’s half a dozen explanations why, but not one of them stands up on its own as a justifiable reason to act that way.”

“Thank you.  You didn’t have to apologize at all, and I appreciate it.” 

“I’m not an unreasonable man – usually – and rarely ever lose my temper.  So yeah, I had to do that for me as much as you.”  That accomplished, he moved on.  “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming back to Jersey?”

Allegra wrinkled her nose at the question.  “That was unfortunate, but not intentional.  I told everyone at the birthday dinner, but you’d already gone.  And then you left in such a snit that night that I didn’t have the chance.  I never intended to just disappear, so for that I’m sorry.  How did you find me, anyway?”

“I took a guess in showing up here.  I figured at the very least Dot would point me in the right direction.”  He laughed.  “And that’s all she did – point.  Not a single word, not a smile, nothing.” 

Much like Allegra at that moment.  Richie sighed.  “Sunshine, it’s time to talk about the elephant in the room.  We’ve stalled long enough, don’t you think?”

She dipped her head in acknowledgement, tracing her thumb lightly around the rim of her cup.  “When you wait as long as I have to engage in physical intimacy, you have time to think about how you want it to be.   Ultimately, the fairy tale would’ve been nice, but that wasn’t realistic for where I was in my life.

“So I decided that I wanted a man who I could be fairly certain knew how to please a woman, someone I could respect, and someone who would have no problem with a one night stand.   That was you.  Add in the weird attraction between us and I thought I couldn’t go wrong.  If you had known I was a virgin, your moral and relationship radars would have gone off like fireworks, and I’d still be back at square one.  So I didn’t tell you, and did my best to make sure you wouldn’t find out until it was too late.”

“Believe it or not, I get that.  I’m not saying that I agree with it, but I’ve moved past it.  What I don’t understand is why now?”

Her laugh was humorless.  “No, what you don’t understand why not BEFORE now.  That’s the real reason you’re here, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know.  Maybe.  They’re really one and the same in my mind.”

“I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, as long as you’ll extend me the same courtesy afterward.  Is that fair?”

He considered what she said for just a heartbeat, then nodded.

“Okay, then.”  She took a breath, and leaned to set her now empty coffee cup on the table.  “I took a vow of celibacy when I was eighteen years old, becoming a religious sister and living in a cloister.  The Church and I parted ways at the first of this year.”  Allegra looked at Richie’s face, searching for a reaction to her words, and, to her surprise, his expression was strangely complacent. 

“You’re not freaking out,” she observed.

He shrugged.  “There’s a little part of me that already knew, I guess.  I haven’t been thinking about much else since I left you the other night, and there are only so many explanations that make sense.  That happened to be one of them.   Couple that with your fascination over my cross tat, and I suppose I really just needed to hear you confirm it.”

“You’re not just another pretty face, Mr. Sambora,” she teased lightly, but his mind was still putting pieces together.

“Since Jon doesn’t have a multitude of cousins with religious callings, I’m going to take a guess that you’re Frannie?”

She validated his assumption with a simple nod. 

“He used to tell me that you could’ve been anything, and that the Church was lucky to have you.  He said you tackled everything with no less than a hundred percent effort and determination.”  He smiled at her with a twinkle in his eye, and she wondered what had caused it.  “I see that hasn’t changed.” 

She shrugged.  “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth succeeding at.”

“So what happened to make you think it wasn’t worth it anymore?”

Carefully deliberating the best way to lead into it, Allegra finally began, “When I went to get my tattoo, I had the letter T incorporated into the design, and you asked me about it.” 

“Yeah, you said it was someone you knew in Jersey.”

“Right.  Her name was Tessa.”  She spent the next twenty minutes telling him about Tessa’s stay in the church orphanage, her rape, the Bishop’s decree and Tessa’s subsequent suicide.  He listened intently, never once interrupting, until her tears prevented her from finishing.

“Sorry,” she said wiping at her eyes, “It’s getting easier, but it still overwhelms me a little.”  Looking up at him, she drew in a breath at the fury in his eyes.

“The Bishop is an ass!  My God, how can you do that to a little girl?” he demanded.  “Her entire world was taken away from her, and then he tosses her to the side like a piece of trash?  That’s just not right!  That’s not what this world is supposed to be about!”  He watched her blot at the tears with the sleeve of her robe, and reached for her hand.  “Please don’t tell me that you blame yourself for it.”

“Well, yeah.   I kinda do.  Nobody else was going to fight for her.  I should have done more to protect her.”

He moved to sit next to her on the sofa, pulling her into his arms for a hug.  “No, baby.  The Church should’ve done more to protect her.  You did everything a woman in your situation could have.  You loved her when she had no one else; you reached out to her when no one else would.  Even after she was taken away, you still made the time and effort to see her and care for her.  You did everything right.”

She wanted to believe him.  Curled up in the safe haven of his arms, it would be so easy to let someone else take the blame. 

Richie gently shook her.  “Hey.  I mean it.  If it hadn’t been for you, she wouldn’t have made it as long as she did.”

“Maybe,” was all she would concede. 

Carefully extracting herself from his embrace, she tied up the loose ends of her story.  “Obviously, I couldn’t fulfill my duties with the level of commitment they deserved, and the Bishop didn’t really want to have to worry about a loose cannon in his church.  So we parted ways, and I shamelessly begged Jon to let me go on tour.  After much convincing, he agreed to let me be me and not tell everyone that a sister was in the midst.  The rest you know.  I’ve indulged in my own personal uprising, living life exactly the opposite of everything I’ve ever known.”

Allegra rose from the sofa and picked up her mug.  “More coffee?”

He nodded and followed her to the kitchen.  They were both quiet as Allegra poured from the pot and stirred in her sugar and cream.  She set the spoon down on the counter and looked at him before sipping.  “So, now it’s your turn.  I heard it mentioned that you’ve had a rough couple of years.   I’d like to hear about it if you don’t mind sharing?”

He leaned against the counter and watched her seat herself at the table.  “I developed an addiction, I went to rehab, and got arrested for DUI with my daughter in the car.”

The bluntness of his statements caught her off guard.  He said it almost defiantly, as though he expected her to condemn him on the spot.  “O-kayy.  Those are the headlines, now tell me the story behind them.”

“They’re pretty self-explanatory.”  His face was closed off and his eyes cold.

“I see you’re not going to make this easy.”  She probed a little more, trying to extract more information from him.  “What was the addiction?  Drugs?  Alcohol?”

“Painkillers and alcohol.” 

“Richie, look at me.”  She waited until he’d done as she asked before continuing.  “I’m never going to be able to ask all the right questions for the whole story to come out.  I’m not going to judge you, so just tell me.  Please?”

A little bit of the coldness left his eyes and he let loose with a deep sigh of resignation.  He reluctantly spent the next half hour filling her in on his life before and during Lost Highway.  How he’d broken his arm and gotten hooked on the painkillers,  the divorce from Heather and all the drama that went along with it, the heart wrenching loss of his dad to cancer,  the oblivion that he couldn’t find anyplace else but in a bottle, Jon pushing him into rehab, and the fiasco that was Denise. 

Then came the hardest part of the story.  The DUI. 

“I have no idea where my mind was,”  he admitted, looking out the window over the sink.  “I had my baby girl in the car and I risked her life.  That’s something that will haunt me forever.”

“Richie, I know how much you love your daughter.  I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”  She crossed to him and slipped her arms around his waist in comfort.  “You didn’t make the best decisions, but you learned from them – and learned who your real friends were in the process.  Some people go their entire lives not knowing that, so you’re lucky in that regard.”  She stepped back, and urged him to turn and face her.  Tipping her head back, she looked into his eyes, seeing the pain and regret.  “I understand now why you look to them for guidance - they got you through the hardest time of your life.  I’m sorry I made such a big deal out of it before.”

“No, you were right; I have to learn to trust myself again sometime.  I just don’t think I’m ready quite yet.”

“You’re getting there,” she encouraged, releasing him with a pat to his stomach.  “It’s like you told me, you’re in tune with the world around you.  Just make sure you include yourself in that world.  You’re a good man, Richie.” 

She moved back and forth through the kitchen, picking up after them.  First returning the sugar and cream to their rightful places, then rinsing out her mug and putting it in the dishwasher,  and finally wiping the table down with a sponge. 

“So what now?”  He finally broke the silence.

Looking for a dishtowel to dry her hands on, she said, “Well, I’m going to try and find a job and make a life, I guess.”

“I’m talking about us, Allegra.  Does all this sharing make us friends, or is there more to this?”

Her mouth went dry and her heart beat like a hummingbird’s.  What did he mean?  “I never expected anything past… what you’ve already given me,” she hedged.

“I didn’t ask what you expected.”

She wanted to believe that there was more to this, but wouldn’t allow herself to hope just yet.  “Richie, is this coming from some sense of moral obligation?  Because if it is, you don’t owe me anything.” 

“No, there’s no moral obligation,” he assured her.  “Allegra, I’ve told you all the worst parts about me and you can still look at me with a smile on your face.   You don’t give a shit what I do for a living and you turn me on like no one has in a very long time.  I, for one, would like to see where this could go.” 

He held out his hand to her, and she put her palm against his, moving to stand in front of him.  “Whaddya say, Sunshine?  I know this is kind of sudden, but can I be your boyfriend?”

She looked into his eyes and read nothing but sincerity there.   His lopsided smile was a little nervous, as though he was unsure of her answer.   

He really wants to try this! 

 “I’d like that,” she whispered.  “I’d like that a lot.”

Richie’s lips brushed over hers in the softest of kisses, and he rested his forehead against hers.  “Allegra, I’ve been thinking about this, and I want – need – to give you the experience you should have had for your first time.”  He stroked her cheek with his thumb.  “Will you let me do that for you?”