Chapter 55 - The Hardest Part IS The Night

Waking up in a fog, Jon sits up grabbing his watch from the nightstand.  When he sees that’s its 1:30 pm, he’s pissed.  “God damn it.” 

He sits there for a minute trying to figure out what time it was back home.  He can’t remember.  He gets up to take a piss and grab his cigarettes. 

Before he calls home, he orders room service; he was starving and needed coffee.  He can’t believe that he slept for over 12 hours.  Once room service is ordered, he calls home.  He calls Monica.  After 8 rings, he hangs up the phone and sits there smoking a cigarette, figuring out the time difference.  “Shit, its only 6:30am there.  She’s still sleeping.”  He says to himself, hoping he didn’t wake her just to hang up on her when she answers.  Bummed, he gets up and changes the channel on the television, looking for news or something to keep him connected to the real world. 

A few minutes later, there is a knock at the door.  “Room Service.”

 

“It’s open.”  He yells from where he is seated.  The door opens and a nice young man pushes the cart in full of coffee, orange juice and the biggest stack of pancakes her has ever seen.  Sliced on the side are some kiwi and strawberries.  Jon signs the slip and the young man leaves.  With a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, he pours himself a cup of coffee and heads out to the patio.  To him, it’s hotter than hell, but he doesn’t care.  It’s a day off in South Africa, he’s soaking up the sun, right after he eats and takes a shower.

He enjoys his day off with some fun in the sun and a little shopping.  He has a baby on the way, and he’s quite taken with the street vendors that sell ‘protection’ statues. They are just simple, carved from wood, but the voodoo priestesses have blessed them – Jon loves the idea of that.  He buys a couple, one for baby and one for Monica.  Strolling down the street, with nothing on but a pair of jean cut of shorts and a ripped superman t-shirt – he’s pretty well unrecognizable.  His mirrored aviator glasses hide him even more, until he runs into Richie.

“Hey man, there you are.  We were all wondering about you at breakfast this morning.  Where did you go?” Richie says, shaking his brothers’ hand in some code like secret hand shake.

“I crashed and burned, man.  I don’t know what hit me, but I didn’t wake up until 1:30.”

“Did you talk to Monica?” he asks, concerned about his little sister. 

Jon shakes his head no and says, “I tried to call, but it was early back home, she didn’t answer.”

“Probably sleeping.”  He says, as he sees a bum rush of girls coming their way.  “You better run!”  He blurts as he turns and runs away.  Richie is left to stand there and deal with the little mob of girls.  He was, after all, the one that loved the attention. 

The sun setting was Jon’s favorite part of the day, and even though he was alone, he sat on the beach and watched it go down.  His thoughts are everywhere, but they are really only in one place.  Back in New Jersey with the woman that he loves, the woman that is carrying is baby.  When he thinks about becoming a daddy, it takes his breath away.  He’s terrified, yet super excited.  When there was possibility that Liz was pregnant, Jon was sick to his stomach.  He couldn’t stand the thought of having a baby with that kind of crazy.  He did love her at one point, but as they grew older; they grew apart.  He was sad when they first broke up, but her behavior quickly ended his sadness.  She was an embarrassment at this point.

Once the sun went down, Jon worked his way back to the hotel.  He was glad to have the down time, but her really missed Monica.  He could picture her laying there on the beach with him in her little string bikini.             He could picture them taking a nap, reading poetry to one another or just laying there talking.  He was counting the days until he could get home to her.

In his room, he sits on the edge of the bed and looks at his watch.  It’s 11pm in Cape Town so that means that it’s 3pm in Jersey.  Knowing her schedule, he knows that she’s not home right now so he figures he’ll call and leave her a voicemail.  Just as he’s about to pick up the phone, there’s a knock knock and the door flies open.  In walks Richie, with a blonde under one arm and a brunette under the other.  “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” he asks Jon.  “I’ve been looking for you, man.  You missed breakfast and then you leave me in town, what is wrong with you?”

Jon can see that Richie is drunk; he can also hear it in his speech.  “Get the fuck outta here, man.”   Jon waves his friend away.  “You’re drunk.”

“We come to party.  Come on, let’s hit the bar downstairs.”  Richie pushes the blonde toward Jon.  She’s just as drunk as Richie; she stumbles and falls on Jon.  As if she had cooties, Jon pushes her off of him and hops off the bed. 

“Get her and get the hell out of here, Richie.  She’s drunk, you’re drunk – take it back to your room.”  The blonde lies there, waiting to see what she was supposed to do.

“You’re no fun.” Richie slurs, “Come on girls, we’ll go get Alec.  HE always loves to party.” 

The blonde gets up and walks toward the door, “Are you sure you don’t want me to stay?”

With the stink eye, he flat out says, “I’m sure.”  Richie leaves with both women in tow.  Jon closes the door behind them and slides the safety chain on.  He wasn’t having that happen again.  Back at his bed, he lays down and starts to watch and episode of the A-Team.  It was the best thing on that he could find, so he laid there and watched TV until he falls asleep. 

Morning snuck up on him a lot quicker than he liked, with having slept so good the night before, he was pretty restless; getting very little sleep.  He’s thankful that today is a 2^nd show, sound check is always easier and quicker when it’s night #2 in a town.  Dragging his ass out of bed, he pulled on a shirt, pulls on some shorts, socks and his running shoes and takes off on a run.  Running helped him clear his head, it helped him calm down, and it’s even helped him write songs.  The harder and faster that he ran, the better he was feeling.  Reaching the point where he was feeling better, he slowed down his pace and made his way back to the hotel.  As he walked through the lobby, he saw David in the restaurant eating breakfast.  Jon walks in and joins him.  “Hey.”

“Wow dude, where have you been?”  Dave asks, looking over at the sweat soaked Jon.  “We looked for you last night.”

“I just needed some time to myself.” Jon tells him, a little under his breath.  “What’s good to eat?  The pancakes are fantastic.”

“I ordered an omelet.” David says, “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, yeah.  Just needed to clear my head.”  Jon’s face is hidden by the menu, but Dave’s know Jon for a very long time.

“What’s going on?  I can hear it in your voice.”

Jon looks over the menu, and decides to be honest with Dave.  “I’m ready to go home.”

Dave chuckles and replies, “I think we all are.  This has been quite the experience for all of us.  We need to go home and regroup, and then hit the road running again."  Jon and David sit together and have a nice, no pressure breakfast.  As they sat there, David can see that Jon's wheels are spinning.  "What's got you so deep in thought?"

"Everything.  Richie was a drunk ass last night.  Brought girls to my room."  Jon gives David a look like what did he think that he's doing?  "I have a girl back home that's pregnant and I don't want to be here."

"Monica is pregnant?" David asks, with a big grin on his face. 

Jon nods his head yeas and asks, "Please keep it between us.  I can't have the world knowing right now.  I guess it would be  bad press."

"I won't say anything.  What did your mom say?"

"She's okay with it.  Liz's sister told her, before I was able to."

"How's Monica doing with it?" Dave wonders, they both had concrete career plans - a baby might damper all of that. 

"I think she's in shock, actually.  But she's not unhappy about it."

"Keeping it?"

"YES!"

"I'm happy for you, congrats."  David gets up and hugs his buddy, congratulating him.

"Thanks."

David grabs his coffee and finishes it off, telling his 'boss', "I'm going to hit the market and see what they have for souvenirs, want to go?"

"No, you go ahead.  I'm going to shower and go rehearse a new song before sound check.  I'll see you at the arena."

"Ok, cool.  I'm out of here" And David leaves, leaving Jon with the check.  He pays it and goes upstairs and takes his shower.

He's at the stadium, playing around with a new song, just to see how it sounded.  As he's on the stage, he can see the support bands come in so that told him practice was over.  He just went back stage and read the latest issue of Penthouse that was left in their dressing room.  It wasn't too long and his band started to show up.  Richie and Alec looking like death, David happy as hell - he went shopping. And then there's Tico, the senior member that watches over all of them, offering advice when needed and always had a shoulder for them.  Tico was papa bear, kind of.

They get ready, all dressed in their favorite 'costumes', and when it's time to hit the stage - they go out with a gusto and go right into Shot Through The Heart, and from that song they gave Cape Town the best show that they have given anyone.  The last encore included a cover song and then they ended it with Jon's newest song Hardest Part Is The Night.  With the little bit of practice, they nailed it and the crowd loved it.  As Bon Jovi was standing there, waiting to take their bow, Jon looks over at side stage for some reason.  And there she is, as beautiful as the day that he left her.  His guitar in hand, he turns and smiles at her.  She waves, they bow and Jon is in her arms as quick as he could get to her.