05.

*Note: This was labeled as Chapter 4 yesterday. Somehow I got out of order, I apologize. The correct Chapter 4 is now up, and this is the correct Chapter 5.

It was Sunday before Richie decided to brave Benny’s again, figuring the bar would be crowded on both Friday and Saturday night. As he and Jon rode by on their way to the airport, the cars in front confirmed his suspicions. Jon was returning home for a few days, his youngest had broken an arm and couldn’t wait to show the cast off to his daddy. Richie was flying out to LA on a red-eye, hoping to surprise Ava and spend Saturday with her before returning Sunday.

He entered the bar and automatically looked to his left, expecting to see Natalie scurrying around behind it. He was a little disappointed to find that she wasn’t, but took a seat by the bar anyhow. As someone on the stage strummed out a few quiet chords, Richie glanced over his shoulder and was nearly floored. Natalie was sitting there on the stool, eyes closed and her head bent low. Her face looked pained, but calm all the same. He could see that she was breathing hard, her chest heaving in the black shirt she was wearing, and he pivoted on his seat to watch her.

“What I want from you is empty your head
They say be true, don’t stain your bed
We do what we need to be free
And it leans on me like a rootless tree”

Natalie still hadn’t opened her eyes as she sang softly into the microphone, and Richie smiled. She was definitely in it, in that zone. She looked like something out of a painting sitting there on that stool with the guitar propped on her hip.

“What I want from us
Is empty our minds
But we fake, we fuss, and fracture the times
We go blind when we’ve needed to see..”

Her voice and the guitar grew louder as she neared the chorus, and Richie was taken aback by what happened next. Natalie’s eyes flew open and locked on someone’s in front of her, and her arm worked furiously to strum against the guitar. She stood from her stool, and the words coming from her mouth shocked not only Richie, but apparently everyone in the place.

“And this leans on me like a rootless..
Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you
And all we’ve been through
I said leave it, leave it, leave it
It’s nothing to you
And if you hate me, hate me, hate me
Then hate me so good that you can let me out
Let me out, let me out, let me out
Of this hell when you’re around”

Natalie finished the song about two and a half minutes later to a loud round of applause, though she didn’t seem to hear it. Her eyes were wild and still on the person in front of her, and this person wasn’t clapping. Without a word or an acknowledgement to the people still clapping for her, she stepped from the stage and shoved the guitar roughly into someone’s arms before she walked straight past Richie and the bar to go outside. The tension in the air was palpable as the person in front turned to watch her go. Richie recognized him as the guy from the bar the other night and chuckled to himself.
Damn. She was a pistol.

Richie slid from his stool and headed outside, his eyes only having to scan briefly for the young woman he’d met a few days ago. She had her arms folded over her chest, glaring out at the traffic as it passed. She didn’t seem to hear him as he stepped closer to her, and it wasn’t until Richie cleared his throat that she jerked her head around in his direction.

“That was one hell of a song,” he said approvingly.” All he received in response was a nod, and Richie could tell that she was seething inside. “If it’s any consolation, I think you scared him shitless, darling” he offered with a smile. Natalie laughed a little, quietly and almost sarcastically. She shook her head and looked at Richie.

“He’s such an asshole,” she burst forth before she could help it. She knew better than to think Richie Sambora, of all people, gave a damn about her personal problems. But sometimes things just come out. “I mean, who the fuck does he think he is coming in here like that?” she asked to no one in particular.
“Well, it is a public bar…” Richie answered reasonably. Natalie’s eyes darkened, and Richie held up his hands in surrender. “I mean, I have no fucking idea, the bastard.” His attempts to lighten the mood were working, and the corners of Natalie’s mouth twitched into a small smile.
“Sorry,” she apologized. “It’s been a really, really bad…” she sighed, as if she’d changed her mind at what she was going to say, “Decade?” she tried with a small laugh.”I hear ya,” Richie said with a nod. Natalie’s heart sank, having heard a lot about him in the news in the recent year or so. She didn’t know how much of it was true, but she supposed enough of it was.
“Wanna get out of here?” he asked, catching her by surprise. Her eyes widened and she looked down the road and around herself like he’d been talking to someone else.
“I don’t know..” she said hesitantly, sheepishly.
“Relax, baby, I’m not gonna throw you in the trunk,” Richie laughed, sensing her unease. “I know you don’t wanna go back in there,” he threw out, thumbing over his shoulder in direction to the bar, “And I’m hungry as a mother, so let’s go get something to eat.”
“Can you…do that?” she asked, feeling like an idiot as each word came out of her mouth.
“Eat? Yeah, I can do that,” he laughed. “Had a lot of practice.”
“I mean…out in public. Without being hassled, I mean.””Sure. People around here don’t give a damn about me. Besides, it’s late enough that most people aren’t out. What do you say?”

He could see the wheels in her mind working, obviously weighing her options. Richie wasn’t used to this – women generally agreed to go anywhere with him upon being asked. He guessed the age difference had her uneasy, though he had no intentions with her. He was hungry, and she was the closest thing to an acquaintance he had available now. Well, that was a lie, but she was definitely easier to look at than the guys currently inhabiting the hotel rooms on either side of him. After a few seconds, Natalie dropped her arms and shrugged. “What the hell?” she asked, “Just let me run back in there and let them know.”

Half an hour later, they were sitting in Richie’s rental car in the parking lot of a little restaurant Natalie had recommended. She’d told him they had the best food in town, but had failed to mention that they had no seating options inside. “It’s like a drive in, only you don’t watch a movie,” Natalie had laughed after they ordered. Richie didn’t mind, anything was better than his hotel room. He was, however, having trouble balancing his food in his lap. Natalie didn’t seem to have any trouble, and Richie guessed she frequented the place often.

“So you’re thirty-three, you said?” he asked conversationally. Natalie nodded between bites of the chicken sandwich she was eating.
“You from around here?” he continued, eating some barbeque ribs that he was sure he’d still taste on his fingers for days.
“Nah. I’m from next door, North Carolina.””How’d you end up here?”
“My car,” she laughed, and Richie pulled a face at her. “I needed to get out. Same faces, same places, same shit. I mean I love it..I love it all. But sometimes you need a change. Sometimes people know you all your life and they want you to be what you always were, not what you are now. And sometimes memories are shit, so you gotta go somewhere new to make some good ones.”
“Damn,” Richie said, bemused. “Gotta remember that one. You should write shit like that down, then you can sing your own songs.” Natalie laughed and covered her mouth with a napkin.
“I needed to get away from it. Away from people. Spread my wings, I guess. I had a friend from college who lived up here, so I moved in with her. Then she went and got married, and here I am.”
“Away from that guy, you mean?” Richie asked, wondering if he was toeing an imaginary line. He didn’t really know anything about Natalie, but he realized that it was a big part of her.
“Mostly, yeah,” she admitted with a grin. “That obvious?”
“Oh no,” Richie said, shaking his head, “I mean, we always sing fuck you songs and try to kill our audience with our eyes.”
“Gah, you give me such a hard time,” she laughed.
“What’d he do, anyhow?”

Natalie looked across the car at him, sizing him up. She was normally a relatively private person, but she felt comfortable around Richie. She had no idea why, but she shifted in her seat and started the story she’d hardly told anyone else in her life.

“We met in high school. I was a shy girl, and I tended to hide from things that were out of my comfort zone. I knew he was going to be trouble for me the day I saw him, you know? I just knew. We became friends our junior year, though we both knew the other liked us. We screwed around – er, metaphorically speaking, not literally – for a couple of months with each other. He pushed me and didn’t let me hide, and it pissed me off but it was what I wanted, too. I know, I’m bizarre. Anyways, the summer between our junior and senior year, we finally started dating. I was ass backwards in love with him. He was my first really serious boyfriend – I’d dated, but…I loved him. I went away to college at Appalachian, and he stayed at home at a local school. I was fine with it, I drove home on the weekends to see him. I noticed him acting differently around November of my junior year…you know, not talking to me as much and not seeming at all excited that I’d come home to visit him. It got to the point where I’d go over to his house when I was home, and he’d sit and watch the tv. He’d hardly speak a word to me…”

Natalie drifted off into a memory, but Richie didn’t press her on. He sensed where it was going, and he felt a pang in his gut.

“We had a knock down, drag out fight about it. I didn’t want to be without him, but I knew I deserved better than that. He promised he’d do better, be a better boyfriend. And he did, for a while. And then I started noticing little things that bothered me…and I finally realized something I’d known for a while. He’d been seeing this girl – younger, blonde, bigger boobs – for a couple of months behind my back. I found out just before Christmas. Some present, huh?”

The more she spoke, the faster she spoke. Richie could tell she was fighting tears by the sound of her voice, and she was staring out over the hood of the car.

“We’d been so close for years, it just seemed absurd to me that we weren’t together, not even friends. I mean…that thing I’d leaned on for so long was gone and I didn’t know what to do with myself. He’d go months without speaking to me until he had reason to yell at me. I fell apart,” she admitted.

“Jesus,” Richie muttered, mussing up his hair.
“He came back a couple of years later, preaching about how he’d grown up. And he seemed to have really changed. I missed him, more than I could stand it. I took him back, even though most of my friends and family begged me not to. We got married when I was twenty-four, and we were divorced by my twenty-seventh birthday. As you can see, he still comes back around whenever he’s alone. I guess I’m his fallback.”

Richie shifted uncomfortably and stared out the windshield with her. He wondered if this was how his own wife had felt during his infidelity and subsequent relationship with a family friend. Though Heather had hardly been an angel during their marriage, Richie felt hot guilt swimming in his stomach at the thought of making someone feel the way the girl next to him was feeling.

“Okay then,” Natalie said so loudly that Richie jumped. She laughed and shoved her napkins in the bag their food had come in. “Enough of that, it’s depressing me. What are you doing in town?” she asked, clearly trying to put the last conversation behind them. Richie debated lying, not wanting word to get out about what he and Jon were playing around with.
“Writing songs. Jon and I like the style down here,” he said, keeping it vague. “Shit, it’s getting late. I better get you back before tongues start waggling.” He waggled his eyebrows out her in a teasing manner as he cranked the car; Natalie’s eyes fell to the clock and she was surprised to see the time.
“I didn’t realize it’d gotten so late..””Me either. Gotta get you back before bedtime,” he teased, earning a sassy look from Natalie. “Kidding, I’m kidding,” Richie laughed.
“That’s what I thought, punk.”
“Hey now, babe, you watch it. That trunk’s still back there.”