07.

Luke hadn’t been back to the bar, much to Natalie’s relief; he seemed to have gotten the message of her song loud and clear. Though to her slight annoyance and displeasure, Richie hadn’t been back either. Or Jon, for that matter. She wondered if their work in Nashville was finished, as one of them had been in the bar nearly every night that first week. It had been five days since either entered, and she caught herself keeping a watchful eye on the door. She wasn’t ashamed or embarrassed to admit she had a schoolgirl crush on Richie. Honestly, who wouldn’t? But regardless of the fact that he was a famed guitarist and singer, he seemed like a good guy. As she watched the door for him, she found that she wasn’t really looking for one half of Bon Jovi; she was looking for the man she’d spent half a night parked in car with eating greasy food and talking like teenagers.

“Get a hold of yourself, girl,” Natalie whispered to herself, tearing her eyes away from the door.
“Talking to yourself is the first sign of insanity, you know” came a deep and familiar voice behind her. Natalie turned and saw the shadowed figure of Richie settled into a chair by the back door.
“Sorry, my mama always told me not to talk to strangers,” she quipped with a big smile as she dumped glasses from a table into a square bucket.
“Smart woman.”

”How’d you sneak in here?”

”Been watching for me, have you?” Richie asked coyly, and Natalie flushed furiously at having implicated herself.
“You singers are all the same,” she taunted in attempt to turn the tables, “So damn cocky.”
“With good reason, baby,” he boasted, wearing the devilish smile she had come to know.
“Oh, I’ll just bet,” Natalie retorted, taking a pad out of her back pocket. “Can I get you anything, or are you just here for the entertainment?” she asked, remembering the conversation from that first night.
“Surprise me,” he answered, leaning back in his chair. Natalie turned and headed for the front, grabbing a glass as she went. She remembered what he’d ordered with his meal all those nights ago, and returned with a glass of the same.
“Excellent,” Richie said, taking it from her and swallowing half the glass down. “What time do you get off tonight?” he asked, licking his lips. It was impossibly hard for Natalie not to stare at them.
“About half an hour from now,” she answered, hitting her phone so the display screen lit up and revealed the time. “Why?”
“I wanna show you something,” he answered cryptically.

He seemed oddly satisfied by the confusion and interest on her face. Natalie knew he wasn’t going to tell her what it was, so she just nodded and went back to work. She made it a point not to worm her way back over to where Richie was seated, but she knew he’d caught her glancing back at him more than once. Richie sat through countless bad jokes and attempts at humor; Martha was back on stage. He was about to doze off when Natalie appeared at his side, one hand on her hip.

“Now you can’t go and fall asleep on me yet, old man,” she teased, and Richie cracked one eye at her.
“I can do whatever I damn well want, sweetheart.”
“Not in my bar you can’t,” she quipped, daring him to argue more.
“I believe that sign says this bar is Benny’s.”
“All the same, it’s more my bar than it is your’s,” she countered.
“Christ. You southern women are so damn stubborn,” Richie commented as he stood. He put a hand on the small of Natalie’s back to guide her out the backdoor, the same he’d come in not an hour or so earlier. She was so tiny that his hand looked strangely out of proportion against her back. Natalie took his comment as more of a compliment than an insult, and smiled slyly to herself. She saw his car packed in the back and headed for it, but Richie whistled at her. She stopped and looked at him, noticing that he was a good couple of feet behind her and going around the bar.

“This way,” he instructed. Natalie had to skip a little to catch up, falling into stride along side him. Her short little legs took two steps in the time he took one.
“Why are we walking?” she asked.
“Why not? It’s not that far.”

”Okay then, where are we going?”
“Surprise.”
“Gimme a hint,” she ordered playfully. Richie looked down at her and saw that she was smiling, biting down on her lower lip like she’s positively burst from something. She was unusually pretty by the lights of the city, he noticed; her face was young and full of life, but her eyes were wise beyond their years. He’d noticed them in the car that night. Crystal blue and big, they beckoned him in like he guessed they’d called plenty before him. He’d watched as they’d dulled from a bright, happy blue to a dull gray as she spoke of the man that’d broken her heart so badly.
“What are you looking at?” she giggled, looking around at their surroundings.
“You’re like a little kid, you know that?”

Natalie didn’t answer, somewhat amused and somewhat stung by his words. She wasn’t setting out to seduce him, but she didn’t like feeling like a baby to him either. A light rain had begun to fall, and thunder rumbled in the distance. Neither Natalie nor Richie were all that worried about it, as the storm still sounded far away. She tugged at her the ends of her hair in attempts to flatten it, but the rain that was coming down on them was causing it to curl into a tangled mess.

“Nothing wrong with being like a kid,” she argued. “Being an adult is pretty overrated.”
“Nothing at all,” Richie agreed, shaking his head. He reached out to her elbow and pulled her up to a building, and Natalie’s body tensed at his touch. Richie noticed it, but said nothing.

“What is this place?” she asked, having never been to it before. She craned her neck to look at the board above the door, but she couldn’t make out the name.
“It’s a studio,” he answered. Richie pulled out his keys and unlocked the door, stepping aside to allow her to step in first. It was dark, and Natalie hovered in the entryway. She’d never been one for going into dark, empty places first.
“Big baby,” Richie snarked, flipping on the lights. He caught her sticking her tongue out at him, though she’d pulled it back in her mouth the second he turned around to her.
“C’mon, we’re going in here,” Richie instructed, jerking his head at a different door he was now unlocking. Natalie followed him into a small, cramped room with a grand piano and a couple of guitars. Papers were lying around everywhere, as were jackets and empty water bottles and cans.
“What are we doing here?” she asked, looking down at the papers on the table. Most were filled with illegible markings and scribblings, but a few were very clean and neat looking with clear titles and music. She realized these were probably the songs he and Jon were working on, and she felt her stomach do flips. She was getting an inside look – whether Richie intended her to or not – at one of her favorite band’s new material. Richie turned around and caught her looking at the papers and laughed; he grabbed them out from under her nose and stuck them in a file cabinet drawer.
“Ah ah ah. No peeking, babes,” he scolded. Natalie shrugged and smirked, as if he should have known it was coming.
“So then why’d you bring me here?” she asked, flopping down into one of the chairs. Her eyes drifted down to a couple of guitars, and she wondered how much they cost.
“Little testing, demo sorta thing,” Richie answered, settling into the seat across from her and pulling a guitar into his lap. Natalie’s heart did another jump. No way was Richie fucking Sambora going to play right there in front of her. He strummed his fingers across the strings a few times, and Natalie was practically squirming in her seat in anticipation. “I want you to hear a song we’re working on, and then I want you to play one of your’s.”
“There’s always gotta be a catch, huh?” she asked, but refusing was not an option. He could have told he she was going to gnaw off her left arm and then he’d play a song for her, and she might have done it.
“You know it. Now shut up and let me play.”

He didn’t have to tell her twice. Natalie shut her mouth and watched him warm up and tune the guitar before he settled into rhythm. She couldn’t help but grin like a goon as he played, the whole thing an insanely surreal but magical experience. Natalie had only seen them perform live once when she was just a young thing, and here she was being treated to a private preview of one of their new songs. It wasn’t until Richie got to the chorus that Natalie realized there was a reason Richie was playing this particular song.

“It’s okay to be a little broken
Everybody’s broken in this life
It’s okay to feel a little broken
Everybody’s broken, you’re all right
It’s all right, it’s just life”

The words and the power of the song literally nearly brought tears to her eyes. The fact that he was singing this – of all songs – to her made her heart heavy. Here was someone she hadn’t known for even a month, and he was telling her exactly what she’d needed to hear for years. She listened quietly until he finished, and when he looked up expectantly at her, she had nothing to say. She opened her mouth a couple of times to speak, but words seem to fail her. There was no way to explain what had just gone through her brain. A loud boom of thunder jerked her back to reality just as lightning flooded in through the window.

“I really am speechless,” she admitted through a laugh. “That’s never happened before.”
“It was good, then?” he asked, and Natalie sensed he was asking if she’d gotten the message.
“It was perfect,” she answered with a nod, at which time he handed the guitar over to her.
“Good. Now it’s your turn.”

”But I don’t have a song..” she started to argue, but Richie raised a hand and silenced her.
“Everybody’s got a song,” Richie argued, “It’s a matter of who has the balls to play it.”

Natalie studied him for a minute, her heart beating fast at the prospect of playing one of her own songs. She licked her lips and inhaled sharply as she positioned herself over the guitar.

“Fine, but don’t look at me,” she said shyly. She glanced up at him to find his eyes still on her and laughed, “I’m serious. You make me nervous.”

”Why? I’m just one person.”

”…who happens to be one of greatest guitar players still living,” Natalie added.
“Hey, you said it…not me,” Richie grinned, but he could tell that Natalie was serious. He sighed and made a display of closing his eyes for her, and Natalie began her song.

“You have a way of coming easily to me
And when you take, you take the very best of me
So I start a fight ‘cause I need to feel somethin’
And you do what you want, ‘cause I’m not what you wanted..
Oh, what a shame
What a rainy ending given to a perfect day
Just walk away, no use defending words you’ll never say
And now that I’m sittin here thinking it through
I’ve never been anywhere as cold as you…”

The song was slow and the melody haunting, and Richie went back on his word and opened his eyes to watch her as she sang. Her eyes were fixed on a point on the floor, and she didn’t seem aware that he was in the room anymore.

“You put up walls and paint them all a shade of gray
And I stood there loving you and wished them all away
And you come away with a great little story
Of a mess of a dreamer with the nerve to adore you.
You never did give a damn thing, honey
But I cried, cried for you
And I know you wouldn’t have told nobody
If I’d died, died for you..”

The song went on for the better half of ten minutes, and Richie realized halfway through that she was just playing and had stopped singing. He watched her with interest, watched how she swayed with the music and watched as the emotion passed across her face. The arrangement of the song was simple, so simple that Richie had picked it up before she’d finished the first chorus. He picked up another guitar and began playing along with her, jerking Natalie from whatever reverie she was in. She watched his fingers in wonder as they played out her chords, and she eventually stopped playing to watch him.

“Finish the song, baby,” he instructed with an encouraging nod. Natalie, the color and heat evident in her cheeks, rested against the guitar and sang the rest of her song while he played, though her voice was softer and shakier now that she remembered she was being watched. When Richie could see that Natalie was finished singing, he stopped playing.

“Now see? That’s a fucking song.”

Richie returned his guitar back to the stand while Natalie laughed and blushed furiously again, dropping her face.
”Why don’t you like singing for people?” he asked as he turned back to her.
“Shy, I guess.”

”What for? People obviously like what you do.” Natalie laughed and handed the guitar in her arms back to him as well. “A couple of drunk guys don’t count.”

”I’m not a drunk guy, and I liked your song.”
“You’re being nice.”

”Shit. Do you know me? If I don’t like something, I’ll fucking say it. Don’t worry about that,” Richie laughed.
“Well. I’m shy all the same. I clam up.”
“See, I don’t think so. I think you clam up when you’re not singing. You open up when you are.”
“It’s harder for people who don’t play amazing riffs…and dance around in tight leather…with perfect hair…and perfect faces…and millions of girls screaming for them.”
“Jon would kill you if he heard you say that.”

”Well then I guess it’s a good thing he wasn’t here to hear it then, huh?”
“I’ll make you a deal..” Richie began, reclining in his chair again.
“What’s that?” Natalie asked, tapping her feet on the floor.
“You sing one of your own songs at Benny’s Friday night, and I’ll…” he trailed off, working out the details of his little plan.
“You’ll what?” Natalie asked, already pretty sure she was going to refuse it.

”I’ll give you a guitar,” Richie said with a shrug. “Your pick. As long as you promise you’ll use it in front of people, singing your own songs.”

Richie had hit her in a sore spot. Her eyes trailed over to the collection of guitars in the room – they were absolutely beautiful. She walked over to them and fingered the necks, biting her lip and going over the pros and cons of the situation. Richie stood up and crossed to the guitars as well, tapping absently on one of them.
”C’mon, what’ve you got to lose?” he offered, leaning haughtily against the wall. Natalie forgot what she was considering as she took in the sight of him. She was treading on dangerous ground with him, and she knew it.
“Dignity?” she answered lamely, turning away from Richie and pretending to admire another guitar up close and personal.
“You’ll be fine. What if I promise to let you cook me dinner too?” Richie teased, earning him the saucy look he’d become used to receiving from her. A loud roar of thunder shook the floor beneath their feet, and a crack of lightning preceded the entire room going pitch black. Natalie let out a little squeal of mingled surprise and fear, and she jumped up so quickly she nearly toppled over. Richie was ready for it, however, and an arm shot out to catch and steady her around the waist. Lightning flashed again and lit up the room, and Natalie froze in Richie’s grasp.


“Not a fan of thunderstorms, I take it?” he asked with a lopsided grin.
“No,” she answered, shaking her head breathlessly. “Hated them ever since I was a kid,” she admitted.
“You really are a big baby,” he picked, guiding her back over to the seats they’d previously occupied. “Well, it doesn’t look like we’re going anywhere for a little while. Whose bright idea was it to walk here anyway?”

Natalie curled into the seat like a cat, and Richie felt a little bad for her. He liked thunderstorms himself, and recalled a couple of concerts that’d taken place right in the middle of a few storms. There’d been one that couldn’t have been any better if they’d mapped it out by the second. Mother Nature seemed to be shining down on them that night; the lightning and thunder had actually kept in rhythm with the songs. He recalled with wonder the moment Jon had dropped to the stage on his knees while singing I’ll Be There For You, just as lightning cracked and thunder rolled.

“You’re the guitar expert. Pick me out a good one. And if I like it, I’ll cook you dinner,” Natalie relented almost in effort to get her mind on a conversation rather than the storm. Richie grinned and tapped his fingers idly against the arm of his chair. “Excellent,” he said with a nod.
“And then I’ll play my song,” she added, obviously trying to sneak that last little detail in.
“Oh no. Doesn’t work that way, babe. You play the song. Then you get the guitar. And I get dinner.”
”Well how come you get the best end of the deal?” she pouted.
“Because I’m clearly smarter than you are,” he teased, earning a playful pinch on his arm.
“You hush,” she ordered.
”Or what? Gonna make me?”
”If I have to.”

Richie liked that Natalie didn’t back down from him. She played with and challenged him, not seeming to care that he’d sold millions of records and had more than his fifteen minutes in the spotlight. Hell, he’d had more than fifteen years.

“I’m a rebel, baby. I don’t do what I’m told.”
“Yeah?” she asked, quirking a brow at him.
“Nah. It’d kill the image, you see.”
”Is that so?”

Richie opened his mouth to speak, but Natalie had covered it with her’s. Richie’s eyebrows shot up, but he didn’t pull away. It’d been a while since he’d kissed someone, and he’d all but forgotten how it felt. With her being so close, he could smell the faint scent of her perfume and shampoo, mingled with the lingering smells of her work at the bar. It was oddly intoxicating, and Richie was sad to feel her pull away from him.

“What was that?” Natalie asked, but Richie’s mind had clouded over so that he couldn’t think of an answer, or even a question. “Oh, that’s right. That was Richie shutting up.”

Natalie grinned impishly, mischievously. Richie sensed that she was a tease, and a damn good one. As she pulled away from him, he brought two hands to her arms and pulled her back to him. Her mouth was open in shock, but she didn’t resist. Richie kissed her harder this time, ready for it, and he felt her body relax in his grip. He felt her shifting around, climbing from her chair and into his. She smiled against his lips, followed by a small laugh.

Richie dipped his head back and opened his eyes, “Not quite the response I usually get.”
Natalie laughed louder now, shaking her head. “Sorry. Nevermind.”

Richie didn’t need to be told twice, and their lips met again. She brought a hand to his cheek this time, and then ran her fingers lightly along his jawline until she reached his chin. Her thumb found the little dimple at its center, and she rubbed it slightly. Breaking the kiss only for a second, she looked at him with an innocent grin.

“Always wanted to do that,” she explained, before she went back in for another go round. Richie’s hand was wrapped around her delicate neck, and he delighted at how small it felt against his hands. She was like a little doll, tiny and perfect. His other hand traveled down along her side, and it was his turn to grin when he felt the muscles in her stomach tighten as his fingertips trailed her sides. “Someone’s ticklish,” he laughed, as Natalie squirmed on his lap. The movement was enough to jerk Richie back into reality of where he was and with whom. He stopped kissing her, his hands resting on her hips. Natalie, too, pulled back, looking at him with concern.

“I think that’s enough,” he said with finality, and Natalie felt heat bubble in her stomach. She immediately felt like she’d done something wrong as she slid from his lap, licking her lips and carefully avoiding meeting his gaze. Almost as if on cue, the lights flickered back on and Natalie could see Richie's face again. He didn't look angry or upset with her, but he was studying her face carefully. She stood up and reached for her pocketbook, feeling painfully awkward now given what had just happened.

"I'm really sorry," she managed, "I shouldn't have done that. I'll see you around..."

She went for the door and wrenched it open, wanting to throw herself down the stairs. Jesus. What had she been thinking? She didn't just kiss people, particularly...him. Richie was on her heels like a puppy, grabbing a little wrist to spin her back around.

"Hey, you don't have to apologize. It wasn't wrong," he said with a grin. His eyes were dancing and made Natalie feel even more uncomfortable.
"Well, it wasn't right either."
"Yeah but you liked it," he teased, now walking down the stairs with her.
"You are such a smartass," she said honestly, both annoyed and amused at the light he was making of the situation.
"You keep telling me that. C'mon, I'll walk you back to your car."