Twenty-one

Richie paced the hotel room. It was the last day of this particular leg of the tour and he was experiencing a bonafide case of stir crazy. What was making matters worse was that Lindsay hadn’t posted in days and he was worried. She never just vanished for days on end without sending some little message letting him know why. Something was wrong, he just knew it and he was stuck overseas with no way to find out why. All he could do was wait on a message that seemingly was never going to come. He smiled as he thought back over the last few weeks since the video. They’d talked often via the board, and he’d often suggested moving to a more live approach to chat. He’d suggested AIM, MSN and SKYPE only to have her say her computer wasn’t fast enough to handle that kind of connection. Fuck didn’t they pay her anything? Couldn’t she afford a decent computer? He’d even offered to send her a newer one only to have her turn him down and rather adamantly. He chuckled as her words about that floated into his mind. You’ve lost your fucking mind right Sambora? Didn’t accept this friendship on the basis of what you can give me, so forget about it. Just deal with my computer as is. Friendship is about more than that. Her pride was often the roadblock to them even talking via the phone. He wanted to offer her his number, had often asked for hers only to have her ignore the request. It drove him crazy and then some. The simple fact was he wanted to meet her. He wanted to know her even better. He didn’t care if she was fat short and fifty, or slim young and twenty, he wanted to meet her in person and see if that connection he felt to her would translate to offline. He craved seeing if she would respond to him in real the way her words responded to him on the computer and she was being stubborn fuck it all. Shit he was Richie Sambora and this one woman was rebuffing him. Women never rebuffed him. True she would talk at length in messages. Hell they’d shared more in a few weeks than he’d ever shared with any other woman, so why the hell was she acting like that didn’t exist? Goddammit all he was worried. Had he pushed too hard? Had he made her go away with his requests? He was who he was, when he wanted something he got it, always had been that way. Even in 1982 when he’d first saw Jon perform. He knew that boy was a star, knew he had the talent to make it and he wanted to play in that band. Twenty-six years later, his initial beliefs were still ringing true. They were one of the top ten bands in the world. He turned to stare at the offending computer that didn’t do as he wanted, as if the computer could magically make a message appear. Groaning he wandered over and sat down, to check the forum for the million and first time since her last message. Subject: From the nearly late great me. Hiya hon, Sorry I haven’t been around the last few days, but life reared its often unfair head my way. ((I’m actually writing this at work so that might tell ya something.)) Yep my Dinosaur finally died, and wouldn’t you know it I managed to get the flu. Now let me tell ya, getting sick at budget time is a real stinky problem. Now I’m faced with a weeks worth of work that I have to get done in eight hours. Dead line is today dammit. Ask me if anyone thought to run the reports when I was sick? Yep your right, of course they didn’t. I tell ya, its one of those days when I actually might have considered taking ya up on that computer offer, but hey payday is here and I’m getting a newer one today. Thank god all my important stuff ((pics, fictions etc)) were housed on my external harddrive, so I didn’t lose too much. Well I have to get back to work, message you later and we can discuss our newest fic, the one you wanna do with David as the main guy who gets into all the trouble? Yeah I don’t blame ya. How’s the payback coming? Did he scream when he found the Vaseline all over his keyboards? How’d the fake bald head thing go? I hope you were taking pictures when the static electricity thing was used. Damn come to think of it I hope it didn’t make him curlier. See ya soon Richie. Linds. Richie leaned back and frowned. She’d been sick. She was alone in the world and she’d been sick and he just bet not even anyone from work had been there for her. An idea began to form in his head as a smile that would rival the mega watt brilliance of Jon’s grin crept onto his lips. He’d fix that. Come hell or high water he’d fix that. Glancing up at the clock he saw that it was time to get to the venue. They had a concert that night and after that he was heading home, only it wasn’t LA he was looking too, it was Woodbridge.