*Author's Note: As a referrence note to understand the circumstances surrounding this chapter, notions here for clarification purposes, are a direct parallel to those found at the end of Chapter 6 of A Tale of Two Popstars.*
 

     Unbearable.  Intolerable.  Frustrating.  Exasperating.  She was all that and more.  But most of all, she was tiring.  

     His nerves on end and it had only been a little more than twenty-four hours.  One fucking day!  Her.  This.  It.  He was beyond tired of this shit already.  Tired.  Tired.  Tired.  It was enough to drive him to the bottle.  And it did.

     One more rousing argument from her and he headed straight for the mini-bar, calling all hell to repercussions.  All resolutions of never swallowing another drop of alcohol as long as he lived flew out the window.  He didn’t care.  

     So what?
   
     He just wanted to forget everything.  He wanted to block it all out.  He had a problem.  It started with an A, it ended with an A, and she wasn’t going away.  So he wasn’t going to think twice about drinking till he couldn’t see straight.  Numbing himself into oblivion would ease all those frustrations just fine and dandy.

     Conscious and common sense of course kicked as soon as he had a bottle within his hold.  For a split second he hesitated.  

     Wasn’t this how he got in this mess?  

     Ritchie fingered the bottle in his hands, remembering what exactly had prompted him to take on a sudden abstinence to alcohol.  His last dabblings into it had screwed him over righteously.  Then his eyes strayed across the room and met Aliesa’s brown ones.  And it didn’t take much to make up his mind.

     Fuck that.

     One bottle.  Two.  Three.  

     Who cared?

     Aliesa Montaine did apparently.  

     By his third bottle from the mini-bar, that problem of his sat down right next to him, because Ritchie wasn’t the only one dying for a release from their obscured reality.  Him being him, and her being her, Ritchie could have taken it as an opportunity to lash out with a biting remark, one of the million and one things that ravaged his mind as far as she was concerned.  But at that point doing so would have taken him energy that he just didn’t have.  Another argument was not how he wanted to spend the rest of his night.  

     So, he did what only seemed fitting considering the circumstances.  He didn’t say a thing.  Not one word spoken, when she slid to the floor beside him.  Instead he propped himself up beside her, and silently offered her the alcohol.  It only seemed fitting, drowning their sorrows.  Besides, he figured that she’d be more tolerable tipsy…that’s how they ended up how they did anyhow right?  

     Several drinks later, Ritchie got that inevitable… déjà vu in a mindless haze.  And damn if it didn’t feel good.  You see when Aliesa Montaine was full of alcohol; she was giggly, slow on the uptake, a little confused, and rambled in repeats.  Ritchie Neville on the other hand, was blunt.   He said whatever the hell he felt like in perfect coherence, and despite the mist his brain was in, spoke subconscious truth.  So put them together highly intoxicated, and well, they were an incident waiting to happen, a train wreck if you will.  As if they hadn’t realized that already.  They had gotten married under these same circumstances after all.  But the alcohol just didn’t make them care.  And that was the point wasn’t it?  They didn’t want to care.     

     “You wouldn’t!” Aliesa cried out, practically toppling over him.

     She let out a high pitch squeal beside Ritchie before breaking into a fit of laughter.  The sight to say the least amused him.  Until now, he’d never recalled hearing her laugh like that.  But she was.  And in his inebriated state it was music to his ears.  

     Aliesa was a funny drunk.  Then again, maybe he just thought she was funny because he was as drunk as she was, and he’d gotten to that state where everything was hilarious.  But, then again…if he was still thinking…maybe he wasn’t drunk enough.  However, it was a situation that was easily remedied, of course.  Ritchie filtered through the bottles by his side to change his circumstances, smirking when he found more, not bothering for a glass, and just taking it straight up. 

     “Like you haven’t?” he denounced, as Aliesa sprawled half-hazardly on onto the ground.

     “Not for a really long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long…” she breathed, “time.”

     “That’s a long time,” he commented.

     At that, Aliesa giggled into another convulsion, her head nodding.  “Yup.”

     “I dare you to,” he taunted again, as he swallowed more of whatever the hell it was he had picked up.

     Her neck twisted sideways at the words.  “You wouldn’t.”

     He emptied their last mini-bar bottle, and pushed it aside.  “Let’s go.”  

     One of her arms behind her, Aliesa shakily attempted to prop herself up.   “You wouldn’t!”

     Ritchie got himself upright, and staggered to his feet.  “We’re going!”  

     Flattening her hand against the ground, Aliesa sat up unsteadily.  “Don’t I hate you?”

     “No, you don’t.  I hate you,” he answered matter-of-factly, moving away.

     “Oh!”  Aliesa shook her head in confusion, and stared blankly up for a moment, contemplating as best she could.  “That makes sense!” she exclaimed in finality.  “But I don’t remember the question…”   

     Ritchie was halfway to the doorway by then, too busy spinning this way and that,  “Ali, where’d you go?”

     A giggle permeated the air, and he turned towards the noise, to find Aliesa in exactly the same spot, still on the floor where he left her.  Striding over, he peered down at her, “Why are you still on the floor?” he questioned.

     Back shoved up against the wall, she blinked rapidly.  “You left,” she pouted.  He dragged her upwards.  “You’re back!” she cried out in delight at the turn of events, before drooping back down.

     Ritchie lifted her off the ground, “No, we’re going right now.”

     “You said that before!  And I didn’t!”  Aliesa’s hand shoved, before she flopped up against him, “Oh you know what Ritchie!  I know what else we can do!  Let’s get married!” She nodded vehemently at the idea, then stopped abruptly, to pull back, “Oh wait!  We did that already!”  Aliesa laughed manically for a moment before her voice dropped down to what she thought was a whisper, but in her condition, wasn’t even close to one.  “But, we can’t tell anyone okay!  It’s supposed to be a secret.  So, shh…” Her finger hit her lip in emphasis, “’Kay?”  Stepping back with her point made, Aliesa’s body teetered with enough momentum to send her to the floor again.  But Ritchie’s hold prevented a collision, and pushed her forward.  “Ritchie?”  Aliesa inquired staring wide-eyed at him at the movement, latching onto his fingers with her own.  

     “Yeah?”

     She tugged at his shirt, “Your eyes are really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really,” she inhaled in her realization, “blue.”

     His gaze swept down her intently at the conclusion.  “Yours aren’t,” he deduced, cracking a grin when she shook her head negatively at his insightfulness.

     Aliesa draped an arm around his neck.  “Nuh-uh.  They’re a boring, boring, boring, boring,” she emphasized, “brown.”

     “No,” he sighed heavily in disagreement, “They’re beautiful,” he corrected.  Those blue eyes fixated on her brown, gazing at her oh so seriously.  “Just like the rest of you”

     She smiled widely.  “Really?” she gushed.

     Ritchie nodded thoughtfully in response, as Aliesa straightened herself up against him. “You’re beautiful.  I think you’re so beautiful.”
     
     “You do?”  

     “I thought you were an angel when I met you…” Ritchie breathed in deeply, the memory filtering in and out in the blur of things.  He had thought that about her.  He really had.  Blanking out in the recollection, he realized that he had always thought it.
 
     Heavenly.  That was the only thing that came to mind when he saw her.

     She was beautiful…like an angel.  

    He didn’t know how long he’d been standing there just staring.  Watching as she laughed, as she smiled, as she talked to one person to the next, noticing how she’d tap her fingernail twice against her glass right before raising it to her lips, analyzing how every once in a while that same fingernail would find itself in her mouth right before she’d blush.  No, he didn’t know how long he’d been standing there.  But he really didn’t care at this point.  

     He probably could have stayed in that spot all night long and just looked at her.  He couldn’t stop staring.  

     That is until a certain Jason Brown blocked his view and he was forced to.

     Not just blocking his view either.  The ass was smirking.

    “Man stop gawking and just go up and ask her to dance or something.  You’re getting all cross-eyed.”

     Ritchie shook his head before taking a swig of his drink and playing the comment off, “I’m not gawking.”

     “Ritchie, if you stared any harder your eyes would fall out,” J scoffed at the protest.  “Just go talk to her.  She won’t bite you.”  J grinned.  “Well… maybe if you ask nice she might.”

     “J.”

     “Richard.”

     Ritchie scowled at that, “Maybe I don’t want to talk to her,” he commented plainly in defiance.

     “And maybe you’re lying,” J retorted back just as tonelessly.  “And damn badly too,” he added.  

     Ritchie quickly looked down at the liquid in his glass, shrugging before taking a quick sip. “Whatever.”

     J eyed him.  “Yeah, you definitely have a thing for her.”

     “I’m not listening.”
     
     “So it wouldn’t matter if I told you she’s on her way over right now with Shannon,” J prompted. 

     Ritchie’s head shot up at the remark, “What?” he asked incredulously.  His eyes darted past J.  And before he could process the possibility of what he could say or do there she was, right in front of him…and better looking close up.    

     “J.  Ritchie.  You know Aliesa right?” Shannon’s warm voice greeted the pair, but Ritchie wasn’t paying attention to her, all his focus was on the woman beside his publicist.  Definitely an angel…  

     “Sure do,” he mumbled out before he could stop himself.  Shannon raised an eyebrow when J snickered beside him.  Ritchie blushed.  So did Aliesa.  He smiled when a fingernail made its way past her lips.  And the words just came pouring out of his mouth.  “You wanna dance?”

     Aliesa smiled up at him in response, her fingers tentatively reaching out to his wordlessly, answering the question in a gesture.  Ignoring the other two people in their presence, Ritchie led her away, taking her in his arms, where she stayed for the rest of the evening.

     Like right now.  It was just like this.  Just him.  Just her.  She was in his arms, the warmth of her body meshing against his own.  Her smile so radiant, and yes, beautiful, just like the rest of her.  

     “Heavenly,” he murmured.  “Definitely.”
 

Five
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