Thursday 18 December 2008

Chapter 14

The months that has passed since Richie and Victoria's break up had been stressful for Sophia. She was trying her hardest to get her sister back to the way she had been before the whole Richie thing but nothing seemed to work. The more she tried to help her the more her sister pushed her away. Sophia could only watch her sister throw herself into work and be there for her when she decided she wanted to talk. As time went on and Bon Jovi released another album it became increasingly difficult to keep the magazines and newspapers away from Victoria. Jon and Richie seemed to be photographed every night with a different actress or model on their arm and Sophia did her best to keep those pictures out of sight from her sister. Now and again Sophia would read the articles, which she knew she would regret as soon as she ended the page, they always emphasized how happy the band was to be touring again and it made her angry to know that Richie was having a ball while her sister was still suffering.


Jon felt exhausted as he collapsed into one of the dressing room seats. They had just finished another sell out show and the band was doing better than ever. The publicity was great mainly due to the plan Jon had devised of having all the guys step out with a famous woman almost every night as well as the non stop TV interviews. In theory the guys would have been pleased about it but the whole idea was just more work and it was taking its toll on all of them. It should have been the best time of their careers but they were all too exhausted to appreciate it and the tension between them was growing every day. It was becoming an effort to be around each other and Jon was increasingly worried about Richie's behaviour. He was drinking a lot more than normal and Jon had to constantly cover for him with the press.


Victoria arrived home from work to find Sophia ripping pages out of a magazine. Curious at what her sister was up to she sneaked up behind her and pulled the pages from her hand. Sophia swung round to see Victoria's face drop. The expression on her face was unreadable and Sophia assumed she was upset at what she had found on the page.
"How long have you been doing this?" Victoria demanded, the anger in her voice rising with every word.
"I thought it would upset you so I've been taking them out before you read them", Sophia confessed.
"I can't believe you would do that! How do you expect me to get over him if you hide everything he appears on!" Victoria shouted. Sophia didn't know what to say to her, this was far from the reaction she expected. Victoria stormed to her room while Sophia sat in silence. An hour or so later Victoria appeared from her room with a suitcase in her hand. "I'm going back home for a while. I need to get away from this place. Don't try and stop me Sophia, it's what I have to do", Victoria's face was deadly serious as she spoke. Sophia stepped out of her way and let her leave, she had never seen her sister like that before and so she did as she asked.


The tour was almost finished now and they had succeeded in selling out every show they had done. Even though everything had gone as Jon had planned there was still something missing. He thought taking Richie on tour and getting back to work would have helped him but it proved to have done the opposite. Jon rarely saw him without a drink in his hand and the more he watched him, he realised how unhappy he was. There were times that he wished he hadn't heard what Victoria had said and felt guilty at being the one to break the news to Richie. He hadn't been able to get through to him during the tour, it was as though he had taken a shadow of the man with him rather than his best friend. It was watching Richie that made Jon decide they would take a break after the tour and he would go back to acting while he helped get Richie back to his old self.

1 comment:

Alina said...

This is not exactly what I expected...

But Jon is right - it would had been better if he'd never heard what Victoria was saying.

I'm quite anxious to see how things develop!