Love Is Strange - Ringo Starr Fan Fiction - Beatles Fan Fiction

Chapter NINE!

"Buongiorno tristezza! I didn't know flatteries of love, love songs, tortures of love. When kissing once she asked me my heart, I gave her my heart, I lost my heart!"

Ringo freshly showered, walked out of the bathroom with a towel loosely wrapped around his slim waist. "He came round with his manager and loads of records."

"Who?" Charlie distractedly asked. She sat up in bed and rested against the headboard. Charlie pulled up the bed sheet to cover her bare breasts.

He jokingly answered. "Why Ricky West, that's who! Star of the Ricky West Show."

Charlie halfheartedly smiled. She parroted the opening line of Ricky West's canceled television program. "Who's the heartthrob that makes all the teenage girl's hearts swoon? Why Ricky West, that's who!"

Ringo boisterously laughed. "That's how his manager introduced him. You would've thought he was Elvis the way he banged on about him. Paul digs his music. He's the one that's been playing his records."

"I never liked him." Charlie edgily replied.

"Paul?"

"Ricky West."

Ringo shrugged. "People played his records at house parties for the slow dances. He weren't never much of a rocker."

Charlie softly replied. "I know." She was familiar with the Italian crooner's silky smooth vocals all too well. Ricky West was a fellow New Yorker. But, he'd reached the height of his popularity in the mid-1950s.

He was also one of her grandmother's, Ida's favorite singers. His albums were the soundtrack to a period of time in her life that Charlie tried to forget. She detested the sound of West's baritone voice. It made the fine hairs on her body stand up and her stomach churn.

In a plush hotel room on New York's Upper East Side. The memory of her grandfather's smell surrounded Charlie. His pungent brand of menthol cigarettes suffocated her. Ida would make her go the bedroom in the back.

Her grandfather would be waiting for her, sitting on the edge of the bed. He patted his knee to beckon her over to him. Those memories were linked to the sound of Ricky's West voice coming from Ida's record player in the front room.

Charlie meets Ringo's gaze. He was staring at her. "What?" She defensively asked.

He shook his head.

She stiffly repeated herself. "What?"

"You're lovely."

His blue eyes were brimming with unbridled honesty. She felt sorry for him. She didn't think she was deserving of his adoration.

"I've never been lovely." Charlie despondently spoke.

Ring stripped the towel from his body and joined her in bed. He rested his back against the headboard and wrapped his arm around her shoulders.

Charlie closed her eyes and allowed herself to be held.

"You're lovely to me." He whispered into her ear.

(----)

John tightly clutched the phone receiver. "Cyn, I need you here." He pleaded with his estranged wife. John worried the phone cord with his fidgety hand. In response, he heard the hiss of a faulty transatlantic connection.

"Hello? Cyn? Cyn?" John stood up from the edge of the unmade bed. He walked over to the partially open curtain covered window. John couldn't properly see the fans without his eyeglasses or his glass contacts. He could hear them through the window.