These photos are from 2007

I think it was the illustrious J-Wowww who compared reconciling with an old boyfriend to reheating cooked pasta. It’s a good analogy, really, because an old flame can seem familiar and comforting but much blander and staler the second time around. When we’re talking about Richie Sambora, I guess it’s more like reheating spoiled meat though. He never was a catch and never will be, although I guess a drunken rocker can seem like an awesome boyfriend when you compare him to a drugged out TV star who hires hookers he finds on the Barely Legal adult film series.

Anyway last year The Enquirer was claiming that these two were together over the summer, I had forgotten about that. They were first linked in 2006, broke up about a year later, and now they’re supposedly together yet again, according to The Enquirer’s sister site, Radar Online. I doubt they’ve been together since last summer this go-round. I bet Denise just calls her tabloid contacts whenever she has dinner with Richie. Here’s more:

They say love never dies!

Bombshell beauty Denise Richards is back together with her ex-boyfriend Richie Sambora, RadarOnline.com has exclusively learned.

“They are dating again,” a source close to the couple revealed.

Richards, 40, and Sambora, 52, dated in 2006 following their divorces from Charlie Sheen and Heather Locklear, respectively, but broke up in 2007.

Now it seems like the pair have reconciled again, following a romantic dinner at Tatsuki sushi restaurant in Woodland Hills, California on Sunday night. “They were there over an hour and they had the whole place to themselves for the last half hour.”

Denise and Richie walked by a tattoo parlor on the way out of the restaurant and he joked to Denise, “What do ya think, should I get one?” and she laughed.

“It is serious but they are trying to keep it low key,” the source told RadarOnline.com about the on again couple.

[From Radar Online]

The “low key” crap is very similar to the story last year about how they were “staying out of the public eye because they didn’t want to become part of the media hoopla surrounding their ex-spouses.” Denise probably wants to hit up a few red carpets and have dinner at Mr. Chow but Richie is probably telling her “no.” So she’s telling Radar and The Enquirer that they’re trying to keep it “low key.”

This is mildly interesting to me on a “what is she thinking?” level. If Denise and Richie started getting papped together I think the collective response would be a shrug and she knows that. So… well played?

Here’s Denise and Richie on vacation on 01/31/07. Is she putting on sunscreen or sniffing something?

Photo credit: Fame Pictures