Best Man

Tapping on the plastic cup of his peppermint mocha frappuccino with the thick fingers of his right hand, Tre stared off toward the wall beyond Giselle's left shoulder as a pair of twenty-something young women, donned in the latest fashions from Aeropostale, walked out of Starbucks, holding cups of steaming whatever.

Giselle, meanwhile, leaned her head down to take a small sip of her vanilla latte, waiting for Tre to make the first move and initiate conversation that wasn't simple chit chat.

And she was in no rush. She'd wait all night for him to start talking.

When he brought his focus back onto her, he smiled nervously. "Do I have a booger?" he wondered, sticking a finger in his up his nostril and wiggling it around.

Giselle laughed and shook her head. "No, you're booger-free. I promise."

"Okay. Good." Chewing on his bottom lip, he lifted his beverage up, but then set it back down, knowing very well that the younger Woods sister was waiting for him. He knew the look she was giving him.

Caroline and Giselle may not have been from the same parents, and simply sisters via adoption, but they acted the same way when it came to facial expressions and the like.

"Alright, what exactly do you wanna know?"

"You tell me."

"Don't go all psychiatrist on me so soon," he pleaded mildly. When she just continued to stare, he frowned. "Okay, so...me and Caroline?"

"And Mike."

"Right. Me, Caroline and Mike."

"Actually that would be 'Caroline, Mike and I,'" she corrected. Then she grimaced with an apologetic wave of her hand. "Sorry."

"I'm gonna be honest. I'm not really sure what it is exactly you wanna know."

"I wanna know what's going on. Why there's a tenseness between the three of you that wasn't there a few months ago."

"It's always been there. Just on a different level," Tre assured, staring down into his cup, letting his thumb graze the smooth plastic, up and down. With a sigh, he hesitated in continuing to speak. But, then, "I think I despise Mike."

"Why do you feel that way?"

Tre shrugged, although he knew why. "Because he took Caroline from me," he admitted abruptly. He was still looking down at his drink but he could see Giselle's expression change from through his eyebrows. "I made her my world, and I know I was a little paranoid when it came to our relationship halfway through it, but it was because I didn't want to fuck things up. But in my defense, I really wasn't the one who fucked anything up. Caroline did. Mike did, too. I was...the victim, for a lack of better words. I gave her so much. I gave her my heart, my time, my...my everything," he rambled. "I wanted to marry her someday. But then Mike stuck his foot in the door, slowly infiltrating how Caroline saw him...almost turning her against what I offered her."

"Offered her what?"

"A life with me," he replied quietly.

There was a strangely welcomed silence that fell over them for a moment, until Giselle pushed her vanilla latte to the side and hunched forward a little.

"What makes you think Caroline was truly ever yours to begin with?"

"Because she was with me first. She loved me first..." he trailed. Then added, "She was mine first."

Giselle sat back and threw the drummer a minute scowl. "I'm gonna step outside my psychiatrist box for a moment to inform you that my sister was, and never will be, anyone's property."

"That's not what I meant. I just---you know you're twisting my words."

"Maybe I am, but that's the message you're conveying when you speak. Caroline was yours. Your girlfriend." Giselle licked her lips and sighed. "I know for a fact that my sister loved you something fierce...for a time. And you know what...I'm not all analysis and facts. I like to believe in theories and ideas as well. It's the conundrum that is me. And I happen to believe, Frank, that, yes, even though Caroline was with you, relationship-wise, first...you were more of a stepping stone. If she hadn't been with you first, she never would've discovered the love she had for Mike. She might as very well be alone to this day, wondering when her soulmate would come into her life. And, yes, I do believe Mike is her match; that they're meant to be."

"I thought you wanted to know what was going on from my perspective; not to ramble off your so-called beliefs," Tre snipped, glancing up and locking eyes with Giselle.

"I do," she answered softly. "Caroline...she told me you kissed her a few weeks ago."

Tre nodded. "Yeah."

"Why?"

"Because I wanted to."

"Why?"

"Because I still love her."

"I don't think you do," Giselle insisted.

"Oh, no? Actually, I'm pretty sure of it. I know my own feelings."

"Do you really? Or are you really just feeling a sense of love lost. Of mere lust now."

Sitting back, Tre pushed his own drink out of the way this time as he glared at Giselle. "You know I'm so very glad we're having this little one-on-one chat," he remarked sarcastically.

"Tre---"

"Don't 'Tre' me, Giselle. In a perfect world---the world that should've happened---you would be my sister-in-law someday. Not Mike's. Caroline would be my fiancee. Not...his. I-in all of our years as friends, as a band, and all the girls we've ever dated or been with, we never took each other's girls. Never dated each other's exes. Never, never cheated on our friendship with our girlfriends. But Mike broke that. He---" he cut himself off when he sensed his voice was rising from anger. Collecting himself, he seethed a heavy sigh as he looked out the window to his left. "I forgave him, because I thought I'd lose him forever. With his heart attack and just...everything was so crazy when it all came to a head last year...I just wanted it to end. I wanted peace."

"But?"

"But now...now I've had a year to stew in what I let him take from me. Caroline and I could've worked it out. I mean, if Billie and Adrienne can work through bumps and marital potholes after fourteen years of marriage, then how come I couldn't do it with Care, huh?"

Then, a thought occurred to Giselle.

"Mike didn't take Caroline away, and she didn't just walk away from you either," she commented.

"What are you talking about?"

Giselle smiled with a sort of victory; knowing she had just realized a crucial fact he was missing in his argument.

"You let her walk away," she continued. "She went to you when she got back from tour last year to talk things over. She told me all about it after the fact. And you both decided it was best to part ways. And that gave her the option to freely give herself to Mike; wholeheartedly." She watched how Tre seemed to sink a little. "If you really wanted to keep her in your life...to really make a life with her, you would've kept fighting for her. But you didn't. And there, my friend, goes your argument," she added with a sympathetic smile.

Tre's face simply fell. He was at a loss for words.

Reaching his right hand out, he picked up his peppermint mocha frappuccino and took a quick sip and then stood up. "I gotta go." Pushing back his chair, he began to walk away from their table as Giselle jumped up with her purse in one hand and her latte in the other.

"Tre," she muttered after him. Following him out of Starbucks she couldn't seem to keep up with him as they walked toward his SUV. He unlocked his door and was about to slide in, when she prevented the door from shutting by grabbing the handle. "Tre."

Stopping, he turned to look at her as she frowned and placed her hands on her hips. "Don't be a baby."

He frowned back at her. "Thanks. That makes me feel even better. Super."

Turning back toward his front seat, Giselle acted first without thinking as she grabbed his left shoulder with her hand who's arm was occupied with her purse. Pulling him toward her she smacked a kiss on his lips that lasted only moments, but it was long enough to stun the 35-year-old drummer.

When she pulled her mouth from his, she looked at him nonchalantly and then smirked.

"Wha-what was that for?"

"Take your mind off my sister and your desperation to have her in your life again for a while, okay? You'll give yourself an ulcer." Turning on the heels of her feet, Giselle waved at Tre briefly and walked casually over to Caroline's Jaguar and unlocked it. "It was nice talking to you Tre. If you ever need an ear, gimme a call."

Then, hopping into the Jag, Giselle started it up and pulled away, leaving a very dumbfounded Tre standing beside the open driver's side door of his SUV.

"What the fuck just happened?" he mumbled to himself.