Best Man

When Mike awoke the following morning, he rolled over to find Caroline sprawled out on her side of the bed; one hand hanging over the edge of the mattress along with one leg. With her face buried underneath her pillow, it looked as if she'd been decapitated sometime during the night while they were sleeping.

Propping his body up, he placed a hand on the small of her back and leaned down to press his lips to the space of skin between her shoulder blades. It was one of the small gestures he made every morning that usually woke her up with a smile but, to his dismay, not this morning.

Caroline continued to lay there, so what was Mike to do? Force her up? He wasn't that kind of person. She was still tired from last night and, when she woke up, she'd probably be hit with a hangover awaiting her. Instead, he shifted off the bed with a stifled groan, wondering to himself just where they were headed and why she couldn't just talk to him anymore. What, in the last couple of months, had changed them? Changed her?

Letting his thoughts stew in his head, he staggered away from the bed and to the bathroom to take his first piss of the day. And while he did so with the door slightly ajar, Caroline took that moment to lift her head out from under her pillow to look in the direction of their bathroom; listening to the sound of Mike relieving himself and letting out a long yawn.

Biting her lip, she began to slink down the bed; clearly having been awake for a good while up to this point. As if casing the location of a prospective heist like a very careful and expert thief, the brunette singer slid off the bed as quietly as possible and began to tiptoe across the floor.

"I didn't know you were up," came Mike's voice.

Jumping slightly, she turned to look at him and offered him a small smile. "Uh, yeah. Just woke up...and I was gonna---"

"You're surprisingly awake for someone who just woke up," he remarked; his hands loosely on his narrow hips.

"Life on the road...it, uh...does that. You learn to deal with...things like waking up and gettin'...um...you know how it is, right? You're able to get up and go..." she offered lamely, gesturing to him with her delicate hand.

"Gettin' up and goin', huh? Then where ya goin' now?"

"What is this? The Spanish Inquisition? Who said I was going anywhere?" she threw back, getting on the defensive while ignoring her hangover that was subtly pulsing at her temples.

"Well, you were trying to sneak out of the room. You didn't even say good morning or anything. It's not like you didn't know I was in the bathroom, Care. I was fucking pissin' loud enough for ya."

"I was not sneaking. I just---"

"Just what?"

"I don't want to go through this with you right now," Care said firmly, throwing a hand up and turning to walk toward the walk-in closet.

"You never wanna talk about anything anymore, Caroline."

"You never get off my back anymore! Maybe I don't have anything I need to talk to you about! Did you ever consider that?"

Mike snapped his head back a little; clearly hurt by her comment as his angered expression fell to just that of, well, hurt.

The two of them stood there, looking at each other for what seemed like forever as tears began to sting both of their eyes. Shifting her weight from one leg to another. She desperately wanted to have him hold her and forget everything that was eating at her and the arguments they kept having lately. It was too much to handle.

"Well..." Mike finally spoke. "I certainly have nothing more to say to you right now."

"Don't talk to me like that; like you don't care."

"What do you expect me to do? You won't open the fuck up. I have no idea what's going on in that fucking head of yours anymore!" he shouted, tapping his right index finger against her left temple.

Swatting his hand away, Caroline glared at Mike. "Because I don't know how to talk about it! Okay? Can't you just accept that I don't know how to..." her voice faded away as she looked over his shoulder and tears began to fall down her cheeks.

"Just talk to me. I don't care what it is, just...Christ. Don't leave me out," Mike pleaded, stepping forward to hold her shoulders in his hands. "I love you too much to let you slip away from me."

"You love me," she repeated; there, but not. Blinking back her tears, she tilted her head upward as if to study the details of the ceiling. "And I'm sorry I'm fucking things up or whatever for us right now, but you don't understand...I can't...I can't just...'cause you love me and I'm just scared of---"

"Jesus fucking Christ, babe. What are you so scared of?"

"I...me...I mean, us a-and..."

Mike rolled his eyes. She clearly wasn't about to open up to him, yet again. "Fine, don't talk to me, but answer me one thing, okay?" he propositioned. "What happened last night at the club? Did something happen between you and Billie?"

Caroline's eyes widened. Oh, shit. What happened? I don't remember. What did I do?!

"I...I dunno," she shrugged. "I was a little drunk."

"A little? You couldn't keep your eyes open, you were stumbling about, practically making out with Billie on the dance floor, then passed out in the car ride home and remained dead to the world until this morning."

Fuck. That's what happened. I was--shit! I was making out with Billie Joe in that hallway, wasn't I? Fuck, fuck, fuckity-fuck, fuck!

"Like I said: a little drunk."

Shifting her hazel eyes away, Caroline turned her body back toward the closet and stepped in to yank a thin, black sweater off a hanger and then a pair of jeans off one of the shelves. As she slipped the jeans on under the dress she was still wearing and put her sweater on over said dress, she could feel Mike's eyes on her as he stood in front of the closet.

"Where ya going?"

Caroline just shook her head.

"I asked where ya going?" he repeated.

"Out," she answered, looking down as she zipped up the fly of her jeans.

Even though her reply was meant to be cool, calm and collected, Mike could clearly hear the desperation in her voice. She was confused and definitely scared about something she, again, didn't want to share with him. And, to Mike, it felt as if this was all going in circles. He was getting no where with asking her to just open up and her not complying to do so.

He might as well just give up.

So, throwing his hands into the air in mock surrender, the tall bassist turned away from the closet and away from Caroline.

"Fine, whatever. Suit yourself. I mean, shit. Heaven forbid the man who wants to spend the rest of his life with you wants some insight into what's going on. I guess that's just too much to ask," he grumbled as he walked away.

Walking out of the closet, Caroline watched his figure saunter back into the bathroom where he shut the door a little hard, causing her to wince before reopening her eyes.

Her chin quivering, she looked at the bedroom door and placed her hand to her lips. "I'm gonna fuck this up. Gonna drive him away," she mumbled to herself.

Without another word, she walked to the bedroom door, pulled it open and walked out in heavy silence.



In the time that it took to drive from her home to the undisclosed home she ended up at, Caroline found herself parked in the driveway, sitting in her car and bawling her eyes out.

Unaware of her raccoon eyes, due to never cleaning her eye make-up off the night before, tears ran down her cheeks like charcoal-colored rivers as she hunched forward slightly against the steering wheel. After a few moments, she managed to lift her head to stare up at the house before her and took the keys out of the ignition.

Not bothering to grab her purse, Caroline hopped out of her car and sauntered up the rest of the driveway and to the front door, doing her best to wipe away her tears as she pushed the doorbell with her free hand.

And, after a few moments, the door opened.

"Caroline? What--are you okay? I, uh...wasn't expecting you to show up on my doorstep."

Tre was completely surprised to find his ex-girlfriend, of all people, there in front of him. At his house. And looking as if she needed some major consoling.

But why him?

"You loved me, right? You would've never left me? I mean, if nothing had ever happened with Mike and me, and things were okay between us...you woulda never walked out and abandoned me, right? 'Cause if you did, do you think that maybe it woulda in some way be because I just wasn't good enough or something?" she blurted out her questions in one, long-winded ramble.

Throwing his hands up, Tre frowned. "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's backtrack, shall we?" he began. "First thing's first...why don't you come in, and then we'll figure out what the hell you just said."

"Sorry," she muttered quietly as Tre ushered her into his house.

Once the two of them had walked inside, and moved to the living room, he gestured for her to take a seat on the couch, which she did.

"Okay, now...to what do I owe this visit and the dried rivers of mascara on your face?" Tre asked, pointing to her.

"Mike loves me," she stated right of the bat. She added to it by trying to smile but having it come out like some sort of pained expression; as if she were dealing with severe abdominal pain. "He wants to marry me, and be with me forever...and...and I'm scared."

"What's there to be scared of if he loves you?" Moving to sit on his coffee table so that he could face her, Tre folded his hands between his knees. "Are you having second thoughts?"

It was unintentional, but there was a notable glimmer of hope in his voice that both noticed and tried to ignore.

Looking up at her ex-boyfriend through her eyebrows, Caroline pouted. "Not exactly. I mean...I don't want to disappoint him, because he means so much to me. And I know it's weird talking about this with you, but you're really the only person who knew me. And I mean, intimately."

"That's kinda common knowledge, Care. I think the whole world knows that. In fact, I recall a bunch of magazines and TV shows going over our scandalous breakup and the whole shacking up with Mike ordeal about a year ago."

Casting her hazel eyes down, she tried to ignore the truth in his comment. "You loved me, and you threw me out when you found out about what I'd been doing with him." Looking back up at him, a few more tears returned to rolled down her face. "You threw me away. Your first thought of action was to kick me out and be done with me. And that's something I still haven't been able to get over."

Tre frowned. "I'm sorry about that."

Simply shaking it off, Caroline lifted her head to face the ceiling as she wiped at her oncoming torrent of tears; trying her best to blink them away so that she could get through what she was there to talk about.

"You know just as well as anyone that I hold a lot about myself in. About how I'm feeling, about what I'm thinking..." she spoke while trying to maintain a steady voice. "I felt lower than dirt. And it's been eating at me the more Mike and I talk about our future. Not about us, as in our fidelity, because I could never bring myself to consciously cheat on him, but in that...that I..."

"What?"

"Do you know the story of why I was given up for adoption?" she asked suddenly, staring Tre down with stern but uncertain eyes.

Tre shrugged. "No. Can't say that I do," he replied. "I s'pose it's one of the many things you never felt you wanted to open up to me about."

"I was abandoned," she admitted. "My birth parents left me in a dumpster. They didn't want me enough to keep me when I was born. They thought I'd be better off left to die in a pile of other people's garbage."

Blue eyes widened in shock as Tre listened to what his ex had just said.

How come she could never tell me this?

Biting her lip, her chin still quivered as the simple thought of her welcome to the world flooded her senses for what was most definitely not the first time in her life. Caroline knitted her brow and looked briefly to the side.

"They could've gotten rid of me before I was born," she went on, shaking her head in her own disbelief. "Abortion was legalized seven years before I was born. But, I was full term. Nine months. And my mother gave birth, and I was taken to a dumpster in an alley and left there. And...and if it weren't for that stranger who heard me crying and taking me to the nearest hospital, I woulda died."

"I'm so sorry..." Tre offered lamely. "I wish I'd known this, but...what does it all have to do with Mike?"

Wrapping her arms around her chest, Caroline bit her bottom lip and looked Tre in the eye once again. "Do you think I was damaged? That my parents saw me and thought, 'Eh, nevermind.' I mean...who does that? Who abandons a newborn?"

"Caroline, you shouldn't be so upset about this. It was something that happened to you before you could even form actual thoughts. You were---what? A few hours old? Focus on the fact that you have two parents who adopted you. Who took you as their own to love and gave you a sister, Giselle, who's your best friend."

Caroline began to shake her head adamantly. "No. No, no, no...you don't get it," she snipped slightly, gesturing both her hands out to him in desperation, which caused the punk rock drummer to sit back a little. "I can't get over it because I started out in this life, abandoned. Left for fucking dead. I have no idea who my real parents were...or...are. And I...I just wanna know why. Why did they do that to me? What was their reasoning? A-and...and I can't have a life with Mike if I can't come to terms with the fact that I almost didn't have one at all."

Suddenly, Caroline hunched forward and placed her face in her hands as sobs began to rack her body. Unsure if he should just sit there and let her cry it out, or hold her in a consoling hug, Tre tried to settle on some sort of middle ground; deciding to simply place a hand on her shoulder and give her a soothing rub to let her know he was there.

"I can't know where I'm going unless I know where I come from..." she spoke through a hiccup. "And I'm tired of people leaving me behind."

"What do you mean, 'tired of it?' How many people could have left you?" Tre was more than a little confused.

"You want the list?" Without missing a beat, she held out her hands and began to count off with her fingers. "My birth parents; every boyfriend I ever had up until college because they were tired of the relationship we had without caring what I felt or thought; my parents when they left me behind in Buffalo so they could move to Raleigh; Dave, in the sense that we broke up; you throwing me out when you found out I'd been cheating; Nick who just left me, Dave and Nef high and dry to try and scramble to find a new bassist..."

"I'm sorry, Caroline. But I don't know what you want me to say to all this. Do...do you want a pity party or something?" Standing up abruptly, Tre took a step back; looking down at her as she looked up at him. "Your life was shit when you were born. Some people decided to take different paths that weren't yours."

"Why are you getting snippy with me? I thought, if anything, I could talk to you."

"We can't talk like we used to, Caroline. Not that we ever truly talked in the sense of being completely honest with one another."

"Why not? Aren't you over---"

"No, Care. I'm not over you," he admitted to her, surprisingly. "You haven't figured that out yet? You walked into my life and made things great. Or what felt great, and you fucked it up and left me in the end. And you've left me wanting you still for more than a year now."

"But...Giselle..."

"I really like your sister, yes. But, fuck it, Care. The second I see you all you do is fog everything up. I can't think of anything or anyone else. You're like the top of the goddamn Golden Gate sticking out above the fog over the Bay in the morning. I can't see the fucking buildings or hills or the damned Bay itself, but I see you...and...hell if I don't wanna burn that bridge down..."

Sinking back into the couch with now more weight on her mind, Caroline wore a grave expression, mixed with her mascara-stained cheeks.

"If I can't talk to you, who can I?"

"You left me for Mike. You're gonna fuckin' marry him. Do us all a favor and open up to the man you're with for the first time in your goddamned, selfish life."

Now utterly stunned, Caroline looked down and grasped her keys tightly in her right hand and stood up.

"Fuck you," she muttered.

"Been there, done that," he quipped snarkily.

Whipping her teary face around, Caroline got angry this time and got 'all up in his shit,' so to speak, standing so close to him that they were maybe an inch or two apart.

"Fuck you," she bit out. "I came here for someone to talk to, assuming you could be objective, but apparently I was wrong. And...and you better stay the fuck away from Giselle, because if you can't get over me, then I will not have you breaking her heart."

"Get out, Caroline, before we say anything we might regret later."

Staring her down, he watched as she stepped away from him, bringing her free hand to her face and wiping extra tears away. "I'm not kidding, Frank. Don't mess with my sister."

"How about you go deal with your own life and stay outta mine?" he suggested, walking with her to the front door until she stepped out. "If you wanna find out who your fucking birth parents are to ask them why they abandoned you, hire a fucking private investigator and leave me the hell alone."

Before Caroline could retort, Tre had slammed the door in her face.



Sitting alone on the edge of his couch, Mike's ears picked up the sound of Caroline's car returning as soon as it pulled into the driveway. Standing up, he walked over to the archway that led into the front hall and waited.

When he heard her footsteps outside and then the doorknob turn, he straightened up his posture.

Her hazel eyes locked with his blue ones almost immediately. And, under different circumstances, she may have jumped in surprise at finding him standing there, but this time, it were as if she'd been expecting to find him there.

"Where'd ya go?" he asked; sort of reiterating his question from earlier.

Dropping her keys on the hall table with her purse, she gave him a tired look. "Somewhere that made me come to terms that the only way I can be okay is if I let you in."

"You wanna let me in?" He was a little surprised that after all this time, now she wanted to open up. And he wondered what changed her mind, and what she would tell him.

Caroline nodded. "Yes." Stepping forward, she took both of his hands in hers and stood on tiptoe. "I'm so sorry for trying to hide my feelings and thoughts from you. I just...didn't know what to do...or how to go about...anything. I'm sorry."

His heart just about grew some more, as if a weight was lifting. Cupping her face with his hands, he shook his head. "Apology accepted," he smirked.

As she leaned in to kiss him, Mike welcomed the act of truce, while wondering what she would tell him.