Always There

Olivia was the first one up the following morning. She'd set her alarm that way on purpose. She needed to know for sure if what she'd overheard and even seen in the kitchen back in November was true. If her parents were secretly together.

Tiptoeing downstairs, Olivia rounded the corner into the living room to find that the couch had no signs of anyone having slept there and she'd noticed her dad's coat still hanging up in the front hall. So she knew he was still in the house. Poking her head in the kitchen, there was no sign of anyone being up. Downstairs, altogether.

Returning to stealth mode, the twelve-year-old padded quietly back up the stairs. The bedroom across from hers was Ben's and the one next to her's was Nathan's. But across from her youngest brother's bedroom was her mom's. Twisting the doorknob as quietly as possible, she pushed the door open, thanking God that the door wasn't the creaky kind. Peering through the crack, it was like hitting the jackpot.

There, in bed, was her mother with her father craddled behind her; his arm wrapped around her waist and the covers pulled up to their waist. From the looks of it, her mother was wearing the T-shirt her dad had been wearing the night before while he was barechested.

Her parents were sleeping together!

Okay, so there was some 'ew, gross' factor to it because it was her parents, but it was her mom and dad. The mom and dad she'd dreamed about having happily together instead of her mom and Mitch, were together! Albeit secretly. But still together!

Not that she had anything against Adrienne, because she was nice to her that one time Olivia had been out to Oakland for Thanksgiving, but there was no comparison in knowing her real dad loved her mom and was with her at that very moment.

Quietly, Olivia closed the bedroom door and slipped into bed, but not to return to sleep. She pulled her journal out from between her mattress and box spring.

* * *

That night, when all three kids were in bed, Billie Joe sat in the master bathroom tub with Maria sitting in front of him, his legs on either side of her. He was rubbing some of the bubbles on top of her head while alternating his actions to place a kiss on her shoulder and neck.

"I can't believe we're soaking in a tub...with Mr. Bubbles," Billie Joe laughed.

"Oh, I know. How romantic, huh?" She smiled, closing her eyes and leaning back to rest her head against his left collarbone.

Pressing his lips to her right temple, Billie Joe snaked his arms across her abdomen and then placed his hands on her stomach. There was no physical evidence of her being pregnant. She didn't have a 'baby pouch' yet, but it was only a matter of months.

"Eh...I think it's better than the regular bubble bath shit. This makes me feel like I'm three years old again," he remarked, running his sudsy fingers up her arms. "Perfumed bubble bath makes me feel like an old lady drenched in Jovan White Musk."

Maria laughed. "My grandma used to wear that."

"And I don't doubt she was a fine lady but too much of a good thing..."

"Yeah, I know..."

They fell silent for a moment, their discussion from earlier that day returning to the foreground of their minds. Billie Joe sighed, Maria rising along with his chest. He lifted his right leg just slightly to graze hers while kissing her shoulder again, and then leaving his face there in the crook of her neck.

"I'm going to tell Adrienne."

Swallowing down a small lump in her throat, Maria nodded. "You should," she agreed.

"How I'm gonna go about it, is another story."

"Yeah, well, I'm sure Mitch is gonna want a divorce now."

"If that happens, how you gonna feel?" he wondered.

She shrugged. "I guess I'll be sad to have a failed marriage under my belt, but I was raised to believe that people fall out of love all the time. They find out years into the relationship that, in hindsight, perhaps it wasn't the best decision to make. That they weren't meant to be," she explained. "My dad's this big...patron of romantic poetry. He always told me that somewhere out there is the one person who's right for everyone. But the chances of finding them is slim, which is why we go in and out of relationships. Even when we're in one, one we're not completely sure of, we're still searching."

"How you doing with that search?"

"I think I'm still searching? What about you?"

"It's up for debate."

Lifting her hand up, Maria brushed some hair off of her face with a sudsy hand. "Euch, I'm getting pruny," she commented, sitting up off his chest.

Leaning over the side of the tub, she reached for one of the two towels that had been set out. Standing up, she smirked at how Billie Joe watched her, studying her every curve, as she wrapped the towel around her body and stepped out of the tub. As she sat down on the closed lid of the toilet, she reached for the cardboard cylinder that was slightly yellow with some purpled and pink stripes up the side. The narrow container looked all to familiar to him and as soon as she twisted the lid and emptied some of its powdery contents into the palm of her left hand, the smell wafted over into his nostrils and jogged Billie Joe's memory.

"Sweet Honesty," he commented, still lying back in the bubbly tub. "Avon."

She nodded. "You saw the name on the container."

"No," Billie Joe shook his head, sitting up. "When you moved out and left for Ecuador, you left behind your container of Sweet Honesty by Avon. So I kept it. And on last check, I still have it. But there's probably like a pinch left. About once or twice a year I open it up and rubs some on my hands."

"You do?"

"Yeah. I like the smell." Climbing out of the tub, quite clumsily, he ignored her small laugh at him and looked at her, while siitting on the edge of the tub, draping the second towel over his lap. "Whenever I was feeling reminiscent, it was a great way to remind me of you."

She tilted her head to the side and smiled. "See, this is why you write the lyrics and not Mike or Tre."

"When me and Mike started out, I almost wasn't."

"Really? You never told me that," she commented, rubbing some more powder on her legs.

"Well, it never came up," Billie Joe replied. "But, yeah. I initially didn't wanna be the lead singer, but Mike threatened to kick my ass because he sure as hell wasn't gonna do it. And John was just the drummer and we weren't the Eagles, so our drummer wasn't doing lead vocals."

"Okay, okay. I don't need a history lesson," Maria teased.

Billie Joe's green eyes locked with her brown ones. A sly smirk crept onto his lips as he grabbed the container of Sweet Honesty from her hands and set it down on the sink counter. Before she could protest, he leaned toward her and scooped her up off the toilet seat and into his arms. Cradling his arms under her ass, he lifted her up so that she wrapped her legs around his waist.

As he carried her out into the bedroom, his towel slipped off his now nonexistant lap and onto the floor. Gently, he laid her down onto the bed, brushing her hair off her shoulders as he placed a kiss on her lips. But before she could respond to the kiss, he disappeared back into the bathroom to unplug the tub and then turn off the light.

Maria had sat up by then, bending her knees and resting the bottoms of her feet on the mattress and leaning back on the palms of her hands when he came back into the bedroom. And the way he sauntered back in was enough to get her pregnant...well, if she wasn't already that way.

When he crawled up onto the bed, leaning down over her, he opened up her towel and dragged his hand down her chest, resting it on her stomach. Moving down her body, he kissed her stomach a little and smirked.

"Hey, in there," he muttered against her skin.

Propping himself up on his elbows, he moved back up her body enough to rest his head on her chest and snaked his arms around to her back. Maria smiled and started to subconsciously run her fingers through her damp hair. When he tilted his head up to looked at her through his eyebrows with those bedroom eyes of his, she could've melted. She cocked her own head to the side, while resting it back on her pillow and smiled affectionately at him.

"You look so beautiful right now," he grinned. "You're, like, glowing."

"Which is common amongst pregnant women," she replied with an impish smirk.

He continued to look at her until he brought himself back up so that they were more level with each other, laying on his side, but entwining his right leg between her as he propped his head up in his left hand.

After leaning over to kiss her, Billie Joe licked his upper lip. "How bad of a husband am I for being here with you right now, and loving it so much?"

"I'm not the person you should ask."

"If only polygamy were legal," he joked, ruefully. "I mean, Adrienne...I love her so much, but when I'm home now, all I can really think of is you." He frowned. "Is it possible to be in love with two women at the same time?"

"I think so," Maria answered truthfully. "It's just like how I DO love, Mitch. Not as much as I thought I once did, but I do love him."

"Do you ever regret marrying him?"

"No," she replied simply. "Because, in the end, he gave me two adorable sons that I love more than life. He gave me a home and a life that I didn't have to worry about making ends meet, even though I'm a disappointed I haven't been able to pursue any of those goals I had in college. But, things change. We can always have our dreams, but we also have to take life into consideration because we never know what it's gonna throw at us."

"Tell me about it."

"Do you ever regret marrying Adrienne?"

Billie Joe thought about it, letting the question roll around in his head for a few moments. "No," he finally responded. "I don't REGRET anything. But sometimes I wish I could redo some things."

"Like what?"

"Well, for one, getting that DUI three years ago. That community service was a bitch, and filing all that paperwork? Ugh, such a pain in the ass."

Maria smirked as she brought her hand up to run it along his chest. "Did you learn your lesson at least?"

"Yeah. Don't get caught drinking and driving. Or be friends with the cop that pulled you over." When Maria smacked him playfully on the chest, he smiled. "No...but, another thing I'd redo, that I think about occasionally, is making a long distance relationship work between us. I mean, when I think about it, it would've been very feesible for us to raise Olivia together because a few months after you left, me and the guys got our record deal with Reprise."

"If we knew then what we know now," Maria muttered with a sad smirk.

"Yeah."

The two of them laid there for a few moments in silence until Billie Joe took his right hand and linked it with Maria's left. He kissed her fingers and then moved to her lips, brushing his nose against hers, lovingly.

Covering his mouth over hers to drown out the sound of their cries as they made love, Billie Joe smiled a little. "I love you, Maria."

She held his glassy-eyed gaze and gently bit his bottom lip. "I love you, Billie Joe."