Good Man

When love starts out in the darkness
It doesn't do well in the light
Affairs of the heart
That start out in the dark
Usually stay with the night
- Fleetwood Mac



There was a rumbling hum of some sort of movement somewhere in the distance, a rhythmic vibration and quite possibly a series of voices swirling around the ether, like a muffled musical cacophony.

Though, in the distance is where it remained. Never in the foreground; simply out there, beyond present comprehension, out of reach.

Caroline knew, in the back of her mind, she was headed somewhere. She felt warmth from sunlight streaming down on her face, though she felt cold. It was quite the paradox, really.

Stirring, she found herself lifting her head and opening her eyes and looking to her left; a smile of relief upon her lips almost immediately.

"You're awake."

Caroline grinned as she looked forward and stretched her arms out before her as far as she could before her fingertips touched the glass of the windshield. After emitting a throaty yawn, she sank back into her seat and gave a gentle nod of her head. "You're awake too," she replied.

"Well, I should hope so. Otherwise, this car would be in a ditch on the side of the road and we would either be very injured or very much not alive."

Caroline turned back to her left.

Mike was so handsome.

Every couple of moments he took his eyes off the road in front of them and glanced at her. She felt complete, safe and, most importantly, happy.

"Or, we could be lucky bastards like the Griswold family in National Lampoon's Family Vacation."

"Unfortunately for us, this ain't the movies."

Caroline smiled again, looking down at her hands. They weren't as smooth as she last remembered them; now slightly more age-worn, but not by much. Her veins were a bit more noticeable now, though. In fact, Mike looked a little grayer here and there, the creases in his forehead and his crow's feet on the sides of his blue eyes were more prominent, and the look in his eyes gave the impression of a few extra years of life experience.

"Where are we going?" she inquired looking at their surroundings. It was dark outside and the roads unfamiliar.

"Road trip."

"To where?"

Mike's first response was to take his right hand off the wheel and gesture over his shoulder with his thumb. Caroline followed the direction to the backseat where there were two teenage children cramped together amid luggage. The older teenage boy looked about eighteen with dark blonde hair and had ear phones in his ear, and was staring lazily out his window, listening to music. The teen girl beside him, younger than a couple years, was petite and pretty, with long brown hair. She was slouched against her own window, with a travel pillow under her neck for comfort, and very much asleep.

"Mikey got into Harvard," came Mike's voice. "Remember?"

Caroline snapped back toward her husband. "Huh? He did?"

Mike looked at her as if she were new to the world. "Yeah. Where have you been?" he laughed, returning his gaze to the road. He shook his head and let out a snicker. "I know it's still a surprise he got in. He definitely didn't get it from my side of the family, that's for sure."

Caroline looked to her right, at the dark scenery passing them by.

When she turned back toward Mike, he wasn't there. She was staring at herself. And the car was empty aside from that.

"How can you think you can pass our children off as Mike's? Everyone's gonna know the truth eventually. It's only a matter of time," Caroline was speaking to herself...

Closing her eyes tight, she breathed out a sharp breath and her eyes fluttered back open.

It was daylight out, about mid to late afternoon. The scenery was still unfamiliar but at least this time she was one hundred percent certain she was not dreaming.

Though, the dream...it felt so real.

It was like a glimpse of the future she could've had. Should've had.

Would never have.

"Sleep good?" Timmy's voice called out to Caroline's waking consciousness.

"Well. Sleep well," Caroline corrected, her voice just slightly more audible than a mumbling.

"Yes, Mrs. Pritchard," Timmy spoke, as if agreeing with a school teacher.

Turning in the passenger seat of her sister's car, Caroline looked over her shoulder and saw Mikey and Chloe in the same spots they'd been sitting in her dream, just several years younger. Mikey was playing with some little, handheld video game for preschool-aged children and Chloe, in her car seat, was playing with a Barbie doll who had ratty blonde hair, due mostly in part to one too many trips into the bath tub.

Mikey must have sensed his mother looking at him, because he looked up and smiled at her. "We almost at Grampa Alex's, mommy?"

Caroline smiled back, her right hand resting on her protruding stomach as she held her son's gaze. "Soon."



"She's what?" came the flabbergasted exclamation from Tre Cool.

He was sitting at his drum set in one of the studios at 880 with Billie Joe, who was a few feet away, standing there, looking just as dumbfounded by the news they had received, with his guitar strapped across him.

As they tried to digest what they'd just learned, Ramona stood before them, her arms folded across her chest, feeling as if she were breaking news to someone about their house burning down.

"It's true, dad. I saw her through the window. She's out to here," Ramona muttered, holding her hands out in front of her like she were wrapping her arms around a fat kid. "I could hear Caroline talking to her sister and she alluded to being due next month by a comment she made to Timmy who just found out she's pregnant, too."

Billie Joe blinked incessantly, his mind spinning with a millions questions and desperately thirsting for answers. He stopped fidgeting and looked at his 'niece' and took a couple steps forward.

"How come you didn't knock on her door and see how she was doing? Or...you know, ask the obvious question of how come she looks like she swallowed a watermelon?"

"I got nervous," Ramona answered her 'Uncle' Billie. "I don't know why I hid like some creepy stalker and then ran away. I just did. I flew home the next day. And here I am."

Tre slumped at his stool. "Well, I'm not in the mood for a jam session now."

"Sorry," his daughter muttered.

Waving a drumstick-clad hand at her, he shrugged it off. "It's not your fault. This is just...big news. Real, big news."

"Surprising news," Billie Joe amended.

Tre pointed the same drumstick at Billie Joe, eyeing his best friend down in an agreeing stare. "Exactly." Then, back to Ramona, "It's surprising."

"So...what happens now?" The eldest of all the Green Day children asked. "I mean, I think the bigger question isn't exactly why she's pregnant, but, perhaps, who is the baby daddy?"

Tre looked from his daughter to Billie Joe who seemed to be staring off into space. Two possibilities flitted through the drummer's head as he thought about when Caroline might've gotten pregnant. June or July of the previous year, probably just after Giselle died.

Well, for one, there was Gerard Way, lead singer for My Chemical Romance. Caroline had been seeing him exclusively for a few months at that point but...hadn't they split up by then? Still, there was the possibility of break up sex. A fuck for the road kind of thing.

The second possibility Tre didn't want to consider.

He remembered about a week or so after Caroline took off without a word that Billie Joe had flown out to Buffalo to check on her.

When he returned, he talked about how Caroline was just dealing with things in her own way for the time and he thought it was best to let her be for the time being. Other than that, Billie Joe had been strangely quiet for a few weeks thereafter.

Could it be possible? Did something happen during Billie Joe's visit?

Something...physical?

At that moment, Billie Joe finally snapped out of his own daze and caught Tre's look. The older man merely gave a shrug and an expression filled with a mix of confusion, worry and shock.

"You okay, Bill?" Tre wondered. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

Billie Joe shook his head adamantly, lifting his guitar off of him and setting it down against an amp. "No, no I'm fine. Just...this is crazy, right? We should probably get a hold of Caroline. See why she's been hiding this information from everyone, with the exception of clearly her sister Timmy and maybe a small, small few in Buffalo."

Tre held onto the gaze a little longer, trying to see if there were any lines in need of being read between.

"I think I'm gonna head home, see what I can do to get a hold of her," Billie Joe added, bidding adieu with nothing more than a nod of his head an abrupt wave of his head. After a quick kiss to the top of Ramona's head, he was out the door and gone.

Out in the parking lot at 880, Billie Joe couldn't get into his car fast enough. He turned on the ignition, practically burned rubber peeling out of the lot and turned onto 27th Avenue as he cursed up a storm.

"Oh, fuck me. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Am I her fucking baby daddy?" he asked out loud to no one but himself. "Shiiiiiit. Adrienne's so gonna castrate me!"



"I'm sorry, honey, but what do you expect your father and me to do? You won't tell us who the father of your baby is. We don't have a name, we don't know who his parents are, what he does for a living. You said he won't be in the picture at all, but he is responsible for this child, too."

Crystal was sitting in the passenger's side of her mother's SUV, listening to the same spiel she'd been hearing for the last month since she told her parents she was pregnant.

"It's not important who he is," came her bland response, as if she'd been repeating it over and over and the words had now lost all meaning.

"Well, then what do you expect us to do? You won't be able to go to school in the fall. You'll have a child to raise. You've already said you won't consider abortion or adoption. How do you plan to support yourself? Your father and I cannot afford to feed another mouth. We are barely able to help you with your college education," her mother whined suddenly. "And now your education is gonna be wasted.

"I'll get a second job. I already have my own apartment and I'm doing alright. I'll finish this semester and drop out," Crystal rattled off. "I have friends who can help babysit from time to time when I need the help, if you and dad can't."

"Crystal. Your father and I love you more than you know, but we can't allow you to do this. You can't throw your life away for this child and think you can be a single mother. It's a harder world out there than it was twenty years ago. Especially, financially. And San Francisco isn't cheap."

"Then I'll move. I'll apply for welfare and WIC. There's all sorts of government assistance out there." Finally turning to look at her mother, she grabbed her tote bag and placed it on her lap, getting ready to hop out of the SUV which was parked in front of the apartment building she lived at.

For now, apparently.

"Crystal..."

"Mom. I'll be fine."

She held her mother's pleading gaze, but did not waver. She was done crying over Joey. He was an asshole, and unworthy of her and their child. She knew that now. And she didn't want anything from him now. She didn't want his money or anything like that. All she wanted was for him to acknowledge the child was his. But she also wasn't about to take him to court. Not because she was scared of his threats he'd made, but because she didn't want the stress.

"I gotta go, mom."

Letting out a heavy sigh, Crystal's mother gave in for the time being.

"We'll talk more about this later, then."

"No," came Crystal's determined tone of voice. "No, we won't. I've told you my decision on the matter and I'm sticking with it." Pulling open the car door, she slid down off the seat. "Love you."

And then she shut the door and walked away.