Good Man

Stay, lady, stay, stay with your man awhile
Why wait any longer for the world to begin
You can have your cake and eat it too
Why wait any longer for the one you love
When he's standing in front of you.



With a sharp intake of breath, Caroline practically jumped out of her skin in shock over the images underneath the bed sheet. Her eyes darting upwards and her cheeks blushing a lovely color of pink like that of a child overhearing several words of profanity, Caroline brought the sheet tightly up to her chest and pulled more of it to her which only cause more to be pulled away from Tre. In doing so, she caught sight of his bare, right hip.

Her mouth agape and her mind running a million miles a minute, trying to figure out how exactly they ended up in bed together, Caroline twisted her body to look away only to wind up twisted in the bed sheet and thus tumble gracelessly out of bed to the floor below with a dull thud.

A hiss escaped from between her lips as she found herself laying on her side, staring up at the bed just as Tre suddenly bolted upright at the noise she'd caused. She could just barely see the top of his head turning from side to side, looking for the culprit who awoke him from his slumber.

"Down here," she mumbled.

Casually, Tre's head poked over the edge of the bed and his blue eyes peered down at her, wide and questioning. "Did we...?"

Caroline shrugged. "I'm thinking we did." Not that she was grimacing, because he had always been a good lay in their past together, but the situation in itself was not expected or warranted.

Tre moved back from the edge, grabbing for the pillow he'd been using and covering his unmentionables with it as he sat up. "I vaguely even remember leaving that bar last night, let alone what happened afterward," he spoke, his voice groggy as all hell.

"Should we wake Billie and ask if he heard any moaning and panting then?" she inquired, a droplet of sarcasm seeping from her voice.

"You assume I made you moan?"

Leave it to Tre to make a joke out of any situation. In response, Caroline merely shot him a withering look as she propped herself up on her left arm. "Well, it smells like sex in here and your John Thomas looked pretty sated when I woke up so, yeah. I'm going with there was moaning involved."

Tre pressed his lips together, looked down toward her for a moment and then turned his head toward the window. The breeze pushing through the curtains was cooler than the previous morning, but it was refreshing.

However, the silence that fell over the both of them was not so refreshing since it was laced with awkwardness and uncertainty.

"So, what do we do now? Where do we go from here?" Came the questions from a very confused Caroline as she reached a hand out to the bed to pull herself up to her feet. "Do we talk this out to death or do we chalk it up to a drunken one night stand?" Then with an actual grimace this time, "Do we tell Billie?"

Tre returned his gaze to her in time to catch her expression, to which he flashed his own at her. "Unless he brings it up himself, I don't think it's necessary. After all, what should it matter, right?" Off her raised eyebrow, he continued, "I mean, we're both consenting, unattached adults. We share a past, we were drunk off our rockers. We've both gone without sex for, well, two years for me. I assume just slightly shorter for you. There was undoubtedly a long-awaited itch that needed to be scratched. It was a relief effort."

Caroline continued to look at him with one raised eyebrow. "Did you think up that entire dissertation while you were staring out the window just now or are you just amazing like that?"

"Both."

"Well, I'm gonna, uh...shower. And if we're keeping this private and hidden from anyone else, I suggest you slip outta the room discreetly."

Tre looked down and considered. "Alright."

Caroline stalked over to the chair across from her bed and picked up her thin, satin robe. Wrapping it around her body, she finally let the bed sheet drop to the floor only to pick it up and toss it lithely over to Tre so he could cover up better.

"Um, see you downstairs for breakfast then?"

Nodding, Tre offered a slight smile. "Sure thing."

"Alright." Caroline grabbed a few toiletries and then slipped out of her room and to the bathroom, closing both doors quietly behind her as she went.



The rest of that Saturday wasn't as awkward as Tre and Caroline both assumed it would be. In all actuality, it felt just as the day before had. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary and no one aside from them seemed to know that anything had transpired the night before between the former lovers. Or if they did, they didn't say anything.

After Caroline's shower, Tre had "awoken" in his room to take one of his own, but by the time both were done and dressed, they realized they'd missed breakfast and were closer to lunch time so they met up with Billie Joe who was sitting outside on the front porch, rocking back and forth in one of the white, wooden rocking chairs with a solemn look upon his face.

Caroline took the chair beside him and Tre took to leaning against the porch railing with his back to the road so he could face his friends. His hands gripping the banister, he gave a nod to his friend of a quarter century.

"Penny for your thoughts?"

Billie Joe looked up and gave a rueful smile. "Remember the old couple that was staying here?"

"Was?" Caroline inquired dubiously.

"When I got up this morning I came downstairs for coffee and Iris was beside herself, so I asked what was wrong and she wondered if I had heard any commotion within the past couple hours beforehand and I told her no, that I was pretty much dead to the world after last night." Caroline and Tre looked at each other before Billie Joe continued. "Then she started to cry buckets and so I went up to her and put an arm around her and asked what happened and she said that the old guy, Hank, was taken to the hospital around 8 this morning with pains in his chest. An ambulance came here and took him and his wife and about an hour later, the wife called back here to Iris and told her Hank had died of a massive coronary."

"Oh my god," Caroline gushed, her hand immediately placing itself over her heart.

"Shit," came Tre's response. "Weren't they on vacation, too?"

Billie Joe nodded. "They were celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary this weekend. Today was the actual day."

"Damn," Tre muttered. "Is everyone doomed to wind up suddenly widowed or something?" Shaking his head, his mind began to wander as he folded his arms across his chest.

"Hey, don't say something like that and jinx me, man," Billie Joe bit out, with a steely gaze toward his best friend. "That's not funny. I mean, I'm sorry for you two, but I don't wanna know what that's like to go through, not anytime soon."

"At least they had fifty years together, and they were happy," Caroline spoke solemnly. "Not everyone can be so lucky." With that, she sat back in her rocking chair and stared out at the front lawn as a random car drove past.

Silence fell over the trio as they thought about what had happened when Tre cleared his throat.

Billie Joe looked up first while Caroline was still focused on the lawn.

"Care and I slept together last night."

Those words snapped her out of her daydream and she shot Tre a questioning look. Not a look of betrayal for speaking about what happened, but just more of surprise that he outed them for the deed.

"Seriously?" Billie Joe looked at Caroline who slowly nodded.

"We were drunk, and we all know when I get shitfaced I get horny," she answered, trying to make light of it.

"Yeah, you do," Tre agreed.

The three of them exchanged looks back and forth with each other before suddenly they all burst out into rows of laughter.

"At least you didn't wind up in bed with a stranger who would've taken advantage of you, and instead with someone you know and have been with before. Someone who cares."

"And possibly made her moan," the 42-year-old drummer quipped for good measure.

"Oh, shut up, Tre."

Caroline took off her sandal and chucked it at Tre. He caught it and chucked it back at her.

"Was it a one time thing or are you two considering a relationship again?"

Tre shrugged. "We haven't given it much thought. For now---"

"---We're gonna leave it as a one night stand," Caroline finished the sentence. "For now." With a smile in her eye, she looked to Tre and then down to her lap. "If anything we can always just be friends with benefits."

"Yeah, neither of us is seeing anyone else."

"And we're gonna have itches in need of scratching from time to time," added Caroline. "You never know."

"Well, whatever you two decide, I'm behind you one hundred percent. Just don't like, you know, start dating again only to break up again which causes a rift in the band because I'd really like to see this thing of ours take flight. Mmmkay?"

"I think we can manage to be civil, no matter what may or may not happen," Tre assured.

"Alright then. With that settled, what do we do the rest of today? Given what happened this morning, I'm not in a party hearty mood. I'm thinking maybe today should be a day or introspection. Like, I think I wanna go to church."

"It's Saturday, Billie."

"Catholics do church on Saturday evenings, don't they?"

"Are there Catholics in the Midwest?" Caroline wondered.

"There's Catholics everywhere," Tre commented as if Catholics were government spies. Caroline caught the tone in his voice and gave him a look that suggested he was bat shit.

Shaking her head at him, Caroline leaned over her arm rest and looked at Billie Joe. "Okay, so we'll find a catholic church holding mass this evening. Then what? We take the Prius out to the middle of a field somewhere and lay on a blanket, staring up at the stars?"

Billie Joe met her gaze and for a moment they both locked onto the same memory from Christmas when they had the conversation outside Ellis' McMansion in New York City about how maybe when you died your soul goes up to the heavens and your inner light becomes one of the stars above.

"Yeah. Let's do that. "We'll go to church, grab some dinner at a quiet restaurant, then find a field and lay under the stars."

"Sounds pretty nice, actually," Tre admitted, letting his mind drift. Then a loud grumble emitted from his stomach that raised the eyebrows of both Caroline and Billie Joe. "But first, I need lunch."

"And somehow we need to get the Prius back from where we left it at the bowling alley last night."



The sky was pitch black and littered with millions of stars; some brighter and larger than the others, but still as breathtaking a view.

In the middle of a field, on a blanket borrowed from the Inn, Caroline laid in the center of it with both guys on either side of her, all three looking up at the sky above them. The only sounds that could be heard was their own breathing, crickets chirping and the whizz of the occasional car on the road on which their rented Prius was parked on the side of.

"There's the Big Dipper."

"There's Orion."

"That one's Cassiopeia."

As they began to point out stars, Billie Joe nudged Caroline and pointed up toward a constellation none of them knew the name of. "That one's Mike."

They fell silent and looked at the constellation in question.

"That's Giselle," Caroline pointed to another grouping of stars. "And that's my birth mother," she added in regard to another grouping the guys weren't sure of where she was pointing to.

"That's my dad," Billie Joe commented, gesturing to yet another constellation. "It looks like a drum, he was a drummer. It's fitting."

"That's Hank." Tre was pointing to constellation that had a U shape.

"Why that one?" Caroline asked.

"Why not?"

Her response was to simply smile and nod. Then, slowly, she reached her arms out at her sides and linked one through each of the guy's arms closest to her, pulling them closer to her. Within moments, they took the cue and each pressed a side of their head to hers.

"I love you guys," she whispered, as if speaking any louder would disrupt the peace.

"Same here," Billie Joe replied.

Tre gave Caroline's arm a squeeze and reached his right leg over her body to nudge his foot into Billie's left leg. "I'll second the motion."

"We're so gay," Caroline giggled.

"We're the guys, so we're the gay ones. You're the girl, so you're just...the meat in a Caroline sandwich."

A snort of laughter peeled from between Caroline's lips. "You would say that Tre."

"But of course."

Curling to the right, she placed a kiss on Billie Joe's cheek, then curled to her left and did the same upon Tre's. He turned his head at that moment afterward and looked at her in the eye. They didn't say anything, they both simply smiled at each other as she ended up resting her head on his shoulder.



Hours later, the three of them woke up, realizing they had fallen asleep. Sleepily they got to their feet and gathered the blanket up. Billie Joe carried it as they walked about fifty or more yards to the car. Quietly they piled in and drove back to the Rose Vine Inn where they silently made their way upstairs to their rooms and returned to sleep.

When morning finally broke, they were all actually up in time for breakfast. They were the only guests now that Iris had since Hank was taken to the hospital where he died. His wife returned briefly, hours later to gather her and her husband's things sometime while the members of TBC were at mass.

They all sat at the dining room table with Iris, eating a hearty breakfast of bacon, eggs and toast along with cups of coffee. They ate, drank and chatted amiably with each other, and afterward they helped Iris clean up the mess, despite Iris' protests against it about them being the guests. They would hear none of it.

They parted ways for a couple hours after that, calling home to check in on their respective families; to see how their kids were and if their homes still stood. They sat on the front porch, reading a book or listening to their iPods. They took a walk around the property or took the car to go into town to wander around for a look-see, though most places were closed, being that it was a Sunday in Kansas.

As the day began to draw to a close, they gathered together for dinner but this time they all helped prepare the food. Tre insisted on grilling some chicken and ears of corn he had picked up at the local grocery store earlier in the day. While he was outside doing that, Billie Joe was tossing a salad and when Iris was out of earshot he made lewd jokes about "tossing salad" in the sexual sense. Caroline only shook her head and laughed as she mixed the batter for brownies only to be surprised when Iris returned from one upstairs at one point with a small baggie of pot in her hands.

"I didn't think you three would object with me adding a little something extra to these brownies," she commented with a twinkle in her eye.

Billie Joe chuckled almost immediately when he saw the baggie of "special" ingredients. "Oh, hell no. Be our very happy guest."

"I figured, it's your last night here, might as well make it a memorable one."

"Don't worry, this will definitely be memorable."

"This is just between you three and me, though. I'd appreciate it if you didn't mention it on my website's guest book or anything."

"Trust us," Caroline assured. "We don't want to bring any unwanted attention to you or ourselves."

"We might share with our friends that this is the place to go and relax if they ever need to get away and find themselves in Kansas, though," Billie Joe added with a smile and he diced some tomatoes on a cutting board.

"If they're as pleasant as you three, then they're more than welcome."

As soon as the chicken and corn on the cob were done cooking, Tre came back into the kitchen with two plates of each dish, set them on the counter and carefully removed the corn from the tin foil, trying his best not to burn his fingertips. The special brownies were baking in the oven when they finally sat down to eat dinner there in the kitchen and congratulated on his grilling skills.

The food was delicious, the white wine Iris served along with it was aged perfectly and their minds, bodies and souls were content with their hunger sated. Twice Iris got up during the meal to check on the brownies and then to pull them out of the oven to cool. And when their stomachs were ready for more she cut the brownies in the pan into twelve squares, each of them getting three a piece. Into each of their second brownie, the special ingredient began to kick in and they all began to giggle some more.

After the their third brownie was devoured, they decided to play some records on the record player in Inn's living room. They played some Creedence Clearwater Revival, Fleetwood Mac (much to Caroline's pleasure) and even some David Bowie. They continued to listen to music, even getting up to dance in between sips of wine; happily finishing off the bottle Iris had opened and starting on a second.

Eventually, however, the buzz from the pot brownies and the alcohol created a lull in their systems, being that both are downers and were making them feel lethargic.

So, the music was turned off, they helped clean up the dishes once more and made their ways upstairs for bed, bidding goodnight to their hostess.



Just after midnight, Tre was sitting on the bed in his room, a big brass one, checking his email on his cell phone before heading off the La La Land when there was a knock at his door. Dropping the phone down on the night table as he got up, he walked over to the door and opened it up to find Caroline in an over-sized T-shirt and a pair of man's boxers he knew to have once belonged to Mike years ago.

Seeing the outfit didn't seem to bother Tre anymore. They were just clothes.

"Can I help you?" he voice a bit drowsy from the pot, the wine, his full stomach and overall sleepiness. Yet, there was also a smile on his face that slightly appeared as not to give the impression of annoyance for being disturbed.

Caroline just looked back at him and stepped forward, forcing him to step backward. She closed the door behind her and stepped around him to walk over to the brass bed and sit down on it.

"Something wrong?" he asked further when she wasn't replying right away.

"No," she shook her head.

He took a step closer to her, and when she beckoned to him with one finger, he took a couple more steps. When he was close enough, she reached out a hand and grabbed onto the waistband of his pajama pants and pulled him over to her to stand between her legs.

Looking down at her, he was able to take the hint and leaned down slightly to press his lips against her and wrap one arm around her back. As she laid down upon the bed, he arched over her, crawling up onto the bed as well so that his knees were now between her legs.

He continued to kiss her, bringing his lips to trail away to her jawline and down her neck as he began to press his body down upon hers in a way that showed her how evident his arousal was. Leaning up slightly, he reached down between their bodies and began to shimmy her boxers off her hips only for her to do the same to him; hooking her feet into the waist of his pants and slide them off his backside.

Placing his hands under her knees, he rested her legs over his shoulders and placed himself at her entrance; waiting only mere seconds before pushing himself all the way inside of her. Slowly, he pulled out, and slowly he pushed back in, groaning at the wonderful friction it caused for them both.

She practically mewed like a cat as he began to pick up his pace and rock back and forth, in and out, faster and faster. It almost felt as if he couldn't get deep enough inside of her; each time grinding as further down and in as possible until they were both perspiring and panting.

He still hadn't reach his peak yet and neither did she, so he pulled out and moved them so they were more center on the bed. He got up on his knees and sat down that way, pulling his shirt off and hers so that they were both completely naked. Licking her lips, she sank down into his lap, her legs on either side of his lap as she took his length back inside of her again. His arms wrapped around her waist and up her back as she threw her arms around his neck and began to pull at his hair, tilting his head back so she could kiss his neck and suckle his skin there.

They fucked like bunnies in that position for a few more minutes until Caroline suddenly arched her back and felt every part of her spasm in pleasure as she climaxed, her muscles clenching around him and causing him to bellow a low, almost inaudible groan. He began to pound upward into her, letting her ride her orgasm out as he began to feel the all too familiar bubbling of his own beginning at the base of his spine and, like a rocket, shooting up said spine and seemingly in every direction. It felt like his body was tingling as if it had completely fallen asleep on him, but not in an annoying way.

Letting out a gasp of release, he fell forward, pinning Caroline to the mattress beneath him; both of them laying in a mess of tangled, sweaty limbs.

As a cool breeze gusted into the room and tickled their slick skin, they shuddered pleasantly again, against each other. Caroline looked up at him as he looked down at her and they both smiled.

"So, this isn't just a one time thing anymore is it?" he whispered, still trying to catch his breath.

"After that?" Caroline questioned with a quiet chuckle. "Definitely not."



Lay, lady, lay, lay across my big brass bed
Stay, lady, stay, stay while the night is still ahead
I long to see you in the morning light
I long to reach for you in the night
Stay, lady, stay, stay while the night is still ahead.