Best Thing In Town

"Ew, ew, ew!" came Audrey's squeal as she jumped out of bed and tore the bedsheet away from Mike. "You're nasty."

Mike laid there totally in the buff with his arms cross under his head while laughing his ass off. "Oh, come on, babe. Like you've never done it?"

"I, at least, have the decency to do it in the privacy of the bathroom when I'm alone." She brought her hand to her nose and pinched down to close her nostrils while wrapping the bedsheet around her equally nude body with her free hand. "And women don't fart. We fluff."

"Not the women I've known."

"Then you clearly don't know me at all," she replied, sticking her tongue out playfully.

Mike propped himself up on his side and gave her a growl. Good naturedly, of course. He then got up on his hands and knees on the bed, edging closer to the side, causing Audrey to squeal and move back a little. The two of them stayed unmoving for what seemed like forever, keeping eye contact almost as they were squaring off. With a bite to her bottom lip, Audrey grinned and opened up a side of the bedsheet and shook it like a matador egging on a bull. Wiggling his eyebrows and staring seriously sexy-like at his wife, Mike jumped off the bed and practically tackled her.

"Ah!" she cried out as they both went down.

At the last moment, Mike turned his body around so that she would land on him and he could break her fall. The bedsheet drooped over both their bodies as she ran the palms of her hands up his chest, along his upper arms and brought them to his neck where she went to cup his face for a kiss.

He 'mmm'-ed happily when their lips parted. "Happy Valentine's Day," he smiled.

"Happy Valentine's Day," she repeated, leaning her head down to place a kiss on the hollow of his neck, slowly working her way down until she was hidden underneath the bedsheet.

Mike grinned lazily until he felt her doing things to him that should be legal in all fifty states...and Puerto Rico. He had to bite his tongue to keep from crying out. Granted, Katarina was in school because it was a Wednesday morning, but Lorelei was sleeping in the room next door. Last thing he wanted was for this moment to be interrupted.

His thoughts were interrupted, however, when he was brought back to reality as his hips bucked like he'd had a spasm. Well...actually...what he had rhymed with spasm. Finally releasing his breath, feeling like he had been holding it for ages, Mike's eyes seemed to glaze over with satisfaction when Audrey reappeared from under the bedsheet, her tongue delicately touching her upper lip.

Hooking his hands under her arms, he pulled her up his body and wrapped his arms around her back, pulling her down to his chest after kissing her ferociously on the lips.

"Nymph," he muttered.

"Stank ass."

They both cracked up and just laid there, soaking in the wonderful beginning of the holiday.

* * *

Valentine's came and went with happy fun. And even a few days later had been just as eventuful because Billie Joe had hit the halfway point of his thirties by turning 35.

Life, as usual, was still mildly hectic from time to time, and everyone was doing fine, feeling fine, and the like. The guys were working like dogs to finish their album in a decent time frame while Audrey was sitting day in and day out in the home office while Kat was at school and Lorelei took her naps, working on her book.

It was a tale of a young woman who had found herself to be pregnant right after her high school graduation in 1970. How her parents didn't support her choice to want to keep the child when it was born and how she decided to make it on her own in San Francisco. How she struggled to make ends meet. How she found the man who became her husband and child's father. How they had the perfect life until Vietnam took his life. How he never got to meet his baby daughter that had been born while hee was overseas. Generally about how, despite what life through at her, the main female character survived the ups and downs of the coming decades, watching her family grow up and move on with their own eventual adult lives. And how, no matter how happy her life could become, she still needed to make amends and go home.

Audrey sat there, staring at her laptop with her elbow propped up on the desk while resting her forehead in her hands. She was focusing on the paragraph she had just wrote, rereading to check for mistakes, when a dull throbbing began to pound in her head, behind her eyes. She rubbed her temples, frowning at how she had been staring at a laptop nonstop for almost three hours straight.

She needed a break. Maybe get some aspirin to take to numb the ache. She stood up and walked out of the room and into her bedroom to get to the bathroom where she opened the medicine cabinet. Pulling out a bottle of Tylenol, she took out two pills and filled a glass of water, downing the tablets in one swift gulp. She closed the medicine cabinet and stepped out of the room, deciding to check on the sleeping Lorelei, who was still doing just that.

Popping back into the office once more, she saved what she'd been working on and turned off the laptop, grabbing up the baby monitor and taking it with her as she went downstairs to grab something to eat for lunch.

After making herself a bowl of Ramen noodles and a grilled cheese sandwich, Audrey contemplated giving Mike a call to check if he'd gotten anything to eat. The last thing she needed was her husband skipping a meal because he was too engrossed with whatever he was doing at the studio.

When the back door opened and Gloria stepped inside, holding a plate of brownies. "I made a dessert for after dinner," she announced.

Audrey smiled lightly. "Mmm, you're famously delicious brownies."

Gloria smiled with pride, always loving the compliments. "How's your story coming?"

"It's coming," Audrey sighed. "Kinda stuck on the chapter I'm working on. Not sure which direction I wanna take. I mean, I know, but I don't know how to go about it," she explained, rubbing her head. The headaches was still there, but the Tylenol had definitely helped some.

"I think you need a break. You look exhausted."

"I'm actually very awake, but just...I got a headache. I think I was staring at the computer for too long without a break."

"Why don't you go out for a few hours until Kat gets home? You seem to be going stir crazy when Lorelei's asleep and when you're not working on your story. You don't seem to have anything else to do."

Audrey nodded. "Yeah...maybe I will go out for a few. You don't mind sitting with Lorelei for a few hours?"

"Why would I have offered if I minded?"

"Point taken."

Audrey patted her grandmother's hand and stood up. In a matter of ten minutes, she had found her purse, found the extra set of car keys and went to the garage to get into the car Mike had surprised her with for Valentine's. It was a 2007 red, S-Type Jaguar that had really taken her breath away. She'd always wondered what it would be like to drive in one, let alone have one.

It fit her nicely. But it didn't help with the headache or the stir crazy, except that it would take her somewhere that was else in style. She drove around the neighborhood for a while, stopping at a Starbucks to get something to drink, sitting inside, staring at the car, wondering what to do when it hit her.

Her lips gradually curled upward into a smile as she stood up, threw out her near empty cup and headed back outside to the Jag.

* * *

"Sorry, sorry, sorry I'm late. What was dinner and by any chance was anything saved for me?" Mike rambled as he threw his keys on the kitchen counter.

He looked around, after assuming someon was in the kitchen because the light was left on. But no one was there. He looked over at the fridge, frowned and opened the door. His frowned turned upside down when he saw a plate had been save for him with cling wrap over it. And even with a little note that read:

'When you're done, come upstairs. -Audrey'

He grinned devilishly to himself before glancing at the clock on the microwave. It was 8 PM. He had been at the studio for 12 hours so no doubt he was probably in trouble. The grin faded when he let that fact roll around in his head.

After eating as fast as he could without making himself sick, he stuck the dish and silverware into the dishwasher and turned it on. Turning off the kitchen light, Mike left the kitchen and walked upstairs, first poking his head into Katarina and Lorelei's rooms. Both girls were asleep and sleeping quite peacefully, too.

He finally poked his head into his bedroom and then stepped all the way into the find Audrey sitting in bed, already in her skimpy nightgown and watching some TV.

"Hey. Sorry I'm late and didn't call," Mike began to apologize, looking like a dog with its tail between its legs. "We kinda got wrapped up on reworking this song Billie and I wrote and decided we wanna add it to the album..."

Audrey met his eyes with her own and smirked. "It's okay. I figured as much."

"Okay...uh...good. So, um, how was your day?"

"I worked a lot on my book, went out and got another tattoo, Kat came home and talked my ear off about how they made ice cream during snack time, we had dinner, watched cartoons, blahdy-blah, I put the girls to bed and, well...here I am."

Mike blinked. "Wait. You got another tattoo?"

She grinned. "Yeap." She leaned forward carefully from the pillow she had propped up against her back. She pointed to behind her as she lifted up her ponytail. Mike walked around to look.

Between her shoulder blades and a few inches below the bottom of her neck, was a red heart that was filled in with some color and then, in black calligraphy letters over it, it said, 'Mike, my love.'

"It's awesome," he commented with a pleased smile. "Now we match," he added, referring to his 'Audrey, my love' over his heart. "Did it hurt?"

"Not as much as the others, surprisingly. My attention wasn't really focused on the ache of the needle anyway," she replied, reaching her arms out to pull him down to the bed.

He laid down and she climbed up on top of him and then laid her head down on his chest, snaking her hand up his shirt to play with his chest hairs.

"I love the tattoo," he said, kissing the top of her head.

"Good. And I can't sleep on my back because it's still kinda sore, so I'm just gonna stay like this all night, 'kay?" she spoke with a yawn.

"I've got no problem with that whatsoever," he assured. "This is exactly where you should be all the time."