You, Brian, and Mandy go out for barbecue

"Honeybear," you tell your husband. "I wanted to apologize for making you and Mandy uncomfortable. Could we all three of us go out? Mandy and I talked yesterday, and she's good."

Brian still looks a little embarrassed. He rubs his short sandy beard that's starting to pick up a little gray. He wears it because without it, he's just too much of a round-cheeked babyface for his liking. You like him either way. Sometimes you dream about his beard tickling you between the legs.

"What were you thinking, hon?" Brian asks.

"Barbecue? You know, your favorite place. I'll drive, you can have beer."

You talk Brian into dinner out for the three of you.

Big Game Barbecue -- it used to be Super Bowl Barbecue, but the lawyers made them stop -- is Brian's favorite, an old-fashioned place in a big barn of a building, with long tables covered in red-checked oilcloth. You and Mandy are wearing snap-front Western shirts over scoop-necked tee shirts, and blue-jeans that ride a little low, to give Brian a treat whether he's looking at you and Mandy from the front or from the back. "Boobs and butts, Mary," he told you once. "I don't care which, but I kinda like a girl to have one or the other."

Though that tiny little hussy Patty down from Canada, she works as a dispatcher for the truck company, she doesn't have much of either, and Brian has confessed to slipping his wiener up her beaver more than once. So you're suspecting that "willing and able" is your honeybear's real preference. Or at least that he won't say no if a lady asks him straightaway to put his wiener in her.

God loves love. Amen.

A leisurely dinner of barbecue and fixings starts out a little stiff, but Brian drinks a beer, and you have Mandy tell the story of how she and Brian met up, with her a down-on-her-luck mother abandoned by her man, and him her truck-driving knight in shining armor.

Until you made Brian into your knight in shining armor.

Well. You've had night thoughts on that one, and prayed a lot.

"Deenie's doing great," Mandy says. "She made sergeant this year. She says it's less grease under her nails and more ink. Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork."

"That's just great, Mandy," Brian says. "I know she was bucking for that."

"Broken wrist gave her some time off to study up," Mandy says.

"Hell. Guess that's one way to make it into lemonade," Brian says. "I'll write up a card, you mail it off to her?"

"You bet," Mandy says.

"Deenie still thinking about going long-haul when she finishes up?" Brian says.

"Wants to open a garage," Mandy says. "Seen a few too many truck accidents."

"More power to her," Brian says. He raises his arm and clenches a fist. Not a Black Power fist, more Rosie the Riveter, you figure.

Mandy laughs.

After nine they open up the dance floor. Brian takes his turn with you, and then with Mandy. And then you and Mandy take a turn together, to the whoops and cheering of a number of fellows along the side. You figure it's mostly about the jiggle and the low-rider jeans, but you can't feel bad about it, since that's exactly what you and Mandy dressed up for.

And you'd have fellows sniffing at your tail if you were wrapped up six layers deep. You know because it happens. Dress down, pull up your hair, put on a stony face, and darn if the men aren't laying their lines on you. You grin at Mandy and shake a little harder.

"Brian hon," you whisper in his ear. "You getting any ideas we can take on home?"

"Uh-huh," he says, giving you a big grin and laying a hand on your nearest jiggle parts.

You peel his arm off the front of your blouse and clear your throat.

"Honeybear, that's too much, even for here," you tell him. "Use your words."

Roll +HOT(+3) to MAKE HIM BEG. 6 + 3 = 9. On a 7-9, he begs for one thing.