"So you couldn't--"

"Nope."

"Not even..."

"Not at all."

I sigh, laying back on Spot's hotel bed after confiding in him about yesterday's bedroom debacle. He pats me on the head. "It's okay, Race." He lays back beside me. "So, do you think it really is because she's knocked up?"

"No, I know what it is."

"Oh yeah? What's that?" I just look turn my head and look at him. "Oh," he says, this big, shit-eating grin spreading across his face. I could kill that little fucker right now. "I knew you'd come around, Race."

"I hate you."

"Yeah, except for the part where you're madly in love with me and want to marry me and adopt little Ethiopian babies with me."

I roll over and punch him in the chest. He punches me back, and we both laugh. This is what makes Spot so great. Among other things, that is.

We lay there for a few minutes, and then Spot rolls onto his side. "You hungry at all?"

"Yeah."

"Feel like going over to Marcello's and getting some pizza?"

I smile and nod at the thought of the pizza parlor we spent so much time in together with the rest of our friends back in high school. "That sounds really good." I stand up and feel my back pocket. "Oh, shit. I think I left my wallet at home. Wanna run to my place with me to grab it? It won't take very long."

"Am I gonna meet your kids?" He looks almost frightened by the prospect.

I laugh. "No. They're stayin' with my ma for the night. I think Caroline's home, but she could be out doing... whatever women do when they go out."

"Oh. Um. Okay."

We head down to the car and drive to my house. We sit in the driveway for a couple minutes while I convince Spot that it's okay if he comes into the house, and then he follows me in.

"I think I left it on the nightstand, so I'll just be a second."

I walk into my bedroom to find my wife on my bed, writhing under the touch of a man who isn't me and sighing a name that isn't mine.

"Is that..." Spot says from behind me.

I stand frozen in the doorway, my mouth hanging open. "I think it is."

"Huh," he says. "That must be why they called him Pie Eater. You know, I always wondered about that."

Caroline looks over and shrieks. "Tony!" She scrambles to sit up, pushing her skirt down. "How... how long have you been standing there?"

"Long enough," I say, grabbing Stephen "Pie Eater" Masters, my old roommate from high school, by the collar of his shirt and dragging him off of my bed.

"Race, I... Let me explain," Pie Eater says, holding his hands up.

"You've crossed the line, pal," I say, and without thinking, my fist meets his nose with more force than I knew I had in me.

"Tony!" Caroline jumps up from the bed, trying to get between me and Pie. "Tony, stop it! Let's be rational here!"

"You... just shut the hell up." I send an ice-cold glare toward my wife, not breaking the eye contact as I let go of Pie Eater's collar and he drops to the floor, his nose bleeding profusely. "I don't have time to waste on whores." Setting my jaw, I walk over to the nightstand and grab my wallet. "Spot and I are leaving, and by the time I get back, it'd be in your best interest not to be here." As I walk out the door, I shake my head.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

"I knew there was a reason I quit hanging out with Masters," I grumble, half to myself and half to Spot, who sits calmly and quietly in the passenger seat as I drive aimlessly, and a little bit recklessly, around town. "That fucking sleazy, stupid son of a bitch. Who the hell does he think he is, fucking my wife?" I punch the middle of the steering wheel. "And Caroline! God damn it! Ten years of marriage and two – no, three kids, and for what, so she can run around behind my back with my old roommate?"

Spot puts his hand on my knee. "You ever put any thought into the fact that you're kind of doing the same thing?"

"This is completely different, Spot."

"Not really." He sighs. "The only difference is, you and I have been going on a lot longer than Caroline and Pie have."

"Yeah, but you and me, we really have something."

"Maybe they do, too."

"Would you fucking stop that!"

"Stop what?" He looks at me, and it kind of feels like he's looking into me.

"Stop being so fucking reasonable. I hate that." I pull the car over and sigh, resting my forehead on the steering wheel.

"I'm just trying to get you to calm down." He moves his hand from my knee to between my shoulder blades, rubbing gently. "You don't know how long this has been going on. Maybe it's more than sex for them."

"I don't care what the hell it is. I don't even want to think about it."

"Race, I know you're pissed off, and anyone in their right mind would be." He leans over and kisses my temple. "But you're also a hypocrite."

"Shut up, Spot."

"You need to step back and take a look at your life. Realize that your marriage is over. I think it has been since before it started." He pats my back. "Both you and I know why you were with her in the first place."

"But I tried, Spot," I say, my voice cracking a little bit. I feel so small and helpless. "I tried to make it work and it did, for so long. Fuck, I have kids with her, for Christ's sake! How come this all has to blow up in my face now? Why couldn't it have happened earlier?"

I hit my head against the steering wheel and Spot unbuckles my seatbelt and drags me across the seat to hold me against him. I don't even notice the tears sliding down my cheeks until Spot wipes them away and looks into my eyes. "Because you're an idiot, Race."

I actually laugh a little bit as I bury my head in the curve of his neck.