Brian was startled awake when the alarm clock went off at six-thirty a.m. Lindsay turned off the alarm, got out of bed, and pulled open the curtains of the east-facing window.

"Jesus Christ," Brian snarled as the sunlight burned his eyes.

"Good morning," Lindsay all but yelled, not feeling the least bit sorry for her hung-over husband.

Brian rolled away from the light and rubbed his eyes. "What the fuck happened last night?"

"Well, after you spent the evening partying in South Beach, Michael and Ted brought you home around ten-thirty, stoned out of your mind," his wife answered as she walked into the bathroom.

Brian slowly sat up as he tried to replay the previous evening's events in his head.

Met Michael and Ted at the Palace Bar... had a couple drinks... drove to Twist... had another couple drinks... bought some trail mix from a Carmen Miranda impersonator...

Brian climbed out of bed and staggered into the bathroom, where Lindsay was brushing her teeth. After pulling off his boxers and taking a long piss, he took off his cowry shell bracelet and sat it on the bathroom counter, then got into the shower.

"By the way, where is your wedding ring?" Lindsay asked after she rinsed her mouth.

"Uh... in the glove compartment of the Ferrari," Brian said over the noise of the shower.

"And why the hell is it in there and not on your finger?" she asked in an aggravated tone.

Brian said the first thing that popped in his head. "My hands were sweaty and I didn't want it to slip off while I was in public."

"Uh-huh," Lindsay said, clearly not believing him. However, she didn't press further.

What the fuck happened after I took the trail mix? Brian asked himself as he shampooed his hair. He had not taken any drugs stronger than alcohol or weed in several years- actually, not since his trip with Michael to Puerto Vallarta in '91- so he was not surprised that he had a hellacious headache and felt a bit nauseated. Worse than his physical pain however, was an overwhelming feeling that something bad had happened after he snorted the funny white powder.

Justin... I know he was at the club with me, but what happened to him? Brian wondered as he washed his body. I remember seeing him in the parking lot of the Palace Bar and he rode with me to Twist. We went in and danced for a bit, then I told him I'd see him later and gave him a kiss...

"Are you gonna be in there all day?" Lindsay asked as she stood on the other side of the frosted glass shower door.

"I'll be done in a minute," Brian grumbled as he stood under the shower head and watched the soapy water swirl in the drain. After he was rinsed off, he opened the door and let a naked Lindsay into the stall after him.

"Holy shit, that water's fucking hot," Lindsay yelled after he closed the door behind him.

Brian pulled a towel from the rack on the wall. "Sorry," he said as he began to dry off.After I took the bumps, I walked around the club for a bit... danced with a few guys... got a couple of meager blow jobs...

Brian suddenly looked up and stared as his reflection in the mirror. What the fuck is this? he remembered Justin yelling at him as he sat on a couch while whoever-the-fuck sucked his dick.

"Shit," Brian whispered, recalling Justin's sad face before the beautiful blonde turned around and walked away. Sometime after that, he remembered Michael and Ted interrupting his third or fourth blow job of the night, then dragging him to his car and taking him home.

Realizing what he had done, Brian quickly brushed his teeth and got dressed in his usual work attire of a polo shirt and dress slacks. Once he had his socks and dress shoes on, he grabbed his bracelet from the counter and walked over to his dresser in the bedroom, where he found his wallet and cell phone plugged into the charger. He looked at the bracelet for a moment and decided to put it in the back of his sock drawer.

"Where are my keys?" he asked Lindsay as he put his wallet and phone in his pants pockets.

"On my nightstand," she yelled to him from the bathroom before asking, "Why are you in such a hurry this morning?"

"Uh... I just remembered that I have an early meeting," Brian answered as he grabbed his keys before running downstairs and out to his car.

**********************

Justin laid on Emmett's couch as he watched Rocky Balboa drive around in his Lamborghini in Rocky IV.

Justin jumped when his cell phone, which was sitting on the coffee table in front of him, started ringing. He picked up the phone and saw that Brian was calling him. Justin frowned and sat the phone back on the table.

"Fuck him," Justin mumbled as he continued to watch the movie. After getting home from Twist the night before, Justin spent a half hour crying on his bed before Emmett called him from the club, asking him where the hell he was. Emmett got home a few minutes later, where he found a red-eyed Justin and demanded to know what "that son of a bitch" had done to him. Emmett spent some time comforting Justin before the younger man told him to go to bed and not to worry about him. But after trying to sleep himself, Justin went out into the living room where he began watching the Rockysaga from the beginning. Since he didn't have to work that day, Justin figured that he would watch all five movies in a row.

A few minutes after the phone call, there was a knock at the front door. Knowing that it was probably Brian, Justin ignored him and stayed on the couch, hoping that Brian would figure that he and Emmett were asleep and would leave. However, the first knock was accompanied by another knock, then another. Justin heard Brian's and another voice outside the door and guessed that Brian's knocking had woken up one of the neighbors.

Soon after, Justin's phone rang again. He ignored the call, then could hear Brian talking outside the door after the ringing stopped. A moment later, Justin received notification that he had a voice mail. He reluctantly listened to the message:

"Justin, I can hear the TV and your phone ringing from outside the door. I'm not leaving until you talk to me, or until one of your neighbors calls the cops on me for loitering."

Justin let out a sigh and sent Brian a text message:

NOTHING TO TALK ABOUT FUCK OFF

"Justin," he heard Brian call through the door. "Will you please open the door and give me a chance to explain?"

Justin pressed the "Stop" button on the remote and walked over to the door. He unlocked the deadbolt and the lock on the doorknob, but kept the security chain on as he pulled the door open.

"What?" Justin barked out, looking at Brian in the small space the chain allowed.

"Can I come in? I already pissed off the lady next door," Brian asked. "She thought I was banging on her door."

Justin closed the door to release the chain then opened it for Brian to come in.

"Justin Honey, what's going on out there?" a sleepy Emmett asked as he staggered out of his room in nothing but a pair of purple briefs. As he walked into the living room, he glared at Brian. "What the fuck do you want?"

"Em, I'll handle this," Justin said, raising his hand to signal to Emmett to stop walking.

Emmett frowned. "Well, I'll be in my room if you need help throwing his ass out."

Justin waited for Emmett to close his door. "Again, what?"

Brian looked at the DVD case sitting on the TV stand. "Rocky IV, huh?"

"Yeah, my dad got me into the movies when I was a kid," Justin answered.

Brian smiled. "My old man did, too. I even have a two-year old female boxer named Adrian."

Despite how upset he was with Brian, Justin couldn't help but smile. "I always wanted a dog, but my mom is allergic."

Brian walked over to the couch and sat. "My parents wouldn't let me get a dog. Adrian is actually our second boxer; we rescued a male that I renamed Apollo, then we got Adrian as a puppy after he died."

"Did he get beaten to death by a Russian?" Justin asked as he stood a few feet away.

Brian chuckled. "No, he was already five when we got him; we had to put him down when he was ten."

Justin nodded, then remembered why he let Brian in. "Anyway, what did you want to tell me?"

"Oh, yeah. Well, first off, I want to say that I'm sorry for being such a shit last night-"

Justin interrupted, "You mean, for getting high and letting some guy give you head?"

Brian sighed. "Yeah."

"What exactly did you take, anyway?" Justin asked. "You said ‘trail mix.'"

"Trail mix is a nickname for a combination of a few powdered drugs that you snort, like cocaine, ketamine, and crystal meth, sometimes with crushed up ecstasy or other pills-"

"Jesus, Brian!" Justin yelled. "Why the fuck would you take that shit? Obviously to get high, but that shit could kill you!"

Brian rolled his eyes. "I only used a little. Trust me, with the amount of drugs I used to take in my younger years, what I took last night was nothing. Shit, this one night during my freshman year of college, I got so loaded that the next morning I woke up on some island in the Bahamas and no idea how I got there."

Justin pinched the bridge of his nose. "Could you please attempt to explain why you decided to take it last night in the first place?"

"That's what I was trying to get to. You know when you asked me in the car why I was in a pissy mood? It was because me and my wife, Lindsay, had an argument in my office earlier that afternoon. She's decided that she wants to start working as a paralegal after never having a real job in her life."

"So, you were pissed that she wanted to get a job?" Justin asked as he crossed his arms over his chest.

"No... will you sit down, please? I feel like you're a cop, interrogating me." After Justin sat in Emmett's old rocking chair, Brian continued. "Before Lindsay got pregnant with Gus, she was studying to become a lawyer. But she dropped out to raise him, and I know that she has always resented me for her giving up her career, although Gus is as much her fault as he is mine. Hell, she was the one that came on to me; she was relentless."

"But why would you be pissed that she wants to work now? You should be happy for her, that she wants to have a career of her own. My mom is a housewife and didn't go to college, and I have always felt that she secretly hates it, because she's so dependant on my dad's money."

"Well, after she left my office in a huff, I started thinking. Like I told you, the only reason that we got married was because our parents forced us to, especially my old man. But now that he's gone and I've gotten my inheritance, there's really nothing keeping us together. Her wanting to get a job was kind of a wake-up call, signaling to me that she now wants a life apart from our marriage."

Justin tilted his head in confusion. "Do you actually want to stay married to her?"

Brian sighed. "See, that's the complicated part. Because of our pre-nup, she stands to get a shit load of money from me in alimony and child support, as well as half the value of the property we own. My old man knew how much I love money and material things, so he agreed with Lindsay's parents with the terms to keep me from leaving her."

Justin looked at him in disgust. "So you want to stay married to a woman that you don't love just so you won't have to give her money? Money for her to live off of and to take care of your son with?"

"It's not just that," Brian said, leaning back on the couch and tilting his head back so he didn't have to look at the disappointment on Justin's face. "The main reason that our parents wanted us to get married was so we wouldn't destroy our family's images. Her parents even knew that she caught me fucking a guy, but they still forced her to marry me, because they didn't want their friends to know that their daughter was having a baby out of wedlock. And, my parents didn't want their friends to know that their son was a fag. My old man used to donate to all of the city and state Republicans, and even played golf with the Bush family, for fucks sake. And my mom is a very devout Catholic. Shit, she even had to find another church after Linds and I got married at City Hall, but no way could we get married in her church, only to have them later do the math and realize that we put the cart in front of the horse."

Justin sniffed out a laugh and shook his head. "So you're still afraid of tarnishing the family image by getting divorced and having people possibly find out that you're gay?"

Brian looked over at Justin and said, "Not only that, but... I think one reason that Lindsay wants to work as a paralegal is because the lawyer that wants to hire her is a friend of hers... and that friend is a big ol' dyke."

Justin thought about that for a second and laughed. "Are you saying that you think that you're wife might be gay, too?"

Brian shrugged. "Well, when I suggested that to her yesterday, her eyes about popped out of her head and she stomped out. Then, despite the fact that she has always had a rule about us having dinner every night as a family, she didn't eat dinner with us last night, probably because she was with the dyke."

Justin rubbed his tired eyes. "So what, do you think that Lindsay will take your money and your son and leave you for a woman, and you'll be publically humiliated, especially if people find out that you're gay, too?"

Brian sucked in his lips. "In a nutshell, yeah."

Justin looked up at the ceiling. "Wow... that's fucked up."

Brian nodded. "So, that's why I acted out last night by getting high and attempted to break my personal record of number of consecutive blow jobs in one night."

Justin looked at him and sarcastically asked, "Did you break your record?"

"No. The record stands at six; Mikey and Ted dragged me out of there after BJ number three or four and took me home." Brian sighed and added, "Also... because of you."