Chapter 1

Tomorrow is my birthday, and I have the toughest decision of my life to make.

My whole life, and beyond, will depend on what I do. I know what I should do... no, I know what she wants me to...

Sorry, I'm a mess right now, let me start over.

Tomorrow is my birthday and I am terrified. I have a decision to make and I just don't know what I should do.

Please, tell me, what would you do?

This all began last month when... no, I guess it began five years ago when I... no, I guess the only way you can understand is to go all the way back, back to about two months before I was born.

My parents were new to Pflugerville, Texas, and my mother was lonely. Lorelei's parents were in their Lamaze class and they discovered that they only lived about a block apart in one of the mushroom subdivisionsthat were eating up the black land farms around Austin. You know the kind, large two-story houses on tiny lots in a "planned community." "Planned" meant there was a common clubhouse and pool. Both our families were part of the techie migration to Austin and whoever came up with the term "yuppie" had our parents in mind.

Our moms became best friends, our dads became pals and Lorelei, born two days after me, and I spent more time together than most twins. We never had separate birthday parties. We went to the same daycare, the same preschool, and were in every class together until they put us in separate health classes in junior high. In self-defense we became best friends sometime before preschool. In second grade Lorelei's father was killed in an airliner crash. I held her for hours as she cried.

Her mother never re-married, and Lorelei often spent more time with dad than I did. I enjoyed hunting, but dad's real passion was fishing. I'd rather watch grass grow. Lorelei was not a morning person, except when dad wanted to go fishing. Of course she had her own key before I did, so she'd be sitting at our kitchen table "a long winter's nap" before sunrise.

I never actually asked Lorelei out, we just started dating about the time she decided she wanted a boyfriend. That's the way it was, Lorelei had a streak of steel a mile wide and 10 feet thick when it came to determination. If it wasn't wrapped in the most beautiful package I'd ever seen, well... Well, what Lorelei wanted Lorelei got and for some reason, she wanted me.

Don't think we didn't have other friends, we always did. We were very popular -- Lorelei was class president all four years in high school and we were Mr. and Miss PHS, prom King and Queen, all that stuff. We both ran distances in track and we both got caught up in the soccer craze that swept Central Texas about the time we were born.

We both played soccer at the University of Texas. Lorelei had the largest scholarship on the team. I played on UT's club team where we won a few national championships. We were both in UT's prestigious Plan II program. Lorelei's alternate major was pre-law, I was a computer nerd. Halfway through our junior year we had a pregnancy scare and Lorelei decided we needed to get married the next summer. I guess that's where the story really starts.

Lorelei was the only girl I'd ever dated, the only girl I'd ever kissed and the only girl I ever wanted to share my bed. I was crazy about her and to say we were happy those first two years is a world-class understatement. The sun didn't rise in the east; it rose in the twinkle as Lorelei opened her eyes.

We were poor, the way only married college kids can be poor, and totally oblivious to it. I got a special dispensation to be admitted to UT's MBA program. Lorelei was admitted to UT law school. We were a team and we were going to change the world... until that damned OU weekend.

The entire second year class of UT law school was invited to spend OU weekend in a luxury retreat owned by one of the big Texas law firms. For those poor souls who don't know about OU weekend, it can't be described.

Even us Longhorns have to admit that the (begin using all the curse words you know. Believe me no matter how erudite, they're still inadequate to describe those people. Now add all the foreign curse words you know and you still lack a sufficiently vile adjective for the... ) Sooners do know how to play football, but they lack the deference that is the Longhorn's due (probably because their team is made up entirely of kids who were raised by us... more epithets on the heads of those traitors to Texas.) We play the game in Dallas, halfway between the two schools, and half the stadium is filled with (someday I'll find the words vile enough to apply to the... ) Sooners and the other half is filled with the pride of Texas.

Sorry about that rant, but because of the game, you can't find a hotel room within a hundred miles of Dallas. The Brownian movements of both sets of fans on Commerce Street the night before the game requires generations of learned behavior, and woe betide the benighted who gets it wrong.

The law firm's hotel and its services on OU weekend are beyond the dreams of avarice of most law school students and believe me those sharks make Scrooge look like Mother Teresa.

Of course it's a recruiting ploy that keeps that firm at the top of the list of UT's best and brightest, cheap at twice the price.

On Friday night, the firm threw a party, complete with an open bar and caviar in five-gallon buckets.

Because my sadistic-football-hating-crone-professor from Japan actually forced us to attend class on Friday, I wasn't going to able to leave Austin until after four.

Given the hoards of faithful making the trip, starting that late meant the trip would take at least twice the normal three-and-a-half hours. I would miss the planned gourmet dinner, but I hoped to be there in time for some of the dancing and the open bar.

Lorelei had caught a ride up that morning with a professor. Lorelei had met him that summer when he'd co-taught a course.

He'd just earned a fortune in some class-action suit and became a professor. Lorelei had been so impressed by him that she'd signed up for a fall class.

We were both surprised when he'd invited us to his mansion on the lake, for dinner a week before the game. I felt a little sorry for him, even as I coveted his house. He'd been divorced for a year and seemed lonely. I liked him, he was our parent's age, but seemed more sophisticated somehow. As soon as he heard about my class conflict he'd offered Lorelei the ride.

Lorelei had been bubbling when we got home. She positively gloated about the opportunity to pick his brain on the three-and-a-half hour drive.

I'd no sooner sat down in class that Friday when I began fidgeting. All I could think about was getting to Dallas. This was far from my first OU game, so I couldn't understand why I was so anxious.

About 10 minutes into the class, the prof couldn't ignore me any longer and said, "You're as bad as my husband. Go on, get! Try to beat the traffic to that silly game."

At the time I thought "God is in His heaven and all is right with the world." The game wasn't until the next day, but I was almost desperate to get to Lorelei.

I'd come to class ready to leave and I was on IH-35 15 minutes later. Traffic was horrible but I pulled into the hotel a little before seven just when everyone was sitting down for dinner.

It was even swankier than I'd dreamed, but Lorelei, sitting across a table from her professor seemed out of kilter somehow.

They were in earnest conversation, and she didn't see me until I put a hand on her shoulder. She startled and blurted out that our room had thousand-thread-count sheets. Then she blushed, which was so unlike her, the suppressed panic I'd been feeling since I'd sat down in class threatened to explode.

Before I could ask her what was going on, the band, with a current Top 40 hit, began to play. Her professor stood and asked Lorelei to dance. If I'd been asked I'd have said I didn't have a jealous bone in my body. Jealousy is fundamentally a lack of trust and I could no more mistrust Lorelei than I could my elbow or my kidney. Besides, like I said, he was about the age of my father!

Lorelei looked away from me and abruptly in accepted his invitation. Adrenalin flooded me but I still couldn't understand exactly why until I shot a glance at them on the dance floor. There was nothing out of the ordinary; they weren't dancing too close or too far. They certainly didn't look guilty.

But with that tiny glace, I knew that she'd slept with him. The whole concept was so alien so impossible, it took a hundred heartbeats to absorb what my forebrain knew. But, I knew it beyond the conscious level. I knew it the way I always had known special things about Lorelei. I knew it to the marrow of my bones, I knew it in my soul and I disappeared!

I'd never believed in temporary insanity, until I was. I'm glad I didn't have my gun with me, because the next thing I was aware of, I was taking it out of our bedside table. To this day I have absolutely no memory of leaving the hotel, Dallas or the drive back to Austin.

Standing next to our bed, I had a mental flash of him, on top of her, inside her. It was so vivid I actually could feel him inside me, as if I had a vagina!

Trembling with unbearable pain and with fists clenched I bellowed the unanswerable question, "WHY?"

All my life I'd given Lorelei everything I had. Even as kids, if Lorelei wanted it, I got it for her and didn't count the cost. I gave myself completely, why wasn't that enough?