Love the one youre with

ex…'

'He's not dreamy.'

'He's hot and you know it,' she says. 'His eyes are ridiculous.'

I try to stifle a smile, but can't. They are ridiculous.

'Now, c'mon. Tell me what's going on, would ya?'

I sigh loudly, drop my head in my hands and say, 'Okay. But please don't judge.'

'When have I ever judged you?' she says.

'Are you serious?' I ask, looking at her through my fingers and laughing. 'When haven't you judged me?'

'True,' she says. 'But I promise not to judge this time.'

I sigh again and then launch into the whole story, beginning with that heart-thudding moment in the intersection. Suzanne doesn't interrupt once-except to order me another drink when a waitress stops by with a silver bowl of salty snacks. When I've finished, I ask if she thinks I'm a horrible person.

Suzanne pats my leg, the way she used to when we were little whenever I'd get carsick in the back of our mother's Buick station wagon. 'Not yet,' she says.

'Meaning what?'

'Meaning the night is but one-martini young… and we have a little situation developing.'

'Suzanne,' I say, horrified by her implication. 'I would never cheat on Andy. Never.'

'Ellen,' Suzanne says, raising her brows. 'Who said anything about cheating?'

Two hours, three drinks, and many conversations later, Suzanne and I are back in our room, drunk and happy. As we raid the mini-bar, laughing that when you're this hungry, six bucks for a bag of candy doesn't seem so outrageous, my mind drifts to Leo's guacamole.

'Should we call the front desk for a restaurant suggestion?' I say. 'I could really go for Mexican…'

'What a coincidence,' Suzanne says, smirking as she lifts up the receiver. 'Or we could just call Room six- twelve… Or better yet head straight for his room.'

I shake my head and tell her meeting Leo for dinner is not an option.

'Are you suuuure?'

'Positive.'

' 'Cause I think it'd be fun.'

'Fun to watch me squirm?'

'No. Fun because I happen to enjoy Leo's company.'

I can't tell whether she's kidding, testing me, or simply holding to her promise not to judge, but I snatch the phone-and the bag of peanut M amp;M's from her.

'C'mon,' she presses. 'Don't you want to know what Leo's been up to all these years?'

'I know what he's been up to. He's still reporting and writing,' I say, kicking off my shoes and sliding my feet into a pair of white terry-cloth slippers with the hotel's insignia. I pop a handful of candy into my mouth and add, 'That's how I got here, remember?'

'Yes, but beyond his work… You know nothing about his personal life, do you? You don't even know if he's married?'

'He's not married.'

'Are you sure?'

'He's not wearing a ring.'

'Means nothing. Plenty of married men don't wear rings.'

'Appalling,' I mutter.

'It doesn't necessarily mean they are players,' Suzanne says, taking the polar opposite stance of her usual rants on ringless, philandering pilots and leering businessmen populating her first-class cabins. 'Not wearing a ring can just be… sort of old school. Dad never wore his wedding ring-and I think it's safe to say that he wasn't on the prowl.'

'Can you really be old school if you're under forty?'

'Sure you can. It's the whole old-soul thing… and I think Leo is an old soul,' she says, almost admiringly, as it occurs to me that calling someone an 'old soul' is almost always a compliment.

I look at her. 'And you're basing that on what exactly?'

'I don't know. It just seems like… he's not caught up in materialism and all the other superficial trappings of our generation.'

'Suzanne! Where are you getting this crap? You've spent about four hours with him, total!'

'He does noble work,' she says, likely referring to his coverage of the AIDS Walk.

'Just because he cares about AIDS victims doesn't make him an old-soul saint,' I scoff-and yet I have to secretly admit that she is tapping into one of the things I once loved about Leo. Unlike so many guys, particularly guys I've met in New York, Leo was never a social climber or follower. He didn't consult New York magazine or Zagat's to select our restaurants and bars. He didn't sport the omnipresent black Gucci loafers. He never dropped references to great literary works he'd just read or artsy films he'd just seen or small indie bands that he had 'discovered.' He never aspired to settle down in a big house in the suburbs with a pretty wife and a couple of kids. And he always preferred travel and experience to fancy possessions. Bottom line, Leo wasn't about checking off boxes or trying to impress or ever striving to be someone or something he wasn't.

I say some of this to Suzanne now, mostly just musing aloud, but then silently comparing Leo to Andy. Andy who owns several pairs of Gucci loafers; Andy who frequently peruses the popular press for our restaurant selections; Andy who is anxious to exit the best city in the world so that we can live in a big house in Atlanta. And while my unaffected husband could never be accused of playing that pretentious urban game of name checking the hippest indie bands or art-house films or literary novel du jour, I had to concede that he at least appeared to have a more status-bound lifestyle than my ex.

A wave of guilt overcomes me as I shift in the other direction, feeling fiercely defensive of my husband. So what if he has an appreciation for the finer things in life, including the occasional brand-name good? So what if he wants a comfortable home and easy life for his family? It's not as though he makes choices to keep up with the Joneses or mindlessly follow the pack. He just happens to be a mainstream guy, adhering unapologetically to his own preferences-which makes him his own man every bit as much as Leo is his own man.

Moreover, why do I feel the need to make comparisons between Andy and Leo at all when there really is no connection between the two? I hesitate and then pose this question to Suzanne, fully expecting her to take the diplomatic high ground, say that I shouldn't compare them. That Leo has absolutely nothing to do with Andy and vice versa.

Instead she says, 'First of all, it's impossible not to compare. When you go down a fork in a road, it's impossible not to think about that other path. Wonder what your life could have been like…'

'I guess so,' I say, thinking that the Leo path was never really an option. I tried to take it, and it turned out to be a cold, dark dead end.

Suzanne runs her hands through her long, curly hair and continues, 'Second of all, Leo and Andy are connected, by simple virtue of the fact that you love-or once loved-them both.'

I give her a disconcerted look. 'How do you figure?'

'Because,' she says, 'no matter how much or how little two people you love have in common… or whether they overlap or have a decade between them… or whether they hate each other's guts or know absolutely nothing about one another… they're still linked in some strange way. They're still stuck in the same fraternity, just as you're in a sorority with everyone Andy has ever loved. There's just an unspoken kinship there, like it or not.'

As I contemplate this theory, she goes on to tell me how she ran into Vince's stripper ex-girlfriend at a bowling alley recently and, although they only vaguely know each other and share just a few, attenuated acquaintances (which is almost impossible to avoid altogether when you're both from Pittsburgh), they still ended up having a long conversation while watching Vince score his first and only three-hundred-point perfect game.

'And it was really weird,' Suzanne says, 'because we didn't really talk about Vince-aside from his ungainly form and crazy Brooklyn-side approach-but it's as if she totally knows what I'm enduring… What it feels like to love Vince, in spite of all his bullshit… And even though you're my sister and I've told you so much more about my