"I'll understand?" Light in the hallway disappears as someone further down the hall locks up for the night.

"No... No Sam, I don't think you'll ever understand. Why should you? You've never been like me. I wouldn't want you to be. You've always been so..." his father's voice chokes. "You were always such a good son."

Sam's father was always such a good father.

Sam swallows. He could have been married now. Lisa wanted children. She wasn't sure when she wanted them but there was the knowledge that had all things gone according to plan, he could have been a father by now.

And had that happened, he knew he would be more confused than ever.

*

"I'm going home."

Sam looks up. Lisa's jacket is standing in front of him, jacket slung over her arm and car keys are at the ready.

"OK..." He places his drink on the coffee table in front of him and stands up.

"Hey!" Max says as Sam leaves the spot next to him on the couch. "It's only eleven thirty."

"You can stay if you like," Lisa says.

"No, I'm coming with you."

"I mean it, Sam. Stay."

"C'mon Sam," Max pleads.

"I really have to go Max. I've got a case file this big to get through tomorrow." He makes an exaggerated gesture with his hands.

"Are you sure?" Lisa says.

"Of course." And the only thing he's sure of is that he gotten much better at lying to her when he needs to keep the peace.

"Max hates me." Lisa slams the belt buckle together several times before finally achieving a lock. She throws herself back into her seat and sighs loudly.

"He does not."

"He doesn't like me."

"Lisa..."

"He was disappointed when he saw me."

"Lisa, can you hear yourself?"

She shakes her head and looks out the window.

Sam flicks the windscreen wipers on, then off again. He peers through the glare of streetlights reflecting off the water, and worries about getting to his meetings tomorrow in the rain. New York sinks into him like the dye in his socks that stains his trainers every time he goes running in the rain, but when it comes to the weather he is irrevocably a California boy.

In the passenger seat Lisa sighs again, indicating she wants to talk but not willing to initiate a conversation. There was a time when he ignored the sighs and the yawns, pretending he didn't understand her moods. Then was a time when he really didn't.

But there's nothing older than this relationship with it's pent up frustration and unspoken resentment. There's nothing older than him with his downtown apartment and his six-figure salary and the way he worries about the rain interfering with his schedule.

He drives on in silence and remembers that when everything else is fitting the mold, Lisa doesn't.

*

He is in his third year at Duke when he meets Lisa.

Lisa has a reputation for avoiding class and keeping odd hours at the residence. Anti-social and unconventional - she is something of an enigma, the kind of person about whom rumours circulate. Some accuse her of having sex with her lecturers. Others say that she has rich parents abroad that pay for her passing grades.

But Sam finds less insidious rumours more intriguing.

"She has an eidetic memory," Jasmine tells him one day. "I've seen her in action."

"How?"

"It's a party trick. She finds an unsuspecting victim, pretends to be drunk and then bets fifty dollars she can memorise a page from a book at a glance."

"You've seen her do it?"

"Yeah. It's a neat trick. Get her to do it for you some time."

Sam has a good memory. He is an exceptional student, all round smart guy and competitive enough to want to go head to head with the eidetic memory of Lisa Stoller.

He develops more than a passing interest in the girl who habitually arrives late for classes and keeps the residences alive with speculation surrounding her frequent disappearances and 3 am turn in.

And then one night, at a party off campus, he catches her act. Three boys pull a magazine from under a couch and bet $10 each against her recall. She scans the page briefly and then throws it into lap of one of them. She recites. Sam guesses two paragraphs. One hundred words maybe. The small audience applauds when she's finished. She bows.

Later, Sam finds her outside smoking and introduces himself.

"I'm Sam," he says and he holds out his hand.

"Sam I am?" She takes his hand and gives it a loose grasp.

"I get that a lot."

"Lisa Stoller."

"I know."

Her black eyeliner is smudged a little under one eye. She wears a man's body shirt. The genuine article if he's not mistaken. A relic from the seventies.

"So, how did you do it?"

"The party trick?" She indicates inside with a slight inclination of her head.

"Yeah."

"Not heard of a photographic memory Sam?"

"I've heard the term used to describe feats of memory but biologically there is no real difference in the mechanics of memory from one person to the other. Eidetic memory exists in few children and even fewer adults, and even then it's not as simple as instant photo recall."

She laughs. "You got me Sam Seaborne. It's a trick. I'd teach it to you but it's something that usually works best with your own system."

"A Russian psychologist used a mnemonic system to memorise lines of foreign languages. He got to four lines of Dante in its original Italian."

She nods thoughtfully. "Not bad. If you gave me a foreign language I'd be useless. I use language groupings and assign them a code."

"It doesn't help you study?"

She grins wryly. "I study like everyone else here. I read and take notes." She takes a drag from her cigarette. "A lot of notes."

He thrust his hands into his pockets feeling the cold. He wonders how to frame the next question.

"You miss a lot of classes." He says eventually.

"I skip Barassa's class on a regular basis and for that I do not apologise. That man is a fascist."

"Some would say his methods were rigorous."

"Are you one of them? Fuck - you went to one of those boys' schools where they caned you into submission right? Now you've got some kind of weird, masochistic need to act out childhood."

Sam laughs "My school was co-ed and surprisingly liberal in matters of corporal punishment. For what it's worth, Barassa takes some getting used to but it's a good class. You should show up on occasion."

She frowns and throws her cigarette onto the ground, crushing it with her toe. Inside the music gets a little louder and a woman's voice shrieks with laughter.

"I really don't like lawyers," she says.

"Then what are you doing here?"

She looks away. "Getting a law degree."

*

Duke is years in the past before they meet again. He finds himself in New York, not where he wants to be and not sure what he's doing. He's been in LA and he's been in Washington, and now he's in New York, almost thirty.

He spends his weekends, when he's not working, watching his friends get married. It's become the social disease of his late twenties. He's on first name basis with the girls at the Bridal Registry in Bloomingdales.

He thought he was going to marry Angela. And then there was Bridget. He got over Bridget by sleeping with Cassandra, but Cassandra was a colleague who refused to be seen in public with him. It ended badly.

And it ended with his move to Gage, Whitney and Pace. He never really decided whether this was good or bad fortune.

But he's single and on the fast track at Gage Whitney when he crosses paths once more with Lisa Stoller. He finds her in a bar the receptionist at Gage Whitney once termed 'the drycleaners' because of its reputation as a place to 'pick up a suit'.

He sees her across a Friday night crowd, slumped against the bar and obviously drunk. A first he can't decide whether it is really her or a very good doppelganger. Her hair is pulled into a bun and she has a smart, navy suit on.

He imagines that even Lisa would eventually wind up working as a lawyer but the image seems so out of place with his memory of the willing misfit who refused to make friends at Duke.

He approaches her until he notices her noticing him. Her eyes are half closed and she's almost swaying, but she recognises him.

"Sham Sheaborne."

"Lisa Stoller. How've you been?"

"Shhhwell... an... and you?"

She is teetering. He instinctively holds out his hand to catch her arm in case she falls.

"Who are you here with?" He looks over her head and wonders how anyone could leave their friend in this state.

She frowns and looks at the floor. "I was in court today."

"You were? Who do you work for?"

"I lost."

"It happens."

She shakes her head still looking at the floor.

"Kids shouldn't have to go to jail, Sam."

He takes a breath and lets it out slowly. His clients are large business, shipping and mining industry. He's never defended a minor.

"Do you live around here?" he says.

"Sam, are you propishish... propishishitioning me?"

"No, but someone should take you home."

He took her home and found out where she worked. A community legal centre. He called her two days later.

*

The relationship is in its second year when they move in together.

When he made the decision to move in with her, his justification was that they already spent all day and all night in each other's company and the move halving the rent for both of them.

He is unprepared for things like Lisa's possessions, which include a scratched antique desk (a twenty first birthday present) and a second hand bureau painted a deep purple. Both offend his Princeton bred sensibilities but she's oddly attached to them and won't be separated.

He is unprepared for the everyday-ness of this relationship. The constancy, the little things that signal intimacy, Lisa complaining about her job - her pay, her colleagues, her clients, Lisa singing along loudly to Neil Young when she thinks he isn't home, and Lisa brooding on Sunday, because it's Sunday.

But he's never been bad at anything and refuses to be so now. He becomes the kind of boyfriend that makes Lisa's colleagues say "where did you find him?" and "where can I get one?"

And Lisa becomes the kind of girlfriend that never gets along with his friends.

*

"Democracy?!" Josh is yelling. "Democracy?" He says it like it's a name he's been called. Like he's insulted.

"The ego on that guy," someone says in his ear and Sam thinks it's not the first time he's heard that about Josh Lyman.

When Josh announced his intention to visit, Sam couldn't contain his excitement. He met Josh in DC. They met over a shared conviction and faith in their ability to change the system.

But he tried Lisa's already small degree of patience to its limit with stories about Josh and him and their time in Washington. And then he invited friends over to meet Josh and finds that he's almost as unpopular as Lisa.

"You say it like it's a Utopian State. Like it's the be all and end all of social and structural change. We've sold the world on the idea that a democracy is the ultimate political system."

"You got a better one?"

"That's not the point," Josh says. "We don't stop looking because of our lack of options. Is a system that allows all parties to have a say - even on matters they are unfamiliar with - so perfect?"

"So who gets to have a say?" Lisa says. "You?"

"If I have the knowledge, yes."

"So it's a certain level of education that will be required then?" Lisa doesn't attempt to hide the acid tone in her voice. Sam wonders why he ever let them meet.

"Unlike our current system where a certain level of affluence is the determining factor."

"At least it's a choice. We can choose our representatives even if there are those who don't exercise that right."

"And why don't they exercise that right? Why are voter turnout figures the lowest since universal suffrage? What kind of choice do you have if you're choosing the lesser of two evils? We need to reform the system and we should start with campaign finance and the elimination of soft money contributions."

"So it won't be a case of only the rich choosing to run, they'll be the only ones able to run."

"Then we regulate the campaign process," Sam says. "We legislate on how much staff a candidate can hire, how much advertisement time he, or she, can take out on television."

Lisa gives him a hard look. He has just taken sides.

"You have all the answers don't you," she says. "You think that if you're just given the opportunity you can change everything where better men and women before you could not. Well I tell you that politics is not about changing the world and making a difference, it's about winning and losing and being able to say on your CV somewhere that you worked in Congress, while the real work is being done on the streets by Samaritans and volunteers. None of which will be given consideration at the next election."

Josh looks bemused but says nothing. Sam cringes. He wonders whether Lisa truly believes what she says or whether she just likes being the incendiary one in the group.

Either way, he knows she'll never be the fan of Josh Lyman that he is.

*

"So you earn, like, a lot of money at..."

"Gage, Whitney and Pace."

"Gage Whitney and Pace...you earn a lot of money at Gage, Whitney and Pace?"

"Yeah." Josh is going back to DC. They are waiting for a taxi outside Sam's apartment.

"Six figures?"

"Yeah."

"A brutal amount of money?"

"Obscene."

"Well you know what they say about a fool and his money..."

"Yeah, but they never tell you how the fool got the money in the first place."

"Luck."

"Right..."

"The point is, you don't need that much money and this," he waves his hand in the direction of Sam's apartment. "This isn't you."

"I'm working for Gage Whitney and Pace. " There's an involuntary apologetic note in his voice. "It's the second largest law firm in New York."

"It's not for you Sam."

"Who knows what's for me."

"Do you miss it?"

"Washington? Or politics in general?"

"Both."

"Yes."

"Then come back with me."

"Right now?"

"Sure."

"You're not serious."

"Right now, tomorrow, next week. Just don't go putting it off until... until you do something crazy like marry Lisa or something."

Sam looks at the ground.

"You don't like her."

"Oh... uh... hey, I don't really know her."

"And what you do know, you don't like."

"No! No, that's not... that's not it," Josh looks away. "It's just... not what I think of when I think of us."

"You and me?"

"Yeah. This isn't us, Sam."

Sam is silent for a while. Then he shakes his head. "I'm not you, Josh."

"Yes you are. You're more me than you think."

"How do you know?"

"Because when we're together, Lisa gets nervous."

Josh' s taxi pulls up. Josh reaches for Sam's hand and grasps it while giving his shoulder a gentle squeeze.

"Call me when you get to Washington," Sam says.

"I will."

The Taxi pulls away from the kerb. Sam watches it until it's a yellow blur disappearing around a corner several blocks up the street.

Josh is going back to Washington to change the world while Sam goes back to his office with a view and his Cerruti tie.

He wonders why he's not following him, why he'll go back upstairs to his apartment and to Lisa who will be making coffee and eyeing the day's papers.

He thinks about Lisa with her dour look and cynical tone, representing battered women and evicted drug addicts, and the way she comes home at night and showers, willing it all down the drain with her shampoo.

***** When they told Leah she made partner she whooped with joy and took them all out to dinner. When they tell Sam he goes straight into the bathroom to splash cold water on his cheeks.

It's days before he can bring himself to tell Lisa, and when he does he drops it casually into conversation. "No big deal," he says.

Lisa regards him suspiciously. "I would have thought you'd be more excited," she says.

"It's an invitation to invest in the company. It will cost."

She shrugs her shoulders and smiles. "It sounds impressive."

He smiles too, pleased that Lisa can be counted on to attach a degree of levity to the event.

The next day, his nine o'clock runs into his ten o'clock and his ten o'clock nearly runs into his twelve. He spills coffee on his tie and contemplates canceling the afternoon altogether.

Between two and three o'clock he goes shopping. He tells himself he is going out for a late lunch but he arrives out the front of Tiffany's staring at the window displays and contemplating his inner Holly Golightly. He goes in and emerges less than half an hour later with a small package in hand.

Out on the street again he takes a handkerchief out of his pocket and wipes a film of sweat from his brow. It is unseasonably warm.

*

When he gets home he hears children's voices coming from the apartment. Lisa is taking care of the neighbour's children.

Inside they are singing "Everything I am is me" to a Sesame Street video. Sam pecks Lisa on the cheek while she continues to sing.

"Me in the mirror, me in my bed, me in the picture I make in my head.."

"I know this one."

"So do I. They haven't changed the songs in twenty five years."

Lisa returns the neighbour's children while he pans the cupboards for food.

"We have nothing to eat," he says when she gets back.

She ignores the question and put her hands behind her head to perform next stretches. "What do you suppose they're trying to say?"

"Who? Where?"

"Sesame Street. The Children's Television Workshop. I mean, most of what they say is pretty straightforward. "Everybody sleeps, exercise is fun, having a pretend friend is OK..."

"Mr Snuffleupaguss is real."

"I noticed. When did that happen?"

Sam smirks. "He was always real."

"Sam..." She put her arms on his shoulders and leans in close.

"Don't tell me he's just a Muppet, Lisa."

"Sam, he's just a Muppet."

"I said 'don't tell me that'."

She lets him go. "Anyway, as I was saying, that whole 'everything I am is me', it's a bit profound don't you think?"

"Pre-school existentialism? I think it's important to instill a healthy respect for modern philosophy at an impressionable age."

"Hmm. I never really thought about it until now. It's wasted on children."

Sam opens the refrigerator and scours the contents. He picks up a carton of milk and shakes it.

"How long has this been in here?"

"It should be OK."

He sniffs it, and pours himself a glass.

"Will you marry me Lisa?"

"Excuse me?"

He thrusts a hand into his pocket and pulls out the small box he bought earlier. It slips from his hand and falls to the ground.

"Damn." He bends to retrieve it.

"You bought me a ring?"

"I pictured this differently."

"You bought me a goddamn ring?"

Inside the box is a piece of paper. She takes it from the box and reads. It says "I owe you an engagement ring - and I'm not stupid enough to pick it out for you."

She laughs. She throws her head back and laughs deeply and with her whole body.

"That's so romantic."

"And you laughing at me kind of ruins the mood."

"Oh God - sorry." She places a hand over her mouth and breaths in. She lets it out in a huff, like a loud sigh.

"Yes, I'll marry you Sam."

*

He's happy. He really is. He marvels at how happy he is and he muses that for once, the rain isn't affecting his mood.

He's happy when he walks into the meeting with Kensington Oil, secure in the knowledge that he's about to dazzle them with the power of his words and the depth of his investigation in to the subject.

It is only when Josh Lyman appears in his office, that things take off in another direction.

Josh's visit is short but it's his presence, the idea of him, that leaves Sam barely able to return to his meeting.

He gets home late. Lisa is already in bed. He plugs in his laptop and begins searching.

Lisa appears in the doorway.

"What are you doing?"

"They have to buy better boats," he says. He doesn't look up from his screen.

"Boats?"

"They can't buy those boats. They are disasters waiting to happen."

Lisa is quiet for a while.

"What exactly is it you do Sam?" she says.

He turns to look at her. He never really discusses his job with her. She never seems interested.

"I'm helping them get away with murder."

She rolls her eyes. "Lawyers."

"You're a lawyer too, Lisa."

"Take that back." A half joke.

"No, don't you see Lisa? You're evidence. You're the case against. We don't have to be the kind of lawyers that give the profession a bad name. We can change things. "

"We can use our powers for good." She raises a fist for emphasis. "Hey Sam, you want my job? You can have it."

She turns and goes back to bed.

Sam goes back to his keyboard.

*

It's the Sun on his face that does it. The clouds part briefly causing them to halt their dash for shelter.

Sam lifts his face and squints at the sky. Gage, Whitney and Pace is barely a block away.

"I just quit my job."

Josh runs a hand through his wet hair.

"You did, but I really need some dry clothes right now so can we save the existential dilemma for later?"

"I quit Gage, Whitney and Pace."

"You know that name doesn't suggest images, it doesn't rhyme, it doesn't form a memorable acronym. Anyone could forget it..."

"I was going to be partner next month."

"For god's sake Sam, we're going to New Hampshire to put the one honest politician in America into the White House, you have a higher calling." A taxi careens past splashing water onto Josh's already soaked shoes. He rolls his eyes and makes a gesture at the disappearing taxi. "And in case you haven't noticed, I'm about to harvest penicillin in my shoes."

"What am I going to tell Lisa?"

Josh scratches his ear and looks at the ground. "Well...that, I can't help you with."

Sam looks at the sky once more and fingers the strap of the satchel draped over his shoulder. He tries to picture Lisa in New Hampshire working on a Presidential campaign. He can't make the images fit and he isn't surprised.

His thoughts return to Josh Lyman who shifts his weight from foot to foot. A squelching noise is heard each time he does. Sam wants to laugh but the noise catches in his throat. Instead he starts walking again. He slings an arm over Josh's shoulders and pulls him gently alongside.

*

She is already there when he gets home which means she left work early. She is sitting on the couch with her shoes off, filing her nails. She files her nails down to small white crescents on the top of her fingers that are never longer than sensible.

"Josh came by today," he says quietly.

She looks up. "Hello."

"I quit my job."

She stares at him for a while. "Excuse me?"

"I quit Gage, Whitney and Pace."

She jumps up off the couch. "You're going to work for Hoynes!"

"No, we're going to New Hampshire to work on the Bartlet campaign."

"New Hampshire!"

He takes hold of her hands. "Come with us. We could find you a job. You've always wanted to get out." It's a hollow offer and just making it feels like a lie.

She throws his hands away. "Working on a Presidential campaign is your dream, Sam, not mine. And now you've found a real loser to get behind. Governor Bartlet is running for President? Does anyone know?"

"Josh says this is the guy. This is someone we can really get behind."

"And if Josh says it..."

"I trust him."

"Well what happened to Hoynes? How do you know he isn't going to do this again, Sam? How do you know he isn't going to leave this guy when he's found someone better?"

"Lisa for god's sake, this isn't.... he's not..." He sighs. "That isn't going to happen."

"You don't know that!"

"I know it. Lisa, this isn't about Josh." He looks at her, notices for the first time that she's close to crying. Lisa didn't cry when her father died two years ago but cried when she didn't get the job at Corman's. She cries out of frustration not sorrow.

"Why are you marrying me Lisa?"

"What?"

"It occurs to me that in the five years that we've been together you've never really been happy. If I can't make you happy, why are you marrying me?"

"Oh no," she hakes her head. "You're not turning this onto me Sam, you're the one who wants to go to New Hampshire."

"Come with me."

"I can't come with you!"

"Why not?"

"Because..." She places hands on hips and bites her lip. "Sam, I don't want to go to New Hampshire."

He doesn't know what to say. He's begun and he can't save it now. He sinks into the couch.

"Lisa, you know how much I've wanted to work on a Presidential campaign."

"I know."

"Five years, Lisa. Five years and we've had our good times and bad, but sometimes..." he trails off and stares ahead for what seems like an eternity. " Sometimes I think you don't really like me."

"That's not true."

"Are you sure about that?"

"Fuck, Sam, what do you want me to say?"

"Tell me why you're marrying me."

"Because...This is ridiculous."

"Tell me Lisa. Tell me what you see when you imagine our future together. Do you see us getting old together? Do you see us having kids? This is the rest of our lives we're talking about. Tell me what you see in your head when you picture us spending the rest of our lives together."

She opens her mouth to speak and nothing comes out. Sam feels the seconds ticking away like he's playing Jeopardy.

"It was...It was just... you know, it was just that there was nothing else left for us to do."

The ticking in his head dies and the silence cloys around him. She waits for him to say something. He doesn't.

"It's not that I don't love you Sam."

He stares at his hands clasped between his knees. One thumb brushes the other reminding him of the tangibility of these extensions of him. A woman in a bar once told him he was beautiful. And there he is, flesh and blood beneath his own hands. He's not so extraordinary.

"It's just that...it's just that you're impossible to be in love with."

And he is good. Oh so good. He is good and true and just, and he doesn't deserve this because he did all the right things.

"And it's not what you do, Sam. It's you." She shakes her head. "No, no... God, I'm doing this all wrong. You're so goddamn perfect, Sam. Every square inch of you. You're kind and you're generous and you really care about things and you're the only guy I know who would give up a partnership at Gage Whitney and Pace to work on the Presidential campaign of someone who is surely going to lose, but you're like turn of the century gentility who sponsored the poor as part of some kind of obligation to the greater good "

"You think I'm insincere."

"No, I think you're sincere but you don't realise when you're philantropy is misplaced. I'm not your goddamn project Sam. I'm not a challenge and I'm not your mission in life. I don't need you to save me."

She looks at him with his hands tightly gripped and his expression impassive. He doesn't look up from his view of the floor. She goes into the kitchen and returns moments later with a glass of water. She takes a sip and then hand it to him. He waves it away.

"When are you going?" she asks.

"As soon as I can."

"I'm sorry."

"Yeah."

* Drunk and cradling a pint glass, Sam wonders whether he should have asked his father if there was something he knew about relationships that no one else did.

"'The last full measure of devotion'," Josh is saying. "Did you really say that? That's fantastic. We have to make the President say that sometime."

"Twenty eight years," Sam says. "How did I not know? How did any of us not know?"

It all spiraled outward. From Lisa to Bartlet, from the primaries to the Inauguration. It moved in small circles slowly getting bigger and bigger until the spin encompassed the world, his world, until it sent him into orbit and left him floating in space. Centrifugal force keeping him in position.

It spun until he became known as an 'influential' man, a man with the 'ear of the President.'

But today it turns inward and he falls down a black hole.

Josh pats him on the back sympathetically. Toby throws his coat over his shoulders and stands up.          "I'm out," he says, and he places a hand briefly on Sam's shoulder in support.

"'Night," Donna and Josh say in unison.

"G'night," Sam says, and he leans his head into the ball of his fist. "'The sins of the fathers will be visited upon the sons.... longitude and latitude..."

"We should take him home," Donna says. Josh agrees and wraps Sam's jacket around his shoulders.

"Come on," Josh says as he helps him to his feet.

There may have been method to his father's madness. There had to be. His father maintained a semblance of domestic harmony and cohesion in one town and kept a relationship of impressive longevity in another. What was most incredible about his second relationship was its length in spite of the institution of marriage and the responsibility of family to keep it together during what must have been difficult times.

It awes him. Perhaps this was what worked when other options were destined to end badly? It required some skill in subterfuge and masquerade but these were surely minor concerns against the greater goal.

Weeks before the election he learned that Lisa Stoller left for Europe to spend six months hiking around the Mediterranean. If she returned, he was never informed.

When he told his father he planned to marry Lisa he nodded sagely and opened a bottle of twelve-year-old whisky to celebrate the occasion. When he told him the wedding was off he performed much the same ritual out of what he euphemistically termed 'commiserations.'

Outside they wait for a taxi. Sam looks at the pavement and fixates on the cracks filled with dried mud. He kicks at the ground trying to shift the dirt. Donna and Josh exchange bemused looks. Sam kicks his foot harder against the ground and then stops suddenly.

"I could have been married now," he says.

Josh rolls his eyes. "No you couldn't."

"This could have been my wedding anniversary."

"Today?" Donna asks.

"It wasn't going to happen," Josh says.

Sam holds out his hands. "Why...?"

"Because everyone knew it was the wrong thing to do. Including Lisa."

Sam nods vigorously. "I know, I know, I just want to know..."

He looks up at Josh and Donna waiting patiently for him and his funk to work it's way out.

"I want to know what it was for."

They are all silent. Josh wipes a hand over his brow and Donna chews her lip.

"Well," Josh says finally. "Maybe that's just what we do. We have these relationships that are never meant to go anywhere. I mean, look at me and Mandy."

"Oh hey," Donna interjects. "What about Dr Freeride? I went back to him."

"Exactly," Josh says. "And Toby's divorced, Leo's divorced, CJ... CJ seems to have a lot of experience..."

Donna frowns. "This is going somewhere right?"

"The thing is..." Josh scrounges for words. "The thing is..."

"We keep making the same mistake," Sam says. The bitterness in his voice is barely contained. "And my father has two relationships for twenty eight years.

Josh thrusts his hands in his pockets.

"I don't know man, I mean, what do you want me to say? It's just... it's just what we do."

Donna turns her gaze toward the sky, a grim look on her face. Sam tries not to look at either of them. He tries to hold on to his sorrow a bit longer. His indignation with the world is a constant. At times he finds it comforting.

But he has to let it go.

He has to let it go because it is past midnight and they will be at work again in six hours and they need to sleep, and because Donna and Josh and Toby have tried hard all night to alleviate his mood and they deserve better than his self pity.

He has to let it go, because the alternative is admitting he doesn't have answers and he knows he isn't ready for that yet.