It's amazing how many thoughts can go through your mind in a matter of milliseconds. From the time Jeff first spotted Ellen to the time his legs kicked into overdrive and propelled him around the nearest corridor, no more than 1.3 seconds elapsed. And yet, in that time, Jeff entertained the following questions, in no particular order: What is she doing here? Is she looking for me? Why is she looking for me? What if she's not here for me and is on a date? Why is God punishing me? Is there a nearby speeding train I can hurl myself either in front of or under?

Before Jeff can ponder the answer to any of the above questions, he finds himself standing in front of the washrooms, safely out of sight, but seriously out of breath. Ashley, Niko and Louie soon join him. Ashley eyes him up down. "You aren't hiding from her, are you?"

"Absolutely not. I'm simply pondering the best course of action."

"You're going to sneak out."

"Out the nearest open window."

For all their ridiculously self-absorbed tendencies, Louie and Niko are still able to step up for a buddy in a crisis situation. One look into Jeff's wide, panicked eyes was all they needed to spring into action. One advantage of being bar regulars is knowing the floorplan by heart. This is not the first time a surprise visitor triggered an emergency evacuation. In fact, for Niko, this happens at a greater frequency than Margarita Monday's. They both quickly bolt for the door to the back entrance. Within seconds Niko returns shaking his head.

"No open windows, the back door is chained. We're going to have to get you out the front door," Niko concludes.

"We're going to need a diversion," Jeff says.

Whether they were genuinely considering other options, or just going through the motions, it wasn't long before the guys all came to the same conclusion. They all stand there with their gazes fixed on Ashley. She immediately shakes her head repeatedly in protest.

"No. No. No. I don't even know her. What would I do?"

A few seconds of silence elapse before Niko offers a solution. "Hit on her."

Louie is immediately on board. "Ooooh, yeah!" As his words hang in the air, it is clear the response blew well past "enthusiastic support" and crossed into "unhealthy perversion."

Not surprisingly, the plan did not have unanimous buy-in. "I'm not going to hit on her!"

It is only moments before Ellen will discover their presence and they don't have the luxury of time to continue this debate. One can only guess that's what Niko tells himself to justify what he's about to do next. "Well, you better think of something," he says as he shoves Ashley out into the main bar area and blocks her path to return to the safety of the washroom corridor. Ashley shoots Niko the female death glare that often reduces men to grovelling masses of jelly. Clearly, Ashley intends to pick this up at a later date. For now, without another plan to follow, she reluctantly, approaches Ellen who is standing at the front bar.

She sidles right up to Ellen, looks directly at her, but says nothing. Ellen finally notices the strange woman staring at her.

"Hello?" Ellen says in a can-I-help-you manner.

In the background, Niko and Louie emerge with Jeff who has a jacket draped over his head. Clearly, this represents their best attempt at remaining inconspicuous. From her angle, Ashley can see the guys but Ellen cannot. Ashley does her best to sound casual. "Hi."

Awkward silence for a few seconds. "Can I help you with something?" Ellen asks. She starts to glance around the room so Ashley quickly recaptures her attention. She starts rubbing Ellen's blouse.

"I love this material. So soft to the touch."

"Thank you." Ellen says cautiously.

"It looks great on you. It really compliments your figure. God, you have such a great body."

Upon hearing that last statement, they guys stop their trek towards the front door and stand there caught up in Ashley's attempt at seduction.

"Um...thanks." Ellen says, unable to disguise her growing discomfort.

Ashley discreetly but frantically waves for the guys to get outside. They shuffle off out the front door.

To the casual observer, the feat they just pulled off would hardly register as noteworthy. After all, they merely orchestrated a very crude distraction and waltzed out the front door. It's not exactly Steve McQueen jumping the Nazi prison fence on his motorcycle. Still, standing beneath the towering oak trees in the downtown city square, Jeff is awash in the most joy and relief he's felt in weeks.

"Better than the bus pull," Louie chimes in as he high-fives Jeff.

Louie's comment triggers a series of memories of other great moments Jeff's experienced in the downtown square. If he had to rank them, this was the second best feeling he's had there. Topping the list is the aforementioned bus pull where teams from rival high schools competed to see who could pull a city transit bus up the steepest downtown street the fastest. Jeff was a member of the winning team in his grade ten year and the sheer euphoria he experienced was surprising even to him, given how silly the event was. He had no idea it was a simple product of biochemistry, an exercise-induced release of endorphins in the brain. All he knew was, in that moment, jumping into the arms of his classmates, it was the closest he ever came to feeling what it would be like to win the Stanley Cup.

Jeff was smiling, lost in that memory when Niko brought him crashing back to Earth. "So we can't talk you into going back to the reunion?"

Jeff just turns and looks away, unable to make eye contact. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Ashley approaching with Jeff's trophy in hand. "Go on without me. I'll be okay."

Niko and Louie exchange looks and come to the same silent conclusion – no sense in pressing him. They're not going to get anywhere.

As they walk off, Louie feels compelled to draw the battle lines. "Just so you know, I'm going after Vicky."

"You're not respecting Dibs?"

"Nope!"

"You realize this means war."

"Bring it on."

Ashley arrives with the look one would have if they just did five to ten years in a federal penitentiary after taking the fall for the other members of the team – bitter, jaded with a well earned sense of entitlement. She drops the trophy at his feet.

"So I'm pretty sure I just earned my first restraining order. You wanna tell me what this is all about?"

"Not particularly."

"Let's try this again, only not phrased as a question. Start talking immediately about what has you so spooked about seeing your old classmates? I mean, they gave you this huge trophy."

"The trophy is the reason."

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

Jeff begins telling Ashley where the story all began. He sets the scene by describing how he, Niko, and Louie were sitting in Niko's living room which looked more like a university dorm room. Full and empty bottles of beer and pizza boxes were strewn around the place. It's obvious they'd been enjoying themselves for a while.

"It was a week or so after Ellen left and the boys were helping me get through it the only way we knew how – drink through it. It happened to be the same day the reunion information forms came in the mail. Every year they have these stupid awards like "travelled furthest" or "has the most kids". Nobody takes them seriously and I wasn't happy with my current lot in life so Niko had an idea.

"Make stuff up," Niko offers

"I can't do that!"

"Sure you can. Watch this." Niko grabs a piece of paper off the coffee table and starts to write what he says out loud.

"Occupation. Jeff considers...

Jeff's recounting of the incident picks up at the reunion where Tracey, 41, a prim and proper looking woman, reads out Jeff's information at the reunion. She picks up where Niko left off.

"...his life's vocation to be helping the underprivileged. To this end, he gave up his lucrative medical practice to work with malnourished and medically deprived children in the third world." She takes a short but noticeable pause before continuing. "Plus he gives free boob jobs to unattractive foreign chicks who are too flat-chested to find a husband in their village."

Ashley's reaction punctures Jeff's story. "Wait, what!?!"

Back to the night in Niko's apartment, Jeff and Niko's heads snap around and they stare at Louie.

"Wait what!?!" Niko and Jeff blurt out in unison.

Louie stands his ground, vociferously defending the added section. "It's good. It makes him look sensitive to women's issues. I'm putting it in." Louie grabs the form and the pen and enthusiastically writes it down.

"After that, we just went with it," Jeff offers by way of explanation.

Jeff continues recounting the events of earlier in the evening but it is overwhelming for her. Almost like it is too much bullshit for the human brain to absorb at once. She processes the remainder of Tracey's speech about Jeff as a montage of bite-sized information chunks.

"...built the first primary school in a village 100 kilometers east of Kuala Lumpur..."

"...taught sign language to the hearing impaired in the mountain regions of Peru."

"...married to a lingerie model/fantasy football expert who likes to spend her spare time perfecting the ultimate BBQ ribs."

Once again Ashley somehow has him sharing more than he originally intended. But now it has taken on a momentum of its own and Jeff is no longer fighting it.

"It was a drunken lapse in judgement, I didn't know they were going to make a big deal out of it...and it gets worse."

"It can't"

"Tracey is my ex-girlfriend. We dated all through Grade 12. I went through that whole humiliating charade in front of the one person I wanted to impress."

"I stand corrected. You've managed to prove two things. There is a God and he hates you."

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

Meanwhile, back at the reunion...Niko is engaged in a deep conversation with Vicky about kids today and how truly terrible their music is when he spots something that gives him pause. It's Louie standing by himself, grinning with a look Niko had seen too many times before. This was Louie's I-have-a-brilliant-plan-up-my-sleeves look. The last time Louie had this look, he and Niko spent an entire night being interrogated by border guards as to why they had a trunk full of Chinese bootleg DVD's. They weren't charged formally but can now boast about being on an international contraband watch list. On this night, Niko didn't know what was coming, he just knew it wasn't going to be good.

Louie approaches them and smiles politely, too politely for Niko's liking. "Lovely evening tonight, it sure is great to see everyone again," Louie says.

"Yes, it is," Niko cautiously replies.

Louie looks over Vicky's shoulder and squints as if he's trying to lock in on something. "Is that Jimmy Tate? I thought he had moved to the States."

When Vicky turns away to take a closer look, Louie grabs a nearby glass of ice water off a table and throws it on Niko's pants making it look like he wet himself. When Vicky turns back, Louie puts on his best empathetic face. He leans in to Niko and half-whispers, making sure he's still loud enough for Vicky to hear. "Dude, I think you had another one of your accidents."

Vicky looks down and is clearly grossed out. Niko glares at Louie then goes off to dry himself. Louie takes Vicky by the arm as if he were at an 1878 Savannah cotillion and escorts her away. "Let me apologize for my friend's... bladder control problem. He's quite sensitive about it."

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

Outside in city square, Ashley can no longer contain her curiosity about the relevance of the trophy in the night's predicament. She picks it and examines it closely. "Are we almost at the point where the trophy come in to the picture?"

"Remember how I said they give out these stupid awards? Well there's one that isn't quite so stupid," Jeff says. As Jeff recounts the story, Ashley is transported back to earlier that night where Tracey stands at the podium on the stage.

"Here at Holy Trinity, we're proud of all our alumni but there are those special few who have gone on to inspire others. We have two wonderful nominees for "Most Inspirational". We've already heard about the tremendous work Jeff Dempsey has been doing around the globe. Our second nominee is joining us on a brief reprieve from the Intensive Care Unit, please take a look at the inspirational story of Dennis Bruce.

As soon as the words "intensive care unit" hit his ears, a sense of terror overtakes him. "Oh no," he says involuntarily in the moment.

Just hearing the story, Ashley has a similar reaction. "Oh no!"

"Oh yes." Jeff affirms as he continues on.

As Tracey finishes teeing up Dennis Bruce's candidacy, a video appears on a giant video screen behind the stage it shows a very frail and sickly Dennis, getting treatment for Roderick's Syndrome in the hospital. Roderick's Syndrome is explained as a rare but devastating neuro-muscular affliction. This is followed by a clip that shows Dennis reading to sick kids. Another clip explains that his whole life doesn't revolve around his illness. It shows Dennis running a midnight basketball league for inner city youth. A final clip shows Dennis volunteering at the soup kitchen. When the clips are done, his classmates acknowledge Dennis who pushes himself away from the table, revealing he is currently in a wheelchair.

"I wish we had two awards to give out but since we have only one, this year's most inspirational goes to...Jeff Dempsey," Tracey proudly announces.

"Let me get this straight..." Ashley says walking right up to Jeff. "You cheated a chronically ill, wheelchair bound, soup kitchen volunteer out of a humanitarian award!?!"

"I know, it's one of those moral gray areas," Jeff shrugs.

"Moral gray area?!? I can't imagine a crasser, more self-serving stunt someone could pull at a high-school reunion."

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

While Louie's plan may have involved the subtlety and deft touch of a wrecking ball, it did enjoy a certain measure of success. Louie was chatting privately with Vicky in a quiet corner of the gym. This was going well, Louie thought to himself. Almost too well. Louie had a terrible feeling there was going to be a retaliatory strike coming but he didn't know when or from where. He wouldn't have to wait long to find out.

Tracey steps up to the microphone on the stage and taps it to make sure it is on. "Hi everyone, it looks like we're in for a surprise treat. One of our very own wants to play a song he wrote. Let's all welcome Niko Stassinopoulos."

Louie stops whatever point he was making and instantly turns his full attention to what is taking place on stage.

"I didn't know Niko was a musician," Vicky says.

"I didn't either," Louie says trying to mask the terror that has him in its grasp.

On stage, Niko tunes his guitar, slowly and methodically. To the outside observer, this is the simple act of a master musician making sure his instrument is in pique form before he performs. Louie knew better. This is the work of a master sadist making sure he extracts every last ounce of agony from his victim. And it was working.

"This is a song that goes out to a friend of mine," Niko says casually. "And he knows why."

Louie is suddenly very concerned. Niko begins playing the opening chords of what sounds like a 1960's folk song. It's what Woody Guthrie would have written if he were petty, vindictive, and hell-bent to screw over a buddy.

"He's a complicated man, there's not a lot who know him. He'd rather keep his cards real close, doesn't like to show 'em."

Louie's okay with this so far. This might not be as bad as he first feared.

"If anyone found out, they'll say I'm gone, I'll see ya. Cause my friend Louie has Gonorrhea."

"And there it is," Louie says aloud. He peaks out the corner of his eye to see how Vicky is reacting. Not surprisingly, Vicky has a disturbed look on her face. Niko ramps up to the repetitive chorus.

"Yeah, my friend Louie has Gonorrhea. Sayin' my friend Louie has Gonorrhea. Oh my friend Louie has Gonorrhea. Tellin' you, my friend Louie has Gonorrhea."

There is now a distance between Louie and Vicky.

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

Perhaps the only person in the city more ill-at-ease than Louie at that precise moment is Jeff who paces around the city square, clearly wound up. Now that Ashley managed to get Jeff talking about what happened, he's showing no signs of stopping any time soon.

"I know it was a stupid thing to do but I just couldn't go back there and face those people as I am. A textbook example of unfulfilled potential."

"Is that really how you see yourself?"

The question catches Jeff like a boxer struck by a quick left jab to the jaw. It rocks him and leaves him discombobulated for a few seconds. He has to think for a few moments before he can respond with a coherent answer. He paces back and forth for about 10 seconds before he settles in front of Ashley and raises his gaze to meet hers.

"I used to be something in high school. I led our basketball team to the championship. I once scored 51 points against St. John's and...

"It was against Franklin Heights," Ashley interjects.

Jeff is more than a little annoyed. Not because she interrupted his train of thought but because she did so while being completely wrong. The 51-point game was the highlight of a high school career that was chalk full of them. It was one of those only-happens-in the-movies moments that happened in real life. Why would a complete stranger feel like she knew what happened better than he? Accordingly, Jeff is unable to quell his patronizing tone. "Um...hello! I was there. It was against St. John's."

Ashley rolls her eyes but doesn't press it any further. Jeff is really feeling it now and the last thing she wants to do is derail him.

"The point is, I'm not even close to being the man I wanted to be."

"Tell me about him."

Bam! Another left jab. How is she doing this?

"The man you wanted to be," Ashley continues. "Picture him as a completely separate entity from yourself and describe him."

For a moment, Jeff considers pulling the pin on this entire line of questioning. He didn't plan on doing this much introspection when the day began. Although, if he really thought about it, there's probably not one thing that's happened so far today that's gone according to plan. "The plan" hasn't worked for him so far so he figures there's no harm in going along with whatever Ashley is driving at. Once again, he starts to pace and talk.

"He's got a great career that he loves, spends time with his friends, takes time to travel, has someone truly special in his life who he cherishes, he acts, ice skates, volunteers his time." The more Jeff describes him, the more this person sounds like a completely fictional character. This brings upon a certain sadness that sits like rock in his gut.

"So what's stopping you from being that guy?"

Jeff is growing tired of these simple yet enlightening questions. His answers are becoming curter. "I'm almost 40. It's too late." Jeff is hoping she will accept this as answer and let it go. Deep down, of course, he knows better.

"It's not. It's simple really. All you have to do is do one thing everyday that that guy would do that you wouldn't. Do you think you can do that?"

"I...suppose but-"

"Good. We start now. Grab your trophy."

Jeff is now completely turned round in his head. Is this some kind self-reflection exercise? His curiosity gets the best of him. "Why would I do that?"

"Because we're going back to your high school reunion."