A man is torn between his perfect wife and a fascinating young man in an unconventional, inescapable love triangle. Thirty-year-old Kent McKutcheon has come to Atlanta with little ambition beyond his earnest desire to grow up and be a good person. But after a year of contented, stable existence with his Mennonite wife, Maggie, a defense attorney with a passion for social justice, Kent has failed to eradicate his private longing for Paul, the lover who abandoned him three years before. When an accidental meeting resuscitates their affair, the passion they share privately soon threatens to destroy the public persona each man has created. Paul is a promising acting student who is unhappily bound to another man, a much older, ailing college professor who is failing to provide the love and sense of family which Paul now realizes he wants. A former wild-child, he craves the aura of home and stability that Kent seems to have with his wife. Frustrated with Kent's guilt-ridden angst and repeated efforts to end their affair, and eager to find the sense of love and comfort which seems otherwise unavailable in his world, Paul pushes closer to Kent's marriage, ultimately developing a fixation on Maggie herself. In a single night that slips out of control, the volatile mix of emotions leads to murder, and all three characters are suddenly more involved with each other's lives than they could have foreseen, and none can hope to escape unscathed.