Two baby boys are born on the same winter day in a small city in North Carolina.  On opposite sides of town.  When they meet—at university, not in their hometown—they fall in love and start planning a life together.  Kit, the white boy, is rich; Gabriel, the black boy, is poor.  Can they make their relationship work?  Can they build a productive—and safe—life together?

Not back home, they decide.  But New York City is another place entirely, and it draws them to it like a magnet.  Their new life is happy and satisfying—with lots of bumps in the road, of course: a forced separation because of career choices, rampant promiscuity during their time apart, the deaths of friends in the 1980s, career ups and downs.  But all of it they take in their stride until one phone call changes everything.