My wife doesn't know I have a side piece, and the insane part is, it's not a person. It's a tiny, sparkly keychain I keep on the ring with my car keys. It's a little silver alien, the kind you'd win out of a claw machine at a dumpy arcade. I won it on a lunch break two years ago with a woman from my office. We weren't having an affair, not really. We just had a few moments of intense, whispered flirting over bad Chinese food in her car. I won the keychain for her, but she laughed and said her husband would ask too many questions. So I kept it.

Now, it's my secret. My wife sees it every day when I toss my keys on the counter. She's even picked it up and said, "Oh, this is cute," completely oblivious to the fact that this little piece of cheap metal is a monument to the most exciting and dangerous five minutes of my adult life. Sometimes, when I'm alone in the car, I'll hold it in my hand and I'm not a husband and a dad with a mortgage anymore. I'm the guy who almost threw it all away for a few stolen moments and a cheap thrill. It's not a side piece I'm fucking; it's a side piece that's fucking with my head, and I can't ever get rid of it.