Chapter 14

At Sally's suggestion, we met for an early dinner at a popular restaurant just off the Stanford campus. We'd beaten the Saturday-night date crowd. It was too early for me to be very hungry, but dinner wasn't as important as talking to Sally –- alone and at length.

"Baby, I don't want to share you with anybody!" I told her.

"What? What happened to 'meeting other people?'"

"Sally, I can't stand this! I'm in love with you! I'm crazy in love with you, and when you started dating those other guys, it — well, it made me crazy, period!"

"You're crazy in love with me?" she said.

"Yes! I'm absolutely, positively, nutso! Gone! Out of my mind!"

"So. Does that mean you think I've met enough other people?"

"Stop teasing me, Sally! Please! I really meant it, what I told you, about meeting other people. I honestly believed it was what was best for you. I mean, after all those years, alone out there on that island. I didn't want to just, like, capture you and keep you for myself. It didn't seem right."

"But when I finally did go out with other men, you didn't like it."

"Well, I never wanted you to, really," I said, "but I thought it was the right thing for me to say. Hell, I believed it myself, the stuff I was telling you. But I was glad when at first you ignored my advice and just stayed with me."

"I loved you," she said. "I told you so over and over again."

"But now? You don't?"

OmyGod! I'd blown it! I'd lost her!

"I think I loved you right away," Sally said. "Before we left the island, even."

"Before we left Hawaii?"

"Before we left the island. My island. Sally Island."

"And ... now?"

"And I still love you Brian! Oh, God, I love you so very much! More than when we left my island. More than in Hawaii! I love you more every single day!"

The relief I felt swept over me like a big wave at Waikiki Beach. "You think," I said, "you've had enough of a chance to get to meet other people?"

"I know all the women on my dorm floor. I've even showered at the same time as some of the men in the dorm. I saw one guy who had one bigger than yours, even!"

And Gregory? And Alberto? How well did you get to know them?"

"Just dinner," Sally said. "Just dinner, and that's all. I was back in the dorm both Friday nights before eleven."

"Jesus! Why didn't you call me?"

"What? To tell you that I'd only had dinner? No dancing? No sex? You would have said that I needed to stay out longer — learn more about these new guys in my life!"

"No. No, I wouldn't have said that," I told her. "But why did you go out with them on Friday nights? Those were our Friday nights! The night that we always made love!"

"It was Alicia's idea," Sally said.

"Alicia? You mean Gregory's sister?"

"Yes. Alicia is my friend. My close friend — the kind you're always telling me to meet and cultivate. I've told her everything ... Everything about you and me, and how we met. She thinks it was very romantic!"

"Well. It was!"

"Yes. And I would tell Alicia how even though you loved me, and treated me so wonderfully, you kept pushing me away, and telling me to go out and experience life and meet other people - even other men."

"Yes, but I..."

"And Alicia told me that was all bullshit."

"What? What was bullshit?"

"She said you didn't really want me to see other men. She said if I actually went out with other men, you'd — what was it she said — it was a funny colloquialism that I'd never heard before. Yes! I remember! She said you would 'go apeshit!'"

"If you saw other guys, I'd go apeshit?"

"Yes! And look at you! She was absolutely right! You've gone ... apeshit!"

"It's true," I said. "I have. I absolutely, positively have. Please, please, Sally, tell me you don't want to go out with Gregory or with Alberto or with any other studly Stanford men besides me!"