"I take it he wasn't our long lost brother." She smiled.
"No, thank God. He would have lost his nut if we were related. God, he was nuts about me. It weirded me out. He was almost obsessive. I hated it. One night, we were lying in bed and he asked me if he could keep me forever. I told him I didn't think that was going to be a reality. That forever's just a really long time, and I didn't think he'd like what I wanted from life." She took a bite of waffle.
"What did he do?"
"He cried. Right there in my bed, this 200-plus guy started to bawl. He told me he loved me and that he wanted me for the rest of my life." She shivered. "I told him he needed to sleep. In his bed, at his house, far away from me, and when he woke up, to think about what he just said to me. 'Consider the consequences of a life with me,' I said. He left that night, and when he came over the next day he didn't say anything about it. He never mentioned it again. And we went on for almost three months after that, until I left for here, actually." She took a big bite of waffle.
"You mean the boy proposed to you, and you turned him down, but still dated him?"
"He didn't propose, exactly. He just admitted he loved me. He wanted me to fall for it, I think. He wanted me to be crazy about him. I just wasn't."
"If Emil ever proposed to me, I think I would say yes."
"I would have married Perry, if he'd asked, when we were eighteen."
"You would have?"
"Oh, yeah. I was crazy for him, back then. I wanted no one but him. I just couldn't stand the idea of his being in a relationship with me, but going to a different college, in a different country for God's sake. It would have been so inhibiting for him. I couldn't do that to him. I think I loved him enough to be compassionate, then."
"What about now? Would you marry him now?"
"I don't know. Things are different now. I'm not crazy for him now. I hardly even know him now. He's so different, really. He grew up a lot, and I wasn't there to witness it. I got everything but the last five years, you know. They seemed to have been integral years, though. The most important so far."

Back | Table of Contents | Next