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was not allowed to go unless I’d been summoned there. I remember my father being away on his frequent business trips, and how I’d sit in the hallway outside my parents’ bedroom, unsure of what to do or where to go, knowing that somewhere on the other side of that closed door my mother was all alone too. I see the same little boy in a cowboy outfit, the same little boy I once was, sitting in that dark hallway with his cat Buddy, afraid and uncertain and so terribly alone, and the emotion is too much for me.
    “Please,” I say to the darkness, “take me out of here.”
    And it does.
    It sets me down on a small stretch of empty beach. I see a young man in his late teens sitting on a blanket on the sand. Next to him is a young woman, Erin, a raven-haired beauty with an hourglass figure and the unintentional look of a 1940s movie queen. Together, they watch the waves crash shore. I remember that they have been there for some time, on this chilly but comfortable late September afternoon. There is no one else around. The beach, the ocean, is theirs. They hold hands and talk quietly about everything and nothing at all, and although they are very much in love—the intense and unbridled love teenagers often feel—he knows that this will probably not last.
    “One day,” he says rather suddenly, “you’ll leave me.”
    Erin blanches. “Why would you say that?”
    “Because sooner or later, everyone does.”
    What he doesn’t know then is that his is a self-fulfilling prophecy. This troubled young man will eventually drive Erin away. Although she adores his tenderness, kindness, sense of humor and nearly unconditional love (he loves her, after all, with the wide-eyed innocence of a puppy), she will not be able to tolerate his mood swings and often-manic need to numb himself with alcohol or drugs. She envisions a life for them, with a family and a home. But he cannot see such things, isn’t convinced it’s even what he wants, and can’t imagine ever being able to deliver that life to anyone, much less someone as deserving as Erin. He loves her and she loves him, of that there is no doubt. Their problem is one of need. He believes he needs her desperately, but she knows she doesn’t necessarily need him. She can have any number of lives and loves that will help her reach her dreams. For him, the sort of life Erin proposes will only be found through her. She is his only chance at what one might call a wholly traditional life—a family and a house in the suburbs—because once she’s gone, he will gravitate toward different kinds of women with different kinds of wants, needs and dreams, women who want a nice life and a good marriage but who also want the fast paced life only a city can offer, and a career rather than a family.
    Women like Jenna.
    I see Erin on the last night we ever spoke, a few weeks after we broke up and she went away to college. I see myself standing in a long corridor on the first floor of her dormitory, exhausted and drawn from a long drive across three states. I am there to get her back, but she stands just beyond my reach, already gone. I tell her I love her and she stares at me. Tell me you don’t love me anymore and I’ll go away, I say. I’ll never come back, you’ll never see or hear from me again. Just tell me you don’t love me anymore. As I await her response, I remember how the last time she’d seen me I’d been unable to deal with her going off to college. I had too much to drink, got stoned out of my mind then showed up at her parents’ house to talk with her. Erin’s father threatened to call the police if I didn’t leave, so I finally did. I remember Erin watching me from her bedroom window, the look on her face not just sad, but disappointed. In her eyes that night, I saw a young woman no longer willing to invest in someone who may not live to see the future she’d once envisioned for them. Tell me, I press. Tell me you don’t love me anymore and I’ll go.
    “I don’t