Whatever. It wasn’t like things had been going so great with him before I’d left for Washington and points east. My mom had not been, shall we say, thrilled by the fact that her then not-yet seventeen-year-old daughter was dating a guy who had not only already graduated from high school, but was

a) not going to college.

b) working as a mechanic in his uncle’s garage.

c) from the “wrong side of the tracks,” or, in the local vernacular, a “Grit.”

d) on probation for a crime, the nature of which he would never reveal.

She didn’t exactly make it easy on the two of us. The first (and only) night Rob came over for dinner, she pointed out to him how in the great state of Indiana, it is considered statutory rape if a person eighteen years of age or older engages in sexual intercourse with a person sixteen years of age or younger, a crime punishable by a fixed term of ten years with up to ten years added or four subtracted for aggravating and mitigating circumstances.

It didn’t matter how many times I insisted that Rob and I were not engaging in sexual intercourse (much to my everlasting regret and sorrow). Mom just had to say the words “statutory rape” and Rob was gone, with a promise he’d be back when I turned eighteen.

I never even got to go to his uncle’s wedding with him, the one he’d promised to take me to.

And then the war came.

And when I came back, having turned eighteen and lost the one ability I’d had that set me apart from all the other girls in town (besides my refusal to grow my hair out), I found him with Miss Thanks-for-Fixing-My-Carburetor-Here-Getta-Load-of-These-Head-Sized-Boobs.

He didn’t see me. See him with her, I mean. He only found out I was back in town because Douglas told him when he stopped by the comic shop later that day, which, according to Douglas, Rob does periodically, to pick up the latest Spider-Man (which is funny, because I didn’t even know Rob liked comic books) and shoot the breeze if Douglas is working the counter.