Opening
Sam’s past and present collide as a teenage heartbreak echoes through his adult life. A cruel revelation from an old lover and a fresh betrayal from the woman he lives with force Samuel 'Sam' Hill to confront the patterns he’s clung to since adolescence—and decide whether he’ll keep mistaking pain for love.
What Happens
Chapter 71: A Belated Birthday Celebration
As a teen, Sam ignores the warnings of his best friend, Mickie Kennedy, and keeps seeing Donna Ashby in secret. When Donna invites him over for a “belated birthday celebration,” he convinces himself he’ll finally meet her parents and make their relationship real. Instead, he arrives to find an empty house—Donna only wants a more comfortable place to have sex.
Sam finally asks why they never go out in public. Donna coolly says their age difference—she’s 19, he’s 17—would make people assume they’re sleeping together. When he challenges her, she cuts him down: “Come on, Sam—why else would I be with you?” He leaves, tries to numb himself with a movie, then drives back to apologize—only to see a red Camaro in the driveway beside her father’s Porsche. The car belongs to Leo Tomaro, confirming Donna’s betrayal.
Chapter 72: The End of an Affair
Sam wallows all weekend and tells Mickie he ended things. He drags himself to his father’s pharmacy, bracing for Donna, but she’s gone—a new girl is training in her place. Seething at God, at Mickie for being right, and at his mother Madeline Hill for her relentless optimism, he’s stunned when his father, Maxwell Hill, explains what happened.
Donna’s parents found condoms in her purse—the same kind Sam knows she took from the pharmacy—grew suspicious, faked a trip to Tahoe, and returned to catch her in their bed with Leo Tomaro. They sent her to college a week early. Sam recognizes how narrowly he avoided being the one caught and fired, a bitter consolation that marks his first major heartbreak.
Chapter 73: The Morning After
The novel jumps to 1989 and Part Five. Sam, now an ophthalmologist living with Eva Pryor, wakes with a brutal hangover as Mickie’s dog, Bandit, licks his face. Mickie stands over him with an empty scotch bottle, furious he missed work and alarmed by a vasectomy consultation on his calendar. She demands answers.
Sam admits Eva doesn’t want children. Mickie shoots back, “Doesn’t want kids or doesn’t want your kids?” The jab lands. As he staggers to shower, Mickie sees dark welts and bruises striping his thighs—the aftermath of a violent encounter the previous night with David Bateman, his childhood bully, now a cop.
Chapter 74: Hard Truths
Sam explains that Bateman assaulted him with a billy club. Mickie tends his wounds and insists he report it, but Sam refuses, believing it will provoke Bateman and endanger the man’s ex-wife and daughter. He decides to outthink Bateman and help the family escape instead, a hard-won expression of empathy tied to his Coming of Age.
Over breakfast, Mickie presses for what really drove him to drink. Sam confesses he called Eva’s Boston hotel and heard a man in her room. Mickie admits she’s known about the cheating for years—she saw Eva with someone else at a club soon after she moved in. Sam explodes; Mickie fires back that he wouldn’t have believed her and she’d have lost him. She ends in a blistering truth: he keeps choosing women like Donna and Eva because he uses his red eyes to excuse not demanding more. After she storms out, Sam realizes Eva has never once told him she loves him.
Chapter 75: The World Series
Eva doesn’t call. Sam cycles through the excuses he might accept, recognizes his fear of being alone, and decides not to burden Ernie Cantwell with his troubles. Ernie arrives in full Giants gear and the two head to Candlestick Park for the World Series—a brief, necessary reprieve from the wreckage of Sam’s life.
Character Development
Sam’s teenage humiliation becomes the blueprint for his adult relationships, but these chapters also show him choosing protection over vengeance, a sign he’s beginning to value others—and himself—differently.
- Samuel “Sam” Hill: Patterns of low self-worth, seeded by his red eyes and Donna’s cruelty, resurface with Eva. Refusing to report Bateman in order to protect others shows growing restraint, empathy, and moral clarity.
- Mickie Kennedy: Fierce, loyal, and uncompromising, she acts as Sam’s conscience. Her confrontation blends love with accountability, insisting he stop settling.
- Donna Ashby: Revealed as manipulative and opportunistic, she exploits Sam’s insecurity and image of himself as unworthy.
- Eva Pryor: Defined by absence and betrayal—infidelity, emotional distance, and silence where love should be—she embodies Sam’s tendency to accept less than he deserves.
Themes & Symbols
These chapters braid past and present to show how wounds mutate into habits. Sam’s heartbreak with Donna primes him to minimize himself with Eva, while Mickie pushes him toward a different story.
- Overcoming Otherness and Prejudice: Sam’s red eyes fuel a lifelong belief that he must take what he can get. Donna exploits that belief; Eva benefits from it. Mickie challenges the narrative head-on, urging Sam to reject the shame others taught him.
- The Power of Friendship: Where romance fails Sam, friendship anchors him. Mickie’s tough love provides the only relationship grounded in honesty and care, forcing growth even when it hurts.
- Bullying and Its Lasting Impact: Emotional manipulation in youth (Donna) and physical violence in adulthood (Bateman) reinforce the same message: Sam is lesser. The chapters show him beginning to resist that message through protection, not retaliation.
Symbol:
- Red Camaro: Leo Tomaro’s car becomes the blunt emblem of Donna’s betrayal and the popular, “normal” world Sam believes is closed to him.
Key Quotes
“Come on, Sam—why else would I be with you?”
Donna’s line crystallizes Sam’s greatest fear: that he’s valuable only for what he can provide, never for who he is. It detonates his fantasy of acceptance and stamps a script he’ll keep reenacting until he chooses to rewrite it.
“Doesn’t want kids or doesn’t want your kids?”
Mickie slices through Sam’s denial, reframing a logistical disagreement as a profound rejection. The question exposes how thoroughly he’s normalized being unwanted.
“You deserve better. You use your eyes as an excuse for not believing you could do better and for not standing up for yourself and telling women they’re not good enough for you.”
This becomes the section’s thesis. Mickie names the mechanism of Sam’s self-sabotage and demands a standard—self-respect—that his romances have never required of him.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
By pairing the teenage breakup with Donna and the unraveling with Eva, the narrative shows how unhealed shame governs adult choices. Mickie’s confrontation functions as a turning point: she makes Sam see the pattern and the cost. Even as Bateman’s violence resurfaces old powerlessness, Sam chooses to protect others over revenge, suggesting a new kind of strength. The stage is set for the central conflict ahead—whether Sam will keep seeking validation from those who withhold it, or finally learn to see his own worth.