After seeing Anne, Jack takes an eight-day road trip to California. In California, he realizes that Anne has been a constant presence in his life, ever since childhood. He remembers the summer when he came back from college and realized that Anne was no longer a girl. They began spending more time together that summer, and their relationship became increasingly romantic.

As the summer dwindled, they began to pull apart. She seemed distant and he questioned her love. Two days before she left to return to school, they found themselves alone in Jack’s family’s house, and they began to undress, believing they were about to have sex for the first time. However, Jack’s mother returned unexpectedly, forcing them to stop what they were doing and rush to get dressed again to avoid being caught.

Over the next year, they wrote to each other and saw each other occasionally, but they were always fighting about their feelings for each other and about the future. As Jack pursued a string of failed careers—getting kicked out of law school, quitting his PhD program, and finally working for a newspaper—he and Anne drifted decisively apart. Eventually he married a girl named Lois, whom he describes as very different from Anne.