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I find that when you fall in love, you overlook certain red flags.

One of them was that she was a liar.

I don’t mean that in a pejorative way. At boarding school lying can be a way of life. There was one legendary liar in my class named Keith Robbins. He used to lick his finger like a bookie and say, “Yeah, yeah, nice. Nice. Nice.” He would lie about things that weren’t important. One day he said, “Yeah, yeah, nice, nice. My uncle is Tony Robbins, the motivational speaker. Yeah.” And I found out later that it wasn’t true. But even if it were, it wasn’t that impressive so you didn’t bother protesting it. You’d just go, “Oh, okay, Keith.”

Another red flag was that Amanda would say really mean stuff to me, and then try to pull it back. She’d say, “You’re not good at anything—only kiddin’!” “Nobody likes you at all. Just jokin’!”

The final red flag was that she told me not to tell anyone she was my girlfriend.

She explained to me that she had another boyfriend at home that she was in the process of breaking up with. She assured me it was over, but if it got back to him, “You know, it’d be bad.” I totally got that.

So she would go home every weekend and visit him, and at one point she said she had to go home more frequently because his parents were sick, so she had to console him. And I thought, Well, you know, the guy’s parents are dying. So I ought to be understanding.

I also put up with it because I couldn’t believe how lucky I was just to be with her. When you’re in a relationship with someone who’s selfish, what keeps you in it is the fact that when they shine on you, it’s this souped-up shine. And you feel like you’re in the club. And you don’t even know what club it is. You just know you want to stay in it.

We’d been going out two months and we went on Christmas break and she invited me to meet her parents in New Hampshire.

This was very exciting. This was going to be my big moment. It would legitimize me as the main boyfriend.

So I drive my mom’s Volvo station wagon from Massachusetts to New Hampshire. And Amanda introduces me to her parents as her “friend Mike,” and I can see how she’s playing it. She doesn’t need to put a label on me. I totally get it.

And then this guy shows up.

And his name is Scott.

And the three of us are hanging out. It slowly dawns on me that I’m hanging out with my girlfriend’s boyfriend.

And it’s going okay. He seems like a good guy. He’s an allstate wrestler and remarkably nice. I could totally see what she saw in him.

It hurts but there’s some consolation because every time he steps out of the room, she’s very affectionate toward me. She kisses my neck or says something in her sweet voice.

But then there’s a moment when I was in the bathroom, and I think, What’s happening in the other room?

The day takes an even stranger turn when Scott suggests that we go hang out at his house.

And so we go and I meet his parents. And it’s a very strange thing meeting your girlfriend’s boyfriend’s parents for the first time. Part of you is angry for obvious reasons and part of you still wants to make a good impression. On a side note, they seemed in perfect health.

I drive home, defeated. And I sort of know at this point that this is her life, and I’m her secret life, like on Maury Povich.

So I think, This is it. I’m going to stick up for myself. It’s either him or me.

And I convince myself that given that choice, she would choose me because what we have is so special. So when we get back to school, I call her and say, “We need to talk. Let’s meet at the hockey game.”

And she says, “Great!”

So I go to the hockey game. And she’s not there. Hockey game ends. Still no sign.

I have this pit in my stomach because I’m going to tell her that she has to pick me or that’s it. But I can’t find her. So I start walking around the school, to the library, the cafeteria, the places she might be. And I ask people where she is. And finally someone says, “I saw her with Keith Robbins down at the tennis courts.”

I remember