Boyfriend #10
Bobby Winkle, age twenty-three
Theirs was a relationship that began as friends and slowly transformed, allure building like static electricity between their bodies.
They dated for six months during that post-undergrad, no-career-yet tricky time.
Jane wondered if her unpredictable mother might sabotage it with his parents (he was Black; she was white), but both families approved, apparently seeing how well they got along, as if they were made for each other.
He left for an internship in Guatemala, a step toward his future career in international affairs. They both cried at the airport.
She missed him prodigiously and supplemented her frequent texts with handwritten letters.
But three months in he stopped texting her back, and she never found out why.
After he returned, Jane was suddenly dropped from hangouts with their mutual friends.
Last year, Jane heard that Bobby (“Robert” now) was running for the state legislature.
At a recent polling, he wasn’t doing so hot in the thirtysomething-jilted-female demographic.