“C’mon! It isn’t like you don’t know the scene by heart. Gary Cooper gives Gehrig’s emotional farewell speech and chokes up, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.”

“It’s the best scene in the movie. I tear up every time I see it.”

“I’m the one crying here. I haven’t seen you in days! I missed my girl.” Sam put his arm around Mary and drew her closer but stopped short of trying to touch her breast this time.

Mary studiously ignored him until the end credits rolled. “Could you have been any ruder? I came to the theater to watch the movie, not to be groped by a hormonal teenaged boy. You’re nearly twenty. You’d think you would’ve outgrown such boorish behavior.”

“For God’s sake! There wasn’t another couple here actually paying attention to what was on the screen. It’s a darkened movie theater! No red-blooded guy brings his girl to the pictures on a Friday night and really expects to see the movie!”

She faced him. “Let me see if I understand this. You spent sixty-four cents on the movies so that you could try to put the moves on me?”

Sam frowned. “When you say it that way, I sound stupid.”

Mary nodded. “You said it, not me.” She slung her purse over her shoulder and stood. “At least one of us got your money’s worth.”

He jumped up and followed her. “Can I still take you out for a burger and a malt?”

She turned and smiled sweetly at him. “Of course. I’m hungry and I’m not stupid.” He mumbled something under his breath that she didn’t quite catch. She didn’t bother asking him to repeat it.

They were silent on the short drive to the diner, and she was impressed when he came around and opened the door for her and helped her out of the car. He really was a nice boy, and when she and her best girlfriends compared notes, he wasn’t any different than their boyfriends. They all had one thing on their minds. She shouldn’t be so hard on him.

To make it up to him, she ordered a less expensive Coke instead of a malt.

“Have you heard anything more from your dad? Is he at the front lines yet? Has he killed any Nazis?” Sam licked ketchup from his fingers.

“Sam Abel, what a question to ask.”

“What? That’s why he’s over there. We have to win the war, and the only way to do that is to take care of those damn Nazis and the Japs. I mean, darn. Sorry.”

Mary rested her chin on her hands. “I wish nobody had to die. This whole war business makes me sick to my stomach. People are dying, and for what?”