The denouement jumps ahead several years. The young man and that specific girl are married, and have a couple of kids. They visit her family quite often, her dad is especially delighted with the grand kids. The young man, now a responsible husband and father, is happy. He reflects about how all this came to be, and concludes that some part of him really did die on that porch all those years ago.
In this, the narrator describes, but does not quite reach an understanding of what happened right then. And I'm sure it makes a better story that way; I doubt that if we knew what we were doing we would be telling or writing stories in the first place. But I didn't really want to write an essay of literary criticism, I just wanted to throw that out there as an anecdote and then ask myself what I thought St Paul was talking about when he wrote "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her." That's Ephesians 5:25, but it's so famous that we knew that already.
I think I should admit that for a very long time my idea of what that might mean was of the heroically childish take-a-bullet-for-the-missus variety, which has a certain Walter Mitty-ish appeal besides conveniently missing the point.
Back to the story for a moment. Dad was so impressed that he not only didn't shoot, he relented and let the kids get married. One moment the young man was a handsome self-centered punk and and therefor a threat to his girlfriend's (and her children's, if any) long-term happiness and well-being, and then those words were out of his mouth and he was a viable suitor.
OK, that picture doesn't have anything to do with anything, I just like it.
