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Summary
Part 3: Chapters 23-25
Chapter 23: LUCY, August 2017
At Bree’s rehearsal dinner, Lucy is too hungry to resist food. Her friends tease her about Dane, and she talks about wanting to leave New York. Jackie tries to convince her to move to Santa Monica. They are relieved that although Stephen will be at the wedding, at least Jillian won’t, since Bree has only invited couples that are married or engaged. Lucy is baffled by the fact that Bree and Evan are the ones getting married, instead of her and Stephen. She remembers Stephen returning to her life in January 2012, when she was home early from a party, studying and thinking of Macy’s death. The night of the accident, Macy helped Lucy when she was drunk at a party and told her about the older guy she was secretly sleeping with. Lucy finds Macy’s car crash senseless, because she knows Macy was sober. She is thinking of Macy when Stephen arrives at her room. Although he is still with Diana, he misses her, and charms her into having sex with him. In the morning, he asks her to take the back way out, to keep their hookup a secret. On her way out, she steals Diana’s red bra, throwing it in the trash.
Chapter 24: STEPHEN, April 2012
Despite his excellent academic qualifications and test scores, all the law schools Stephen has applied to reject him, apparently because of his DUI. He calls his brother Luke, telling him he wants to delay law school, and Luke gets him an interview with the CEO of a brokerage firm looking for analysts. Stephen texts Lucy, who comes to his room. He is still with Diana but has been having sex with Lucy on the side for three months, and though Lucy is dissatisfied with the arrangement, she puts up with it. He invites her to a graduation party in Long Island that June, assuring her that he and Diana will have broken up by then. They have angry sex, Lucy frustrated with his relationship with Diana, Stephen furious at Officer Gonzalez for his DUI arrest and at the law schools for not accepting him. He asks Lucy to get emergency contraception after he doesn’t pull out in time.
Chapter 25: LUCY, April 2012
After having sex with Stephen, Lucy goes to a meeting with her adviser, Mr. Levy. He offers her a place in Writers on the Riviera, the program that was her reason for attending Baird. Lucy struggles to look happy at the news. She feels drained and sad, as she usually does after sex with Stephen. Consoling herself that the summer will be better, she realizes that Stephen’s party conflicts with the dates for Writers on the Riviera and decides to turn the program down. Walking past Slug, she has an urge to scream to the world that she is sleeping with Stephen, but she fears being more open would only mean losing what she does have with him. Back at home, she goes to bed, refusing to go the Eighties party with her friends. Disgusted, Jackie blows up at her, saying her relationship with Stephen has turned her into a passive, miserable person. After they leave, Lucy lies in bed listening to Fleetwood Mac sing “…tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies.”
Analysis
At Bree’s rehearsal dinner, Lucy eats a full meal, a striking contrast with her behavior in the earlier timeline. The opening of the book presents Lucy as still exercising hard and controlling her diet, not eating at all before the wedding luncheon and barely eating then. However, her decision to eat dinner at this point in the day nevertheless shows an improvement in her relationship with food and her body in the time since college. She specifically cites her decision to eat as due to a need for strength, showing a significant change in her understanding of power in that time. While at the height of her anorexia, Lucy associates the ability to withstand hunger with the power of self-control. She feels triumphant about becoming smaller, even as her energy dwindles. However, at age twenty-three, she has changed. While she still feels the power of thinness, as evidenced by her insistence on a size 2 bridesmaid dress rather than a more comfortable size 4, she now understands that food is a necessary fuel for the emotional strength she will need to face seeing Stephen.
The angry sex Stephen and Lucy have in Chapter 24 is an example of Stephen using sex as a means of avoid his feelings of anxiety. In this scene, he notes that they almost always have angry sex, because Lucy is usually angry at him, as she is here for continuing to date Diana. However, the anger Stephen directs toward sex in this instance is his rage over his rejections from law school, which he blames on Officer Gonzalez. He transmutes his panic into sex, which allows him to feel a release of his anxieties over his future. Stephen lacks an ability or willingness to deal with his emotions outside of sex, and his relationship with Lucy is limited by his unwillingness to engage with her emotionally. However, he is emotionally present during sex, which contributes to sex being the best part of their relationship. In this particular scene, he is so caught up in his anger and fear that he forgets to pull out before orgasming, an example of emotions leading to a lack of control.
In Chapter 25, Lucy gives up the Writers on the Riviera program in order to go to Stephen’s graduation party, a moment that symbolizes her giving up on her own dreams and sense of self in an effort to keep Stephen. Throughout the book, Writers on the Riviera represents Lucy’s ambition to become a travel writer and her drive to be independent. The program is her reason for choosing Baird and therefore a way to pursue her own goals for herself instead of following the path CJ prefers by going to Dartmouth. Lucy sees the program as the path to becoming like Marilyn, building a life of travel and adventure, rather than living in the Long Island culture she finds increasingly stifling. However, Lucy has become so distant from herself at this point in the book that even before she realizes the program conflicts with the date of Stephen’s party, she cannot bring herself to feel excited at the news of her acceptance. Her decision to give up her place in the program marks a low point for her character, when her desire to be with Stephen overwhelms her sense of self, as shown by Jackie’s furious reaction to her passivity when she refuses to go to the Eighties party.
