On Wednesday, May 1st, with 108 days until she can leave Waning Bay, Michigan, Daphne reflects on how she met her ex-fiancé Peter three years earlier in Richmond. The story Peter loved telling—about her hat blowing into his hands in a park—was charming in his version but humiliating in reality, ending with Daphne falling into a trash can. He retold it constantly, until his bachelor party, when he abruptly left her for his lifelong best friend, Petra Comer.

Daphne explains that Peter and Petra had been inseparable since third grade, with their families intertwined for twenty-five years. Peter had always insisted Petra was like a cousin to him, but he ended their engagement the morning after his bachelor party. Now Daphne sits in a tiny, sweltering apartment scrolling through Petra's social media, torturing herself with images of Peter and Petra together with both sets of parents at Lake Michigan.

Loud sad music—Jamie O'Neal's "All By Myself"—blares from her roommate Miles's room, prompting their neighbor Mr. Dorner to pound the wall. Daphne knocks on Miles's door and finds him disheveled, high, wrapped in an afghan, watching a one-minute scene from Bridget Jones's Diary on loop. Miles is Petra's ex-boyfriend; Daphne moved into his apartment to replace Petra's rent after Petra moved in with Peter.

Daphne asks Miles to lower the music and stop smoking inside. He claims he sticks his head out the window when he smokes and invites her to watch the movie with him. She declines, returning to her laptop to search for jobs far away, fantasizing about becoming a children's librarian in Antarctica and counting down the 108 days until she can escape.