Six weeks after their wedding, Eve opens their joint credit card bill and is horrified by the amount. She goes through it line by line, cataloging every expense from their wedding and honeymoon—bridesmaids' and groomsmen's gifts, hair and makeup, wedding-night lingerie, tuxedo rental, cocktails, minibar charges, an Uber they didn't need—as well as everyday costs of their new life together: insurance, phone bills, electricity, groceries, and Dom's daily smoothies. Neither Eve nor Dom has ever lived away from home, and they are stunned by how quickly ordinary expenses accumulate.

Eve sits down to create the budget her mother had urged them to make. She reviews their income situation and realizes it is precarious. Dom lost his full-time warehouse job shortly after their rental application was approved, and his personal training business brings in inconsistent income because clients cancel last minute and often don't pay. Dom refuses to charge cancellation fees or chase debts, believing things will work out. His planned fitness app has gone nowhere because he can't find an investor. Eve checks their joint bank account and discovers they won't have enough to cover rent and car payments before her next paycheck arrives.

After fifteen minutes of budgeting, Eve is forced to confront the truth: they cannot afford their current lifestyle. They never properly calculated their finances before moving in together, naively assuming that working hard would cover normal expenses. Eve dreads telling Dom, knowing he is usually sweet and easygoing but can become stubbornly fixated on wrongheaded ideas.

Eve reflects on the one previous time Dom became irrationally determined—when they were seventeen and had been together for two years. Dom's father drunkenly told him that teenage relationships were destined to fail and that it was a "tragedy" they'd met so young. Dom took it literally and broke up with Eve on a school balcony, believing they should date other people and reunite later, like a vaccination against future doubt. Fortunately, Dom's horrified father talked sense into him, and the breakup lasted only nine hours and twenty-three minutes—the worst of Eve's life.

The chapter ends with Eve insisting to herself that they are blissfully, happily married. She eats a sour mandarin without complaining and doesn't spit out the seeds, a small act that subtly mirrors her determination to swallow difficulties without protest.