The narrator drives home from Monrovia, panicking at how short the twenty-minute trip is compared to the cross-country journey she supposedly took. She watches a YouTube video about hacking her odometer, worries about whether her car looks road-worn enough, and pulls a muscle in her neck—deciding the injury can explain any odd behavior. She arrives home to find Harris and Sam are out, quickly unpacks, and when they return she hides in the basement, paralyzed by the impossibility of transitioning back into her domestic self. She finally pounds upstairs at the last possible moment and reunites tearfully with Sam, blocking her face when Harris photographs them.

The next morning, the narrator wakes gutted by grief. She sobs while making Sam's school lunch and struggles through every interaction with Harris, whose coworker-like demeanor contrasts painfully with the intimacy she experienced with Davey. She checks her phone obsessively for texts. The following Tuesday, she drives back to Monrovia on the pretext of meeting Arkanda, planning to see Davey at his lunch break—but discovers it's his day off. She buys spray paint, writes "CALL ME" on the pink canvas chair from the Excelsior, and sets it up across from the Hertz. Jordi, when told, gently calls the gesture stalkerish, prompting the narrator to retrieve the chair and abandon it in a park near her home.

At 3:00 p.m., Davey sends a video of himself dancing alone at night in front of the Excelsior's columns—a raw, wrecked performance. The narrator calls him immediately. Their phone call is emotional; both are crying. Davey reiterates that this must be the real end—no more calls or texts—because he needs to build a normal life and can't think straight with her in it. She agrees, telling him she loves him and wants him to be happy. They hang up almost warmly.

Back home, the narrator bakes pound cake, plays card games with her family, and feels momentarily hopeful she could become a "real wife." But by 2 a.m. her ecstatic relief has evaporated. She masturbates while fantasizing about Davey, discovers she can simultaneously parent Sam and think about him, and enters a grinding cycle of obsessive grief. She stalks Davey's family on social media, finding a photo of him with his hand around Claire's waist that feels like a knife to the gut. She tells Harris a fictionalized version of meeting Davey—a waiter-dancer in Indiana—and bristles when Harris dismisses fans who think they know her.

Jordi becomes the narrator's lifeline. During their dessert meetings the narrator repeats Davey stories compulsively. Jordi suggests that it might be okay to leave Harris, but the narrator insists that's not the issue—she compares her attachment to a ketamine addiction. At Jordi's urging, she puts website blocks on her phone and computer, snaps a rubber band on her wrist as negative reinforcement, and channels her anguish into obsessive house-cleaning, room by room, wall by wall. A tender scene unfolds when Sam pretends to be a sleeping object the narrator "cleans," waking as if after a hundred years. Despite daily invitations from Sam and Harris to reconnect, the narrator remains unable to come in from the cold.