53 pages • 1-hour read
A Merry Little Meet Cute
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Chapters 20-25Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 20 Summary: “Bee”
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of R-rated sexual content, substance use, sexual harassment, bullying, antigay bias, and mental illness.
Luca helps Bee try on the wedding dress he designed for the film, which fits and flatters her. Bee gets texts from her moms, who are sad that she will miss Christmas, and from Jack Hart, who is still angry with her. Nolan invites Bee to meet him at the ice-skating rink. They joke about how they are doing things “backward,” having a date after becoming sexually intimate. As he asks about how she got started in her career, Nolan says, “I can tell you from experience that Bianca von Honey truly brings joy to the world. You are no villain” (269). Bee describes her experience in high school making out with a guy who wanted to keep things secret. When she wanted to break things off, he threatened to post one of the nude photos she’d sent him to a revenge-porn website, so she posted the picture first. The popularity of her post led her to begin her ClosedDoors account.
Nolan shares how INK’s manager took most of their profits. Bee admits that she always admired that Nolan was bisexual, like her, and that she’s been surprised by how much of porn caters only to straight male fantasies. They joke about being two “bisexual disasters,” but as they talk about Kallum’s sex tape and how public interest is returning to Nolan’s past behavior, Bee feels nervous, thinking, “[M]y whole life was one giant sex tape” (273). Nolan is lacing up Bee’s skates when the journalist Dominic Diamond appears.
Chapter 21 Summary: “Nolan”
Dominic wants to know who Bee is, and Nolan feels defensive and angry. He remembers how Dominic made a scandal of Nolan being caught with Emily Albright and becomes protective of Bee. Dominic says that he only wants the world to know the real Nolan Shaw. Nolan and Bee walk back to their hotel, and Nolan sees Steph at the bar, eating maraschino cherries. He hates not kissing Bee goodnight, but he realizes that “even after Duke the Halls wrap[s], [he’ll] still have to be in Clean, Unobjectionable Nolan mode” (281), which means that he and Bee will have to hide.
Steph reveals that details about Nolan’s mother and sister have become public on the internet. He realizes, “I wasn’t a person to the internet, and my mom wasn’t either. We were bags of blood for the gossip vampires, and we were content fodder for everyone else” (283). Most of the information comes from his sister’s social media account, where she posts personal information. Steph thinks that Nolan should handle the situation by doing a public interview and selling his own version of the story.
The next morning, Nolan talks to Emily for the first time since the scandal and gets her permission to talk about what really happened that night. Emily asks if he regrets anything, and Nolan reflects that he regrets the times he was demanding or selfish. Nolan dresses as the duke and then sits down with Dominic for an interview. He maintains his composure and explains that Emily had food poisoning that night and called him for help. When Dominic asks about Bee, Nolan says that he admires her as a colleague but that he’s not in a place where he can focus on romance or a relationship. Regarding his mother, he says he admires her strength and asks that people respect the privacy of his family. Nolan sees that Bee witnessed his remarks about her and hopes she understands that he’s protecting his family. Gretchen approaches Nolan and says he’s a better version of himself than she gave him credit for. She will reorganize filming so that he can be home for Christmas Eve.
Chapter 22 Summary: “Bee”
While Sunny does her makeup, Bee reflects that, in Christmas Notch, she “c[an] be anyone and do anything. And that mean[s] being Nolan’s person and getting to live out all of the acting dreams [her] younger self was too scared to hope for” (298). She puts on the wedding dress and goes to the chapel to film the scene where her character, Felicity, is running away from her wedding. They film, and Gretchen is happy about the scene. After everyone else leaves, Bee lingers in the church. She wonders if there is a way she can be a mainstream actress and still be Bianca von Honey. Nolan enters the church, and Bee is moved by how much he wants her. She worries that she is still a fantasy to him, whereas she is finally seeing him, the real Nolan. They have sex near the altar, and Bee is conscious of the setting and its associations with marriage.
Chapter 23 Summary: “Nolan”
Gretchen supplies the final page of the script and the line that “the real meaning of Christmas is just to love, and to be loved in return” (318). The others, including Luca and Sunny, note that this steals a line from a famous song, so Gretchen proposes an alternate line saying that love is a gift year-round. When Sunny asks why Gretchen is doing a holiday movie, Gretchen answers that Hope Channel movies make her happy: “And happy and formulaic are not incompatible with smart or important” (320). Bee and Nolan promise that they will stay in touch after the movie and share their goodbye kiss in a take. As he departs Christmas Notch, Nolan realizes that his feelings for Bee are growing deeper.
Chapter 24 Summary: “Bee”
After she finishes filming, Bee tries to return calls from Jack Hart. She is surprised to find that her moms have arrived in Christmas Notch. They are loving and supportive of Bee’s career choices. Bee is delighted to see them and feels that she can have it all: star in a Christmas movie, keep a role in the porn industry, and have the famous boyfriend. They have an enjoyable Christmas dinner until Teddy reveals that Dominic Diamond has discovered Bee’s work as Bianca von Honey and has posted topless pictures of her and a photo of her and Nolan posing with Prancer. Bee is upset because she can’t get in touch with Nolan, even though his flight has landed. She eats several marijuana edibles that Sunny gives her.
Chapter 25 Summary: “Nolan”
As he lands in Kansas City, Nolan finds he misses Bee. He turns on his phone and sees several notifications. Steph instructs him to pretend he had no knowledge that Bee was a porn star and was pressured into taking a picture with Prancer. Nolan tries to call Bee and, when leaving a message, almost says that he loves her. He reads the social media response to Dominic’s post, which contains deprecating comments about Bee and her career and outrage from mothers that the Hope Channel isn’t completely family friendly. Nolan is glad to reunite with his family. On Christmas morning, he finds Kallum making pizza in his kitchen and a stack of bills needing to be paid. Kallum thinks that two weeks isn’t long enough for Nolan to have fallen in love, but Nolan says, “With her, everything felt so doable, so light. Like everything would work out. I felt like the old me and the new me, but also like the best parts of both” (348). Realizing that his comeback is in jeopardy, Nolan agrees to the statement Steph has prepared.
Chapters 20-25 Analysis
These chapters contain the dramatic crisis typical to the romance narrative arc. First, they propel the romance plot forward through scenes that bring the central couple close together, both emotionally and sexually, before creating a parting and conflict that raises questions about how they will manage to be together. The ice-skating date moves Bee and Nolan’s connection from the purely sexual context onto more emotional ground, especially as they discuss their careers and their hopes for the future. In tension with this, the exposure of Kallum’s sex tape begins the scrutiny around Nolan’s past and foreshadows the storm of public accusation that will follow the exposure of Bee’s work as Bianca von Honey. The exposures of Bee’s ClosedDoors account and Maddie’s Instagram account explore the risks of online content and the boundaries of private and public life for different people and situations. The internet is likewise the stage for public discussion and dissection of celebrity personae, exposing The Dissonance Between the Public Persona and Private Self.
Throughout, the novel has presented Kallum as a foil to Nolan in how he has handled the post-INK days; at this point, his character is developed into a closer friend and mentor who challenges Nolan to reflect on his feelings. These exchanges allow the novel to reveal Nolan’s complex feelings about his conflicting responsibilities. Nolan sees himself with Bee as the best version of himself: one who has been slowly emerging and who acknowledges and integrates the lessons from his misbehaving past and handles the responsibilities and opportunities of his new maturing. Bee also entertains a momentary vision of a future that allows her the full scope of what she wishes for: a loving relationship and a career in two different worlds. This vision seems like a fantasy, but she hopes it could be real, playing on the novel’s questions of those boundaries. Both Sunny and Luca sound a note of caution about Nolan’s persona, but Bee trusts her own vision on this.
Dominic Diamond functions as a nemesis and antagonist, driving the crisis point of the plot and also bringing together the three themes as the novel reaches its emotional climax. Dominic’s character demonstrates how boundaries between the public and private become blurred when private individuals, like family members, get caught up in scrutiny on a celebrity figure. The social media storm around Bee’s exposure and Nolan’s participation in the film interrogate The Painful Effects of Discrimination as responders express fatphobia, judgments about sex work, and hostility toward body shapes that don’t fit the ideal sculpted by mainstream media likes movies and advertising. This discussion also acknowledges hostile attitudes that are expressed by some toward bisexuality, judging bisexual people as “unable to decide” or “disasters,” in the words that Nolan and Bee use to describe themselves.
The tone of this section changes, becoming less comical and more dramatic to reflect the narrative tension. Rather than jokes, the setting in these chapters introduces more symbolic associations around snow and the holidays, in keeping with the script’s move toward a discussion of the real meaning of Christmas. Pearl’s last-minute script provides a moment of humor, as her line is an allusion to “Nature Boy,” a song written by Eden Ahbez and made famous when recorded by Nat King Cole in 1948. The song is about a “strange, enchanted boy” who discovers a lesson about loving and being loved in return (318). The song has become a jazz standard and has been recorded by several artists; the characters refer to collaboration by singers Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga (2014) and the version by David Bowie featured in the movie Moulin Rouge (2001).
These references layer the novel’s texture of pop culture allusions and allow the authors, through Gretchen, to make the statement that entertainment designed to deliver pleasure, even in predictable channels, can also be meaningful and intelligent. This develops the theme of The Pursuit of Pleasure and is a retort to common judgments made against the romance genre, holiday films, and porn, respectively. Fun and enjoyment are positive, the novel argues, provided they don’t hurt other people.
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