Narrator receives a $20,000 windfall from a whiskey company and plans a solo cross-country road trip to New York.

Thirty minutes into her drive, narrator stops in Monrovia for gas and is strongly attracted to a young man named Davey cleaning her windshield.

Narrator follows her attraction to Fontana's restaurant, where she initiates a conversation with Davey and learns his name and life details.

After briefly resuming her drive, narrator turns back to Monrovia and rents Room 321 at the Excelsior Motel.

Narrator hires Davey's wife Claire to redecorate Room 321 in the style of a Paris hotel, spending her entire $20,000.

At a bar with Davey and his friends, narrator learns he already knew who she was and deliberately arranged their first meeting.

Davey and narrator go alone to Room 321, but he refuses to have sex with her in order to protect his marriage.

Davey performs a dance he choreographed specifically to express the feelings between him and the narrator.

On narrator's final day in Monrovia, Davey says they should stop all contact after she leaves and walks away without turning back.

Narrator returns home to Harris and Sam but is overcome by despair and cannot readjust to her familiar domestic life.

Narrator's doctor tells her she is entering perimenopause, prompting her to resolve not to abandon her feelings for Davey.

Narrator gets in shape, choreographs a dance, records it in a scant outfit outside the Excelsior, and posts it online for Davey.

Narrator learns Davey has moved to Sacramento; that night she ends up having sex with Audra, his former lover.

Narrator admits to Harris she slept with a woman in Monrovia; they agree to open their relationship and see other people.

Narrator watches Davey perform a sold-out dance show in New York and steps outside afterward feeling renewed and grateful.

The narrator's impulsive detour from a planned cross-country drive leads her to a weeks-long stay in a Monrovia motel, where she develops a profound emotional connection with a young man named Davey Boutrous. Though their relationship never becomes fully sexual, it awakens dormant parts of her identity and desire that her domestic life in Los Angeles had long suppressed. After a painful goodbye, she returns to a life that no longer fits her, and a perimenopause diagnosis convinces her she cannot simply move on. A failed attempt to reach Davey leads instead to a transformative sexual encounter with Audra, and a fraught confrontation with her husband eventually opens their marriage to new possibilities. Years later, watching Davey perform in New York, the narrator achieves a hard-won sense of peace and gratitude for everything she lived through.

The central story from road trip to renewal.

Narrator receives a note from neighbor Brian warning that someone is photographing her house with a telephoto lens.

At a dinner party, Harris categorizes people as Parkers or Drivers, and narrator gets up and dances alone in the middle of the room.

Narrator and best friend Jordi meet at Jordi's sculpting studio and openly discuss their respective marital sex lives.

The night before the trip, narrator and Sam share their weekly bath and Sam asks once more about getting a dog.

On the first day of her drive, narrator calls her father and he tells her he is in the deathfield.

Claire finishes redecorating Room 321 and gives narrator a full tour of the completed, transformed space.

Davey's mother Irene introduces herself at Hertz, takes narrator to lunch, and reveals Audra's past sexual relationship with Davey.

Narrator and Davey lie together on blankets in the hills and narrator tells him she loves him; he does not say it back.

On her supposed final night in New York, narrator sends Harris and Sam a fake farewell video filmed inside Room 321.

Sam discovers the discarded Call Me chair in a dog park and insists on keeping it; the family also adopts a dog named Smokey.

Harris confronts narrator about her dance video, accusing her of disrespecting him and treating his feelings as irrelevant.

Narrator invites her married friends one by one to Room 321 and asks each of them about their real desires and secret fantasies.

Harris tells narrator he is dating a woman named Paige; Paige then calls narrator directly for an uncomfortable conversation.

At a gallery opening with Jordi, narrator exchanges meaningful glances throughout the evening with an artist's ex-girlfriend named Kris.

Narrator's new book is published and she boards a flight to New York City to begin her book tour.

Before the narrator leaves Los Angeles, her domestic restlessness surfaces in small revealing moments — a neighbor's warning note, a dinner party dance, and an unusually candid conversation with her best friend Jordi. Her weeks in Monrovia are shaped by the renovation Claire completes, a disturbing lunch with Davey's mother Irene, and a charged moment in the hills where the narrator declares her love. Returning home is complicated by a fake farewell video she sent to her family, an accidental rediscovery of her discarded chair, and a tense confrontation with Harris over the dance she posted online. As the open marriage arrangement takes shape, her new relationship with Kris brings happiness and then devastating heartbreak. The arc closes with the publication of her new book and a flight that finally delivers her to New York.

The supporting world around the narrator's transformation.

Barely thirty minutes into her road trip, narrator makes an impulsive decision to turn her car around and head back toward Monrovia.

Narrator calls Jordi from Room 321 and admits she is staying in Monrovia rather than continuing to New York.

Narrator masturbates to fantasies of Davey but is horrified by the sudden realization that she believes she is too old to pursue him.

The morning after their first night alone together, narrator texts Davey explicitly what she wants to do to him and he responds.

Davey confides in narrator about a sex dream in which he was intimate with his male classmate Aaron Bannister.

Davey pulls an old painting out from under the motel bed and proposes that it depicts a woman standing before a cave.

After returning home from Monrovia, narrator drives back and leaves a lawn chair painted with the words Call Me near Davey's workplace.

Davey sends narrator a video of himself dancing in front of the Excelsior; they call each other and agree it is goodbye.

Harris confronts narrator about her prolonged low mood after the trip; she lies and claims she is going through menopause.

After calling her friend Mary about menopause, narrator realizes her current surge of desire is rare and decides not to give up on it.

Audra challenges narrator for living inside a fantasy and insists she must find a way to engage with reality.

Narrator discovers that Davey secretly visited Room 321 and installed the missing bathroom tiles to complete their circular star pattern.

Retired cop Tim Yoon calls to explain the telephoto photographer was a real estate agent; he also reveals that Brian has died.

Left alone with Sam while Harris visits Paige, narrator shuts herself in the bathroom, deep in the deathfield, before Sam draws her out.

At a friends' potluck, a woman named Tara reveals that Arkanda originally sought out narrator because Arkanda also experienced FMH.

The narrator's transformation begins with a single impulsive decision to turn her car around barely into the road trip, a choice that sets everything else in motion. In Monrovia, smaller but equally significant moments accumulate — she confronts her fear of aging after fantasizing about Davey, tests the limits of their connection through texts and confessions, and encounters a motel painting that keeps yielding new meaning each time she looks at it. After returning home, she deflects Harris's suspicions with a lie about menopause, then arrives at a hard-won clarity about her desire through a frank phone call with a friend. A sexual and philosophical confrontation with Audra, a secret act of tile-laying by Davey, a stranger's revelation at a potluck, and a moment of collapse in her own bathroom all force the narrator toward a more honest version of herself. Together these turning points trace the inner architecture of a woman fundamentally remaking her life from the inside out.