Cleo and Frank meet on a building elevator at a New Year's Eve party and immediately connect.

Cleo and Frank get married at City Hall and ask a hot dog vendor named Kamal to serve as their witness.

Cleo reveals her secret marriage to Frank during an awkward lunch with her estranged father and stepmother.

Frank gets drunk and accepts a dangerous diving challenge from a stranger during the couple's belated honeymoon in France.

Frank buys a baby sugar glider from a Craigslist listing in the Bronx and brings her home as a gift for Cleo.

Cleo asks Frank to stop drinking and he responds by yelling at her; she spends the night crying alone in the bathroom.

Frank comes home drunk and accidentally allows the sugar glider Jesus to drown in the toilet bowl.

While Frank is away filming in South Africa, Cleo goes to Anders's apartment and the two begin a secret affair.

Cleo tells Anders she suspects Frank is in love with a coworker and that she wants to leave Frank, but she ultimately stays.

Cleo creates a symbolic dirt garden in the living room and attempts suicide by slitting her wrists.

Frank finds Cleo injured and she is hospitalized in the psychiatric ward, where she receives thirty stitches.

Frank takes Cleo to the countryside after her hospital release and their confrontation ends in a permanent break-up.

Eleanor's father dies and she invites Frank to sit shiva; they accidentally confess love to each other and kiss.

Frank tells Eleanor he has been attending AA meetings and is fully committed to staying sober.

Frank travels to Rome to visit Cleo and they agree to divorce while promising to remain family to one another.

Cleo and Frank meet by chance on New Year's Eve and quickly fall into a passionate romance that leads to a rapid marriage of convenience, allowing Cleo to stay in the United States. Their early months together are loving but strained by Frank's heavy drinking, Cleo's worsening depression, and a growing communication breakdown between them. Frank's attempts to fix things, like buying Cleo a sugar glider, ultimately fail, and Cleo begins a secret affair with Frank's best friend Anders while Frank is away for work. The marriage collapses entirely when Cleo attempts suicide, is hospitalized, and the two finally confront their mutual resentments upon her release. In the aftermath, Frank finds genuine love and sobriety with Eleanor, while Cleo rebuilds her life through art in Rome. The novel closes with Frank traveling to see Cleo, and the two agreeing to divorce while vowing to remain family.

The rise and fall of Cleo and Frank's passionate marriage.

Frank insists on walking Cleo home after their elevator meeting and they jump from a stairwell together to ring in the New Year.

Quentin and his boyfriend Johnny have a final, bitter fight in which Johnny publicly calls Quentin a trans freak.

Quentin meets the mysterious Russian man Alex at a party and they take drugs and have sex together.

Zoe has a seizure during Antigone rehearsals and Frank rushes to the hospital to be with her.

Zoe attends a free Climaxing to Consciousness workshop where she meets a professional escort named Portia.

A doorman follows and corners Zoe on an empty street until Cleo and Audrey rush in to intervene.

Eleanor starts a temp copywriting job at Frank's advertising agency and quickly develops a crush on him.

Frank hosts his annual office holiday party and Eleanor, dressed up and drunk, sees Cleo's striking beauty for the first time.

Frank and Cleo discuss whether they want children together while jointly caring for their new pet sugar glider.

Frank's advertising agency wins a major account that requires him to spend several weeks filming in South Africa.

Anders attends a benefit auction and bids on and wins one of Cleo's paintings to give it a boost in the room.

Santiago visits Cleo in the psychiatric ward and brings a comfort meal that hospital staff confiscate at the door.

Cleo abruptly moves out of Quentin's apartment when Alex is evicted and moves in with Quentin.

Zoe signs up for an escort website and meets the Japanese businessman Jiro at a sake bar, where he pays only for her company.

Eleanor's proposal for an animated television show is accepted, launching her new career and independent creative life.

While Cleo and Frank's marriage unravels at the center of the story, the lives of those around them are equally turbulent and revealing. Quentin loses his boyfriend and falls deeper into drugs with a dangerous new companion, while Zoe struggles to survive financially after Frank cuts off her allowance following his wedding. Eleanor enters Frank's world through a temp job and quietly becomes the most grounded and self-aware person in his orbit. Secondary characters like Santiago and Anders offer contrasting models of loyalty, love, and self-destruction that illuminate the novel's central themes. Zoe's encounter with the kind businessman Jiro challenges her assumptions about herself, intimacy, and the value of connection beyond wealth. Together, these storylines trace a full arc from the novel's opening to its resolution, showing how each character searches for purpose and belonging in a glamorous but hollow world.

The struggles and turning points of the story's vivid supporting cast.

Santiago hosts a wedding reception where all the guests understand the marriage is partly meant to secure Cleo a Green Card.

Cleo quietly stops taking her antidepressants in the months after her wedding, allowing her depression to slowly return.

Cleo joins Frank at the hospital after Zoe's seizure and Zoe makes her cold dislike of Cleo unmistakably clear.

Cleo wanders off with a group of teenagers in France and becomes frightened walking back alone through the dark to the hotel.

Eleanor and Frank go out for drinks after a pitch meeting and a drunk Frank tells her plainly that he is a bad man.

Cleo attempts to ask Eleanor something serious in the office bathroom during the holiday party but Frank and Anders interrupt before she can.

Frank's mother advises him to get Cleo a pet and Eleanor specifically suggests a sugar glider after he confides his worry about Cleo.

Frank and Eleanor's hands accidentally brush at a work celebration party and she leaves the event feeling deeply disappointed.

During their affair, Cleo tells Anders she has read Frank and Eleanor's email exchanges and believes the two are in love.

Anders ignores a voicemail from Frank and realizes Cleo has not left Frank as promised; he decides to accept a job offer in Los Angeles.

Cleo and Frank's fights grow so explosive and frequent that a neighbor sends them a note about how clearly the noise carries.

Santiago stays with Anders in Los Angeles and Anders's tearful breakdown upon hearing of Cleo's hospitalization exposes their affair.

Cleo attends her ex-boyfriend Danny's art show, gets drunk and high, confronts Anders about abandoning her, and dumps ice water over his head.

Eleanor quits Frank's agency when her father's health takes a serious turn, cutting off her contact with Frank for months.

Eleanor encourages Frank to reach out to Cleo and he proposes that he and Eleanor move in together and start a shared life.

Beneath the headline events of Cleo and Frank's marriage lies a web of pivotal decisions and quiet revelations that determine every character's fate. Cleo's choice to stop her antidepressants, Frank's inability to rein in his drinking even under pressure, and the growing pull between Frank and his coworker Eleanor each represent a turning point that the couple cannot walk back. Anders's cowardice in the face of real love, Zoe's frozen coldness toward Cleo at the hospital, and Santiago's confrontation with Anders in Los Angeles all expose the deeper truths beneath the novel's glittering surface. The affair between Cleo and Anders is driven as much by suspicion and loneliness as by desire, and its unraveling forces both of them to reckon with what they actually want. Cleo's explosive moment at Danny's art show marks her lowest public point, but also the beginning of a painful clarity. Eleanor's decision to leave Frank's agency rather than pursue a married man, and her later encouragement for Frank to reconnect with Cleo, prove that self-respect and love for others are not in conflict.

The key decisions, discoveries, and emotional shifts that shaped every relationship.