To avoid Caroline’s San Francisco tour date, Percy travels to Los Angeles. Zoe points out that Caroline is performing at the Troubadour the day after she arrives, which would allow Percy to see them. She reports how well the San Francisco show went and shares that Joe came to see her family. Finally, she tells Percy that Joe knows she is in Los Angeles.

Percy relents and messages Joe, who leaves her an all-access ticket. His girlfriend’s band, The Curlers, is opening for them. Joe tells Percy that because of the popularity of “Bay Window,” he managed to effect a change that properly credits her as a co-writer of the song.

After reading more about Joe’s bassist girlfriend, Percy looks up Raj and learns that he is married. Later that evening, Percy rushes to the Troubadour from a work event, hoping to catch “Bay Window.” Watching Joe, she allows herself to feel happy for him and Raj, as they have both moved on from her.

Joe calls out into the audience, asking if Percy is present. After Percy identifies herself, Joe starts playing “Bay Window.” Percy feels the warmth of Joe’s gesture, even as she is sure that Joe’s girlfriend isn’t worried about her. Once the song is over, Percy exits the venue, thrilled by how good the song sounded with her bridge. While she is walking to calm down, a girl who had been at the Caroline show identifies Percy as “the girl in the bridge” (217). Percy tells her that she wrote it, earning the fan’s admiration.

Back in her hotel room, Percy calls her mom. She is still high on adrenaline, which she interprets as a panic attack. Percy’s mom helps her to do breathing exercises until she calms down. Lying in bed, Percy obsesses over how she forfeited her collaboration with Joe. She puts on “The Weakness in Me” by Joan Armatrading, which causes her to wonder if Joe really does have a strong pull on her or if Percy is just weak against him.

The next morning, Percy reviews the song demos Luke sent her for his new band, Skinner. She calls him to ask if she can lend a hand in mixing Skinner’s debut album, asking for writing and production credits.

Percy joins Luke at a studio in Brooklyn. The sound engineer and studio owner, Dennis, is unenthused when Luke tells him they need to record new lyrics for their song, “Least Worst Night of the Century So Far.” He gives them an hour to finish the recording. Nervous, Percy goes to the bathroom and calls Zoe, who encourages her by comparing her to producer Rick Rubin.

After recording the first take, Percy tells Luke that his self-consciousness is getting in the way of the melody. Luke internalizes her advice, commenting that the final output is sure to upset Joe. It irritates Percy to think she is just another element in Luke’s revenge against Joe. Dennis senses Percy’s frustration and calls Joe a “hack.” After the recording, they sit down to work on sound mixing. Percy leads the process and impresses Dennis.

Percy forwards a rough cut of the song to Joe with a note explaining that she wanted to try her hand at production. Joe doesn’t answer, which stings Percy. Two weeks later, when Percy is back in San Francisco, she makes Zoe reach out to Joe. Zoe reports that Joe couldn’t stop talking about his gripe that Percy chose to work with Luke instead of him. Despite Zoe’s best efforts, Joe wouldn’t listen to anything in Percy’s defense. Zoe tries to reframe the situation as a positive, claiming that Percy is now free from Joe.

Percy is tasked with facilitating a trendsetter focus group at a New York music festival for one of their alcoholic beverage clients. The stated objective is to deepen Percy’s reports, though Percy’s boss thinks it is actually a cheap ploy to seed their new rum product and turn the trendsetters into informal brand ambassadors. This upsets her boss’s sense of integrity, prompting her to charge the client double for the project.

During the panel discussion, Percy asks the trendsetters about their favorite acts of the festival. The group gushes over the bands they describe as magical and ethereal. An outlier suggests that the same bands they are talking about are “whiny,” reminiscent of dated post-9/11 music. The same outlier expresses his liking for Caroline, whom he saw the night before. The band leader drunkenly sang a Fleetwood Mac deep cut. Percy tries to suppress her excitement.

Percy clocks out early from work and wonders about Joe. When she returns to her hotel room, she writes a blog post entitled “What Makes You Think You’re the One,” after the Fleetwood Mac song she suspects Joe performed. The post is written from Joe’s perspective and imagines that he keeps looking for Percy, hoping to address the song to her. The end of the post concludes that Percy is bitter towards Joe because she wants to be “the only one” in his life. She doesn’t know how to be special on her own, so she rides on Joe’s talent.

When Percy’s readers meet the post with a confused response, she is compelled to delete it, but not before hoping that Joe might have read the post as an apology to him.

Skinner’s debut gets a scathing review on Pitchfork. Percy’s disappointment is mitigated by the fact that Caroline has released “Bay Window” as a single. The song steadily gains popularity, appearing in films and late-night talk shows. Percy’s favorite writing on “Bay Window” interprets the song as a confession of Joe’s fear of commitment. Other pieces of writing feel that the song is targeted towards mothers and criticize the song for having unpatriotic sentiments. Percy sends her favorite piece to Joe, but he doesn’t answer, leaving her wounded. She wonders if and how the world will continue to remember “Bay Window.”

Percy watches LCD Soundsystem play in San Francisco. The band plays “Someone Great,” which Percy reads as a song about the feeling of losing the one person you could share your grief with. Percy wishes she could talk to Joe about “Bay Window,” but she fears that he no longer wants to talk to her. Percy envies LCD Soundsystem and still doesn’t think she has what it takes to call herself a songwriter.

Percy expands her blog into a professional website that offers songwriting and production services. She also starts writing her own lyrics and melodies. One day, she gets an email from an indie musician named Meg Vee, whom Dennis directed to Percy. Meg asks Percy to help her write new songs, much to Percy’s glee.

In the midst of the 2008 financial crisis, Percy joins a pitch meeting for a new client, a denim company. Percy becomes self-conscious when she sees an assistant brand manager named Casey, whom Percy thinks looks young and trendy enough to already know everything that Percy is about to present.

One of Casey’s colleagues asks how the agency sources trendsetters. The answer causes him to identify Percy as the arbiter of taste. Another colleague is skeptical that the trendsetters are actually cool, prompting Percy to suggest that corporate executives have no taste. Casey supports Percy’s point by quoting a lyric from the song “Comfy in Nautica” by Panda Bear, implying that trendsetters and white-collar workers have vastly different aspirations. Unlike white-collar workers, trendsetters reject comfort, making them bolder. Casey’s colleague quips about being called a white-collar worker, which causes Percy to insult his fashion sense.

Percy’s boss fires her on the drive home. Percy explains that with the onset of the financial crisis, she doesn’t feel comfortable about being a white-collar worker. Percy’s boss compliments her anyway for humiliating Casey’s colleague. She asks Percy to do one more recruitment tour, this time focusing on converting their trendsetter panel into an emerging class of ground-level marketers called “influencers.” Unlike Percy’s trendsetters, the influencers don’t need to have taste, just a platform to market the product.

Percy visits New York as part of her last recruitment tour. She catches up with Nomi, who tells her that Raj secured a lucrative book deal. Their reunion makes Percy worry about how Joe will survive the financial crisis. She learns that he may be performing at a bar in Williamsburg that night. She goes in hopes of seeing him.

When Joe appears at the bar, he feigns unfamiliarity with Percy, prompting her to do the same. She conducts a mock trendsetter interview to catch up on his life and share developments in her own. Joe explains that he will survive the crisis as long as he tours and performs live. The two banter over his career as a musician, allowing Percy to bring up “Bay Window.” Joe describes it as Caroline’s most successful song, for which he is grateful to his co-writer.

Joe invites Percy to his place so that he can play some songs for her. He insinuates that he read Percy’s “What Makes You Think You’re the One” blog post and that she had guessed the Fleetwood Mac song he played correctly. Joe was in a volatile state that night, but he rightly interprets that Percy was writing more about herself than about him. He dismisses it all as ancient history, especially since he and his bassist girlfriend have broken up. In response, Percy tells him how her relationship with Raj ended. She admits that she is insufferable and apologizes for working with Luke. Joe will accept her apology if she works with him again.

“Heartbeats” by The Knife starts playing at the bar, which Percy describes as a song about two people who find divinity in the synchronization of their heartbeats. As she and Joe enjoy the song, all the bad feeling between them is erased. Joe brings her to the line for the bathroom and kisses her. Percy asks if they can have a relationship without having to work as songwriting partners. She wants to protect her new identity as a songwriter, which she knows will be ruined if she and Joe break up. Joe is frustrated with this and mentions Skinner again. Percy makes him pick between romance or music alone. Joe refuses to answer, proving her point and leaving her annoyed.

The next day, Joe texts her anyway, letting her know that he will visit the Bay Area for Thanksgiving. Percy is relieved that she and Joe are talking again.

Percy and Joe spend Thanksgiving with the Gutierrez family. Zoe tells Percy that she is moving in with her girlfriend. Percy assures her that she will be fine as she is in the midst of compiling her blog posts into a book. Zoe then tells her that she has invited Joe to hang out with them later, celebrating the anniversary of their friend group.

The trio falls into their old habits, compiling song lists to Zoe’s prompts. Joe admires the lyrics that Percy has written for Meg Vee. Joe asks her what kind of song she would write if she were given free rein. Percy pitches a song called “The Girl in the Bridge,” in which the entire song takes place from Joe’s perspective—except for the bridge, which takes place from hers.

After Zoe heads to her girlfriend’s place, Joe and Percy have sex, discussing Percy’s new song idea as they take off their clothes. They are still talking about the song after sex. Joe lets Percy listen to a demo he recorded to accompany the lyrics she wrote. When the demo gets to the bridge, Percy sings the lyrics she has in mind; the words describe their habit of fighting for each other’s respect and outdoing each other.

The next morning, Percy realizes that she was wrong to make Joe choose between romance and music, as one will always suffer without the other. They have sex again, then continue working on the new song in bed. Later, Percy goes online to look for jobs, and Joe floats the idea of moving to a cheaper city. He finds a small house in Montana and suggests living out a fantasy life together. Percy believes that the music will cause a rift between them, but she doesn’t mind because she is excited to hear the music they will make.