The relationship between Joe and Percy becomes fraught because Joe is unwilling to acknowledge the emotional reality of his partnership with Percy. From Joe’s perspective, Percy’s faultless taste in music makes her the perfect first listener for his song demos. He tries to protect this dynamic by refusing a relationship with Percy, labeling her his “critic.” However, the term he uses is telling because it suggests his failure to acknowledge Percy’s stake in his music. Joe relegates Percy to the role of a commentator when, in truth, she has as much of an emotional connection to those songs as he does. Brickley uses the thorny dynamics of their partnership to explore the true definition of collaboration from an emotional perspective.

In Joe’s defense, Percy is reluctant to call herself a songwriter, but his willingness to take this statement at face value underscores his naiveté. He does not bear any ill will towards Percy, nor does he actively seek to discredit her relationship to his songs, but he is ignorant of the fact that Percy’s self-esteem drives her assertions. Practically speaking, he ignores Percy’s skepticism about her songwriting ability by consulting her at every chance he gets. Even when things fall apart at the wedding, Joe shoots her an email, desperate to get her feedback after Funny Strange receives a solid review.

Under these circumstances, Joe and Percy have an extremely one-sided relationship, for Joe depends on Percy to advance his music career, even while Percy remains steeped in doubt. He believes that he is gifting her with continued friendship, but that role is the bare-minimum requirement of their relationship. After turning to her mother and Zoe for advice, Percy realizes that she needs to cut herself off from Joe for her own well-being. In the email she writes at the end of Chapter 20, she frames this separation as being beneficial for him, and she urges him to trust himself instead of depending on her so heavily for creative inspiration. The break is implied to have caused the stall behind Caroline’s second album, arguably derailing the momentum of Joe’s career.

Despite this setback, Joe does learn to trust in himself, even if his songwriting instincts turn out to be wrong. Meanwhile, Percy independently learns to accept that her music-writing reflects her frustrations about becoming a songwriter. This pattern is most evident in the one piece of writing that the novel shows from her workshop days, in which she subtly expresses her wish to write a song as powerful as Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You.” After she gets Joe to credit her for cowriting “Bay Window” and sees the audience’s favorable reaction to the song, Percy actualizes her identity as a songwriter by asserting it in public and entering a working partnership with Meg Vee.

Percy grows into this new role to the point that she becomes defensive of her identity as a songwriter when she reunites with Joe in the last two chapters. She has spent so much time trying to defend the notion of that identity that she fears the emotional baggage she will take on if her personal relationship with Joe were to sour. By the end, however, she cannot help but see that the confluence of their romance and their creative collaboration is inevitable. She needs the tension of their partnership to move their relationship forward, just as Joe needs her criticism to write songs. The one-sidedness of their relationship has therefore gained a healthier balance now that they see each other as standing on equal ground. Joe acknowledges this shift at the end of the novel by prompting Percy to initiate the songwriting process, asking her what kind of song she’d like to write.