The narrative moves back in time. In June 2000, 17-year-old AJ works at Reel World Video in Gladstone, Massachusetts. She spends much of her shifts watching the 1964 cult TV series Astronauticals and writing fan fiction about it online. A broken arm has ruined her summer plans for a journalism internship and soccer camp, both essential to her hopes for an athletic scholarship and her dream of attending New York University (NYU).

The store’s owner, Storm, announces that she has hired extra help. The new employee is Noah, a tall, intimidating young man from Gladstone’s famous acting dynasty. His great-aunt Eudora appears in the Astronauticals episode currently playing on the store’s television. Noah left town years earlier following an arson incident and is rumored to have joined the military. He stares at AJ with odd recognition when they’re introduced. They begin on hostile terms as she attempts to hide her fan fiction and deflects his scrutiny with a sharp retort.

That evening at the Graves family dinner, AJ’s father, Jack, is quietly drinking, which AJ knows is a dangerous sign. Her siblings are introduced: Patrick, a golden-boy college athlete; Libby, a bossy 19-year-old; Emily, AJ’s twin who has Down syndrome; and 15-year-old Mike, a gamer who often stirs their father’s anger. AJ deflects a building confrontation between Jack and Mike by raising the subject of Noah. As the family dissects the gossip of AJ becoming coworkers with someone famous, their father makes a demeaning comment about AJ’s looks. She turns the remark into a joke, playing her usual role as comic relief while her mother says nothing.

At work, AJ catches Noah reading Waiting for Godot, and they argue about it because she considers him pretentious while he assumes she’s ignorant. She makes a pointed comment about arson that shuts him down. After AJ’s soccer friends leave for a camp she can’t attend, her sense of loss intensifies. She tries to reach a top shelf, but the shelving gives way, and Noah catches her, shielding her injured arm. He later leaves her a stool and a note: “A JOB WORTH DOING IS WORTH DOING WELL” (18).

Days later, AJ is analyzing an episode of Astronauticals when Noah intervenes and explains the improvisational concept of a “game,” the foundational premise that gives a scene its structure. He admits that he loves the show, that comedian Ezell Farr was his great-uncle, and that Eudora destroyed all the family’s tapes of the show after Ezell’s death. AJ invites him to finish the episode, and they bond immediately.

About a week later, Noah drives AJ and Mike to a Science Fiction Society of the Berkshires meeting. When the chair, Peter van der Hopper, mentions wanting a panelist for an Astronauticals anniversary event, Mike volunteers Noah to ask Eudora. To AJ’s shock, Noah agrees.

Noah drives AJ to Drew House, the family’s vast Gilded Age estate. Eudora, a composed woman in her seventies, dismisses the show and its fans, but AJ pushes back. Eudora agrees to consider the panel if they read the Romeo and Juliet balcony scene for her. Noah resists, but AJ accepts. His Romeo is unexpectedly raw and unguarded. Sensing his trust in her, AJ drops her own defenses and fully inhabits Juliet. A real connection forms between them. When the scene ends, Eudora offers to train them in exchange for doing the panel. Feeling out of her depth, AJ panics and excuses herself from the house.

The next day, at a local park with Emily, AJ encounters Noah. He’s immediately warm with Emily, and the three spend time together. When Emily settles onto the tire swing, Noah and AJ sit and talk. He reassures her that Eudora’s offer is genuine and then explains the real reason he’s in Gladstone: His mother, Lorraine Bell, is gravely ill at a nearby long-term care facility, and he’s her sole advocate. His father left the family when Noah was nine, and Eudora funds the care but remains detached. He feels marooned because he had to leave West Point. AJ shares how her broken arm destroyed her path to an athletic scholarship. Noah urges her to accept Eudora’s offer. He tells her that he’s drawn to exploring the psychic dimension of improv with her and that acting has been his only escape from grief. When Noah casually implies that he sees her as a little sister, AJ conceals her disappointment and agrees to be his scene partner.

AJ and Noah’s training at Drew House begins. Eudora coaches them through method warm-ups, Shakespearean scene work, kinetic synthesis sessions, and improv exercises. The housekeeper, Mrs. Gilroy, is disdainful of AJ. Improv proves difficult when AJ keeps blocking Noah’s choices. After one tense session, they make peace over Eudora’s new puppy litter. Their days settle into a routine of acting practice followed by shared shifts at Reel World.

One night, when dropping AJ off home, Noah witnesses Jack yelling at Mike through the living-room window and suggests that they take a walk. In his backyard, he shows AJ a pile of burned rubble. He explains that it’s a doghouse he destroyed in anger after finding his mother unresponsive after she overdosed on pills when he was 17. He describes being sent to live with his father in Los Angeles afterward and drifting through a meaningless party scene before enlisting to escape it. When he tries to draw a comparison between their fathers’ drinking, AJ erupts with denial and storms inside, leaving him visibly hurt.

The next day, she channels her anger into a physically aggressive scene from Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. That evening, Noah leaves a peace offering at Reel World, a worn copy of Ezell’s book on improvisation, Laughter & Death, which the late actor personally inscribed to Noah. While reading it that night, AJ finds that Noah has scratched the letters “AAD” next to the game entry about alcohol addiction. She realizes that he had been trying to help her. They work through their remaining tension at Reel World while watching Astronauticals, each confessing the worst thing their father ever said to them. Noah’s father called him his “biggest mistake,” and AJ’s father said she’s the reason Emily has Down syndrome. Noah tells her she’s not alone. For the first time, she feels relief instead of shame.

When AJ’s cast comes off in mid-July, Eudora replaces the usual training music for kinetic synthesis with Now That’s What I Call Music 4 (NOW 4) an upbeat pop compilation. The shift makes the exercise genuinely enjoyable for AJ and Noah, and as they dance day after day, their attunement deepens. One afternoon, they feel a sudden shared awareness, a state of mutual consciousness where improvisers inhabit the same imaginative space, which Ezell called the “Black Room.” They begin accessing it reliably, their scenes becoming intuitive and fluid.

One day, Mrs. Gilroy interrupts practice with news that Noah’s mother’s test results have arrived. Noah rushes off. Eudora speaks to AJ about losing her twin brother and then Ezell, and she worries aloud that Noah will walk away from the family’s artistic legacy. She also confesses to her own stage fright since Ezell’s death but affirms that she’ll honor her commitment to the panel. Then, she tells AJ directly that she has real talent and offers to recommend her to Juilliard or NYU.

Patrick visits Reel World and makes his disapproval of AJ’s closeness with Noah plain. That night, Noah arrives in distress. They play an improv game whose premise circles the question of whether a person should know they’re dying. AJ grasps that he’s asking whether his mother should stop pursuing treatment. Before he can say so outright, he begins crying, and AJ holds him.

In the following weeks, Noah grows withdrawn and sleepless, though he’s never cold toward AJ. At Drew House, AJ persuades a resistant Noah to keep one of the puppies, and he names her Bud. Noah later asks AJ to meet his mother. Lorraine is physically devastated by her illness but mentally sharp and funny. She and AJ immediately bond over Noah’s “terrible taste” in films. On the drive back, AJ cries quietly at the cruelty of Lorraine’s situation and at the sustained, loving performance of normalcy that Noah maintains every time he walks into his mother’s hospital room.

The day before the Astronauticals panel, Emily falls ill, and AJ has to stay home with her. The washing machine also breaks. Noah arrives unexpectedly and fixes it, and he and AJ both end up soaked. After changing clothes, he stretches out on the couch with his head in AJ’s lap. They watch Astronauticals alongside Emily and both fall asleep for several hours. That evening at Drew House, Eudora produces two pages from Ezell’s unfinished play, Fire & Water, and asks them to perform it. After reading the short script, they improvise beyond where it ends, constructing a story about two scientist partners who have pulled their home outside of time to prevent one partner’s death. When Noah’s character pleads with her to stay, the moment feels entirely unacted. Eudora is moved to tears, saying that Ezell would be proud.

The next day, AJ and Mike drive Eudora to the Springfield Comicon. Backstage, Eudora is overcome with stage fright and grips AJ’s hand. Noah arrives just before showtime, visibly hollow beneath a controlled exterior. Through their connection, AJ senses deep distress in him. Together, they coax Eudora to the edge of the stage, and the moment she steps into the spotlight, she’s transformed by the crowd’s enthusiasm. While watching from the wings, AJ and Noah share a relieved hug. Noah gives AJ her first kiss and then a second that’s longer and urgent. In the parking lot afterward, he gravely tells her that they should talk, kisses her once more, holds her tightly, and leaves looking overwhelmed.

Noah doesn’t appear at Reel World the next day. Storm informs AJ that he has called in for the week, and AJ’s attempts to reach him at Drew House are deflected by Mrs. Gilroy. The following Sunday, she drives up to find his car gone. Eudora, looking defeated, tells AJ that her and Eudora’s acquaintance is over. Noah has left with his things and Bud and won’t return. She then coldly informs AJ that she was only ever a means of influencing Noah, retracts her earlier praise of AJ’s acting ability, and dismisses her. When AJ stops at Reel World, Storm confirms that Noah called that morning to quit. AJ goes to the back bathroom and cries.

Furious, she signs up for the school-play auditions. While waiting in the wings, memories of the kiss trigger a panic attack. The faculty director leads her onstage before she recovers, and she defuses the situation with a joke that gets the room laughing. She walks out having sealed her vulnerable self back behind her armor. In the months that follow, she pours her pain into schoolwork, writes sharp op-eds, and secures strong grades and references. A warm alumni interview with Peter van der Hopper helps her NYU application. After discovering that her fan fiction has accumulated over 1,200 followers during her absence, she starts writing again. She deletes the recommendation form she had planned to send Eudora, choosing to earn her place alone. Her NYU acceptance arrives that March. The summer before college, she goes out, kisses other people, and tries not to look for Noah.