Connell and Marianne drive home together the morning after a house party held at the home of one of Marianne’s friends. Marianne is hungover and in bad shape. She apologizes repeatedly to Connell for her behavior at the party; Connell deflects her apology. 

The night before, once Connell and Marianne arrived at the party, she joined her friends Peggy and Joanna, and Connell went elsewhere. Marianne believed that Connell was with Theresa, a girl whom he had casually dated, but Theresa was not at the party. Marianne became extremely drunk and propositioned Connell later in the evening. Connell turned her down, on the grounds that she was too drunk. 

Back in the present, Connell and Marianne drive back to Marianne’s house. Connell says that he is hungry, and Marianne invites him in for breakfast. She takes a shower while he eats. Once out of the shower, she approaches him, and the two of them have sex again, for the first time since high school. 

Connell and Marianne are now a couple. Although their relationship is no longer a secret, it is quiet and discreet. One night, they are in Marianne’s kitchen with Marianne’s friend Peggy. Peggy asks them bluntly about their relationship, and they concede that they are together. Peggy then asks them if they would be interested in a threesome, and Marianne, speaking for them both, says no. 

Connell recalls a recent time when Marianne returned to Dublin from a weekend home. She was in a bad mood; Connell had noted that she often seemed unhappy after a family visit. He asked her if she might be pregnant, and she told him that she had just gotten her period. This revelation led to a larger conversation about babies and families, and Marianne confessed that her own family disliked her.  

Back in the present, Peggy leaves, and Connell thanks Marianne for standing up to her. Marianne tells him that she would have gone through with the threesome if he had really wanted to do it, but that she was glad that he hadn’t wanted it, either. Connell feels troubled by what seems to be her low self-esteem and the lack of agency beneath her assured façade. 

Marianne returns to Carricklea for the weekend during summer vacation. She is in the supermarket, talking to her friend Joanna on the phone; Joanna has a job, and the two of them debate the meaning of work. 

Marianne runs into Connell and Lorraine in the checkout line. Connell’s surprised reaction and their mutual awkwardness demonstrate that they are no longer a couple. Nevertheless, he offers to drive her home from the supermarket. He first drops off Lorraine at his house then tells Marianne to get into the vacated front seat of the car. 

Marianne remembers their former intimacy: erotic silly phone messages that they exchanged not long ago, as well as a pool party during which Connell had been unusually demonstrative and affectionate. They broke up two days after this pool party. From Marianne’s perspective, Connell broke up with her. She is now seeing Jamie, a boy in her Trinity social group. Connell seems bewildered by Marianne’s subsequent lack of communication, and asks her if the two of them are still friends. Marianne tells him that she is home because it is her father’s anniversary mass. He offers to go to the mass, and she accepts; they tentatively resume their friendship.  

Connell meets Marianne for coffee in Dublin. He is late because of a street protest, over what he is not sure. Once he arrives and sees Marianne waiting for him, he notes her tired and rundown appearance. The two of them talk about violent as opposed to pacifistic protests, and Connell notes that “there are worse things than getting beat up” (21). He sees Marianne balk at this comment, though she says nothing out loud. 

There is a flashback to their breakup the previous summer, which sprang from a misunderstanding. Connell couldn’t afford to stay in Dublin over the summer, and he felt shy about asking Marianne if he could stay with her. He told her that he was going home, which she took as an announcement that he was leaving her. 

At the coffee shop, Marianne tells Connell that she hopes that he and Jamie will get on. She then confesses to Connell that Jamie is a sexual dominant and that she is a submissive. Connell, in turn, tells Marianne a disturbing story of his own, about a drunken near-encounter that he had with Paula Neary—their old economics teacher—while he was home for the summer. 

Marianne, at her apartment with her Trinity group of friends, including Jamie, is interrupted by a call from Connell. He tells her that he has been mugged and is outside of the city with no way of getting home. She instructs him to take a cab to her apartment, telling him that she will pay the cab driver. 

Getting money from her bedroom out of an envelope, Marianne remembers her recent difficult Christmas with her family. Her brother picked another violent fight with her, and her mother gave her money as a gift but insulted her while doing so. 

Connell arrives in the taxi. He is drunk and has a dramatically bloody face from having been assaulted. She leads him into the apartment to clean up his face, over his objections. Once inside, Connell is overtly hostile toward Jamie. When Jamie and the rest of the group leave them alone together, Connell tells Marianne that he would prefer it if she were dating his mugger. He also tells Marianne that he has a new girlfriend, a medical student named Helen Brophy. Marianne is surprised and embarrassed by her upset reaction to the news. 

Connell travels through Europe by train with Niall and their friend, Elaine. He has recently won a scholarship, which has brought him new freedom, money, and security. Marianne has won a scholarship as well, but for her, the value of the scholarship is more emotional than financial. Connell and his friends are on their way to visit Marianne, Peggy, and Jamie, who are all staying at Marianne’s vacation house in Trieste. It is their final stop on their European tour; from there, they will all fly back home to Dublin.  

Over the course of the trip, Connell has been in touch with his mother, his new girlfriend Helen (who is on an exchange program in Chicago), and Marianne. While his exchanges with Helen are loving and ritualized, his emails to Marianne are longer and more literary. Connell feels like a different, more conventional person with Helen than he was with Marianne, and he enjoys the feeling of normalcy and security that the new relationship brings him. Helen, however, senses Marianne’s continuing hold on Connell, and she feels suspicious and insecure. 

In Trieste, Connell and his friends mingle with Marianne and her friends. While Marianne is gracious and welcoming, Peggy is cold and Jamie is boorish. Jamie gets drunk over dinner and picks a fight with Marianne, shattering a champagne glass on the kitchen floor. Connell intervenes, and he and Marianne retreat together to a private garden on the grounds. They end up spending the night in the same bed, where they do no more than kiss.