Alex swims in the ocean, gets caught in a riptide, and barely saves herself.

Alex dents Simon's luxury car in a minor accident and hides the damage from him.

Alex flirts with the host's husband Victor at a party and they fall into the pool together.

Simon discovers the hidden car damage and tells Alex to take the train back to the city.

Alex decides to stay in the Hamptons for a week rather than return to New York.

Alex pretends to be part of a group of young visitors and stays overnight in their crowded house.

The women in the house discover Alex doesn't know anyone there and force her out.

Nicholas, a house manager who recognizes Alex, brings her to his employer George's estate and cooks her food.

Alex befriends a young boy named Calvin on the beach and uses him to gain entry to a private beach club.

A young man named Jack brings Alex to dinner with his film-producer father Robert, where she spots a woman from her past.

A former acquaintance named Dana warns Alex in the restaurant bathroom that Dom is coming to the Hamptons to find her.

Alex and Jack attend a house party where Jack's friend Max gets into a confrontation with the host.

Alex and Jack use a gate code and hidden key to break into a guesthouse on his ex-girlfriend's family's property.

Jack confesses there is no safe with cash, then crashes the car in a panic as Alex prepares to leave him.

Alex arrives at Simon's Labor Day party, finds him on the porch, and freezes when she sees the look on his face.

The novel opens with Alex, a young woman surviving off wealthy men, spending the summer with her boyfriend Simon at his Hamptons home. After hiding a car accident and flirting dangerously with another man at a party, Simon kicks her out — unaware she has nowhere to go. Rather than return to New York, where a dangerous man named Dom is hunting her, Alex decides to wait out the week until Simon's Labor Day party. She survives by infiltrating the spaces of strangers — a group house, a wealthy friend's estate, a private beach club — making herself useful and invisible as long as possible. A teenager named Jack draws her into a reckless spiral that ends in a car crash, which Alex walks away from to reach Simon's party. She arrives and finds Simon, but freezes when she sees the look on his face, unable to close the distance she has spent a week crossing.

The headline events that define Alex's desperate week in the Hamptons.

Alex performs oral sex on Simon before they leave together for the party at Helen and Victor's house.

Simon's assistant Lori drives Alex to the train station, and Alex realizes how deeply Lori despises Simon.

Alex calls two former wealthy dates from the train platform but neither man wants to see her.

Alex hooks up with a man named Matt in the strangers' house, not knowing he is another woman's boyfriend.

Alex recalls the last time she saw Dom, when she was alone in his apartment and stole his money and drugs.

Alex spends the night alone on the beach after being ejected from the strangers' house.

Nicholas and Alex drink alcohol and do cocaine together in his staff apartment at George's estate.

Alex touches one of George's carefully preserved priceless paintings and leaves a permanent mark on it.

Nicholas lets Alex sleep in his apartment but tells her plainly that he knows exactly what she is up to.

Alex finds a lost purse in the beach club bathroom and steals the cash inside.

The beach club bartender invites Alex into his car to smoke weed and they begin hooking up, but Alex stops before sex.

Alex does Margaret's makeup at her parents' house and borrows Margaret's phone to text Jack.

The housekeeper Karen catches Alex swimming naked in Margaret's pool and gives her a knowing look.

Jack tells Alex that he was forced to leave school because of something he did to his ex-girlfriend Annie.

Dom calls Alex and she finally answers, confessing that his money and drugs are completely gone.

Running beneath the novel's main storyline is a current of quieter desperation, as Alex commits small acts of theft and manipulation to keep herself fed and sheltered. Her behavior before Simon kicks her out — stealing drugs from Dom, performing the role of perfect girlfriend — already reveals a woman whose survival instincts override her judgment. At George's estate, cocaine and alcohol loosen her control until she irreparably damages a priceless painting, alienating Nicholas, the one person offering her real shelter. At the private beach club, she steals cash from a lost purse and hooks up with the bartender, two acts that reveal how far she will go for temporary comfort. Her encounters with Margaret and Jack expose how ill-equipped she is to manage people whose neediness exceeds her own, and the novel's emotional turning point arrives when Dom finally reaches Alex by phone and she is forced to confess she has nothing left to give him.

The hidden struggles, small crimes, and secondary encounters that fill Alex's week.

Alex passes a car wreck with Simon and has a foreboding feeling that she is the one who died in the accident.

Alex convinces herself that Simon only wants a brief break and forms a plan to appear at his Labor Day party.

Alex lies to a group of young strangers at a train station, pretending to know them in order to secure overnight shelter.

A teenager named Jack introduces himself to Alex on the beach and exchanges phone numbers with her.

Alex tells Nicholas there is no traumatic reason for her behavior, saying there was never any terrible thing.

Alex redirects the car Nicholas arranged to take her to Simon's house and has the driver drop her at a random curb instead.

Alex orders food and drinks at the exclusive beach club and charges everything to the Spencer family's account.

Alex leaves Margaret's house abruptly because Margaret's deep unhappiness is too much for her to manage.

Jack's friend Max tells Alex privately that Jack is actually only 17 years old.

Alex decides to stay with Jack despite learning his real age, reasoning he will be out of her life soon enough.

Jack proposes stealing cash from his father's safe to give Alex money to pay off Dom.

Alex tells Jack she loves him, knowing it will be their last night together.

Alex calls for help after the car crash and then walks away from Jack, telling him she is fetching help from a neighbor.

Jack sends Alex a series of threatening texts about harming himself as she walks toward Simon's house.

Alex throws her phone into a garbage can and walks the rest of the way to Simon's Labor Day party without it.

The Guest is structured around a series of pivotal decisions and discoveries that redirect Alex at every stage of the novel. From the beginning, Alex is haunted by a dissociative feeling — passing a car wreck, she has a foreboding sense that she is the one who died — and her entire week in the Hamptons rests on the chosen fiction that Simon will welcome her back. Each new encounter brings a revelation that challenges her self-deception: Nicholas exposes her pretense, Max reveals that Jack is underage, and Alex is forced to confront that she has no real answer for why she lives the way she does. Rather than change course, she doubles down, telling Jack she loves him while secretly planning to abandon him. Her decision to walk away from the crash site is the novel's moral breaking point, and discarding her phone is her final act of commitment to the delusion that Simon will save her.