You Deserve Each Other

“I haven’t been shy with the hint-dropping, drawing attention to my lips by licking, nibbling, and idly touching them—advice I got from Cosmopolitan. My shiny lip gloss was developed in a lab to magnetize the mouths of men, effective as fanning peacock feathers. Nicholas’s primitive instincts won’t be able to resist. It’s also a magnet for my hair and I keep getting the eye-watering taste of extra-hold hair spray in my mouth, but sometimes beauty requires sacrifice.”

These lines from the Prologue introduce the reader to Naomi’s self-described “basic” personality by showing her stereotypically gendered interest in things like gossip magazines and makeup. These lines also establish how interested she was in Nicholas early on, as well as the lengths she went to for him to want her, demonstrating the change in Naomi over the months of the relationship. Naomi’s observation about beauty requiring sacrifice because her hairspray keeps sticking to her lipstick reveals her unique humor and sets the reader up for the romantic comedy atmosphere of the novel.

“This morning I found one of my tires completely flat. Standing there staring at it, I was transported to a year ago when Nicholas remarked that he ought to teach me how to change a tire. Offended by his assumption that I didn’t already know how to change a tire, I set him straight and informed him that I’ve known for years how to do that. I’m a modern, responsible, self-sufficient woman. I don’t need a man to help me with vehicular maintenance.

The thing is, I do not actually know how to change a tire.”

Juxtaposed against the previous quotation from the Prologue, this excerpt reveals how drastically Naomi’s attitude toward Nicholas changed in less than a year—since the incident she remembers here is from a year before the story takes place. These lines also start to dig at the problems in the relationship, showing that Naomi’s lies are at least partly responsible for the strife. Rather than telling Nicholas the truth, Naomi let her fears of being inadequate control her.