You Deserve Each Other

Naomi is on a date with Nicholas at a drive-in theater. Though it’s only their second date, Naomi is falling fast, and she desperately hopes he’ll kiss her, both because she wants to kiss him and so all her makeup and hairspray don’t go to waste. When the movie’s over, Nicholas tells Naomi she’s beautiful and leans in for the long-awaited kiss. It’s everything Naomi dreamed, and she ends the chapter thinking it’s “a magical, extraordinary night” (6).

A year and nine months later, Naomi and Nicholas are engaged and miserable. Naomi gets a ride home from her job at the Junk Yard (an oddities shop) from her coworker Leon on a rainy night—her car has a flat tire and she’s refused to ask Nicholas to change it because she’s claimed to be able to do all her car maintenance for months and won’t give him the satisfaction of catching her in a lie. She knows he’s suspicious, though, which infuriates her because “he should assume that all of [her] lies are true” (11).

Naomi hopes Nicholas won’t be home when she gets there, silently grousing about how attentive he is to his overbearing mother,