Lina tries to forget Nash. She commits to a “new and improved, healthier and slightly more boring but definitely better head space” (291). She focuses on tracking down Duncan Hugo and the Porsche.

At the gym, as Lina tries to focus on her workout, Nash walks in. He tells her they need to talk. Although she is melting from the heat of him, Lina tells him to stay away from her.

She stops at a convenience store on the way home and notices a buff-looking guy watching her, the same man from the soccer field. He is buying rotisserie chicken and, oddly, a large bag of gummy candy.

When Nash rescues the mayor from a snake in her house, the two discuss the touchy subject of disciplining Tate Dilton and the legal ramifications of his stop of the Black couple from Washington. “One bad cop,” the mayor tells him, “is all it takes” (304).

Lina agrees to meet Nolan for drinks at the Honky Tonk—a “non-date” she tells herself (307). She shows up before Nolan. At the bar, a drunken Tate Dilton stares menacingly at her, and then aggressively accosts her about being Nash’s girlfriend, calling her “Morgan’s bitch” (310).