Expiration Dates

Shocked, Daphne drops Murphy’s leash. Immediately, Murphy takes off running. Hugo runs after him while Daphne, who physically cannot run, screams for Murphy. She feels helpless and terrified. Her thoughts swirl over Hugo’s confession that he wrote Jake’s note and then settle again on Murphy.

After Daphne’s failed relationship with Josh, when she quit her job in San Francisco and moved back to Los Angeles, she was lonely. The first thing she did was adopt Murphy. He has been with her for seven years, and she realizes that Murphy is “the longest relationship [she has] ever been in” (225). She sees Murphy disappear into the distance; Hugo is unable to catch him. Panicking, she screams for Murphy repeatedly, crying. Hugo returns, apologizing, but Daphne keeps screaming.

Suddenly, Murphy trots back, the end of his leash held in his mouth. He walks up to Daphne and drops the leash at her feet as if confirming that he will not leave her. Crying, Daphne hugs him. Finally, she demands to know why Hugo wrote the note. He says that on the day of her first date with Jake, he dropped by her apartment and saw the note tucked under the door. It said that Jake had three weeks. Instead, Hugo replaced it with one without an end date because he wanted her to know what it felt like to not have a limit. He wanted her to know “what it felt like to choose” (227).

Hugo assures Daphne that it does not change anything. He hates to admit it, but she chose Jake not because it was fate but because she fell in love with him. Crying, Daphne admits, “I wanted it to be you. […] I wanted more time” (228). Hugo reminds her that he is still there and that she has all the time she wants.

Daphne returns home, thinking about the three weeks she was meant to have Jake. She analyzes their dates and wonders if there were any clues as to when it was supposed to end. She looks around their apartment, recalling how Jake insisted on trying to fit her things into his life. She told him that it was fine and put most of it in storage, knowing that it bothers him because by making no effort to make the space hers as well, it is like she does not really live there. She then thinks about the other ways she has held herself back. For instance, she is messy in her own apartment but has tried to hide this fact from Jake.

She undresses in the bathroom and stands in front of the mirror, staring at her scarred body. She has shied away from looking at herself too closely but now inspects every detail, reflecting on the scars and bruises. She sees her image as “wrecked and wretched and distorted” (231). She has resisted looking because she did not want to acknowledge the truth of her own damage, but now she realizes that the person in the mirror is “a whole that has been stitched and sutured and stapled, but a whole nonetheless” (231). She accepts herself fully for the first time since her diagnosis.

Daphne goes to her parents’ house to talk to her father. She admits that she is not sure she wants to get married. Ever since she became ill, she has treated herself like she was different, as if she deserved her illness, but she no longer wants to punish herself. She adds that Jake is perfect, kind, and honest, which makes her feel guilty. Her dad reminds her that he may be perfect on paper, but that does not matter if she decides that he is not perfect for her.

Daphne does not believe that it is fair to drag Jake into the uncertain future of illness. She cannot promise him any time and fears hurting him when she leaves. Her father says that “love is a net” that is there to catch you when you fall (236). He adds that no one’s time is promised; anyone could be gone at any moment. He says, “We are all dying. Every day. And at some point it becomes a choice. Which one are you going to do today? Are you living or are you dying?” (237). Daphne insists that she does not know what to do, and her father tells her to follow her heart.

Daphne meets Jake for a walk. He is driving his vintage Chevrolet. For the first time, Daphne asks why he keeps it if it is so much trouble, and he admits that his first wife gave it to him and that he cannot stand to part with it. Daphne thinks back to their first date. When she saw the note with no end date, rather than excitement, she felt fear: “Fear that he wouldn’t be who [she’d] imagined. Fear that [she] wasn’t ready. Fear that [she] wouldn’t feel the way [she] was supposed to” (242). She finally realizes that she wants the “weak-in-the-knees, movie-kiss-in-the-rain epic love” (242).

She tells Jake that she cannot marry him. She does not know what it is like to live without apologizing for herself and her illness and wants to find out. She also tells Jake that he could not save his first wife, and he cannot make up for that by trying to save her. She adds that Jake deserves a love that is “easy and joyful and uncomplicated” (244). He may not realize that that is what he wants yet, but he will, and she cannot be that for him.

As they talk, a group of teenagers walk by wearing black Doc Martin boots. Jake scrambles for his notebook to write it down. Daphne asks what the boots mean and then understands that it is a sign of Jake’s first wife, a sign that she is watching over him and encouraging him. She recalls her father’s words and thinks, “Love is a net. It can catch you long after that person is no longer there” (245). With nothing left to say, they part ways.

Daphne chats with Kendra and Irina. Daphne has found a new apartment and moved her things from Jake’s apartment. Jake was not there when she finished moving, and Daphne believes that he hates her now. Irina repeats her earlier assertion that “love isn’t enough” (249). Kendra adds that she and her husband do not work merely because he is the right person for her but because she feels safe enough to be “every bad and impossible version of [herself]” (249). She can change and never worry if he will still love her. In fact, it is never even a question because she knows that he has already loved her through changes.

Daphne says that she does not know what to do next. Irina says that Daphne is going to Italy, where she will be overseeing a production not as Irina’s assistant but as a full producer. Daphne is shocked but happily accepts.

Daphne walks through Beverly Hills while speaking on the phone with Hugo. He reminds her that she is supposed to be heading out for a date. Daphne retorts that it is not a date, “just coffee.” Hugo jokingly warns her not to be late or else her date will get the wrong idea.

As he talks, Daphne approaches the cafe. She sees him through the window and thinks about the funny way time “doubles back and leaps forward. The way six years can pass in a blink but a moment can stretch to a decade” (252). Someone behind Daphne says that she dropped a receipt. Daphne picks up a piece of paper from the ground. She suspects that she knows what it is, but before she can read it, the wind pulls it from her fingers, and it disappears.

She considers chasing after it and then decides against it. She tells the note goodbye, feeling that its disappearance is not an ending but a new beginning. Then, she walks into the cafe. Hugo is still speaking on the phone and tells her that she looks beautiful. She hangs up the phone and walks to him. He has the same leather jacket that he wore on the day they first met, and she reflects on the changes she could not have predicted and her excitement for the future.