Expiration Dates

“It’s not that I do not want to get married or even that I do not want to get serious with someone, it’s just that it’s not up to me. Something else has always called the shots in my life—call it the universe, fate, the comedic force of timing. But my life isn’t like other people’s. I have a different set of rules to live by.”

Daphne reassures the reader that she wants to find real love and potentially get married. However, she also firmly believes that the choice is out of her hands and uses the notes as an excuse for why she does not invest in her relationships, further tying the notes to the theme of Fate Versus Choice.

“He was attractive. Tall, dark, handsome. Well-dressed, clearly successful. But he was also arrogant, that much was as obvious as the cologne that wafted over to me in waves. And arrogance tended to devolve into unkindness quickly. I wasn’t interested. Plus, there was no paper. No name, no amount of time.”

Daphne describes the first time she met Hugo, who eventually becomes her best friend. Despite finding him attractive, Daphne has no intention of dating him because she has not received a note from the universe telling her she will. However, a page later, a note suddenly appears, and she changes her mind. This highlights the way that Daphne allows the notes to dictate her life, abdicating the need to make the decision for herself.

“Something always happened to me once I got the paper—I became resigned. I knew what was coming. I felt, sometimes, like I’d hacked the system. Wasn’t the hardest part of heartbreak the unpredictability? […] Friends were always talking about how they did not see it coming. But I did. There was no need to dive in headfirst only to realize the proverbial pool was empty. I knew when to invest, and for how long.”

Daphne states that she allows her mysterious notes to dictate when and how she will invest in the relationship, once again foregrounding her understanding of the conflict between Fate Versus Choice. Though the notes give her a sense of protection from heartbreak, they also take away the excitement and anticipation of a new relationship.

“Murphy was never interested in anything canine. It is my genuine belief that he is a 1940s banker who was once cursed by a witch to live in a dog’s body. He sniffs almost nothing and is appalled by the game of fetch. You want me to catch a ball? With my mouth? I imagine him saying. How uncivilized.”

Daphne’s love for her dog, described here early in the narrative, comes up again near the end of the novel. When Murphy briefly escapes, she realizes that her seven years with her dog is the longest relationship she has had, thus reinforcing her disappointment in her love life. This passage also showcases the dry humor with which Daphne narrates her story.

“I’m reminded every time I go out somewhere I haven’t been of how many hidden wonders there are in LA. How much unlikely culture is hiding just out of sight. […] Downtown is a haven of installation art and fusion food and, yeah, a layer of trash, too. It’s real in a way Los Angeles never was, at least not in my lifetime—and New York used to be. And it’s all here for the taking, if you just look.”

Setting the novel in Los Angeles provides a detailed and glamorous backdrop to heighten the romantic nature of the narrative. Daphne, born and raised in Los Angeles, loves the city. Additionally, placing the characters within the settings of downtown Los Angeles and West Hollywood underlines their upper-middle-class status and contributes to their entertainment industry backgrounds.

“Jake shrugs. ‘I don’t think the opposite of casual is serious, actually.’ […] ‘The opposite of casual is deep.’”

Daphne and Jake discuss what they want out of their relationship. Jake’s statement comparing casual to deep echoes Daphne’s stated desire for deep connection. However, Jake’s desire for depth gives Daphne pause because she simultaneously fears letting people too close and allowing them to see the messiness of her life, aligning with the theme of Connection and Vulnerability.

“I was deeper in than I should have been; I could feel it. And I was angry at myself for it, too. If I were my friend, I’d be telling me that men like this don’t change, that he was momentarily infatuated with me and that it would fade, just like all the others had. That whatever was between us would not prove to be special.

I didn’t need a friend, I had a paper saying it for me.”

While Jake desires depth and Daphne balks, the opposite occurs in Daphne’s relationship with Hugo. After only a month of dating, Daphne realizes that she is already in love with Hugo and wishes for depth and longevity in their relationship, though she knows that Hugo’s note only allots her three months.

“But lying underneath Jake I wonder if sex might express something else—some level of tenderness. If we might be able to judge not the strength of a person’s feelings but the measure of their care.”

Daphne discusses her sex life and the importance she does or does not place on it several times. Her assessment of sex with Jake as tender and thoughtful comes shortly after discussing sex with Hugo, which was urgent, intense, and passionate. The placement of the two scenes invites a comparison between Hugo and Jake, suggesting that Daphne feels a deeper attraction to Hugo.

“I think about how Hugo and I became friends, after our breakup. How it felt seamless, almost—like he was meant to be in my life. I liked that I didn’t have to lose him like I had everyone else. I didn’t think I could bear to, honestly.”

Daphne’s love for Hugo in the three months they dated and her gratitude for their friendship suggest that Hugo broke up with her. However, the narrative eventually reveals that the opposite is true, and Hugo echoes Daphne’s claim that he wants to remain in her life however he can. Daphne’s description of her feelings about Hugo highlights the theme of The Dichotomy Between Truth and Story as she initially keeps certain elements of their relationship from the reader.

“Three months go by, and then two more. Jake and I keep seeing each other. Our relationship progresses slowly and easily—like an open road with no traffic. We just keep moving forward.”

This passage signals a quick time jump from Daphne’s second date with Jake to five months later. Daphne highlights the slow ease with which their relationship progresses, though she feels some uncertainty. This contrasts with Daphne’s deep love and certainty in her feelings for Hugo after only a month of dating.

“But sometimes I’m afraid it means I’m somehow fading—that all the bright and brilliant aspects of myself are diminishing in this cocoon. That I will not have the sparkle I once had—that all my edges are being worn down in this intimacy.”

This passage again betrays Daphne’s uncertainty and ambivalence about dating Jake. Though she enjoys the warmth and comfort she feels with him, she worries about the lack of intensity and desires a relationship with more passion, which manifests itself in a fear that she is losing her “sparkle.”

“My box. Filled with paper. There are postcards and fortunes from inside cookies, and the corner of a rolled-up newspaper.

Peter, five weeks.

Josh, six months.

Stuart, one night.

They mark out my life in units of time. Days, weeks, months, years. I take the last piece of paper out of my bag, the one I’ve been carrying around since I met Jake, five months ago, now.

I place it inside.”

Boxes appear as a symbol in several places in the novel, both literally and metaphorically. Daphne keeps the notes, which measure her life in concrete units of time, in a literal box beneath her bed, which symbolizes her attempts to compartmentalize her life and keep parts of herself hidden away. However, it is not the only box in her life.

“And that was when they told me. The thing I must now share. The truth I’ve been avoiding. There is not just one box under my bed, there are two. One measures my life in names and units of time, the other in milligrams.

This is a box filled with prescription notes, with complex words like nitroglycerin and captopril scrawled underneath a hospital insignia. […] In this box I am the Patient.”

Daphne reveals the second literal box she possesses, which contains another aspect of her life that she wishes to hide away from her loved ones. This is also the moment when she reveals her biggest secret to the reader. Her illness constitutes one of the reasons she tries to maintain distance in her relationships, highlighting the complexity of Connection and Vulnerability in the face of chronic illness.

“I knew when I saw a name, when I saw that mark in days, weeks, months—that I would have that time, that it was now promised to me. I’d be alive. I’d get to live it.

I have a deal with the universe. I take my time in increments, and I get to stay here. For the time written, I get to keep my heart. But now—”

Daphne explains that not only do the notes protect her from potential disappointment and heartbreak and give her a warning of how much to invest in any given relationship, but they also promise that she will live for at least the length of time mentioned. Daphne fears that a blank note means that her future is no longer promised. Her fear of the unknown is the main obstacle holding her back.

“I was in love with him. That was God’s honest truth. Everything about our relationship felt big and epic and heady. […] His personality made me feel safe, being in his orbit was like being inside the sun—the rays couldn’t harm me, all I felt was the warmth of proximity. I didn’t want it to end.”

Daphne makes this definitive statement about Hugo, once again inviting comparison to her stated feelings for Jake, which pale in comparison. With Jake, she feels warmth and safety but little passion or intensity. Meanwhile, with Hugo, she experiences all of the above, as well as the sense of certainty that she lacks with Jake.

“‘[L]ife is much more like a continuum than a three-act structure. Here’s the thing no one tells you in any of these fucking movies we make: love is not enough. […] The problem with love is that it’s not enough,’ she says. And then she looks up at me. Her eyes are still soft. ‘But it’s also nearly impossible to let go of once you’ve found it.’”

Irina, discussing her relationship with her on-again, off-again ex-wife, argues that love by itself is not enough without compatibility and hard work. The statement “love is not enough” supports the theme of Connection and Vulnerability, highlighting the difficulty of love without vulnerability.

“I thought about what it would feel like to be that cherished, to be that chosen, and for the first time in my life, I knew I wanted it. I wanted epic love, the kind that’s reserved for the movies. […] But acknowledging a desire means acknowledging the what-if of that want. I wanted it, and that meant I was terrified—of never having it. Of never getting there.”

Not only does Daphne acknowledge that she wishes for the kind of love that one sees in movies, a recurring motif in the novel, but she also acknowledges the fear that has held her back. Admitting to wanting something requires also allowing the possible pain of never finding it, and she wishes to avoid that pain at all costs. Therefore, Daphne often settles for less than the “epic love” she desires, relinquishing Connection and Vulnerability in favor of emotional safety.

“What I want doesn’t exist. Not here, not in this life. And the next best thing is not ignoring that reality. The next best thing is acceptance of what is. If I can’t be healthy, I do not want to pretend I am. I want the ease that comes from acknowledging that I’m not. I want the truth.”

Daphne claims that she wants the truth. However, as her later conversation with Hugo demonstrates, she is not actually facing the truth but rather her “story” about it. Her belief that Jake refuses to accept the reality of her illness may be accurate, but she likewise cannot yet face her own truth.

“As I look at Jake sitting across from me I feel the desire to protect him palpably—I feel it down deep into my bones. And then I consider something else, something that is hard to look at but impossible, now, to ignore. I wonder if I’ve been seeing that desire—honoring it, recognizing it—and calling it love.

Protection and love are not the same thing. Love says, I will try and I will fail. Love says, Despite. Love says, And yet and yet and yet.”

Daphne considers her own motives, wondering if she has accidentally confused care and protection with more romantic forms of love. She asks the question here but does not yet answer it. Her claim that love says “and yet” will become significant in the last chapter of the novel, foreshadowing her choice to rekindle her relationship with Hugo.

“‘The truth isn’t just inconvenient, Hugo. Do you know what the truth is? It’s a death sentence when you’re twenty years old. […] It’s being with the man I’m supposed to marry but knowing I’m hurting him by even agreeing to it. That’s your precious truth, Hugo. You don’t get to stand here and say that the truth is the same for me as it is for you.’

[…]

‘Bullshit,’ Hugo says. […] ‘That’s not the truth; that’s your story about it. And they aren’t the same thing.’”

As before, Daphne believes that she is adequately facing the reality and truth of her illness, mortality, and love life. However, Hugo argues that she is not telling the truth but rather making up her own narrative about the truth in order to protect herself. She uses this version of the truth as an excuse to hide from real connection, illustrating the interconnected themes of The Dichotomy Between Truth and Story and Connection and Vulnerability.

“For as long as I can remember I’ve had an all-or-nothing narrative about love. The movies pitch marriage as some magical undertaking, where you meet a person who is physically molded for you. The feeling of certainty is impenetrable. Everyone is so damn definitive. They know instantly; they say yes without hesitation. But I’d have something better. It wouldn’t be a feeling, it would be evidentiary proof.”

Again, the motif of movie love appears. Daphne compares the kind of certainty she sees in romantic movies to the kind of proof she believes that she gains from her mysterious notes. By relying on the notes as evidence of her “happily ever after,” she does not have to examine her own feelings and risk making a wrong decision.

“Standing here now I see it. All the glorious reality that makes me who I am. A whole person. A discombobulated whole, a whole that has been stitched and sutured and stapled, but a whole nonetheless.

We have to be cracked open sometimes. We have to be cracked open sometimes to let anything good in. What I see now, emerging in the mirror, is this one simple truth: learning to be broken is learning to be whole.”

Daphne finally looks at herself, literally and figuratively. She has avoided looking at her naked reflection in the mirror. Now, she takes in her whole, imperfect body and realizes that she has been denying the truth of her own life the entire time. She feared that her illness made her less-than and now realizes that brokenness is simply part of being human.

“Looking at my father before me now, I realize how much I’ve been denying the people who love me. I didn’t want them to know I was in pain or short of breath. […] I didn’t want my sickness reflected on their faces. But more than that, I didn’t want to see their own weakness. I didn’t want to feel their tender and heartbroken humanity. Because then it would confirm it all, everything I feared.”

This passage relates directly to the theme of Connection and Vulnerability. Though Daphne wants connection, she has avoided it for fear of showing her own weakness. Moreover, she feared seeing other people’s weakness because she believed that it would reflect her own mortality. She did not want to acknowledge that loss and brokenness are universal parts of the human experience.