59 pages • 1 hour read
Things We Never Got Over
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Chapters 26-33Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 26 Summary: “PMS and the Bully” (Naomi)
Naomi arrives at Honky Tonk for her shift. With her poker winnings, she wants to buy a car. The other servers can tell she and Knox had sex and demand to know details. She is just starting to feel good about her life when she gets a text from Sloane alerting her that Waylay is being singled out by her teacher. Without hesitating, Naomi heads to the school to confront Mrs. Felch. Naomi is astounded when Mrs. Felch readily acknowledges her actions and states, “Way is being treated the way she deserves to be treated” (278). Before she can respond, however, Naomi becomes aware that someone else is in the classroom.
Chapter 27 summary: “Field Mice Revenge” (Knox)
When Knox arrives at Honky Tonk, the staff tells him about the message from the school. Unlike Naomi, Knox understands the implications of the teacher’s cruelty toward Waylay: Tina slept with her husband just a few months earlier. Certain that Naomi is walking into a trap, Knox hurries to the school.
In the bar parking lot, he finds his grandmother with Naomi’s parents. They are worried because Waylay never came home from school. Together, they all caravan to the school. They arrive at Mrs. Felch’s room just as Mrs. Felch is explaining to Naomi how Tina ruined her life. They are relieved to see Waylay there in the room. Mrs. Felch describes Waylay as a “juvenile delinquent” (284) and says she’s just like her mother. Naomi points out she has no right to take her anger out on Waylay and that she will have Waylay removed from her class. She adds sympathetically, “You and Waylay both deserve better than the hand you were dealt” (286). As they leave the school, Naomi tells Waylay to come to her if she is having a problem and encourages her not to pretend everything is alright. Knox and Naomi return to the bar for the night shift, and Knox tells Naomi’s parents he will drive her home that night.
Chapter 28 Summary: “Third Base” (Knox)
Sensing Naomi’s panic, Knox skips work and drives them to his high school make-out spot in the country. He tells her she cannot beat herself up over things she cannot control and that she is doing a great job with Waylay. They begin to kiss, and soon they are having sex in his truck. On impulse, Naomi begs him not to use a condom: “I feel like being reckless” (295). She is astounded by the intensity of their mutual desire. Despite the confines of the truck, they both orgasm multiple times. Knox reels from the feeling, thinking “I almost went cross-eyed” (297). When he climaxes for the last time, he feels “born again.”
Chapter 29 Summary: “Knox’s House” (Knox)
Knox drives Naomi to his cabin. Waylay is with Liza J., so they have the night to themselves. Naomi is confused about whether this is a relationship or just great sex. She’s also concerned that everyone in town is talking about them. Knox says only he wants the two of them to get some sleep. For the first time, the two actually sleep together.
Naomi wakes up early because she needs to make herself presentable before she returns home. Knox cautions her to be sure to lock her doors. Naomi, fresh from a shower, assures him she always locks her doors. As he watches Naomi get herself ready to return home, erasing any signs that she spent the night having great sex, Knox tells her she does not need to keep being the good girl and trying to make everyone else happy. Naomi, however, disagrees. She does not want her relationship with Knox to jeopardize her petition for Waylay’s guardianship.
Chapter 30 Summary: “The Breakfast of Shame” (Naomi)
Naomi returns to the cottage and finds Stef making breakfast for Waylay and her parents. Her father tells her it is time to shop for a car. Liza J. tells her that Nash is coming home today from the hospital.
Confused about Knox, Naomi confides in Stef. Stef tells her to stop overanalyzing and says, “Did it ever occur to you this may be your chance to start living a life you choose?” (320). Waylay overhears their conversation and asks whether Naomi and Knox “are a thing” (320). Knox stops by that evening, and the three of them, along with Knox’s dog, make s’mores.
Chapter 31 Summary: “Shifty in the Stacks” (Naomi)
It is September. Mrs. Felch abruptly retires, Naomi is enjoying her new SUV, and work is going smoothly. Knox is becoming a reliable part of her world. She receives an email from her ex-fiancé telling her he wants a second chance. Stef tells her to forget him.
One afternoon, Naomi is in the library where she accepted a part-time position to earn extra cash. She is reading up on parenting. A stranger, a man with short, spiky, red hair, introduces himself as Flint. He says he is new in town and needs some help setting up his computer, and he wonders whether Naomi knows of anyone in town with computer skills. Naomi almost gives him Waylay’s email address since she has a knack for electronics, but something about the man convinces her not to. As the man departs, Knox arrives.
Chapter 32 Summary: “Lunch and a Warning” (Knox)
Knox offers to take Naomi to lunch. There, she confesses that this relationship is beginning to feel like the real thing, and she asks Knox what comes next. Knox avoids answering. As they leave, Naomi’s phone rings. Nash tells her he believes that Tina may be coming back to town because there is something she left behind. They found Tina’s fingerprints on a storage unit at her trailer park, which was broken into over the weekend. Grainy surveillance camera footage shows someone who looks like Tina but with long hair, most likely a wig, wearing one of Naomi’s new dresses that Knox bought her. Dressing up like her twin was a thing Tina did in high school to avoid getting in trouble, but her wearing that dress meant she broke into Naomi’s cottage. The locks were never jimmied, so someone, perhaps Waylay, must have let her in. Naomi immediately worries that her sister will take Waylay or that this might impact her application for guardianship.
Chapter 33 Summary: “A Swift Kick” (Naomi)
The following Saturday, Naomi, Liza J., Stef, and Naomi’s parents head out to the soccer field to watch Waylay play. Without Knox there, they all pump Naomi for questions about her romance, more specifically the sex with Knox. Naomi’s mother, noticing how close Waylay is to her, tells her daughter she is doing a remarkable job with her niece. Then Nash shows up. When Nash reveals the facts about Tina’s break-in, everyone assures Naomi that they have her back. “Naomi, you’ve got a lot of people who care about you,” Nash tells her (353).
Unexpectedly, Knox appears. Knox and Naomi watch the game. When a player trips Waylay as she moves to score, Waylay says a choice expletive. Later, Waylay scores the game-winning goal. After the game, everyone heads out for ice cream. Naomi decides that this was “the best day of my life” (359).
Chapters 26-33 Analysis
These chapters recount the process by which Naomi, as the months go by and her sister fails to make any contact, evolves into her role as a mother figure on her Journey to Self-Discovery. Though she has no experience with motherhood, Naomi discovers instincts she did not know she had and successfully protects Waylay from the ill-tempered and mean-spirited Mrs. Felch, who punishes an innocent girl for the actions of her mother. Naomi stands her ground and defends her quasi-daughter with a confidence she did not expect from herself. These chapters conclude with a nearly perfect day when Knox and Naomi, along with their friends and family, enjoy a beautiful Saturday morning soccer game in which Waylay scores the winning goal.
This narrative of unexpected happiness and emotional bonding forms only half of the storyline of these chapters. Dark tension lurks beneath these emotional high notes, from Tina looming in the background to Naomi’s still-unexplained breakup with Warner. This alternating between dark and light reflects a carefully constructed counterbalanced narrative that creates dramatic tension.
Even as Naomi gathers confidence as Waylay’s new surrogate mother and as Knox’s sexual partner, she begins to understand what Waylay endured as Tina’s daughter and how the small-minded residents of Knockemout have held her accountable for her mother’s actions. For all her scrappiness and appearance of strength and independence, Waylay survived a traumatic childhood. She never knew her father and was dependent on an irresponsible mother. She never made friends because she was forced to live in a town where everyone minds everyone else’s business, and her mother’s bad reputation extended to her. Above all, she was abandoned when her mother went off with her boyfriend. Waylay puts her faith in Naomi, and Naomi, for her part, embraces her role as guardian. Every decision she makes—every time she and Knox rendezvous, every table she serves in the bar—is measured against the idea of being worthy of being Waylay’s guardian. In having an actual guardian, Waylay is experiencing The Power of Community for the first time: “You ask me what I think. You care how I answer,” Waylay tells Naomi. “Mom didn’t” (302).
As Waylay and Naomi find their way to a mutually supportive and respectful relationship, Naomi and Knox begin to examine the implications of their own relationship. Under the guise of pretending to be a couple for Naomi’s parents, Naomi and Knox ask the difficult question of whether sexual compatibility translates into a relationship. Knox artfully dodges the questions Naomi asks about where their relationship is going. Score writes detailed and explicit sex scenes, but the more the novel grounds the relationship in sex, the more their love struggles to soar above the physical, and Score introduces doubt about whether Knox and Naomi can harness The Courage to Love. Both are compelled by their sexual compatibility, but Knox’s emotional baggage over his strained relationship with his brother and Naomi’s unresolved feelings about her failed engagement leave them both wary of a deep, emotional connection. They will need to overcome these hurdles to commit to each other.
Against these two narrative strands—Naomi’s guardianship application and her intense relationship with Knox—conflict looms. Yes, Mrs. Felch is vanquished, Waylay sees Naomi as the mother she never had but always wanted, and Naomi and Knox are asking the appropriate questions about their relationship. But this movement toward a happy ending is countered by two subtle-but-menacing plotlines. The redhead in the library who gives Naomi a bad vibe foreshadows danger for Waylay, along with Tina dressing as Naomi and breaking into her home. These ominous threads round out the dynamics of these chapters, which are at once bright and dark.
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By Lucy Score
