That evening, Cyrus drives himself to an AA meeting at the Camp5 Center in Keady. He sits beside his sponsor, Gabe B., a thirty-three-years-sober playwriting teacher and former Southern California fixture. The meeting's topic is "life on life's terms," and Cyrus initially plans to stay silent, but eventually shares about snapping at a woman at work and how good it felt to seize control. He confesses that sobriety feels like a textureless middle, that his childhood prayers to God and his dead mother were just empty words, and that recovery itself feels like nothing but limited language unable to touch the rot inside him. When he edges into political territory, old-timer Big Susan shuts him down as an "outside issue."

After the meeting, Gabe insists Cyrus join him at Secret Stash, a coffee shop owned by a fellow member. Gabe notices a burst blood vessel in Cyrus's eye and presses him on his "God made of words" complaint. When Cyrus suggests he might find meaning in a Persian or Islamic higher power, Gabe bluntly calls it bullshit, accusing Cyrus of leaning on a Persian "schtick" that fills his poems with pomegranates instead of the iPhones that actually shape his life. He warns Cyrus the act is holding back both his recovery and his art.

A flashback recalls Cyrus's fifth step two years earlier, when he revealed he'd slept with men and Gabe responded by casually disclosing his own hundreds of male partners in 1970s California, teasing that Cyrus is hardly straight-passing. Back in the present, Gabe invokes a playwriting rule—never send a character onstage without knowing what they want—and pushes Cyrus to articulate his deepest desire. Cyrus admits he wants to die, and that he always has. He explains his mother died meaninglessly as one of hundreds, his father died anonymous on a chicken farm, and he wants his death to matter more.

Gabe asks if Cyrus wants to be a martyr. Cyrus says yes. Gabe mocks the idea, joking that Cyrus can't even wash his clothes, let alone strap a bomb to his chest. The exchange escalates: Cyrus accuses Gabe of racism and sanctimony, attacks Gabe's failed marriage and troubled son, and quotes Borges on fathers and mirrors. Gabe stays calm, refusing to be baited. Cyrus storms out, calling AA a "bullshit cult of bullshit," and drives home rehearsing better insults. Catching the deepening red bloom in his eye in the mirror, he resolves that this was his last meeting and his last conversation with Gabe.