While waiting in a beach parking lot for their surf instructors, Frankie tells George she has always wanted to surf. Seeing George smile without his glasses triggers a memory from when Frankie was almost fourteen and George had just returned to the Big House after living with his father in Montreal.

In the flashback, Frankie remembers learning that Mimi had found George alone in his father’s apartment after forty-eight hours without care. Frankie rushes to see George, finds him sobbing on his bed with his hair forcibly buzzed short, and feels intense hatred toward his father for taking him away and failing him. Because George is devastated, Frankie lies beside him and soothes him by retelling one of her mother’s whale stories until he stops crying and smiles at her, reminding Frankie how long she has loved being the person who can comfort him.

Back in the present, George explains that surfing is part of his day-three breakup plan because movement, novelty, and time outdoors might help Frankie. Frankie says George’s research helped her realize Nate was not the only person for her, and if there is only one person meant for her, it is not Nate. That leads Frankie to explain that she once feared partnership would erase her, partly because she sees her mother as having given up her whale-research ambitions after getting pregnant and choosing a life with Frankie’s father. George gently pushes back, suggesting Frankie may be clinging to her own interpretation of her mother’s life instead of hearing her mother’s version.

Frankie then says Nate may have been the wrong man at the right moment because she was burned out and wanted a fuller life. When George asks why she chose Nate, Frankie says Nate felt easy, safe, and never intense enough to destroy her, but she also admits she still feels confused and humiliated by the last-minute breakup. George argues that a real relationship should allow Frankie to be fully herself and says conflict is normal, adding that he is working on his own failings in therapy. When George asks about Frankie’s one major fight with Nate, Frankie reveals Nate wanted her to take his last name and had already used it for a gym membership and their resort booking, which made Frankie feel trapped and absorbed. By the end of the conversation, Frankie says she might want belonging only if it is mutual and equal, and George quietly agrees that he would want that too.