Fizzy is giving a well-rehearsed speech to the graduating class at the University of San Diego’s Revelle College, where she took creative writing classes. With her is her best friend’s husband, Dr. River Peña. Fizzy urges the graduating class to do what makes them happy. She tells them to live their lives like they’re in a romance novel. While she claims that romance is the fantasy of an individual person having significance, Fizzy herself realizes she’s lost her joy. She’s missing the romance plot in her own life.

A year later, Fizzy and Jess are talking in a bar. Fizzy has been seeing a therapist, whom she hopes will help her start “writing, dating, feeling like [herself] again” (9). She’s lost interest in casual flings and worries that she will never experience authentic love. In turn, she feels this has dried up her romance writing brain. There’s a handsome man whom she tags as “Hot CEO” staring at her from across the bar, but she doesn’t feel the urge to do anything with him.

Dr. River Peña, Jess’s husband, comes on TV and describes the compatibility test, DNADuo, that his company Genetic Ally developed. Jess insists that the old Fizzy will come back.