Summary

In Chapter 6, Frances and Bobbi attended public events where Melissa and Nick were present. Bobbi was contemptuous towards Nick and flattered Melissa. Frances was increasingly drawn towards Nick, though the two did not speak privately again. However, they exchanged late night emails regularly after Nick emailed Frances about her poem, as he had promised he would. At first, the emails were mutually intellectually flirtatious, but the playfulness became more sensuous after Nick, who was thirty-one, teasingly said he would never email a twenty-one-year-old, Frances, late at night. The feelings caused by their flirtation affected Frances' response to a writer who addressed her suggestively during the launch of a new poetry anthology Melissa, Nick, and she attended. Frances ignored the man's advances, despite Melissa's chiding. She did not want Nick to see her responding to another man.

Frances visited her mother. She told the...