51 pages • 1 hour read
Tessa BaileyIt Happened One Summer
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 6-11Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 6 Summary
Brendan sets out on his morning routine. He likes routines and consistency. As a sea captain, predictability is important to him. He’s aggravated, though, that he can’t get Piper out of his mind. He’s surprised—and aggravated again—to find Piper in the supermarket early in the morning, asking her phone what she can make for an easy dinner.
Brendan is struck by Piper’s beauty and continues to be irritated by his attraction to her. Responding to his surliness, Piper challenges him that he’s not being a very good representative of Westport given that he’s so protective of it. Feeling guilty, Brendan tells her there is a memorial to her father in the harbor. He says that Henry belonged to Westport, and they take care of their own.
Piper confesses that she doesn’t remember much about her father, and Brendan starts to revise his first impression of her: “Was she actually an overindulged brat from the land of make believe?” (54). If she’s in the store to buy ingredients to make a meal for her sister, maybe she’s not as selfish as he thought. He puts ingredients in her basket and tells her how to cook them, but when she gets frustrated with him, Piper shouts that she feels sorry for his wife. Brendan admits that his wife is dead, and they part ways. He leaves smiling.
Chapter 7 Summary
Piper and Hannah visit the harbor, and Piper has Hannah take several pictures of her for her Instagram feed. They get ice cream and visit the memorial to their father. Piper worries that she doesn’t feel a connection to Henry and wonders if she’s “too shallow to feel anything” (61). As they walk, Piper realizes she isn’t looking at her phone but instead is noticing the world around her.
The sisters find a man, Mick Forrester, waiting for them outside the bar. He tells the women about the day they lost Henry overboard. Mick says the wives of Westport fishermen have nerves of steel; they don’t cry or complain. His daughter Desiree, Brendan’s wife, was like that. Mick invites Piper to a potluck on Friday and gives her the address for someone named Opal. Piper doesn’t know who Opal is, but she thanks Mick, and she is moved by his story about Henry’s death. No Name feels different now that she’s learned more about her father.
Chapter 8 Summary
Piper tries cooking hamburger for dinner after a day spent cleaning the apartment. Thinking about her conversation with Brendan that morning, Piper asks Hannah if she thinks Piper is spoiled. Hannah says no; Piper has many good qualities. They discuss Brendan and Piper feels sympathy for him because he is a widower. She thinks that maybe they could be friendly enemies. The moment of bonding between the sisters is interrupted when Piper realizes that the cleaning rag on the counter has caught fire, and so has the meat. Panicked, Piper runs downstairs and into the street with the flaming pan.
Chapter 9 Summary
Brendan is having fish and chips with his friend and first mate, Fox. They meet at the Red Buoy every Monday night, and Brendan always has fish and chips. Brendan tries talking about the upcoming king crab season, but Fox teases him for being distracted by Piper. Fox thinks that, since Desiree has been dead seven years, Brendan should move on. Brendan, however, still feels he should be loyal to her. The narrator says that his grief “had become a habit. A routine. A comfort of sorts” (76).
Then Piper appears in the street carrying the flaming pan, and Brendan rushes out with a fire extinguisher. He yells at Piper for being careless, but Hannah comes to her sister’s defense. She calls Brendan a bully and says Piper doesn’t need another man treating her like garbage. Brendan is taken aback by her accusation, and he regrets the bad impression he’s made. While Fox takes Hannah to the record store to help her cool off, Brendan tries to apologize to Piper by taking her back to the Red Buoy and offering her his fish and chips.
They talk about fishing and Piper dares Brendan to eat Fox’s pot pie. Brendan forces it down but admits that he doesn’t like to try new things. Trying to make conversation, he asks Piper why she is in Westport, and she tells him about the hotel pool and the party. Brendan sees more glimpses of her personality that intrigue him, but he is confused by his feelings, and by her.
Chapter 10 Summary
Piper wakes up to a pounding on the door of her apartment; it’s Brendan. She reflects that she doesn’t know how to act around him. Flirting is her default with men, but “Brendan had robbed her deck of the pretty-girl trump card, and she couldn’t get it back” (93). He’s had too many glimpses behind her mask.
When Piper answers the door in her tank top and underwear, Brendan is embarrassed, so she covers herself with a pillow. He’s come to install a lock on the door before he leaves for a three-day fishing trip. He asks about the red mark on her head and Piper tells him she keeps hitting her head on the bunk bed. They exchange phone numbers and Piper recognizes that “Brendan’s attention made her kind of…fidgety” (96). She is used to men checking her out, but the wedding ring suggests he is still hung up on his wife. When she teases him by asking if they’re friends, Brendan says no. Piper admits to Hannah she has no idea what is going on with him.
Chapter 11 Summary
Aboard the Della Ray, leaving for his fishing trip, Brendan downloads Instagram on his phone and creates a profile so he can follow Piper. His crew teases him about his interest. Brendan is dismayed to discover that Piper is famous; a picture of her at the rooftop party has 3 million likes. He realizes, “Piper Bellinger was from a different, flashier planet” (104), way out of his league. He thinks that he must look foolish to her and decides to just focus on fishing.
Chapters 6-11 Analysis
These chapters cover the segment of the enemies-to-lovers plot where the characters circle each other, continue to be convinced they are incompatible, but also begin to see qualities in the other that draw them together. Brendan is the one who wavers first in his initial hostility. When Piper accuses him of not being welcoming, he is embarrassed, because he considers himself an integral part of the town. He emphasized her father’s connection to Westport, but Brendan has the same connection—another silent parallel between the two men.
In addition to his protectiveness, Brendan will turn out to have an untapped nurturing side, which he first demonstrates when he selects ingredients for a meal and puts them in Piper’s grocery basket. The gesture is in part an apology because he has been so antagonistic to her, thinking her shallow and superficial; he made a snap judgment based on appearance, which Piper does not do to him. The fact that she is at the grocery store to buy ingredients to make a meal for her sister displays a nurturing tendency in Piper that Brendan responds to.
Brendan’s protectiveness appears when he sees Piper run into the street with the flaming pan. He has been discussing her with his friend Fox and tells Fox, who is a womanizer, to stay away from her. He isn’t yet willing to admit he is interested, but Piper has rattled Brendan’s routines and made him realize how deeply he’s fallen into a rut. His attraction to her, which he is still unwilling to admit, makes Brendan realizes that his grief over his wife is no longer about Desiree but has become a habit. He’s not ready to pursue Piper, but he is drawn to her not just by her physical beauty but by the glimpses of vulnerability he sees.
This impulse to take care of her leads Brendan to come to No Name to put locks on the doors. He wants Piper to be safe while he is on his fishing trip. Piper is amused by his embarrassment when she answers the door in her skimpy sleeping attire. She cultivates her attractiveness and is accustomed to using it to her advantage, but Brendan isn’t easily manipulated. He is very different from the men she’s used to. She finds herself out of her usual element both in Westport and with Brendan—another way both the man and the town are linked—and so uses the pillow as cover to try to make him more comfortable. The combination of sexual awareness and heightened emotion in their confused feelings is a stock gesture of the romance genre and makes it believable that their intense feelings could sway the characters to move out of their comfort zones.
These chapters continue emphasizing the difference between Piper’s life in Los Angeles and Westport. Things like cleaning her apartment, grocery shopping, and cooking a meal are stretches for her, and Piper feels satisfaction at having tried something new. She still wants to show people—especially her stepfather—that she can be responsible and self-sufficient. Westport is charming to her, and she is proud of herself for observing it, rather than filtering everything through her phone. But Piper also feels disconnected. Seeing her father’s memorial doesn’t stir in her the feelings she thinks she’s supposed to feel. She doesn’t know who Opal is. Her conversation with Mick tells her more about Brendan’s wife and emphasizes the difference between the women of Westport, the women who become fisherman’s wives, and Piper.
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