59 pages • 1 hour read
Lucy ScoreThings We Never Got Over
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A 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 1-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “Worst Day Ever” (Naomi)
Tired and road-weary, Naomi Witt arrives in the small town of Knockemout in northern Virginia wearing a daisy in her hair. She was summoned by her estranged twin sister Tina, and Naomi decides she needs coffee before she meets her. At the café, Naomi notices a photo of her sister—who looks just like her—above the cash register identified as someone banned from the restaurant. As Naomi straightens out the confusion with the server, Knox Morgan walks in. Naomi is struck by the man’s “hot as hell” (4) good looks and thinks “He looked like he’d just stormed off a marauding Viking vessel” (5). The two exchange sharp banter, but Naomi is not impressed by the man’s boorish manners. When she leaves the restaurant, Naomi finds her car is gone. Figuring the police towed it, Knox offers to drive her to the police station.
Chapter 2 Summary: “A Reluctant Hero” (Knox)
Knox notices that Naomi is nothing like her twin. It is not just the daisy in her hair; Naomi is classier and more refined than her rough-edged sister. When Naomi resists his offer for a ride to the police station, he teasingly threatens to hog-tie her to his truck. “Your chivalry sucks” (19), Naomi retorts.
At the station, Knox cautions the cops not to mistake Naomi for her twin, who is perpetually in trouble. The cops assure Naomi that they did not tow her car. Knox guesses what happened: “Your asshole sister stole your car” (20). Caught unprepared and tired from her drive, Naomi breaks down. Knox offers to drop her off at her hotel.
Chapter 3 Summary: “A Pint-Size Criminal” (Naomi)
At the hotel, Knox notices the door to Naomi’s room is ajar, the lock broken. He goes with Naomi into the room. They find the room ransacked and the word “sucker” scrawled in lipstick across the bathroom mirror. More unsettling, they find a girl in the room. Knox knows her: She is Waylay, Tina’s 11-year-old daughter. Naomi feels as if she “had been shot out of a cannon” (27) because she had no idea her sister had a daughter.
Naomi doesn’t know what to do next. Desperate for answers, she calls her sister who answers from the road, driving Naomi’s car. By explanation, she says only that she has “got shit to do” and that her daughter would be “holding her back” (31). When Naomi begins to unpack, Knox and Waylay cannot help but notice Naomi packed a beautiful wedding dress. Before she can explain, there is a knock at the door; Knox phoned the police when they found the room ransacked, and they are here to investigate.
Chapter 4 Summary: “You’re Not Staying Here” (Naomi)
The chief of police, who identifies himself as Knox’s brother Nash Morgan, informs Naomi that assuming guardianship of Waylay would be the only way to keep her out of Child Protective Services (CPS). Since the lock on the hotel door is busted, Knox offers to take Naomi and Waylay to Tina’s trailer outside of town. Fatigued by the long ride and emotionally spent, Naomi, “running on fumes” (41), agrees.
Chapter 5 Summary: “A Vat of Lighter Fluid and a Nap” (Naomi)
The trailer is a mess: An eviction notice is pasted on the door, the garbage cans are overflowing, and pizza boxes and bourbon bottles are strewn about. Seeing that Naomi is too exhausted to straighten up the trailer, Knox offers a place for her and Waylay to stay as long as they need to. Knox drives them to a spacious log cabin with a “storybook cottage” (49) just behind it. Naomi falls in love with the charming cottage. Knox tells her that the landlady, Liza J., lives in a big house down the road and that they will meet after Naomi and Waylay get some sleep.
When Naomi wakes up, still groggy, she finds Waylay already in the kitchen munching a PB&J sandwich and slurping down a soda. As they share the peanut butter, Waylay asks why Naomi’s arms and knees are scraped. Naomi tells her that she climbed out of a church basement window but doesn’t explain further.
Chapter 6 Summary: “Asparagus and a Showdown” (Naomi)
As Naomi and Waylay bike to town, Naomi tells herself she should be in Paris on her honeymoon. When they get to the grocery store, Naomi pulls out a stash of hidden cash, money from the wedding she bailed on. Naomi shops and is determined to provide Waylay with a healthy diet of fruits and vegetables. She notices that she is being stared at. She finds out that Tina shoplifted from the store. When Naomi and Waylay have a snack after they shop, a woman named Sherry Fiasco introduces herself and, out of the blue, offers Naomi a job as a server at Honky Tonk, a local tavern: “Can you deliver beer and be generally charming?” (64). Naomi accepts the job.
Chapter 7 Summary: “A Punch in the Face” (Knox)
When his brother Nash stops by his house with news for Naomi, Knox growls that he saw her first. Suddenly the brothers begin to fight: “Fists were how they settled countless arguments for decades” (68). Naomi, wearing a simple sundress, breaks up the fight. Knox is unsettled and doesn’t know what to do with this outsider. Naomi is unlike any woman he’s ever known. Nash tells Naomi her car was reported stolen two days ago by Warner Dennison III of Long Island. Embarrassed, Naomi admits the car is in her name but was a gift from Warner, her ex-fiancé.
The dinner with her landlady turns out to be dinner with Knox’s grandmother, Liza J., whose scrappy personality and generous hospitality appeal to Naomi. As Knox watches Naomi settle down for her meatloaf dinner, he admires her sundress, which is “floating around her like she was some kind of fairy-tale princess” (78)
Chapter 8 Summary: “The Mysterious Liza J.” (Naomi)
Liza J. takes Naomi on a tour of the house after dinner. In the dark of the study, Liza J. asks Naomi directly about the rumors swirling in town that she is some sort of runaway bride. Softened by the hospitality and liquor, Naomi admits that she is. Liza J. offers her and Waylay the cottage rent-free.
Knowing her grandsons the way she does, Liza J. cautions Naomi that she is in the middle of something with Knox and Nash. Indeed, the brothers trade barbs through dinner, sparring for Naomi’s attention. Nash gives Naomi a brochure on how to arrange a permanent guardianship. The word “permanent” sends Naomi reeling. Nash tells her that Tina is involved with a new boyfriend who has ties to a Washington crime syndicate. Because of that, Nash assures her that even if she did come back, a court would be unlikely to grant her custody of the child she abandoned.
Chapters 1-8 Analysis
These opening chapters introduce three of the book’s central topics: 1) the difficult and contentious relationship between siblings; 2) the way a heart continues to beat even when it is wounded; 3) the unsettling prospect of the responsibility of adoption.
The opening chapters juxtapose two sets of siblings. On the one hand, there’s Naomi, the runaway bride, and her twin sister Tina, the all-around rule-breaker. On the other hand, there’s the hunky, bad boy Knox with his clever banter and calculated aloofness, and his brother, the town sheriff Nash whose open personality and eagerness to help are diametrically opposed to his brother’s grumpy nature. As the novel opens, both sets of siblings are in trouble. Tina baits her sister to come to Knockemout with cash, only to steal her car and leave her with the responsibility of her daughter, Waylay. The message she scrawls on Naomi’s hotel bathroom mirror—“sucker”—says it all: Tina takes advantage of Naomi who, by her own admission, has spent her adult life trying to clean up the messes her sister gets into to keep their parents happy. Naomi does not share why she ran away from her wedding; rather, her focus is on her emotional estrangement from a sister who delights in breaking rules and demanding other people pay the price. Knox and Nash are similarly dysfunctional. They live in the same town, but they seldom speak. When Nash introduces himself to Naomi, Knox is put off by his brother’s unctuous charm: “Knox looked like he wanted to shove his brother’s head through the already damaged door” (39). Right off, the brothers spar over Naomi’s attention. The novel begins with an air of suspicion, distrust, and anger between siblings; these families are fragmented. This dynamic situates the novel to explore how people with histories of such estrangement and distrust within intimate family relationships can reestablish a sense of community and learn to trust others.
Naomi and Knox’s initial meeting at the café is a classic romantic comedy meet-cute, a term used to describe the charming, often unlikely scenarios that introduce the romantic leads to one another. The sparks fly immediately: The sarcasm is thick, the put-downs are sharp, and the mutual distaste is clear. Readers of romances will recognize this grumpy/sunshine dynamic, a genre staple. Naomi is brassy and cool, while Knox is a “bad-tempered sexy man-beast” (5). The initial attraction is compelled not by their personalities—they are opposite in temperament, mood, and disposition—but by each other’s looks. Naomi responds to Knox’s exaggerated masculinity: his tattoos, scruffy beard, deep-set eyes, and massive forearms. Knox responds to Naomi’s “classier look” (13): the daisy in her thick, chestnut hair (leftover from the wedding), her “full pink lips,” and eyes that make him think of “forest floors and open fields” (13). For Knox, Naomi “went in the Disney princess direction” (13). This sets up their dynamic: the grumpy Viking and the sunny Princess.
The introduction of Waylay brings the reality of guardianship to Naomi’s story. What is remarkable about their initial meetings here is how quickly Naomi moves from being a complete stranger to petitioning for Waylay’s guardianship. She never questions Tina’s motives or holds their sour relationship against Waylay; she immediately begins taking care of this precocious child. For Naomi, Waylay is not a relationship as much as a responsibility. As she discovers aspects of Waylay’s life, Naomi is determined to be the kind of mother figure she needs. The guardianship process reveals Naomi’s character and her willingness, or her need, to fix problems and help people clean up messes. It never occurs to her to seek out the police as Knox does. In moving forward so quickly to secure guardianship of her niece, Naomi is in “Naomi-mode.” In these chapters, she is forging her identity. The reader might assume that Naomi is impulsive or irresponsible because she ran away from her wedding, but her care and responsibility for Waylay reveal otherwise, and her actions foreshadow that she had good reasons to do so. In stepping forward without question, hesitation, or any knowledge about how to take care of Waylay, Naomi is also determined to counterbalance her sister. She is not being Naomi: She is being (as the townspeople initially call her) not-Tina. In this way, Tina is also Naomi’s foil.
These opening chapters set up problems that will be resolved through discovering love, rebuilding trust, and willingness to open up to others. For now, the characters’ lives are in pieces, their relationships are strained, and their shattered hearts are veiled in secrets.
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