Expiration Dates

Content Warning: This section discusses heart failure, chronic illness, and medical trauma.

One evening in Los Angeles, Daphne Bell waits for a blind date with Jake Green, set up by their mutual friend, Kendra. As she waits, Daphne considers the piece of paper in her hands, slipped beneath her door that day, that is blank except for the name “Jake.” This note indicates that Jake is the man she is meant to spend the rest of her life with.

Jake is running late. Daphne texts her best friend, Hugo, while she waits, intending to meet him for drinks after her date ends. Then, she tries to focus on the present. After “[t]hirty-three years, six significant relationships, forty-two first dates, [and] one long weekend in Paris” (4), Daphne believes that she is meeting the last man she will ever date. When he arrives, Daphne is struck by his handsomeness and his pleasant voice.

Daphne received her first mysterious note when she was in the fifth grade, a postcard that read, “Seth, eight days” (6). She asked her parents what it meant, but they did not know. Then, she recalled a boy named Seth from soccer.