This Time Next Year

The narrative shifts to Quinn as a college student having an expensive meal at the French restaurant where Minnie works. Quinn is eager to impress his first serious girlfriend, Polly, and celebrate her recent scholarship to the University of Reading, but a phone call from his mother leads the couple to fight. They reconcile and profess their love for each other.

During the dessert course, Quinn’s phone rings again, and he doesn’t notice Polly choking on a piece of plastic. He feels as though he is constantly “being made to feel a bad boyfriend or a bad son” (199). As he calls his mother back, Quinn watches a girl with brown hair run from the kitchen, dropping her chef’s hat in the process. Though Quinn doesn’t know that the girl is Minnie, who has just been fired for leaving plastic in Polly’s dessert, he identifies with her obvious misery.

When he cannot reach his mother, Quinn decides to go home. Polly says she is tired of feeling like her own emotional needs are always less relevant than Tara’s and ends their relationship. Though heartbroken, Quinn is relieved that he no longer has to balance his romantic life and his mother’s needs.