When Arabella's memory of January 22nd comes rushing back to her, she drags the last of her demons out from under the bed - once and for all.
Arabella's obsession with a fellow young author, Della, leads to unexpected progress on her book, despite a devastating setback. Kwame wades into uncharted waters with Tyrone and attempts to make amends with a disgruntled ex-flame. Terry has some luck in work and romance - and joins Arabella in staking out the bar where she was spiked.
After Simon inadvertently drops a bomb on Arabella, she heads to her mom's birthday dinner, where painful, long-forgotten memories bubble to the surface. Kwame's no-strings-attached hookup bender leads him to Tyrone, a stranger in search of a different kind of connection.
Arabella's bloated social media presence finds her more glued to her phone than ever, perpetually internalizing the stress of her followers. At a Halloween "paint and wine" organized by Terry, Kwame opens up to the girls about his recent sexual experiment - and Arabella's reaction lands her in an emergency session with Carrie.
Reeling from a demoralizing development in the investigation, Arabella hatches a risky plan to "spark joy" - and convinces an adverse Terry to bankroll it. Still navigating the fallout of his own assault, Kwame challenges himself to explore the full spectrum of his sexuality.
Strapped for cash and still unable to produce a draft of her book, Arabella takes a job working alongside Theo at a vegan delivery start-up. Birthday girl Terry takes covert measures to ensure Simon won't make a surprise appearance at her party. The festivities find Kwame avoiding reminders of his assault while Terry airs her suspicions about Theo.
Much to Terry's disapproval, Arabella attends a support group for rape and sexual assault survivors run by their high school acquaintance, Theo. In a flashback to 2004, teenage Arabella and Terry intervene when a resourceful, troubled young Theo attempts to flip the narrative on consensual sex gone sideways.
A tumultuous day finds Arabella reassessing a sexual encounter with Zain and, following a promising new lead in the investigation, opening up to Biagio about her assault. Later, after a meeting with Susy Henny, Arabella threatens to break the internet when she goes off script at a writing summit. Meanwhile, Kwame's prompted to report his own assault to the police.
Arabella returns to London two months after the incident and starts seeing a therapist, who encourages her to find creative and relaxing ways of coping with her trauma. Her agents anxiously await the first draft, and assign another client to help her with the writing process. Kwame introduces his new boyfriend to a stranger he met online.
The action flashes back to three months before the incident as Terry visits Arabella in Ostia, a district of Rome on the Tyrrhenian Sea, where the up-and-coming author is having a whale of a time - all at the expense of her agent. After procuring supplies from local drug dealer Biagio, the pair have a wild night out that takes an unexpected turn for both of them.
Lunch with Terry gets Arabella thinking about the hazy events of the previous night, prompting her to probe Simon for answers. Growing increasingly desperate to put together the pieces, Arabella drops by Simon's apartment - and later, finds herself at an unwelcoming doorstep. Meanwhile Terry has a lousy audition, and a concerned Kwame rushes to Arabella's side.
After visiting her aspirational long-distance boyfriend in Italy, burgeoning writer Arabella returns to London, where she's greeted by a deluge of frantic messages from her literary agents. With a matter of hours left to finish a draft of her second book, she plans to pull an all-nighter - but is soon tempted to join a friend on a night out.
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