- When on publicity tour for her best-selling memoir, a writer is forced to confront secrets from her past when an estranged childhood friend shows up unannounced.
- The Reading tells the story of Elsa, an award winning writer, giving a reading of her recently published, autobiographical short story collection. She reads the ending of the final story in the collection: a young girl falls in love with Jacoby, a teenage boy who works for her family, only to learn that he is gay. In the story, the girl chooses to help Jacoby open up to his father, realizing that what he needs is more important than her hurt feelings.
But during the reading, one of the guests, Jake, disrupts her Q&A to object to the ending of the story. He spouts slurs about the gay character and taunts Elsa with combative and offensive questions. She, the interviewer, and the audience are all stunned and can only ask the man to stop. He sits down, gives a pseudo-apology, and the event goes on. But Elsa can't quite take her mind off his intrusion.
Later, Elsa is signing copies of her book for her fans when she spots Jake in line. She refuses to sign his copy, on account of his bigoted behavior.
Jake sneers about the ending of the story in response, and Elsa dresses down his bias and expectations of hetero-normative characters and easy, gift-wrapped endings. But when she finishes, Jake is bemused. He sits down and narrates to her how he would have ended the story. As Jake wades into greater and greater detail about the gay character and the hardships he would have written in for him, Elsa realizes: Jake is Jacoby. He shreds her uplifting, self-congratulatory version of the story and replaces it with with the story of how her actions ruined his life. She didn't help him open up to his father; she ratted on him, vindictive because he didn't love her back. And as she realizes what she has done to him and to the truth, he leaves, her world shattered.
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