Jess

Jess is Bethany’s closest and most perceptive friend during the high-school reunion weekend. More socially confident than Bethany, Jess acts as both an emotional sounding board and an active accomplice: she helps prepare the cover story surrounding Ransom, questions the risks of allowing a stranger into Bethany’s family home, encourages Bethany to participate in reunion activities, and comes to her aid when embarrassment and romantic confusion threaten to overwhelm her. Their friendship gives the narrative a practical counterweight to Bethany’s self-doubt.

Identity and Friendship

Jess is introduced through her immediate concern for Bethany. While Bethany is meeting Ransom, her phone vibrates with Jess’s name, suggesting an established friendship in which Bethany’s unexplained absence is enough to cause worry. Jess is not merely a casual acquaintance from school; she is someone Bethany expects to hear from and someone who feels entitled to ask whether Bethany is ready for the reunion’s full social ordeal. Her questions about the “whole shebang” and about the final detail they had discussed show that the two women have already planned Bethany’s presentation of her life to their former classmates. Their conversations therefore establish Jess as a participant in Bethany’s private strategy, not an observer who learns about it afterward.

Jess also represents the social ease Bethany believes she lacks. Bethany works too much and has little social life, while Jess is described as naturally good with people and as having had about a dozen boyfriends in the previous three years. The contrast is explicit: where Bethany becomes uncomfortable in social situations and feels insecure, Jess moves easily through them. Their differences make the friendship complementary rather than competitive. Jess supplies confidence and momentum; Bethany supplies care, judgment, and practical competence.

Ally in the Fake-Boyfriend Scheme

Bethany’s plan to bring Ransom to the reunion is partly a response to the polished lives she sees around her. She admits that she has been watching other people through social media and comparing herself with images of marriage, children, vacations, and apparent stability. Jess is one of the people who knows the vulnerable reality beneath Bethany’s desired public image. She understands that Bethany wants a date not simply for companionship, but to display a “perfect life” to former classmates despite having little time for a social life of her own. Jess’s role is thus connected to Bethany’s management of anticipated judgment. She helps protect the appearance Bethany wants to create while recognizing how precarious the arrangement is.

Her skepticism prevents that support from becoming blind approval. After Bethany decides to let Ransom pretend to be her boyfriend in exchange for secure access to confidential files connected to Hannah Wells Organization, Bethany worries that she may have lost her mind by allowing a stranger into Bethany’s parents’ house and by offering him access to sensitive professional information. Jess has already identified the danger in sharper terms. She acknowledges that Ransom is extraordinarily attractive but warns that attractiveness does not rule out theft. Bethany insists that Ransom seemed above-board and that she would not have proceeded if he had given her a bad feeling, yet Jess remains unconvinced.

This exchange makes Jess the scheme’s ethical and practical checkpoint. She neither prevents the arrangement nor treats it as harmless. Instead, her doubts preserve the sense that Bethany’s bargain has genuine consequences. Jess’s concern becomes more pointed because Ransom is not only a hired companion. He is also trying to use Bethany’s professional access to search adoption records for information about his birth parents. The arrangement places Bethany’s trust, employment, family home, and personal devices within the same opportunity structure. Jess’s suspicion recognizes what Bethany’s romantic hope and professional ambition temporarily obscure.

Social Catalyst and Practical Care

Jess repeatedly pushes Bethany toward participation when Bethany would prefer to retreat. At breakfast, Bethany complains good-naturedly about the ambitious schedule Ransom has planned for the weekend. Other classmates encourage her to continue, and Jess adds her voice until Bethany agrees. The scene recalls their high-school dynamic: Jess pushed Bethany to try things, while Bethany resented not being naturally good at them and feared embarrassment. Their adult friendship retains that pattern, but it is not presented as simple pressure. Jess’s insistence helps Bethany move beyond the passive performance of a perfect life and into actual experiences with other people. She functions as an engine of action, turning Bethany’s reluctance into participation.

Jess also understands when the performance has become emotionally dangerous. During the reunion, Bethany becomes distressed after the possibility arises that classmates suspect she hired Ransom to pretend to be her boyfriend. Jess is the person Bethany calls when the crisis becomes too much. The call initially startles Bethany because she fears that the agency may have detected Ransom’s database search or that he may somehow have gotten her into trouble. Relief follows when she sees Jess’s name. That reaction shows how strongly Jess is associated with safety: even amid professional and romantic risk, Jess’s call is the interruption Bethany can welcome. Jess may melt down in situations like this, but she is still the friend Bethany turns to when control is needed.

Their temperaments are described as opposites, a yin-and-yang pairing in which each compensates for the other’s weaknesses. The friendship is especially tangible in Jess’s hotel room. Jess answers the door with her hair wrapped in a towel after a failed attempt to create curls with a straightening iron. Bethany brushes out the damage, dampens the hair, and teaches Jess how to produce the beachy waves she wants for her strapless dress. Jess responds with gratitude and compliments Bethany’s makeup. The exchange reverses their usual social roles: Jess may be the more confident person among others, but Bethany possesses the technical knowledge and calm competence needed in this intimate moment.

Jess accepts help without defensiveness, while Bethany becomes useful rather than insecure. The styling scene turns friendship into embodied cooperation, with hair, makeup, clothing, and reassurance all helping Jess re-enter the public event.

Witness to Bethany’s Romantic Exposure

Jess’s presence also intensifies the public stakes of Bethany and Ransom’s performance. Bethany believes that Jess may understand what is really happening between her and Ransom, especially because Jess has seen how easily they have slipped into the appearance of a long-term couple despite knowing each other for only a short time. Bethany and Ransom have already made mistakes that reveal they do not know enough about one another for two people supposedly dating for nine months. Jess notices the impression Ransom makes and is impressed by the man Bethany has found, but her approval remains mixed with suspicion. She can see both the success of the performance and the instability beneath it. At the dance, Jess is also connected to one of the book’s important reminders that Bethany’s social world contains genuine history rather than merely an audience to impress.

When Ransom proposes publicly, Bethany is shocked by the apparent authenticity of the gesture, and the surrounding classmates interpret her reaction as evidence that the proposal is real. Later, Jess is remembered in connection with the song “Dear Prudence,” with Bethany’s friend Jess identified as the guitarist. This musical detail places Jess within Bethany’s personal and performative history: she is not only the woman who helps manage the present reunion but also someone who has shared public creative moments with Bethany. Jess therefore belongs to the continuity between Bethany’s high-school identity and her adult self-presentation.

Her friendship survives the gap between those versions of Bethany and helps connect them.

Narrative Role and Significance

Jess serves as a stabilizing companion in a plot organized around disguise, social judgment, and the conversion of performance into intimacy. She knows that Bethany wants to look successful, but she also sees the fear and overwork beneath that image. She supports Bethany’s desire to attend the reunion with Ransom while questioning whether the arrangement is safe, honest, or professionally defensible. Her doubts keep the fake-boyfriend scheme from appearing consequence-free, while her encouragement keeps Bethany from retreating into work and isolation. Jess’s practical assistance is equally important. She advises through conversation, helps Bethany recover from emotional humiliation, accepts Bethany’s help with her hair, and provides a reason for Bethany to return to the social world when panic would otherwise send her away.

The friendship also reveals Bethany’s less visible strengths. Bethany may feel inferior beside Jess’s ease with people, yet she is the one who can repair Jess’s failed hairstyle and teach her how to prepare for the dance. In that exchange, the apparently insecure friend becomes the competent caretaker. Jess’s function is consequently reciprocal rather than merely supportive: she pushes Bethany outward, and Bethany gives Jess the confidence and assistance she needs in return. By the time Ransom’s secrets begin to surface, Jess has helped create the conditions in which Bethany can distinguish public appearance from private trust. She is the friend who can admire Ransom, distrust him, encourage Bethany, tease her, and still recognize when the arrangement has become dangerous.

Through Jess, the story presents friendship as an alternative form of social security—less glossy than the perfect life Bethany sees online, but more durable because it is built from candor, intervention, shared history, and care.