Golden Hour

From Candypedia
Golden Hour
Chapter90 of 129 (list of chapters)
PublishedOctober 3, 2015 (2015-10-03)
Page count44
Major charactersPaulo, Matt, Daisy, David, Abbey, Rachel, Madison, Jessica
Minor charactersMolly, Jordan
LocationsMatt’s aunt’s beach house, Daisy’s house, Burger-Tron, Roseville High School, Abbey’s house, Roseville neighborhood
Collected inVolume Six
Chapter navigation
← Guest of HonorIce Block →
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The gang’s summer beach trip goes sideways for Paulo in every direction: Daisy confronts him over years of cruelty to Abbey, David says “I love you” and has never been more serious, and poor Matt catches the fallout at the campfire.

Synopsis

Matt and Rachel ease into the trip, with Matt hunting down college application dates while Rachel plans to apply everywhere he does.[1] Paulo soon drags the boys out for volleyball, though he can barely meet Matt’s eye,[2] and ropes in Jessica and her girlfriend Madison to round out the teams.[3] That evening, Rachel hands him the phone, and the caller turns out to be Daisy.[4]

Paulo and Daisy stay friendly as they catch up, right until Abbey comes up. Daisy admits Abbey hasn’t been himself lately. Paulo scoffs that he should just get over his problems, and she boils over with “Why’ve you always gotta make a JOKE out of it?!”[5] She tells him she can’t keep letting him hurt Abbey, and that he doesn’t even remember what he’s done.[6]

What he’s done fills a long flashback from Daisy’s side of things. She remembers Abbey shutting her out of every family crisis,[7] and she remembers the fight at Burger-Tron, where Paulo sabotaged Abbey’s milkshake order for a laugh.[8] Abbey finally airs everything that day. He stopped bringing up therapy because he feels like “too much of a FUCKING BURDEN”,[9] and when he accuses Daisy of letting a bully get away with anything, she slaps him across the face.[10] Abbey goes cold and reminds her that she always ended up on Michael’s side against Lucy too.[11] He leaves her with only a “Maybe” about the group’s next outing.[12]

Back in the present, Daisy says Abbey was right about Paulo and tells him she is “so disappointed”. Any apology he has to offer belongs to Abbey instead.[13] Paulo refuses point-blank, insisting Abbey would sooner kill him than answer a phone call.[14] Twice he starts to bring up what happened at the con, and twice he swallows the words.[15]

Down the shoreline, David finds Paulo in tears.[16] Paulo asks him whether he’s even a good person. David hoists him into the air and spins him around as he lists everything wonderful about him. He finishes with “And that’s why I love you” and insists he’s never been more serious in his life.[17] Paulo works out what that might mean and bolts.[18]

He runs straight into Matt at the campfire and detonates, screaming that he’s not “fucking like that” and calling Matt a creep.[19] Matt, wounded but steady, says plainly that he doesn’t like Paulo that way.[20] Paulo apologizes almost immediately, admits he’s insecure and lost, and asks how Matt can be so open. He isn’t, Matt replies. He came out to his parents once and it went badly, and violent reactions like Paulo’s are why he still hides it: “I’m scared of what others might do to me.”[21]

Paulo breaks down, calling himself a worthless bully with no future, and Matt steadies him. He’s sixteen, he’s a good kid owning up to his mistakes, and he’ll always have Matt and Rachel behind him.[22] As the hot dogs go on the fire, Paulo suddenly hugs him tight, mumbling “I’m just testing something out, okay?” Matt tells him to take his time.[23]

Character dynamics

Daisy leans across the Burger-Tron table and slaps Abbey across the face, knocking his head to the side as the milkshake wobbles.
Daisy’s patience finally gives out at Burger-Tron.
  • Paulo and Matt: Paulo hasn’t known how to act around Matt since he found out Matt was gay at the end of Take Heart, and he spends most of this trip blushing and dodging before finally exploding at him.[24][2][19] They finally clear the air as Matt lays out his parents’ rejection and his fear of exactly this kind of reaction, and Paulo apologizes for real.[22] By the last page, Matt is the one person Paulo trusts with the question of who he is.[23]
  • Daisy and Paulo: Daisy has been Paulo’s most loyal defender, quick to excuse him however badly he behaves.[6] By the end of the call, that admiration is gone. She tells him she really looked up to him and is “so disappointed”,[13] and Paulo would rather let her believe the worst than admit that Abbey attacked him at the con.[15][25]
  • Abbey and Daisy: The flashbacks show a couple that was already coming apart quietly. Abbey is convinced he’s a burden, so he handles every family crisis alone, and Daisy’s reflex to excuse Paulo reads to him as her taking a bully’s side over her own boyfriend.[7][9] His parting shot about her always ending up on Michael’s side reaches back to the party in Happy Hour, where he watched a drunk Daisy cling to Mike and tear into Lucy.[11][26]
  • Madison and Jessica: A comfortable new couple who bonded over their shared hatred of pre-calc.[16] David blurts out Jessica’s old crush on Lucy and points out the resemblance between the two. Madison is left furious at possibly being “a replacement for SOME BITCH?!”,[27] and Veronica has said the insecurity sticks with her.[28]
  • Paulo and David: The boss-and-sidekick clowning has always run on real devotion from David’s side, and his “And that’s why I love you” is completely sincere.[17] Paulo’s panicked exit says more about Paulo than about David.[18] In fact, Veronica has said David knew he’d bounce back and wasn’t hurt by it.[29]

Trivia & observations

David grins broadly as he holds Paulo aloft and says "And that's why I love you".
Serious conversations with David involve a surprising amount of airtime.
  • Per Oliver’s commentary, the last twenty-five pages originally ran in a quick, sketchy style because the page buffer ran out ahead of the authors’ overseas trip. Veronica redrew all twenty-five of those pages in the finished style in late 2018 for Volume Six, and the redrawn versions are what the site shows today.[8]
  • The phone call between Paulo and Daisy was extended by two pages in 2023, which is why a few pages in the middle of a 2015 chapter carry a 2023 date. Per the commentary, Veronica felt the scene needed it.[30]
  • Daisy spends the call holding the Claret key-chain Paulo gave her, the gift he hid in her signed book at the end of Guest of Honor.[6][31]
  • David calls Paulo “Aibou” for the first time here, and the endearment stays in his vocabulary for years afterward.[32][33]
  • Veronica’s commentary heads off the obvious comparison: “Madison and Lucy aren’t complete clones, see Lucy loves gym the most because it allows her to kick balls into jerkface’s.. faces.”[16]
  • Veronica has said Paulo’s “security blanket” jab refers back to the events of Take Heart and shows how little he actually understands about Abbey and Daisy’s relationship.[13][34]

Related chapters

  • Guest of Honor: The convention day this chapter’s phone call keeps circling back to. Abbey cornered Paulo in a restroom there, choked him, and warned him to stay away from Daisy, and that is the story Paulo starts telling her twice and never finishes.
  • Take Heart: Abbey’s bitterness about the flower “THAT WASN’T EVEN FROM YOU” started here, when Paulo’s charity rose reached Daisy signed with his own name. It’s also where Paulo tried his loud matchmaking to patch the couple back up, the very thing he pleads in his own defense on the call.
  • Ice Block: The beach trip carries straight on the next morning, with Paulo working up the nerve to ask David about “last night” before an ice cream truck derails the conversation entirely.

References

  1. ↑ Chapter 90: Golden Hour, page 1
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Chapter 90: Golden Hour, page 3
  3. ↑ Chapter 90: Golden Hour, page 5
  4. ↑ Chapter 90: Golden Hour, page 11
  5. ↑ Chapter 90: Golden Hour, page 14
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Chapter 90: Golden Hour, page 15
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Chapter 90: Golden Hour, page 19
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Chapter 90: Golden Hour, page 20
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Chapter 90: Golden Hour, page 23
  10. ↑ Chapter 90: Golden Hour, page 24
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Chapter 90: Golden Hour, page 25
  12. ↑ Chapter 90: Golden Hour, page 26
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 Chapter 90: Golden Hour, page 28
  14. ↑ Chapter 90: Golden Hour, page 29
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Chapter 90: Golden Hour, page 30
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 Chapter 90: Golden Hour, page 31
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 Chapter 90: Golden Hour, page 36
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 Chapter 90: Golden Hour, page 37
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 Chapter 90: Golden Hour, page 38
  20. ↑ Chapter 90: Golden Hour, page 39
  21. ↑ Chapter 90: Golden Hour, page 41
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 Chapter 90: Golden Hour, page 42
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 Chapter 90: Golden Hour, page 44
  24. ↑ Chapter 81: Take Heart, page 33
  25. ↑ Chapter 89: Guest of Honor, page 35
  26. ↑ Chapter 80: Happy Hour, page 29
  27. ↑ Chapter 90: Golden Hour, page 32
  28. ↑ “Ask response on Madison’s grudge against Paulo”. 2019-06-28.
  29. ↑ “Ask response on David’s reaction to Paulo running off”. 2019-10-23.
  30. ↑ Chapter 90: Golden Hour, page 12
  31. ↑ Chapter 89: Guest of Honor, page 48
  32. ↑ Chapter 90: Golden Hour, page 35
  33. ↑ Chapter 119: New Year’s Resolution, page 38
  34. ↑ “Ask response on Paulo’s “security blanket” accusation”. 2019-05-19.
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