This Lullaby recap

Remy Starr manages her successful novelist mother's fifth wedding while preparing to leave for Stanford. Convinced by family history that love always fails, she dates controlled, suitable boys and breaks up before becoming vulnerable. Dexter Jones, an affectionate but disorganized musician, violates all her rules. What begins as an unwanted pursuit becomes Remy's most important relationship as she joins his circle of bandmates and allows him into her carefully ordered life. Her friends' romantic problems, her brother Chris's steady commitment to Jennifer Anne, and Barbara's new marriage reveal that neither cynicism nor optimism can eliminate risk. Frightened by how much Dexter matters, Remy ends the relationship and tries to return to emotional distance, only to find that detachment now feels like loss. Before leaving for college, she reconciles with Dexter and admits she loves him. They cannot promise permanence, but Remy accepts that uncertainty is part of attachment rather than a reason to refuse it.

Remy Starr has just finished high school and plans to leave for Stanford at summer's end. Before she can go, she must oversee the details of her mother Barbara's fifth wedding, this time to car dealer Don Davis. Years of watching Barbara fall in love and divorce have made Remy distrustful of permanence. Her musician father left before she knew him; his main legacy is a sentimental hit called "This Lullaby," which everyone else hears as romantic and Remy associates with abandonment. She applies strict rules to her own dating life, choosing manageable partners and ending relationships cleanly. Her brother Chris and his devoted girlfriend Jennifer Anne seem to follow a different model. During wedding errands Remy meets Dexter Jones, a messy, exuberant musician who declares his interest without fitting any of her requirements. She dismisses him, but his persistence and openness make him difficult to keep within the categories that usually let her stay in control.

Barbara and Don marry, adding another official beginning to the Starr family's history of relationships. Remy's close friends Lissa, Chloe, and Jess provide both support and competing evidence about love: they know her rules, but their own attachments cannot be solved as neatly as she claims. Dexter continues to appear in Remy's life. She meets his Truth Squad bandmates and sees the disorderly house, uncertain gigs, and strong friendships that form his world. His lack of polish embarrasses her, yet his warmth is not an act and his friends depend on one another in ways she respects. Remy begins spending time with him despite insisting that he is not her type. The relationship develops without the careful selection and emotional distance she usually maintains. Dexter takes her seriously while refusing to share her assumption that every romance should be planned around its ending, and Remy discovers that annoyance and attraction are becoming harder to separate.

Remy and Dexter become a couple, drawing her further into Truth Squad's improvised community. Dexter's habits still clash with her need for cleanliness, schedules, and control, but he is attentive and unashamed of caring for her. Their connection becomes less casual than Remy intended. Around them, Lissa's romantic difficulties reveal how limited Remy's standard instruction to leave can be when the person involved still has complicated feelings. Chris and Jennifer Anne's domestic seriousness also challenges Remy's belief that commitment is merely self-deception. Barbara's marriage to Don encounters the adjustments that follow a wedding, forcing mother and daughter to confront the difference between believing in love and doing the ordinary work of sustaining it. Remy continues to interpret every problem as advance notice of a breakup, but she also begins recognizing how often this interpretation protects her from having to risk trust. Dexter's place in her days is no longer easily removable.

As the date of Remy's departure approaches, her relationship with Dexter becomes more emotionally demanding. She can no longer describe him as simply another unsuitable summer boyfriend, because his friends, music, and affection have become part of her life. The prospect of distance intensifies her fear that he will eventually abandon or disappoint her. Rather than wait for an ending she cannot control, she falls back on her old strategy and damages the relationship herself. Dexter is hurt by her determination to treat genuine feeling as a mistake. The breakup does not restore Remy's former confidence. Attempts to resume a detached social life only make clear that she is comparing other possibilities with Dexter and that her rules have not prevented pain. At the same time, changes among her family and friends show that relationships can fail, recover, or take unexpected forms without confirming a single universal theory. Remy must decide whether being right about risk matters more than being honest about love.

Separated from Dexter, Remy finally sees that refusing vulnerability is itself a choice with consequences. Barbara and Don continue facing married life rather than allowing every conflict to repeat the family's established pattern. Chris and Jennifer Anne's commitment, and the less orderly choices made by Remy's friends, demonstrate that no set of rules can predict which bonds will endure. Remy acknowledges that she loves Dexter and that ending the relationship early did not make the feeling temporary or spare either of them. Before leaving for Stanford, she seeks him out and speaks without the calculated distance she once valued. Dexter accepts her return, and they reconcile. Neither can guarantee what college or separation will do to them, but Remy no longer requires certainty before permitting attachment. Her father's song remains tied to a father who left, yet its existence also proves that an imperfect love can leave something meaningful behind. Remy ends the summer prepared to enter college with Dexter in her life and with a more open understanding of love's risks.

After pushing Dexter away, Remy discovers that the emotional detachment she prized does not protect her from missing him or regretting the hurt she caused. The summer's other relationships also resist her simple rules: her friends make choices she cannot control, Chris and Jennifer Anne demonstrate genuine commitment, and Barbara and Don continue trying to build a marriage instead of treating conflict as automatic proof of failure. Remy finally admits that loving someone cannot be made safe by scheduling the end in advance. She seeks Dexter out and tells him honestly that her feelings are real. Their reconciliation does not offer a guarantee that the relationship will last forever, particularly with Remy preparing to leave for Stanford, but she accepts uncertainty rather than using it as a reason not to love him. Her father's lullaby no longer functions only as evidence of abandonment; Remy can recognize that an imperfect or unfinished love may still matter. She ends the summer willing to carry that change into college and to let Dexter be part of her future without demanding proof of its outcome.