"I love you" is the first line of the second chapter, which begins with the narrator's declaration of love for Viola. The narrator asks her to say it to him, but she refuses, saying that she has to get up early the next morning to go to bed. She says that she will say it again the next time she says it, and the narrator promises to do so. Viola tells the narrator that she is in the third year of her studies at the university, and that she cannot wait to see her friend from school, who is from an upper-class family. She tells him that he is her first boyfriend, and she is embarrassed that she did not tell him about it when she broke off the first-year relationship with him. She asks the narrator what his first boyfriend is like, and he tells her that it is a "hottie" who looks just like Viola's first boyfriend. Viola asks if there is anyone like that in the world, and if she is too embarrassed to tell them about it, like she was when she was a teenager. She then asks if the girl she ran away with was too embarrassed to share her secret with them, or if she herself was too shy to share it. She wonders if anyone like her is out there, too shrewd to reveal her secret to them.