On the roof, Ben says he wants to tell her the truth, and the fact is that he never had a brother. He had to write something, so that's what he wrote. He doesn't know why he wanted to tell her, but it must be because she provokes him and makes him think about things that he never thinks about. She does all this without even saying anything, but just by the way she looks at him. He says that the "absolute truth" is that the reason he wanted to come to New York was that "it was a pretty good chance to get as far away from everything as possible. My parents, my family, all that crap. And yeah, on top of it, I lied to get in. So, basically, I'm a shallow loser." He's also sorry that he's not the guy she thought he was. She came so far to get to know him, because she thought he was so great, and he's not. He asks what she's thinking. She says she's never made "a substantial choice" in her life, and that's why she came. She thought it was him, but he's "just the excuse." She smiles and says that when she came up to him at graduation, it was "like a high, like a drug," because she had never done something like that before. She says she means that she wasn't sober, and so the first big decision she made turned out to be "just stupid and embarrassing" and something she'll look back on with regret. She shrugs and says, "And that's that." Ben says he wanted to make sure everything is okay with them, especially if she's leaving. Felicity says he didn't have to do that, and Ben says that he did. They both look out over the city. Ben comments that he can't wait to see what the city looks like when it snows.

Felicity is sitting on her bed as Knoll tells her this is his big speech. He says, "You mustn't leave this school." What nineteen-year-old uses words like "mustn't"? He tells her that this is a "life struggle" and "a challenge" and that if she leaves, she will be confronted with the same issue five or ten years from now. She'll be a doctor, married, with kids, and it will "grip [her] like a blast of freezing cold air" and she'll ask, "What the hell is my life?" He says she'll be able to trace it back to this very moment when "that geek R.A." gave her these four words of advice: "Stay in New York or perish." Knoll corrects himself to say, "Five, six words." He finally shuts up and Felicity starts about five different sentences before deciding to go with, "You don't have feelings for me, do you?" Knoll says, "Me? Honestly? Yeah." Felicity looks disappointed. Knoll asks to give her one more piece of advice, and that is that she shouldn't "fundamentally disregard" everything he's said because of his feelings. Felicity nods.