The man is invited to the woman’s fiftieth birthday party, arranged by their fellow neighbors. He wants to ask his wife what he should get as a birthday gift, which makes him think about how his wife left him a few weeks ago and moved out due to her unwillingness to put up with him any further. He recalls the other night when he drove out to her new neighborhood and watched her on her balcony one night. Eventually, he calls his wife, and she tells him to get something pretty, as women like pretty things.

The man goes to Kay Jewelers to find a birthday gift. He explains to the clerk that he wants to get something nice but not too nice, after which she shows him a seashell pendant. It makes him think about the warmth of summer, as well as how the woman once said that she likes the beach. He gets it and asks the clerk to gift-wrap it. Afterward, the clerk says he should come back and pay her a visit sometime.

Before the birthday party, the man grooms himself and dresses up nicely. He goes there, greets all of his neighbors, and starts catching up with all of them. One of them asks him about his wife, to which another neighbor says it’s taboo to talk about her right now. He apologizes and offers to get the man a drink, which he accepts. Soon enough, the man runs into the woman, who says again that it’s her fiftieth, which makes everyone want to talk about mortality.

Looking at the gift table, the man sees that everyone else has just given envelopes rather than birthday gifts. Nervously, he ponders whether he should keep the seashell pendant, but he knows he can’t do much with it himself. He sneaks over to the gift table to set it down and then rejoins his neighbors for conversation. Soon enough, everyone starts dancing, and the man feels a renewed sense of youthful joy.

However, the man’s gift is spotted, and everyone tries to figure out who gave it. They realize it’s the man, after which the woman is asked to open it. When she sees what it is, she finds it so beautiful and thoughtful that she cries. The man prides himself on having remembered her fondest memory, while the woman’s husband is just awkwardly there.

The next morning, the man tells his wife what happened, and she says that it’s that exact kind of tone-deaf embarrassment which caused her to leave him in the first place. Furthermore, she says that he might have reminded the woman how unhappy she is with her own husband. The man asks her if that’s what happened between them, to which she says that it was. Finally, she says that she’s going to file for a divorce.

Later that day, the woman’s husband comes up to the man’s house to invite him to shoot skeet. The next day, they go to the nearby shooting center. The woman’s husband is adept at shooting clay targets, whereas the man has never shot before. Eventually, the man gets the hang of it and proves to be a natural. Soon enough, the woman’s husband demands an apology for what the man did, as it’s caused a rift between him and the woman. The man doesn’t apologize, instead saying that the woman is unhappy by her husband’s fault. Out of upsetness, the woman’s husband points his gun at the man, but there’s only a sound with no shell.

From then on, the man repeatedly tells all his neighbors at the country club about what happened at the shooting center once in a while. He says that he merely laughed in the woman’s husband’s face. A few days after, he goes back to Kay Jewelers to ask out the clerk, and they head out to coffee after her shift. At a coffee shop, he learns that she was widowed decades ago and never remarried. They both bond over their own brokenness and how they could fit together.

Before the man can hold the clerk’s hand at their table, the woman suddenly appears. She gives him a big hug, and the clerk immediately feels hurt. She tells him how sweet he is, and he is taken by her affection, a kind of affection which he has never gotten once from anyone in his life, all the while the clerk stands up and walks away. From then on, he will think about the woman’s hug, as well as the clerk’s pain.