The Prologue of the play opens with two characters, Pete and Ginette, (both of whom appear again in the Interlogue and Epilogue) “sitting on a bench in Pete’s yard” on a “clear, cold Friday night in the middle of winter in a small mythical town […] called Almost, Maine” (15). This initial setting of the town, season, and time of night will remain constant throughout the scenes to follow, though the characters and more specific settings within the town will shift.

Pete and Ginette are initially “not sitting close to each other at all,” and are silent for several beats, looking up at the stars and occasionally glancing surreptitiously at each other (15). Finally, Ginette breaks the silence, intending to say, “I love you,” but faltering, until she finally gets it out several lines of dialogue later. There is a very long pause, in which “Pete is dealing with what [Ginette] has just said to him. She is dealing with Pete’s response—or lack thereof—to what she has just said” (16). When Ginette seems to have decided she made a mistake, Pete finally says he loves her, too, and “she and Pete feel JOY!” (16).