Frankie was old enough now to know this, and April had saved her in so many small ways over that first year, when Frankie was still uncomfortable in her skin, still awkward with her identity, that she couldn’t bring herself to be cruel and say no to the bridesmaid request. Also, there was the kindness the day of graduation too—the no-questions-asked call to the taxi, the hug before the drive to the airport.
It wouldn’t be fair to say that she didn’t regret saying yes to the bridesmaid request: she did. But then she dialed Laila, who was asleep in her apartment in Charlotte and who said: “You think I want to wear a magenta taffeta gown? Sometimes we do things that we just don’t want to do for the people we love.” They hung up, and Frankie sat in the silence of her hotel room, like so many hotel rooms she’d sat in for the past few years, and wondered why she so often found herself alone. And maybe if she showed up for the people she really did love, she’d find herself less alone when it mattered. She wasn’t about to say any of this to Ezra though.
Frankie reached up and palmed the lump on her head, as if that could circumvent the blood flow. She thought of the time in Bangkok when she had gotten a concussion after she’d beaned her head against load-in equipment. There, she’d lain flat on a couch in the greenroom until her balance recalibrated, and after a few hours, her disorientation and spotty memory issues cleared up. She assumed the same would happen today.Besides, she didn’t want Ezra’s sympathies. He’d already suggested student health, and the last thing she wanted was to be stuck in an exam room with Ezra looking worried and making calming but annoying comments to whatever resident was on call from the Pittsfield hospital.
Then, from behind the pastry display, Frankie heard: “Excuse me, oh my God.”
She turned, and Ezra’s gaze followed. The barista swung open the little door from behind the counter and stepped forward.
“I just realized,” she said. “I didn’t, I mean, I didn’t recognize you from... well... your face. Are you ok?”
“Semi,” Ezra said, as his eyes watered and tears streaked down his cheeks. “Not great, I guess.”
“I didn’t make the connection at first,” she said. “But it’s you from last night.”
Frankie perked up, her headache momentarily forgotten. Ezra, best that he could, perked up too.
“You saw me last night?”
The barista—Frankie noticed now that she wore a name tag that readJoni—frowned.
“Well, yeah? Five card draw?”
“Is that some sort of drinking game?” Frankie interjected, because a drinking game would at least explain the situation. She hoped not though. What she hadn’t told Ezra because, well, there hadn’t been a great time to raise it, and besides, her booze habit was none of his business, is that she’d sworn off alcohol for two months now. She’d made the decision right before Halloween. She hadn’t checked herself in anywhere; she wasn’t attending AA. She didn’t, like, have a formal problem.But she found that at thirty-two, her hangovers were sticking like ugly bruises, and it was true that she could no longer party with Night Vixen, who was now a multimillion-dollar brand, the way she did early in her career. Someone needed to be the goddamned adult, someone needed, dare she say it, to be the Girl Scout! Frankie didn’t want it to be her, but alas, who else was it going to be?
“No, not a drinking game,” Joni replied to Frankie. “Poker.”
“Poker?” Ezra yelped. “I was playing poker?”
Frankie rested her elbows on the table, silently relieved that she hadn’t been driven to drink by Ezra Jones, and folded her hands beneath her face and parked her chin there. Nowthiswas getting interesting. She remembered that Ezra, at least the last she had heard, had been banned from the Bellagioandthe MGM when he was caught counting cards a year or two after college. She couldn’t remember the specifics (and hadn’t totally believed them, if she was being honest), only that Laila had been dating a mutual friend who spilled the details, and Laila, even though she was fully aware of Frankie’s moratorium on Ezra Jones news, called her up breathless to gossip all about it. The whole thing was lurid, shocking—Frankie kept saying, “No way, no way, thatcan’tbe right,” but indeed, it evidently was. A decade ago, Ezra had never had any sort of edge to him: he was a baseball hat–wearing, khaki pants, Boy Scout kind of guy. In fact, Frankie remembered now, he had been an actual Boy Scout until his freshman year in high school when Henry, older and significantly cooler, pulled him aside at Christmas and said:Dude, you gotta quit, ok? No one will ever make out with you if you don’t.You couldn’t judge a book by its cover, but with Ezra, you kind of could. He wasnice, he wassmart, he wasall-American handsomein the way that suburban Philly boys could be in 1987, and he was the sort of committed that most girls wanted. He was Bruce Springsteen, not Axl Rose.
“I think you have the wrong guy,” Ezra said. “I don’t play poker.”
“You play poker,” Frankie interjected. “At least last I heard.”
“Not anymore I don’t.” He waved a hand as if to end the discussion, and Frankie was honest to God a little turned-on by his dismissiveness.
“No, it was definitely you.” Joni hesitated. “Ezra, right?”
If Ezra’s face hadn’t been so mangled, Frankie was certain she would have seen the blood rise to his cheeks. As it was, he was already a piggish shade of pink.
“Was I there?” Frankie asked.
“You don’t remember if you were there?” Joni said, not unkindly, rather just because it was a reasonable question. “But... I’m not sure? We were over at Waverly’s—”
“Waverly’s... the pool hall? That’s still around?” Frankie said.
At this Joni looked even more perplexed.
“We went to school here,” Ezra offered. “But we haven’t gotten around to exploring just yet.”
“Oh! Cute. Married college sweethearts.”
“Oh no—” Ezra started to explain.
“So we were at Waverly’s, not Lemonhead?” Frankie talked over him. “Because I was definitely at Lemonhead.” She thought again of Laila and wished she’d paid better attention to the last name of the girl she was crashing with. At least then she couldcall directory assistance and track her down to sleuth out the messy spiral of their evening.
Her phone, she needed her phone, where was her phone? She had it on her last night in the elevator when she’d locked eyes with Ezra. Had she and Laila even made it to the rehearsal dinner? Had Ezra? Some part of her brain tingled—she imagined her neurons waking up after being sucker punched—and she tried to lean in and pay attention. Why was she thinking she’d been on—no, this didn’t seem possible. Had she participated in... a scavenger hunt? Frankie thought she must be hallucinating now. Never in her wildest dreams would she do such a thing. Even for April. So why was it prickling at her subconscious, why did it feel so real?
