“If it were my tennis instructor, at least I’d understand,” Frankie had howled. “You’ve never seen Fred!”
They laughed until Ezra’s mom needed him—she was in remission now but only just, and relied on Ezra when her energy was low, and he said, “Hey, I gotta go, but you know, I just realized that I didn’t even know you played piano.”
“Oh,” Frankie said. “Yeah. Just one of those things that all kids outgrow, you know? It’s not really part of my deal anymore.”
“Same time tomorrow?” Ezra asked before hanging up, and Frankie, staring into darkened apartment windows in the building across the street—the whole of Park Avenue fled town for the summer—responded simply, “Yes.”
Frankie didn’t know what to expect, come fall. Over the summer, she had relied on Laila for relationship advice. Laila was back home in Atlanta working at Orange Julius during the day (You don’t even want to see my uniform, she’d whined) and babysitting at night, so once she put her charges to sleep, she would call Frankie collect, and they would dig into every detail, every sentence, every nuance. Laila was more experienced in the ways of love; she’d had a high school boyfriend and also dated someone for most of her freshman year before she dumped him after he got so drunk that he streaked naked as part of a fraternity pledge prank. So whenever Frankie worried she was wildly misreading Ezra’s intentions, Laila would soothe her like she knew everything, and Frankie, uncharacteristically, believed her.
Back on campus that fall, Frankie, Laila, and April unpacked their bags and boxes and met in the mail room of thedorm for their first night out. She hadn’t seen Ezra, and she didn’t know his phone number on campus, and she felt too vulnerable to just show up and knock. So the three of them had headed to Lemonhead. The night was warm and star speckled, and as they made their way through campus, the optimism of a new year and new possibilities hung in the air. Everyone felt it. Even Frankie.
“This is going to beour year!” Laila had screamed into the open sky.
“Fuck yeah!” a lacrosse bro screamed back from across Middie Walk.
April had turned and curtseyed just as Frankie was flipping him off. They laughed about it all the way to the bar.
Frankie was three beers deep when her bladder pressed against the waist of her Levi’s. Laila was on the dance floor, and April was flirting with a boy a year behind them who she’d made out with a few times last spring. The AC had broken, so everyone was sticky and shiny, but none of it mattered: there was a joy at being back together, a joy at the possibility the new school year held. Frankie squeezed through the crowd to the bathroom. A new song came on, one that would empty the dance floor or push bodies closer together, depending on how drunk or how frisky any of them were. Frankie heard Bono wailI can’t live, with or without you.
She looked in the mirror and felt the music penetrate all the way down, like it was changing her on a cellular level. It wasn’thermusic that mattered, it wasanymusic that mattered, she thought, and she didn’t regret for a moment that she had abandoned chasing the genius of someone like Bono when itwas so much easier to listen rather than create. After spending the entirety of her childhood with only a singular goal, bebetter, bethe best—a goal that too often wasn’t even her own—she never regretted walking away. Her world could still be filled with noise, with melody, even if it wasn’t of her own making. Her parents hadn’t understood this; Fred hadn’t understood this. But Frankie did, and that’s all that mattered. She suspected Ezra might too, but what if he didn’t? What if he pushed her just like her parents, shamed her the way that they had when she’d quit, nagged her the way that they still did now? It was nearly impossible to be in the same room with her parents without the tension of her choice cutting between them. Frankie didn’t want to ruin the one pure thing in her life, the one pure person, so this was her secret to keep.
Bono wailed again, his voice clear even through the bathroom door. Frankie was so moved, she almost started to cry, just standing there, washing her hands, listening to his perfect tenor. Then the door swung open.
“Frankie,” Ezra had said, like a gasp, like he’d searched the world over for her. Frankie drank him in. He was skinnier and tanner than when she last saw him in May. The cut of his jaw looked sharper, the blaze in his eyes felt acute.
“In the flesh,” Frankie had said, uncharacteristically shy. “Have you been looking for me?”
“Yes,” he said, catching his breath.
“Where?” she asked, moving forward.
“Everywhere,” he said. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.” And then he’d pressed her back against the porcelain sink, pausing just long enough to meet her gaze. And with nohesitation, no ounce of self-doubt, he’d kissed her. Exactly like the Ezra Jones she’d come to love.
“Frankie,” he’d managed, his voice husky, almost broken, then again, “Frankie.”
He ran his lips over her neck, down her collarbone, and Frankie dipped her head back, electricity running through her like a current she knew she was going to be unable to stop, like an addiction from which she wouldn’t recover.
Ezra’s hands were all over her, making up for the summer spent connected by nothing but a phone line. His fingers wound their way under her shirt, over her bra, and then she wasn’t wearing a bra at all.
“Jesus,” he’d said. “You are so fucking beautiful.”
Then his mouth had covered her right breast, and Frankie moved her hips closer to his, urgency coursing through her. Sex had always been casual, distant, but now sheneededEzra in a way she never had. The button fly of her jeans unpopped—pop pop pop pop pop—and then his fingers were inside her underwear, and Frankie gasped at how he set her ablaze. He lifted her onto the sink, and his fingers sank deeper inside her. “Ezra,” she managed. “Ezra...” She reached for him but he shifted ever so slightly away.
“Not yet, not here,” he’d said. “First, let me do everything I’ve been thinking about all summer. To you.”
And so she’d let him. With her arms around his shoulders, he’d explored every last inch of her there. And even now, after they’d ruined it all, Frankie remembered that it was the most solid thing that she’d ever held on to her whole life through.
TWELVE
Ezra
Ezra found Frankie on the floor of the ladies’ room. Her eyes were closed, and she was leaning against the wall, and for a moment, he worried she was unconscious.
“Frankie,” he whispered and nudged her shoulder. “Frankie!”
Her eyes fluttered open, and he squatted down to her level.
“What happened? Are you ok?”
