“Like I don’t know that,” Frankie said.
“Do you?” Ezra said more loudly, and now she could see this was about significantly more than his stupid girlfriend.
“Of course I do. You know, you don’t know anything about me anymore either.”
“Fine!” Ezra said. “That is actually totally fine! Have you noticed you haven’t heard from me? That, like, I haven’t messaged you on AOL?”
“I’m not evenonAOL messenger!” Frankie said, as if that made her side of the argument more potent.
“Jesus Christ,” Ezra yelled, louder than Frankie had ever heard for the whole of their two-year relationship. He really was different; he really had changed. “Why are we still doing this? I have a girlfriend I love, and a job offer in San Francisco—”
“I don’t know, Ezra, whyarewe still doing this?” Frankie yelled back. “I spent the past ten years of my life in total bliss without you!” This wasn’t true, but Frankie didn’t think Ezra would be any the wiser.
Above them, they heard the window open again, and they both cocked their heads north and quieted. Three books came barreling down, spines open, pages flapping, followed by, “Get a fucking room, lovebirds!” then the window slamming shut.
Frankie pressed herself against the brick facade, but Ezra raised his hands over his head, then realized he was still in the line of fire, when another book—a hardcover, no less—smackedhim right in the middle of his shoulder blades, sending him barreling forward and straight into her.
They both froze. Ezra’s hands flattened against the brick wall on both sides of her face, Frankie’s wide eyes matching his right in front of her. She felt his breath on her cheek, and for a moment, they breathed together, and honest to God, Frankie wondered if he were going to kiss her. Or she was going to kiss him. She didn’t know where the instinct came from. It felt animalistic, reckless, totally inappropriate, and yet it rose up in her all the same.
After a beat or two, Ezra broke the spell and gingerly eased a step back.
“You know what, Frankie? This isn’t working. I don’t know what happened last night. I don’t care that my grandmother’s ring is tethered to your finger. I don’t know if we’re married, and I don’t know where our phones are, and I don’t know if we slept together—though I pray we did not.” He took a slow breath, and she narrowed her eyes at him. “But what I do know is that this is a waste of my time. I’ve grown up enough to know that. I have to go find Mimi. I have to go clean up. I have a million better things to do than stand here relitigating my past with a girl who never wanted to be a part of my future.”
He brushed himself off and took a long look at her, and Frankie felt her insides roil. He reached into his left side pocket and pulled out the keys, tossing them to her. On instinct, she held her hand out and caught them.
“Here,” he said. “I’m done with this. You solve it because you always know everything anyway.”
Frankie started to protest because she hadneversaid that, that she knew everything; she just did happen to know a lot about a lot of things, and she wouldn’t apologize for it! But Ezra talked over her.
“If you find out we’re married, send me the divorce papers. Then we can finally be done.Forever.” He spun back around and kept going.
Frankie leaned against the wall because the ground no longer felt level. And then for the first time in her life, Frankie Harriman watched Ezra Jones walk away.
SIXTEEN
Ezra
Ezra was pretty sure that a grapefruit-sized bruise was blossoming in the middle of his back where the book had careened and knocked the wind out of him. As soon as he rounded the bend from the alley, he hunched over and tried to breathe. His brain was moving at a million miles an hour, and he couldn’t find his focus: there were too many things to home in on. His pain. Mimi. The security guards.Frankie.Goddammit, Frankie!
He hadn’t wanted to walk away; he knew that, theoretically, two minds in this situation were better than one, but he just couldn’t take it. Couldn’t takeher. Frankie Harriman was honestly the most exasperating person in the history of the world, and though he was intuitive enough to know that this was part of their attraction—he was a straight arrow, and she was a moving target—he was also intuitive enough to know what he could and couldn’t handle now. Also, he had the unnerving sense back there that she was, inexplicably, about to kiss him,and just as unsettling, he realized that he wouldn’t have protested.
Mimi.Ezra forced himself to refocus. Mimi was exactly what he could handle. Mimi wasn’t uncomplicated; that wouldn’t be fair to say. But she certainly wasn’t Frankie, and though he didn’t think he was running from their history, he did have to admit, doubled over and grimacing outside the upperclassman dorm, that for now, simply beingnot Frankiewould have been sufficient enough to sayI do.
Of course, there were plenty of other reasons why he wanted to marry Mimi, just as their initial questionnaire had told them: they both wanted three kids; they both liked the same snack at the movies: a large buttered popcorn with Milk Duds dumped in; they both (remarkably) liked the same movies too: brainy period pieces preferably with British accents. They agreed on where they would live (the suburbs outside the city), on dogs or cats (dogs, always; besides, Ezra was allergic to cats), they both were early risers and were polite enough to tiptoe around if the other was sleeping. He took window seats, and she preferred aisles; he liked the soft middle of bread rolls, and she exclusively ate the crusts. It was true that of late, she was always on the go—to a Datify rock climbing event or a softball game in Central Park or a Rollerblade 5K—and that she had started hinting that Ezra needed more hobbies. But Ezra had hobbies—he liked reading, and he still ran in the park at sunrise whenever his company wasn’t required alongside hers at the gym, and if he really wanted to get into it (he didn’t), he’d given up his one passion—poker, cards, blackjack—because she’d asked him. So he begrudgingly tried rock climbing and attended an event at the Met with her (opera was really not histhing) and he put on a smile because that made Mimi smile, and really, it wasn’t all that hard, even if he was exhausted by it all too. He literally showed up for her because she figuratively showed up for him, and honestly, in a world where plenty of people didn’t, Ezra thought that was really something. He was thirty-two; he wanted to be married. He’d wanted to be married really his whole adult life. He found a woman he loved who wanted to build a life that echoed his own. That felt magnificent.
Admittedly, Mimi was puritanical about Ezra’s gambling. For one thing, Mimi liked control. She found beingout of control, she’d say with a grimace, unattractive. On this, she and Ezra actually agreed! They were both so measured that nothing about their lives felt complicated. But Mimi also explained that for a span in her childhood, her uncle lost his house, had to move into their garage. He couldn’t stop, Mimi said: he went to the track; he routinely lost money on sports all the way down to Triple-A baseball; he’d try to lure her dad or her brothers into any sort of bet: who could run down the sidewalk the fastest, who could beat him at Donkey Kong, who could drink a can of Tab in under thirty seconds? He didn’t have to be at a card table in Vegas to feed his habit, Mimi said. It was everywhere; it was all-consuming. It was, she noted, a cautionary tale.
Ezra wanted to explain that he was different. His wasn’t an impulse; he wasn’t an addict. He just happened to know how to do it, how to win, and besides, it wasn’t her money to lose (though he rarely, rarely lost). But the corners of her mouth turned down whenever they discussed it—going to Vegas for some blackjack or a casual poker night with his law schoolfriends (who he really didn’t see much of now anyway)—and Ezra didn’t want to argue. Avoiding the issue by agreeing with her felt like the best tack to take. It didn’t even feel like that big of a sacrifice—who can’t stop playing poker for the woman he loves? So though he had actually jump-started his career with his innate ability to count cards, win hands, read the room, he more or less stopped. No, he stopped. He sold his platform for more money than he ever imagined would come his way, and Google recruited him to build part of their back end if he were willing to relocate to San Francisco, and that was that. Poker was in his rearview mirror. Until last night, evidently.
The snow had begun to slow, and Ezra pushed himself upward and took a few steps east, then west, then east again. He didn’t want to be around when Frankie came to her senses and chased after him. He shook his head.Who was he kidding? Since when had Frankie been in the business of apologizing?Never.Never once.She was undoubtedly stewing back there, waiting for him to return and offer his own apologies.Well, he huffed to himself,no dice.
Ezra scooped up a handful of snow and molded it into a tight ball, then pressed it against his right eye. Instant relief. He moved it over to his left. Then his right. Then his left again, until the snow began to melt from his body heat and was leaving only frigid streaks down his cheeks. Still, he felt certain that his swelling was subsiding. He peered over his shoulder toward the alley. Still, Frankie hadn’t emerged.What was she doing back there now?He told himself not to care.
So he simply began to walk. Away from her. The more distance he put between them, the better. But where to go?Waverly’s.He could try there. Joni from the coffee shop had atleast placed him there. He felt his hands shaking and squeezed them into tight fists, as if that could stop him from trembling. He hadn’t even gambled in college. After Ezra moved into Henry’s apartment, his brother had been the one to invite him to his weekly card night, where they mostly played poker but sometimes switched it up to blackjack. At first, the table ribbed him on being such a newbie, and they were more than happy to take what little money he had before he inevitably folded early and then nursed his Amstels for the rest of the evening. But something happened in the weeks that followed. Ezra felt his brain percolating, like a twinge somewhere in his cerebrum that was awakening. He went to Barnes & Noble and picked up a book on card counting, and discovered that he could teach himself strategies in a night. Easy, no sweat. And from there, it was as if he couldseethe cards, move all the numbers around in his head, and had a sixth sense about who was playing what and which cards were left to be laid down. And then he became unbeatable. Not right away, of course. Poker and especially blackjack weren’t like addition where simple mastery meant you knew everything. But eventually, a few months later, yes. Then Henry took him to Atlantic City, and then they started playing high-stakes games when he had breathers from law school, and one thing led to another. He didn’t have a problem (other than getting caught in Vegas that one time). He merely loved it.He loved it.The rush, the assuredness, the way his brain hummed along like a machine that was built for it.
Three years later, the summer his mom’s cancer returned, the summer he was set to take the bar, he sat in his boyhood bedroom and read some books on coding, which was still the Wild West, and built a new way to play with strangers fromall over the world. And then he sold it, and now, he never had to work a day in his life again. But he wanted to. He loved to work, and maybe that was one thing that he and Frankie had in common. They both understood that the work was part of what defined them: he just never thought she’d be a talent manager when shewasthe actual talent. God, she was so fucking talented. He hated that he still remembered this so clearly about her, even if he’d only seen her play two times in the entirety of their relationship. She was that good; it was that memorable.
Steinway Auditorium. There was something that was nicking a part of him from last night. But maybe he was just caught up in the memory of Frankie sitting at a piano bench from all those years ago, the first time he saw her play. He tucked his chin into the neck of his parka and braced against a blast of wind.No, he was headed to Waverly’s. Maybe his beloved Nokia had fallen under the poker table.
