So Ezra stared up at the ceiling for a long minute and said: “Do you ever miss it? Do you ever feel like you should have made different choices?”
And Frankie, unequivocally, emphatically said: “No.”
So Ezra nodded, and then, because he was a man who honored his promises, he never said another word, not when she and her mom were fighting a few months later that summerin the Hamptons when he visited, not when she was starting her job search their senior year and he could have applied to law school at UCLA or USC or anywhere that they could have lived parallel lives. And years later, it dawned on Frankie that maybe if she hadn’t asked so much of him, maybe if he’d pushed her, they’d have found a better way to battle. Maybe a better way to love. But they didn’t; they hadn’t. And so the next time they did indeed fight, fully a year later, it was the one that broke them.
Today, Frankie stared at the girl whose room she’d crashed in last night, and the girl stared back, unwavering, her flip phone in her hand again, poised to call the cops.
“Look,” Frankie said, “I’m sure we can work this out.” She was tired, so goddamned tired. “What’s your name? I’m Frankie.”
After a long, skeptical pause, the girl said, “I’m Zoe.”
And Frankie said, “Great, Zoe, let’s make a deal. I absolutely must get the CD back. Technically, it’s stealing if you keep it.”
“Technically, it’s breaking and entering if I report it.”
Frankie felt her nostrils flare. She didn’t have time to waste here, and yet she couldn’t keep going without the disc.
“What do you want? Money?” She pulled out her pockets. “I have no money.”
Zoe tapped her foot and stared past Frankie thinking. Then: “If you need this so badly, then this is what I want: I want an apology.”
Frankie flexed her jaw. She could do that. What was so hard about doing that?
Zoe laughed, though Frankie could tell it was pitying, not humorous. It was true that Frankie Harriman was spectacularly bad at apologies, but so what. For her clients, she’d do anything.
“Fine,” Frankie said. “I’m sorry.”
Zoe laughed again and popped the CD out of the Discman, then threw it toward her. “That wasn’t really all that difficult, was it?”
It was, though Frankie didn’t know why it had to be.
“I’m keeping the Walkman,” Zoe added. “Consider it my overnight fee.”
“Sure, sure—” Frankie started, but then Zoe gazed off, distracted by something in the distance. Her eyes narrowed, and she jutted her head forward.
“Isn’t that your boyfriend?” she said, gesturing toward a building down the way. “I’ve changed my mind. I want to hear his side before I agree to anything about the cops.”
So Frankie looked where Zoe did, and there was Ezra, sitting on the steps of stupid Burton Library. Before she could protest, Zoe had mounted her bike, which had enormous treaded tires and pushed through the snow, and was headed toward him like a bullet, Frankie’s apology be damned.
TWENTY
Ezra
Sitting on the steps outside Burton, chewing on the security guard’s new information about the mistletoe, Ezra refused to believe that he had partaken in the events surrounding it, even if they were harmless fun. He suspected this was a lie he was telling himself because he had felt an inexplicable tug toward Frankie back in the alley, when they were pressed against the wall, and he had to stop himself from tilting forward and kissing her. Out of habit, out of nostalgia, he couldn’t say. He’d spent so many years trying to forget Frankie Harriman that now, he couldn’t come up with an answer to a question that he didn’t even know how to ask. He jiggled his toes to keep them warm and stuffed his hands further into his pockets. Gregory should be here any minute, at least if Ezra had calculated his biathlon time correctly.
He pushed to his feet and checked his watch again. Maybe he’d been too generous with Gregory’s physical fitness. Then he saw a figure careening toward him on a mountain bike,waving at him with a mittened hand. He couldn’t make out it if it were a man or a woman: all he saw were bright green earmuffs and loads of layers from the L.L.Bean catalog.
“Hey!” he heard her shout as she got closer. A woman. “Hey!”
She skidded in the snow and hopped off the bike in one fluid motion, then let it give way to gravity, the frame clattering against the steps and onto the ground.
At the sound of her voice, Ezra’s adrenaline kicked in, or maybe it was his fight-or-flight system.The girl from Homer with the pepper spray.He stumbled backward, tripping up the steps, scrambling for the door. If this girl were going to mace him a second time, he had to be better prepared. He honestly didn’t think his vision could take another dousing. It was possible, he thought as he swung the doors to Burton Library back open again and the heat from the lobby assaulted him, that he could go permanently blind.
The security guard looked up at the commotion.
“You get your visitor’s pass?” he said.
“Please,” Ezra panted. “You have to let me in. There’s a crazy person tailing me.” He felt wild; he felt reckless. He wondered if this was what Frankie felt like day-to-day. He wanted to recoil from himself, from this baser side of himself, but mostly what he wanted was to avoid being pepper-sprayed. It was incredible, he thought, how you could surprise yourself when the stakes were higher than you ever imagined. He prided himself on being collected, on being the port in a storm; he’d had to be so for his mom, and later, at the card table, and then at all times with Mimi, a couple always in control of themselves. But it turned out that there was only so much painhe could tolerate before his defenses broke down and he became animalistic. Just like Frankie.
