And his brain really did go blank then, as he found himself kissing her back, unsure at first, then desperate, hungry. And he didn’t want it to stop because it felt just like it used to and that was comforting, delicious, soul affirming, and then it felt nothing like it used to—because Frankie was a stranger now, and that’s when he came to his senses. He opened his eyes and pressed her back gently and said, “No, I mean, I can’t.” He paused. Tried to breathe. “Shit, this is such a mess.”
And Frankie looked as confused as he felt, like she didn’t know what had come over her. But it passed quickly, and honestly, Ezra wasn’t even sure if he were seeing something he wanted to, something that wasn’t even there. Because then she comported herself and said, “Sure, sorry. It was just... I don’t know. An experiment.” Which of course it was to Frankie, Ezra thought. Always cavalier with his heart.
He started forward again, and she followed. They walked side by side in silence, the crunch of the snow and a car alarm off in the distance their only company. He should say something, he knew. He should tell her that she couldn’t just kiss him, she couldn’t just do something reckless like that. An experiment! He should say that he loved Mimi and he was faithful and loyal and maybe she couldn’t understand that, but she needed to respect it all the same. But Ezra found that he didn’t have it in him right now. He also found that he hadn’t minded the kiss, which was just as troubling as all the rest of it.
He pressed on, back toward Burton, his eyes on his Sambas, her eyes on her Docs. Then he glanced up and stopped cold. Frankie kept going, lost in her own thoughts, then realized he wasn’t beside her and stopped as well.
“Holy shit,” Ezra said, his heart flying, his pulse skyrocketing. Because there was Gregory, and indeed, his nose was swollen and pink. But there beside him was—again, Ezra had to ensure that he wasn’t hallucinating—but no,there was Mimi.
Ezra forgot about the kiss and Frankie standing beside him wearing his grandmother’s ring and rushed forward.
“Look who I ran into in the lobby,” Gregory said dryly. “She wanted to come find you too.”
Ezra froze for a beat before Mimi made a face and he realized that he hadn’t hugged her, he hadn’t kissed her hello. He swooped in and lifted her off her feet. When he rested her back on the ground, he noticed that she looked uncharacteristically rough. Her skin was blotchy; she had bags under her eyes. Ezra wasn’t judging. Ezra didn’t care. His plan was back on, the proposal still a possibility!
“I’m sorry,” she said. “They got me on a direct flight this morning.” She gestured to the snow. “I guess you can’t mess with God.” She managed a smile that was perfectly beguiling, and if Ezra didn’t know better (he told himself not to know better), he’d believe her.
Because somewhere in the back of Ezra’s mind, which was both muddled and jumping like a live wire now, he remembered that this was a lie. That her flight had taken off and landed on time yesterday. But maybe he’d gotten that wrong. Maybe the American Airlines website had been wrong. It’s not like technology was always right! Ezra didn’t actually believe that: technology was almost always right—which was part of the reason he’d been so stressed about Y2K and why Google was knocking on his door. But he was so awash in relief, so overjoyed that Mimi was here, at Middleton, and that—this was important—she was not Frankie, and that everything was going to be ok, that he told himself another untruth: that he’d been mistaken about her flight because Mimi would never intentionally deceive him. And he had his own deceits, so what was one more lie when so many had already been told? He’d just kissed his ex-girlfriend! Couldn’t they all agree to ignore the various misdeeds and wounds from the past day and just move on? Wouldn’t that be the easiest solution?
Gregory looked from Ezra to Frankie to Mimi and back to Ezra again. He appeared decidedly less thrilled than Ezra would have hoped from a dear friend who knew he was set to propose to the theoretical love of his life. Then Ezra remembered the gold band on his left ring finger and wondered if that had anything to do with it. Mimi hadn’t yet noticed, so heshoved his hand in his pants pocket and wiggled it off with his thumb. He felt his anxiety spike to level ten again, just as he was smiling at the one thing, the one person, who should have calmed him.
Frankie took a quick step backward, intuitively seeming to understand that this situation did not call for her presence, but inadvertently tripped over a loose brick in the walkway.
“Shit!” she yelped, then quieted, as if she hadn’t meant to draw attention, as if she were an interloper. It was only then that Mimi seemed to focus on the woman who was standing behind Ezra and certainly then that she registered who exactly it could be. Ezra figured her Doc Martens and wild hair were unavoidable giveaways: Mimi knew he didn’t travel with that type of company, not because he minded, but because the Upper East Side set of her friends (who were now his friends) were the ballet slipper and chunky-highlight types. Most of them had hair that looked exactly like Jennifer Aniston’s, and Ezra wondered just now, possibly for the first time, why they all wanted to resemble one another. Frankie scrambled to her feet, and the four of them stood there silently, tensely, like any small movement or quiet word would turn the whole situation combustible.
Finally, Gregory shook his head and said, “Déjà vu,” then plodded to the phone booth on the corner to call a cab.
All the lines in Mimi’s face had shifted downward into a scowl. But Ezra knew she didn’t understand Gregory’s reference, the “déjà vu” of it all; Ezra knew that whatever she was peeved about, it couldn’t have been the full truth. Because he had never told her, he’d barely told anyone beside his mom,Henry, and Gregory, that he’d gotten on bended knee right here, outside Burton Library, and asked Frankie Harriman to marry him. And that his proposal would be one of the last things he’d say to her, because from there, it all went to shit. At least until last night. Possibly including last night too.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Frankie
Gregory sat up front with the driver, so the three of them—Frankie, Ezra, and Mimi—were squished in the back. Frankie wondered if she were expected to make small talk, but Ezra glared and then blinked furiously at her when she asked if Mimi’s flight had gone smoothly, so now she just fidgeted with her hands and listened to the radio, which was playing the top songs of the year, counting down to number one. Frankie knew that Night Vixen’s summer banger would be somewhere in the top five, and strikingly, this brought her no joy.
She tried not to think about what had just happened—that she and Ezra Jones had kissed, no, they had made out—made out!—smack in the center of Middie Walk. She hadn’t been planning on doing it; she certainly didn’t think it through, and even if she had, she wasn’t expecting Ezra to reciprocate with such heady commitment. But she supposed that she’d been curious if it would feel like it used to, if he would taste like he used to. It did. He did. And then she found that she didn’t wantto stop, so she didn’t. She pulled back only because he pushed her away. Frankie wanted to talk to him about all of this, sheneededto talk to him about all of this. But now, here was Mimi.
Ezra’s leg was bouncing beside her, jittery and taking on a life of its own. A decade ago, she’d have placed her hand on his thigh, a weight to remind him that she was there, that he should breathe. Now, she waited for Mimi to do the same, but she never did. Instead, she regaled them with calamities of her trip: the canceled flight, the night at the airport Holiday Inn, the middle seat by the toilet this morning.
Ezra, Frankie could tell, was trying to be engaged, but he kept turning his head toward her window, his attention elsewhere. Maybe it was because of the kiss. Maybe it was because of the ring that was still stuck on Frankie’s finger. Maybe it was because of his hangover. Maybe he was nervous because now he had to pull off the turn-of-the-century proposal, and after last night’s shit show, he was beginning to doubt that he could pull off anything smoothly. Frankie thought it might be any one of those things—but she reminded herself that Ezra’s problems weren’t her problems anymore. She again tried to quell the instinct to palm his thigh.
Frankie took a long look at Mimi, who was not what she was expecting, though she didn’t know what she was expecting, to be honest. She was beautiful. Certainly. Striking with green eyes and red hair and freckles across both cheeks. This reminded Frankie of Ezra’s own band of freckles, that crescent moon that spanned from his left eye to his ear. They would have adorable children, she knew. But there was something about Mimi that repelled Frankie. And it wasn’t that Frankie was jealous, though it was possible she was jealoustoo, which surprised her. But it was something else, something familiar: a layer beneath the surface that Frankie knew too well from LA, from nightclubs and fandom and plenty of circles around the globe with superstars; a frenetic, hungry energy that could be passed off as sociability but in reality was too often desperation. Frankie listened to Mimi ramble about the perils of her trip, seeking reassurance from Ezra, who kept starting sentences and letting them drift.
“But I’m here now, Ez, I’m here,” Mimi said. Ezra made a face that Frankie thought was meant to be a smile, but honestly it looked like Ezra was trying not to vomit. “Ez,” Mimi said again. “I’m here, despite everything.” She finally rested her hand on Ezra’s leg. “I know how important that is to you.”
At this, she cast a side-eye look at Frankie, as if she were Ezra’s white knight, protecting him from the evils of his ex-girlfriend. It was a little on the nose, Frankie thought. Ezra murmured his thanks, and Gregory turned his head just enough to catch Frankie’s eye, then rolled his far back into his head. She wondered if he sensed it too: the insecurity, the hunger.
The drive to the hotel was only ten minutes. Gregory gave the driver cash and held the door while the three of them tumbled out. Well, mostly Frankie tumbled out.
“Your head?” Gregory said.
“Oh right, you were there,” Frankie replied. It was a relief to have another memory backing hers up. “It’s better, thanks.” She paused and assessed. “Your nose?”
Gregory shook his head and winced. “I think there is a very decent to probable chance that a deviated septum surgery is in my future.” He turned to the side. “But then I can get thisbump smoothed out and can tell everyone it was for breathing problems.”
Mimi and Ezra had dipped inside the Inn by now, so Frankie took Gregory by the wrist and pulled him to the side, hanging back.
“Hey, did we get married last night?”
