“How’s your head?”
“You know about my head?” Frankie jolted. This was new information, and new information was exactly what Frankie needed. She’d pored over her own recollection, and after Abel Rink and the Zamboni debacle, most of it remained fuzzy, just out of reach.
“I mean, I saw you at Lemonhead.” Laila frowned. “Were you that wasted?”
“I saw you at Lemonhead?”
“Yes? You were at the entrance with Gregory and Ezra, and you were going on and on about the injustice of being paired with him, and couldn’t you join my team and who would have to know?” She paused, her eyes casting sidelong glances around them. “Um, is there a reason that Ezra is staring at you?”
Frankie began to turn.
“No, don’t look don’t look don’t look!” Laila said.
Too late. Frankie found Ezra’s eyes through the thicket of guests, or he found hers, but it didn’t really matter. He held her gaze and then scowled. He glanced to his right, where Mimi was distracted by a conversation with someone Frankie didn’t recognize, her hands animated. Then Ezra mouthed:You!and jabbed a finger quickly in her direction.
Frankie flung open her own hands as if to say:What? Me?
Ezra held up a palm:Five minutes.Then he jerked his thumb toward backstage.There.He steeled his jaw and popped his eyes as if to say,Do not make me drag you back there, and Frankie sighed and mouthed,Fine.Then to Laila, she said: “As I was saying.”
“Uh,” Laila started, then stopped. “What exactly happened last night?’
“What did you see happen last night?” Frankie asked, like she was a guest star onLaw & Order. It occurred to her that she really needed to start spending less time alone in hotel rooms.
“So you really don’t know? This isn’t, like, a rhetorical question?” Laila looked delighted at this turn of events, like a romantic mystery meant to be solved was exactly what this wedding needed.
“I mean, I know.” She paused. “Some of it, I know.”
“I was only in and out of Lemonhead,” Laila said. “Oh, we won by the way! Did you know that?” When Frankie looked confused, she said, “The scavenger hunt, we won!”
“Oh. Ok. Congrats.”
“Lord,” Laila laughed. “I figured the most competitive person I know would at least be impressed.”
Frankie nodded, as if to say that she was, though she really was not. A competition that Frankie Harriman was not prepared to slit throats over? She did an internal temperature check to ensure she was still alive.
“Well, anyway,” Laila continued, “it was a hi and bye situation there—you were waiting by the front for Gregory to bring you an ice pack, and I guess he didn’t, so Ezra popped in and grabbed one, then told me he had it under control.” She winced. “Jesus. In hindsight, he was pretty wasted. Should I have stayed?” Her face fell, her voice growing serious. “Shit, Frankie, did something happen?”
Frankie remembered the time their junior year when Laila had been pinned against the back door at Lemonhead by a senior whose name she only recalled as Christopher. How he’d held both of her hands above her head and kissed her neck until Laila, squirming and terrified, raised a knee to his crotch, and then ran all the way back to the dorms. Laila didn’t report him because, well, she’d said, nothingreallyhappened, and it was the late ’80s and this sort of shit just got glossed over, cast aside with,Maybe you shouldn’t have worn such a short dressorHow many drinks did you have anyway?
Eleven years later, Frankie couldn’t say it was any better, at least not in her industry. But she did what she could. She gave her artists pepper spray. She gifted a few of them with martial arts lessons a few Christmases ago. She thought now about how exhausting that was: the constant sense that you were only one bad move, one laced drink, one stupid evening out away from danger. Certainly, there were men in her life, in the business, who would look out for her or her artists, but not enough. She could quit, she could walk away, but what wouldthat do? Only leave her female artists more vulnerable. So she stood between them and danger like a shield.
She stared at Ezra now—he had refocused his attention back on Mimi—and was grateful that, even while blackout drunk last night, he’d looked out for her. She hadn’t known how much she’d needed this—not just last night, but maybe for decades—until this very moment. How much easier everything could be if you had someone acting as that shield, someone who always stood by your side. She’d always assumed that she hated being protected, that his paternalism was repulsive. Maybe what she had hated was that she was in danger—emotionally, mentally—in the first place, and when she was, no one had her best interests at heart.
“Really,” Laila was saying. “Did something happen? Do I need to go maim him?” She looked around for a utensil, finding only a discarded skewer on one of the cocktail tables. She picked it up anyway. “I can do a lot of damage with this. You don’t even know, like, you don’t even understand. You say the word, and I’m basically auditioning forThe Matrix.”
“No,” Frankie said. She wanted to reassure Laila because that’s how you tucked away your trauma for the time being. “No, nothing happened. I mean, nothing like that.”
Laila uncoiled, the tension in her face abating.
“Shit, still though. I shouldn’t have left you.”
Frankie really didn’t want to turn this into a thing when it was so much easier not to. Also, she was ruminating about Ezra’s chivalry. She lowered her voice, though the DJ had started up now—the opening riff of “Don’t Stop Believin’ ” cut through the air, and all the guests let out a cheer, so she had to recalibrate.
“I think it’s possible... we may have gotten married?”
Laila leaned in.“What?”
“I THINK IT’S POSSIBLE THAT EZRA AND I GOT MARRIED LAST NIGHT!”
