Mimi’s face fell into something that Ezra had never seen before. Terror or anguish or fury. A combination of all of them. Maybe, actually, it was honesty.
“I did tell you! I left you three messages!” She was sobbing now.
“You didn’t tell me, Mimi. Not the truth.”
She jumped to her feet and slipped on the slick floor, her heels no match for the marble that was still damp from all the melted snow tracked in. Ezra reached out to grab her, but she caught herself on the windowsill, found her balance, and stood taller.
Then: “Fine,” she said, her voice low and flat. “The reason I did not get on the plane is the exact reason that your friend Gregory would love to gossip about. I wanted some earrings, ok? I wanted some earrings, and I was at Neiman’s, and I just wanted something nice to impress yourfancyfucking friends, so I took them.” Her mouth contorted as she inhaled. “Youdon’t understand what it’s like to never have what you want, to never be able to get what you deserve.”
And Ezra pulled back at this because he understood it so completely that he was almost offended that she thought this of him. He knew intellectually that she was speaking about money—that he had it now and she didn’t—but so much of his life had been spent in pursuit of seeking something that he didn’t have, of filling a void that he couldn’t even articulate but that shadowed him all the same. And Mimi hadn’t seen that? Mimi hadn’tknownthat?
“And the earrings meant you couldn’t get on the flight?” Ezra said finally, quietly, resigned.
“No, of course not! Do you have any idea how any of this works?”
Ezra wasn’t sure what to say because he didn’t think it was necessarily wrong that he wasn’t aware of the rules of shoplifting.
“I got caught, ok? Security. And it’s not like they sent me to jail, ok? Don’t you worry, Ezra Jones, your girlfriend did not spend the night in jail!”
“Mimi, that’s not what—”
“I know the drill, ok? Please, do you think this was my first time?”
Ezra, in fact, had no idea how many times she had been apprehended by mall cops. Until an hour ago, he hadn’t even known this was in the cards. He wondered now if this was why she was so controlling of his own vices. Maybe it was a kindness on her behalf, not an embarrassment, which he had always assumed.
“Is this why you hate my gambling? The poker? The blackjack?”
“What?” she said. “I mean, no? I told you about my uncle who had to move in with us.” She paused. “Also, who loses money for the sport of it? It’s just another thing you don’t value because you don’t realize how much some of us go without.”
Ezra nodded and didn’t pursue it. He’d gone without plenty. But this wasn’t the time, this wasn’t the fix.
“So security took me into their little back room and I had to sign some forms saying I wouldn’t come back there for a year, and blah blah blah.” She made a face like this was an inconvenience to her, not actually a crime. “It took forever, and I missed the flight, ok? And it felt much easier to just show up today, but maybe I shouldn’t have done that either because, my God, no good deed goes unpunished!”
“What was the good deed?” Ezra asked. He couldn’t even imagine.
“I came here because you didn’t want to do this alone.” She considered this then laughed. “Which is ironic since you were actually doing it withher.”
Ezra fell quiet. Then: “I wanted you here because I was going to ask you to marry me. At midnight. For the millennium.”
Behind him, he heard Bruno whisper, “Jeeesus,” and he turned, and Bruno said, “Sorry, man.”
When he turned back, Mimi was frozen, her mouth agape, her eyes wide.
“What?”
“I was going to ask you to marry me,” he said again, andhe honestly thought he might cry. He knew the ring in his pocket was never going to be on her finger; he knew that this was all about to end.
“Wait,” Mimi whispered, her voice hoarse from yelling. “Wait! Please, you can still ask! I didn’t mean to screw it all—”
Ezra waved a hand, cutting her off. “I can’t, Mimi. I can’t.”
“Because I sometimes take things?” She was crying again, the rage sucked out of her. “Because, I mean, sometimes, I want things that aren’t mine?”
Ezra felt something splinter in him. It wasn’t so bad that she wanted things that weren’t hers. But no one was owed anything in this world, and he, more than most, had learned this lesson through simply living. He ran his hands over his face, blew out his breath. This would be the moment to confess his own omissions, the mess of last night, waking up with Frankie in Homer. But maybe they’d done enough damage to each other in the past few hours. He didn’t want to hurt her any more than he had to, didn’t want to make this any messier than it already was.
“Please, Ezra, come on. I like the life we’ve built,” she pleaded. “I’ll stop. You stopped playing poker for me, and I’ll stop this for you.”
It occurred to Ezra that for all of his years, he’d assumed that loving someone meant sacrifice. Whether it was because his mom sacrificed so much of herself by marrying a shitty man who left them or whether it was simply because that’s just how he’d moved through the world, doling out small pieces of himself whenever someone asked him to. Never stopping to consider whether or not this was a part of himself he wanted to relinquish. But what if it didn’t have to? What if loving someone meant enhancing your life, not subtracting from it?
