Ezra
Ezra checked his watch, and it was nearly time. On the lawn across the way, some students were setting off shitty makeshift fireworks, and he turned for a minute and fought the urge to run over and tell them to be careful. That they could blow off a finger or an ear. But he didn’t need to take care of everyone; he knew this now.
Besides, Frankie was in front of him, out of breath, and it was almost midnight, and he was tired of always being the grown-up. Where had that gotten him? The most success he’d had was when he gave in and followed his passion, quitting law school, building his gaming platform, losing himself to the numbers or the cards or, yes, how much he had loved Frankie Harriman. He’d do it differently now. He’d take the time to listen to her fears; he’d take the time to understand why and how he could love someone whose perspective on their future was so out of sync with his own. She had been awful about the pregnancy, New York, the rest of it, but he’d been awful in hisown way too. Maybe that’s just who you were at twenty-two, but he’d repeated plenty of those mistakes between then and now all the same.
“We didn’t get married last night,” Frankie said. She was just a few feet away now, and she looked pained from her run. “I mean, if you need to propose to what’s-her-name, we didn’t get married last night.”
“You know her name,” he said.
“Fine,” she answered. “To Mimi. If you need to propose to Mimi.”
“You remembered?”
She nodded. “We didn’t get married officially, I guess I should say. Like there wasn’t a paper; we didn’t have a priest.”
“I’d never have a priest,” Ezra said. “And Alec Barstow is definitely no saint.”
And Frankie smiled. “Finally, something we agree on.” She paused, uncertain. “And Mimi? Where is she?”
“Gone,” Ezra said simply. A beat passed. Then: “How’d you know where to find me?”
Frankie took a long look around. At the kids setting off fireworks, at the starry sky above, at Burton in front of her.
“I just knew,” she said. Ezra started to speak but she held up a hand. “Let me this time. Let me be the one to finally chase you.”
FORTY-FIVE
Frankie
Frankie wasn’t sure if she truly had it in her, but she knew she owed it to herself, and to Ezra, to at least try. Maybe it would be ugly and maybe it would be ineloquent, but she’d shown plenty of men her ugly parts; she’d just never asked them to love her in spite of them. Frankie had made a life for herself, a career for herself, with those ugly parts: the brashness, the brazenness, the overconfidence.
But now, she was standing in front of Ezra and saying: love me anyway, choose me anyway.
“We didn’t get married,” she started. “But I put on the ring, and you put on yours, and well, I guess for a few minutes, it was lovely to think about.” She paused because she wanted to get this right. “I don’t... I don’t think that will ever be for me, Ezra. The white picket fence, the two point five kids with a golden retriever and dinner every night at six. And I guess I always knew that but wanted to have you for myself anyway.” She was surprised to find herself blinking back tears. “Andeven though it’s been over between us forever, and even though I spent that forever hating you, I just...” She sighed. “I owe you an apology. Because I should have tried harder. I should have been better. You didn’t deserve to find out that I had a miscarriage three thousand miles away from you, and you didn’t deserve to hear the relief in my voice when I told you, even when I could hear the pain in yours.”
“Frankie—” Ezra said.
“Please, let me just—” She stopped, blew out her breath. “It’s New Year’s Eve, you know? And if I don’t say this now, I never will.” He nodded, so she steadied herself and continued. “I don’t expect for you to forgive me; I don’t expect for you to come to LA and take me to dinner. But, I mean, I was thinking—last night, we pretended for a minute that we were together, and I had a head injury and you were pretty drunk—”
“Very drunk,” Ezra interrupted.
“Right, so even more drunk than what I said. But well, I was wondering, maybe if I came to New York, maybe I could takeyouto dinner? I can’t... I don’t want to lose this before we’ve even started. So, I mean, maybe I could ask for you to possibly like me again, someday?”
“Frankie,” he said, and took a step closer. “I already like you again.”
“But I can’t be any of those things you want. I need to tell you that now. I don’t want to make you unhappy. For a long time, I wanted that—I wanted you to be the most miserable bastard on earth.”
Ezra tilted his head back and howled with laughter, so Frankie allowed herself to grin as well.
“I mean, Ezra, I really did hate you.”
“It was mutual,” he said.
And she took another step closer until they were right there, in front of each other, with nowhere else to look, nowhere else to turn. No pretense, no baggage, no lies, no history but the good kind.
“I won’t run again,” she said. Ezra nodded because he already knew.
“But is it a hard no on the golden retriever?” he asked with a smile. “I mean, I really would like a dog.”
