She offered him a hand. They both froze for a beat, his grandmother’s engagement ring twinkling in the morning light between them, then she reconsidered and thrust out her other one.
“Shit,” he muttered. “Shit shit shit.”
“Let’s just go back to the hotel,” Frankie offered. “Shower, get some sleep, pretend this never happened.”
“No,” Ezra said in the urgent way that was just so Ezra. “I’m proposing tonight. This needs to be over ASAP.”
“You can still propose tonight.”
“How can I propose tonight if we’re already married? I can’t...” He flung a hand into the air as if to say,I’m not a polygamist, my God, come on!“Also, Mimi should be at the hotel by now, her flight landed this morning, I can’t just—” He stopped and sighed.
“Fine,” Frankie said, her chest tight, her patience tried. “Just fine. There must be a reasonable explanation. We’ll figure it out,thenwe’ll go back to the hotel and move on. Act like it never happened. Annul this if we need to.Obviously, legally or not, we’re not married.”
Ezra started to reply, but his face folded into confusion. His hands, tucked deep into his coat pockets, moved with urgency.
“The lining of my pocket is torn...” he offered, as a way of explanation. He paused again, wrestling something free. “Something’s caught in here.”
Frankie raised her eyebrows because the Ezra she knew—summa cum laude, matching socks, organized Filofax, never late for a deadline—would never have a hole in his pocket. But Ezra shimmied something out of the right side of his jacket. Then he held up a set of keys and peered at them the best he could with his donut-sized eyes and faulty focus.
“I don’t suppose these are yours?” he asked.
“Mine?” Frankie said. “Why would my keys be stuffed inside the lining of your coat?”
“Why are you wearing my grandmother’s engagement ring?” he rebutted.
“Why did we wake up in a twin bed in Homer?” Frankie barked back.
Ezra sighed, his shoulders deflating like someone had punctured him. He ran his hands over his stubble, and something was so familiar, too familiar about it. Not from years back but from last night. Frankie tried to hold steady, to hold still, but she was nearly bowled over with a memory:of mistletoe, of Ezra running his hands over his face, of Frankie leaning in closer, and of kissing him.Frankie thought she felt her breath leave her body.
Ezra, fortunately, paid her no mind.
“Well, these aren’t mine.” He dropped his head into his hands. “I’ve never seen these before in my life.”
“Fabulous,” Frankie said, and she hoped her voice didn’t wobble.
“Fucking A,” Ezra replied, too loudly. His voice reverberated off the exterior dorm walls and then bounced right back at them. Though she tried not to betray it, Frankie was screaming on the inside too.
SIX
Ezra
Ezra was trying to think only of Mimi but found it increasingly difficult to stay focused. His face was throbbing, Frankie was wearing his grandmother’s ring, and the snow was coming down in sheets. They trudged away from campus in search of shelter, finally landing at a coffee shop that used to be a Chinese restaurant where they’d gone for Friday night dinners with April, Connor, Gregory, and Laila. But Chinese food reminded him of Mimi, who liked to crack open fortune cookies and intuit the deeper meaning, and brought his brain and anxiety circling right back to where he started.
Mimi! Sweet Mimi, who he’d planned to ask to marry him at the stroke of midnight when the world ushered in a new century. He’d written a small speech, he’d ensured that his tux had enough give for him to get down on one knee, he’d even inscribed the ring with the date: 12/31/99. Mimi came from a sprawling midwestern family who spent Christmas every year at her childhood home outside Kansas City, and she had agreedto cut the visit short to join him at Middleton. To be honest, Ezra had pleaded: it was about a month ago, and Ezra was late to mail back the RSVP because he wasn’t sure if she would join him.
“Please, I want you to meet my college friends.” They were splitting Chinese food on the sofa in their one-bedroom, and it occurred to Ezra how separate his lives had been until now: there was his college life and the friends he kept in touch with (mostly just Gregory and Connor), and there was his Mimi life. Mimi worked for a dating start-up, Datify.com—she was insistent that meeting your spouse on the internet was about to become the next big trend in romance, though Ezra was dubious. Who would ever admit to such a thing? Didn’t it sound embarrassing, impersonal, desperate? But she was constantly dragging him to various events; in fact, they’d met at one. Datify frequently gauged compatibility algorithms, so they held meet and greets with free wine and cheese for singles who agreed to fill out questionnaires in exchange for a shot at love. Ezra happened to be at the bar with a poker buddy when Mimi descended and corralled him into joining.
“Here,” she’d said, flipping back her shiny red hair, handing him a clipboard. “Trust me, you’ll be awed, amazed, bowled over at what is about to happen.” Ezra was already fairly swoony at her beauty, and she probably knew it, so she turned on a magnanimous smile, and he ticked off various likes and dislikes: Was he a morning person? Was education important? Was he religious? Did he want children? What was his favorite city? Did he like hiking, did he like movies, did he like quiet time, reading, concerts, cooking, spicy foods, far-flung vacations, museums, Valentine’s Day, and baseball games? Hehanded the clipboard back to Mimi, and she ran her finger over each of his answers, her eyes widening as she went.
“Wait!” she squealed. “WAIT! I cannot allow you to meet anyone here.”
“That doesn’t seem fair,” Ezra said, half-heartedly. He didn’t really care all that much because the whole thing seemed like a gimmick. But he was trying to play along mostly because she was adorable.
Mimi ran into the back of the bar and emerged a few minutes later, her pale cheeks flushed. She pushed a different clipboard with a completed form into his hands.
“Look,” she said, nearly breathless. “Look!”
He looked. Then he raised his eyes to hers. She was grinning and thrust out a hand, and said, “I’m Mimi. I think you’re my perfect match.” And Ezra took her hand and raised it to his lips and kissed it. Because they’d both checked off “chivalrous,” and they’d also both checked off “romantic” and “honest” and “loyal,” and he knew that she would appreciate the gesture and not find it cheesy or patronizing. She giggled, then held her hand to her heart, like she’d been shot with Cupid’s arrow. They were a couple within a day. And from there, his life was about Mimi, about their future, not his past.
