“And Alec? What happened to him?”

“Oh, that boy bolted.” Gregory laughed, like this was in any way hilarious. “Ran back inside, tossed the keys at us, and fled. He could be in Canada by now.”

Frankie rubbed her temples. “So we didn’t hook back up with him after Lemonhead?”

“Well, I stayed.” Gregory made a face like he knew that had been the wrong decision.

“You stayed?”

“Uh, yeah. The bartender who gave me the ice pack also threw in a shot of tequila, and I thought I was getting a vibe.” He flopped his hand. “It turned out that his vibe was just his general vibe and not necessarily a Gregory vibe, but who could have known that at the time?”

“Not your shining moment.”

“Your definition of ‘shining’ is subjective,” Gregory said with a grin. “Most people really do like me.”

Frankie wasn’t going to argue, because he was probably right, and she’d never been granted such a social luxury: to simply be well-liked as soon as she made an entrance. She’d never tried to be well-liked; she’d never tried at all actually. For a long time, maybe right until this moment, she’d worn that as a badge of honor. But what would be the harm, to have a bartender like you just because, to be amiable because it was the generous thing to be? She looked again toward the hotel. Ezra was almost always amiable because it was the generous thing to be, and Frankie had always thought of this as a weakness. Maybe that was just another lie she told herself because confronting how diametrically opposite she was to that graciousness was too onerous a task.

“And her? Mimi?” Frankie asked.

Gregory sucked in his breath, the air whistling past his teeth. “Well, Ezra really can pick them, that’s for sure.”

“Hey.” Frankie scowled. She thought of the kiss again.

“You decimated his heart.” He shrugged. “Just because you don’t see yourself as the bad guy doesn’t mean that you weren’t.”

Frankie started to argue but stopped herself. There were so many more important things right now other than relitigating the past. Besides, she didn’t know how much Gregory knew, and she also decided—right then—that she wouldn’t be judged for whatever he did know. Though surely there was judgment to be made. But first, she knew she had to figure out her own responsibility. Because for the first time in years, she realized that she had some.

“You know, it takes two to tussle.” She often said this—to her clients, to roadies, to dickhead executives at record labels—and now, she only just realized that Ezra was the one who used to say this all the time and that he told her it was because his mom used to pester him with it all through his childhood, how he couldn’t bring himself to correct her. Tango, Mom, it’s tango. Something about this pained Frankie: the thought of Ezra as a boy, that his mom was gone, that they had veered so far from each other that she only offered her condolences several years later, that she was wearing his grandmother’s ring while he was ensconced in room 303 with Mimi.