Frankie yanked the ring on her finger, but it wouldn’t budge: either her knuckle had swollen overnight or she’d shoved it on with such force last night that it was just stuck there. He pulled the gold band off his own hand, but she yelped, “If I have to wear this, so do you, so don’t you dare!” which really didn’t make all that much sense rationally, but they had bigger fish to fry, so he slid his back on.

“What the hell, Ezra?” Frankie started again and threw her arms into the air, then was on her feet, the sheets (whose sheets?) in his old dorm room tossed on the floor. One of the sleeves of her sweater caught a prong from the ring, and she spent a good five seconds waving her left arm spasmodically trying to release herself. When she did, she circled around in search of her jeans, finding them under the wood-laminate desk, and jumped into them like an old-timey cartoon character.

Ezra watched all of this and was struck by how little she had changed; how much she reminded him as she so often had done in college of a tornado: always in motion, occasionally a thing of beauty, too often destructive. Her hair was blond now—he’d never pictured her as a blonde, always a broody brunette, but he gazed at her and thought that it suited her. Maybe because it gave the veneer of sunshine but then you noticed the darker roots and wondered if there weren’t something more menacing below. That’s who Frankie was. A blonde with dark roots, all the way down. She was leaner than a decade ago, reflected not just in her taut shoulders and arms (which he couldn’t help but notice in her tank top before she covered herself), but in her austere cheekbones too. He knew she was a big deal in the music world and jetted from city to glittery city, but Ezra thought that she looked like she could use a home-cooked meal. Not for the nutrition but for the nourishment. Even with the blond hair and the lithe body, she seemed nearly unchanged. Ten years had come and gone, and here they were, exactly as they had been.

Frankie caught her breath and then rubbed her temples. Then she was at it again.

“What the actual fuck, Ezra?! Please tell me that we did not get . . .” She paused here, and Ezra thought she might actually gag. “Please tell me that we did not get married last night?!”

“I thought you remembered last night clearly,” he said. “If memory serves, not even five minutes ago, you reassured me that you remembered everything.” He felt himself slide into unemotional work mode, which calmed him, slowed his racing heart.

“Stop being such a goddamned lawyer,” she scoffed. “I’m not on the witness stand here.”

Ezra did not bother correcting her, but it stung a bit, that she thought of him as a lawyer, that she hadn’t kept up on his life enough to know that he’d never given it much of a go. It’s not like he wanted her to be plugged in to his life, but standing there in front of her, he realized it’s not like he hadn’t wanted that either. He’d heard things over the years, didn’t mind perking up his ears whenever her name came up in conversation. Usually, it only served to remind him that they were better off apart, that they’d always been combustible. Still. It would have been nice to know her ears were perking up too.