“And what should I do now?” Frankie asked, though she wasn’t sure why.

“Well, you could chase after him,” he said after a long beat. “Apologize. Propose.”

“Give me a goddamned break,” Frankie scoffed. “Also, I think you mean divorce. We may already be married.”

“No, I don’t mean that at all,” he said, then fell silent again. Then: “But chasing after Ezra was never your thing. You always made him do all the work.”

THIRTY-FOUR

Ezra

Ezra tried Mimi’s phone from a pay phone on the corner, but she wasn’t picking up, and there was no shuttle back to the hotel in sight. Ezra paced back and forth on the sidewalk, his breath all around him pillowing in the bitter night air, and tried, tried, to pull back from the swirl of combustible emotions that were boiling over inside of him.

So Gregory had seen her stealing. That wasn’t great. It wasn’t the end of the world, but it admittedly wasn’t great. But we all have our quirks, he thought. Ezra’s quirks were decidedly noncriminal, barring the Bellagio and MGM, but still. This was petty stuff, nothing major. He had his grandmother’s engagement ring in his pocket again, and all he wanted to do was propose at midnight and start the next phase of his life.

It was really goddamned freezing out now, he noticed. His ears stung, and his dress shoes were not meant for subarctic temperature, so his toes cried out too. He tried to consider where he would go if he were Mimi. She couldn’t make it back to the hotel on foot in her high heels, and from the look of it, the entirety of campus was shuttered for the night. A few stragglers wandered past, on their way to Lemonhead or someone’s dorm to celebrate the turn of the new year, and from a distance, a girl shouted to another, “Happy Y2K, bitch!” And someone whooped a reply.

Ezra tucked his hands into his pockets and headed north. He didn’t know where he was going, but then what else was new. He was out here, chasing a girl like he’d chased his high school girlfriend before she dumped him, like he’d chased Bethany before she disappeared for one time too many, like he’d chased Frankie, and now Mimi. Why was it so difficult for him to find someone who stayed? He stopped and stared up at the now cloudless sky. The storm had moved through, and the spread of stars above him nearly took his breath away. He’d forgotten how beautiful it was. In New York, there were lights for miles and miles but no stars.

Ezra picked up his pace and saw a light on in the distance and slowed. Burton Library appeared to be open. Which of course it was: Burton was always open, a safe harbor when students needed to pull all-nighters or retreat from a horrible roommate who didn’t shower or just lose themselves in the stacks stocked with history. He sped up again, the wind gusting and chapping his cheeks, blowing his hair aloft too.