“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 take you to 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.”

She placed her hands on his cheeks. “I would allow for a dog. And it’s possible I’d consider a baby someday, though I don’t do diapers, and I can’t promise more than that. I just do not want a ring.”

Ezra stared down at her, considering it all.

And then, above them, an explosion of real fireworks. They each craned their necks upward, and all around them, reds and purples and golds soared across the night sky. Frankie and Ezra stood there under the cascade of lights as students shouted their countdown. They were at ten, and then nine, and then eight, then seven, then six, then five, then four, then three, then two, and finally, they were on the precipice of a new millennium, a new century, a new start.

And Frankie gazed at Ezra, and Ezra gazed at Frankie, and it was so odd, she thought, how much she already knew she loved him, even the ways he had changed, even when she remembered all the terrible parts. She pressed up onto her tiptoes because she was the one who had to do it now, and she raised her chin and clasped her hands behind his neck, and then, sober, non-concussed, not under the influence of mistletoe, and not riding the adrenaline of the mishaps of earlier in the day, rather simply with the hope of starting over, Frankie Harriman kissed Ezra Jones in the very spot they’d splintered.

Finally, Ezra pulled back and said: “Wow, that was really something.”

And Frankie giggled, so Ezra giggled too, and then he leaned down and kissed her again, wholly, taking his time, because it felt exactly like it used to and entirely different as well.