Ezra unlatched the lock to Frankie’s apartment with his set of keys just as his phone buzzed in his back pocket.

“Hello?” He swung the door shut with his foot, dropped the keys on top of the upright piano.

“Happy birthday!” He could hear Frankie smiling on the other end of the line. She hadn’t wanted to spend his birthday apart, their first together in so long, but they’d had to diverge at Heathrow—she was on to Stockholm with Night Vixen; he was back in Los Angeles to start grad school at UCLA. He’d turned down Google after April and Connor’s wedding; he’d decided that with his whole life ahead of him, he didn’t need to keep chasing something he wasn’t even sure he wanted. He decided, instead, to teach, which reminded him of his mom for no reason other than he thought she’d like that for him. And actually, he liked that for himself too.

“High schoolers are the worst though,” Frankie had said one night last spring. Ezra had just gotten his acceptance letter in the mail—he was using Frankie’s mailing address by then—and they were braided into each other in her bed, her apartment smelling of new paint because she’d had a purple wall that she thought no longer suited her. Ezra ran his hands through her hair, back to brunette, just like it had been at Middleton, and grinned. He felt her own grin against his chest too.

“Hormones and zits and attitude,” Ezra agreed.

“And you have the misguided notion that you can make a difference,” Frankie said. She tilted her chin up and kissed him. “Still a Boy Scout. Some things never change.”

Ezra laughed because so many things, in fact, had. He’d returned to New York after the wedding and packed up his stuff, mostly just clothes and mementos—the rest meant nothing to him at all—while Mimi was at work. His lease ran through June, so he called her and told her to stay as long as she needed. He didn’t want to be cruel; he never wanted it to end bitterly. That, he supposed, was going to be true forever. He didn’t have to reinvent himself to reinvent his life.

Frankie had said she’d consider New York; she didn’t want him to think that she was repeating old patterns, asking him to move for her. But Ezra surprised them both: he was ready for something new, for the unknown, which had always terrified him. But because he now knew she was willing to meet him halfway, he was willing to meet her halfway too, all the way even. So he took a taxi to JFK, and he boarded a flight, and he started over in Los Angeles. But not really starting over, because he was with Frankie, and that alone gave him the peace of mind not to panic. Though he still hadn’t adjusted to the relentless sunshine, the green juice, the traffic that was backed up by 2 p.m.

“Happy birthday!” Frankie said again on the other end of the line. Ezra tried to calculate the time in Sweden. It must have been the middle of the night; she must have stayed up to reach him when he finally got off the plane. He thought something about this likely contented them both—she was tired when he was tired, her happiness was his happiness, they really were in this together. Everything about it felt new; everything about it felt right.