“It’s not like ice skating is, like, a critical life skill,” she said while they were waiting in the concession line for a large popcorn and Red Vines.

“No.” He shook his head and smiled. “But what if I want to take you skating some time? Just because I want to? Wouldn’t it be nice if you said yes?”

Now, a decade later, the cold from the step outside Homer was seeping through her Levi’s, just like it had all those years ago on the ice, and Frankie pushed the memory away. She wasn’t here for nostalgia; she wasn’t interested in a trip down memory lane. Getting swept up in emotion today wasn’t going to help anything. She nodded to herself, an exclamation mark on her proclamation. Beside her, Ezra shoved his arms through the sleeves of his North Face puffer, and Frankie hopped to her feet, happy for a respite from the chilly concrete, a respite from her thoughts.

“Can you walk? We really need to get you somewhere.” She paused. “Isn’t student health . . .” She glanced to her left and right, tried to get her bearings. In contrast to the pulse at Lemonhead the night before, the campus was quiet, the snow falling in wet, fat flakes and starting to stick. The gray Gothic buildings seemed to shiver, so Frankie did too. She thought again of the ring on her finger and wondered, if she managed to wrestle it off and dropped it in the snow and let it sink to the ground below, if that would mean that whatever happened simply hadn’t. Could you erase a moment or an act just by burying it? Frankie knew well enough the answer, but that didn’t mean she didn’t consider it all the same.

Ezra was still whimpering on the chilly steps beside her. His eyes were swelling at an alarmingly rapid rate, his lids and surrounding skin a bright angry pink. Frankie didn’t want to play nursemaid, but she also didn’t know what other choice she had, and she’d done it often enough for work: a harried trip to the ER for a pumped stomach in Milan, a backstage IV of fluids if it meant getting the artist onstage in London.

“Goddamned Mace!” Ezra squawked, and Frankie wasn’t sure if he was genuinely crying or just unable to stop his tears from the spray. Ezra had always been an easy crier. In college, she first found this lovable, but by the end, she thought it was all a little melodramatic. “I mean,” he continued, “who maces a perfectly nice guy standing there trying to explain himself?”

Frankie didn’t think this was the time to get into the dynamics of a young woman returning home to find a strange man in her room or point out that she also kept Mace not only in her purse but in her glove compartment too.

“Come on,” she said. “You need help.”

She offered him a hand. They both froze for a beat, his grandmother’s engagement ring twinkling in the morning light between them, then she reconsidered and thrust out her other one.