“Shit,” he muttered. “Shit shit shit.”

“Let’s just go back to the hotel,” Frankie offered. “Shower, get some sleep, pretend this never happened.”

“No,” Ezra said in the urgent way that was just so Ezra. “I’m proposing tonight. This needs to be over ASAP.”

“You can still propose tonight.”

“How can I propose tonight if we’re already married? I can’t . . .” He flung a hand into the air as if to say, I’m not a polygamist, my God, come on! “Also, Mimi should be at the hotel by now, her flight landed this morning, I can’t just—” He stopped and sighed.

“Fine,” Frankie said, her chest tight, her patience tried. “Just fine. There must be a reasonable explanation. We’ll figure it out, then we’ll go back to the hotel and move on. Act like it never happened. Annul this if we need to. Obviously, legally or not, we’re not married.”

Ezra started to reply, but his face folded into confusion. His hands, tucked deep into his coat pockets, moved with urgency.

“The lining of my pocket is torn . . .” he offered, as a way of explanation. He paused again, wrestling something free. “Something’s caught in here.”

Frankie raised her eyebrows because the Ezra she knew—summa cum laude, matching socks, organized Filofax, never late for a deadline—would never have a hole in his pocket. But Ezra shimmied something out of the right side of his jacket. Then he held up a set of keys and peered at them the best he could with his donut-sized eyes and faulty focus.

“I don’t suppose these are yours?” he asked.

“Mine?” Frankie said. “Why would my keys be stuffed inside the lining of your coat?”

“Why are you wearing my grandmother’s engagement ring?” he rebutted.

“Why did we wake up in a twin bed in Homer?” Frankie barked back.

Ezra sighed, his shoulders deflating like someone had punctured him. He ran his hands over his stubble, and something was so familiar, too familiar about it. Not from years back but from last night. Frankie tried to hold steady, to hold still, but she was nearly bowled over with a memory: of mistletoe, of Ezra running his hands over his face, of Frankie leaning in closer, and of kissing him. Frankie thought she felt her breath leave her body.

Ezra, fortunately, paid her no mind.

“Well, these aren’t mine.” He dropped his head into his hands. “I’ve never seen these before in my life.”

“Fabulous,” Frankie said, and she hoped her voice didn’t wobble.

“Fucking A,” Ezra replied, too loudly. His voice reverberated off the exterior dorm walls and then bounced right back at them. Though she tried not to betray it, Frankie was screaming on the inside too.

SIX

Ezra

Ezra was trying to think only of Mimi but found it increasingly difficult to stay focused. His face was throbbing, Frankie was wearing his grandmother’s ring, and the snow was coming down in sheets. They trudged away from campus in search of shelter, finally landing at a coffee shop that used to be a Chinese restaurant where they’d gone for Friday night dinners with April, Connor, Gregory, and Laila. But Chinese food reminded him of Mimi, who liked to crack open fortune cookies and intuit the deeper meaning, and brought his brain and anxiety circling right back to where he started.