Frankie flipped the hood of her jacket over her head and tugged the cord to seal in the warmth. Ezra squinted as the flakes landed on his eyelashes and then melted. His ears were a salmony pink from the cold, and he pressed his chin into the zipper of his coat to conserve body heat. They marched silently toward the bar, his Sambas and her Doc Martens crunching the ground beneath them.

Frankie wondered what he was thinking. In the ten years since she’d left Middleton, she’d convinced herself that her time here hadn’t been transformative. That she’d been looking for an escape from her parents and the pressure of their musical aspirations and that Middleton had been a temporary fix. But as she tilted her head left, then right, she found herself pregnant with nostalgia. For the night when they, along with their friends, decided to camp out on the North Lawn because Gregory had said there was going to be a meteor shower (there was not); for the spring fair fundraiser where the campus turned into a literal circus, and fire-eaters and jugglers and men on stilts wobbled by, and Ezra taught her how to play Skee-Ball at the makeshift arcade. She was exceptional at it from the get-go and delighted at beating him each time, and he, ever the good sport, laughed until he ran out of tickets, and she, flush with them, went to the prize booth and bought him a stuffed zebra with a sad look on its face because it reminded her of him when he pretended to pout at losing.

They stomped by Steinway Auditorium, an imposing stone building that was one of the newer builds on campus. The Steinway family, of the piano fame, had donated several million dollars to attract top talent shortly before Frankie matriculated. It was one of the reasons her parents conceded and made peace with her decision to skip Juilliard and the like: though Frankie was done with all of that by then, they held out hope that she’d return to her roots, to “her gift” as her mother liked to say while Frankie often made vomit sounds.

As if reminding himself of the building’s significance, Ezra did a double take and stopped.

“No,” Frankie said, still so in tune with him. “We wouldn’t have gone in there.”

Ezra fished the keys from his pocket, ignoring her.

“Ezra!” she cried. “I wouldn’t have gone in there!”

Her head throbbed when she raised her voice, and she tried to still herself to make the pain dissolve.

He turned to face her. “So you still don’t play?”

“What business is it of yours if I do or do not?”

“Nothing about you is my business anymore, Frankie. And yet here we are.”

“No,” she said. “I’m still not playing. Ok? Can we go to Lemonhead, like we agreed?”

Ezra gave her a long stare, and even with his jelly donut–sized eyes, Frankie knew that he had her number. She wasn’t about to tell him that a few months ago—nearly nine months after she bought the upright piano on Western Avenue and then let it collect dust for the better part of a year—she woke up pressed against her purple wall and felt the tug again: like an addict in search of another hit. And for the first time in years, she scooted out the piano bench and felt her fingers curve, then fly over the keys. She didn’t know why: nostalgia, comfort, pain, maybe all three wrapped up together. Not unlike her decision to come back for the weekend: nostalgia, comfort, pain. Maybe they were all related.