She looked in the mirror and felt the music penetrate all the way down, like it was changing her on a cellular level. It wasn’t her music that mattered, it was any music that mattered, she thought, and she didn’t regret for a moment that she had abandoned chasing the genius of someone like Bono when it was so much easier to listen rather than create. After spending the entirety of her childhood with only a singular goal, be better, be the best—a goal that too often wasn’t even her own—she never regretted walking away. Her world could still be filled with noise, with melody, even if it wasn’t of her own making. Her parents hadn’t understood this; Fred hadn’t understood this. But Frankie did, and that’s all that mattered. She suspected Ezra might too, but what if he didn’t? What if he pushed her just like her parents, shamed her the way that they had when she’d quit, nagged her the way that they still did now? It was nearly impossible to be in the same room with her parents without the tension of her choice cutting between them. Frankie didn’t want to ruin the one pure thing in her life, the one pure person, so this was her secret to keep.

Bono wailed again, his voice clear even through the bathroom door. Frankie was so moved, she almost started to cry, just standing there, washing her hands, listening to his perfect tenor. Then the door swung open.

“Frankie,” Ezra had said, like a gasp, like he’d searched the world over for her. Frankie drank him in. He was skinnier and tanner than when she last saw him in May. The cut of his jaw looked sharper, the blaze in his eyes felt acute.

“In the flesh,” Frankie had said, uncharacteristically shy. “Have you been looking for me?”

“Yes,” he said, catching his breath.

“Where?” she asked, moving forward.

“Everywhere,” he said. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.” And then he’d pressed her back against the porcelain sink, pausing just long enough to meet her gaze. And with no hesitation, no ounce of self-doubt, he’d kissed her. Exactly like the Ezra Jones she’d come to love.

“Frankie,” he’d managed, his voice husky, almost broken, then again, “Frankie.”

He ran his lips over her neck, down her collarbone, and Frankie dipped her head back, electricity running through her like a current she knew she was going to be unable to stop, like an addiction from which she wouldn’t recover.

Ezra’s hands were all over her, making up for the summer spent connected by nothing but a phone line. His fingers wound their way under her shirt, over her bra, and then she wasn’t wearing a bra at all.

“Jesus,” he’d said. “You are so fucking beautiful.”

Then his mouth had covered her right breast, and Frankie moved her hips closer to his, urgency coursing through her. Sex had always been casual, distant, but now she needed Ezra in a way she never had. The button fly of her jeans unpopped—pop pop pop pop pop—and then his fingers were inside her underwear, and Frankie gasped at how he set her ablaze. He lifted her onto the sink, and his fingers sank deeper inside her. “Ezra,” she managed. “Ezra . . .” She reached for him but he shifted ever so slightly away.