“Don’t worry,” Gregory said again. “I got you.”

Ezra nodded perfunctorily because this seemed like the only reasonable reaction. Why did he care if he ran into his ex-girlfriend from a decade ago? Why was his heart thumping through his flannel shirt? Why was his mind racing a million miles an hour like it used to?

He waited for the Xanax to kick in. What sweet relief that would be.

The elevator number settled on THREE, and the gold doors whooshed open.

It took Ezra’s brain a good four seconds to get what he was looking at: a blonde staring at the floor, her Doc Martens tapping out a beat, her black down jacket zipped to the neck. He stepped forward as if magnetically drawn toward her, as if he couldn’t stop himself even when he’d spent the previous hour reminding himself of all the ways he’d need to do just that. Then he felt Gregory’s hand reach over and grab his forearm, pulling him back, like the elevator was full or like they were bracing for impact.

By the time Frankie Harriman looked up from her Motorola and snapped it closed, the door was already easing shut. But there was just enough time—a few seconds that morphed into a decade—for Frankie to gasp and for Ezra to both recoil and retreat, and for each of them to vow to themselves that this would be the only time they’d be within spitting distance the rest of the weekend through.

SIXTEEN HOURS LATER

ONE

Frankie

Frankie awoke to a headache that felt akin to a leech sucking the blood straight from her spinal cord. The throbbing started low in her skull, right at the nape of her neck, and reverberated out with each heartbeat, each pulse, into every vein, every cerebral fold, every nerve. She squeezed her eyes closed, willing for sleep for one more moment, but the pain was unbearable, too much to allow for rest to settle back in. This, certainly, was one of a hundred hangovers she had endured, and yet this one felt different. Harrowing.

She allowed her eyes to flutter open and found herself staring at a white wall. To be sure, this was not the first wall she had woken in close proximity to, but certainly, she knew immediately that it wasn’t her own. She’d painted one of her bedroom walls a vibrant purple last year, and though all her friends in LA thought it was a little much, Frankie had yet to grow weary of it, unlike so many other things in her life. (Really, she only had, like, three friends in LA, and mostly, those friendships were work friendships, but still. They really all did think she’d get sick of the purple wall.)

Frankie rolled to her back, emitted a groan, and noticed a heat emanating from beside her. The naked back of a man rose and fell next to her. This was also not a highly unusual experience for Frankie, who often took advice from Prince and partied like it was the end of the world, or at least the end of the century. Who could blame her: hot men and tequila went with her business.