“Frankie!” he sputtered. “Frankie.”

He cocked his head up and saw her slow to a jog, then finally, blessedly, a stop. She spun around. He took another long inhale and exhale, and he felt the fever pitch of his disquietude ebb just enough to reassure him that he had himself under control.

“Well,” she called down the alley in which they’d landed. “Looks like one of us has greeted their thirties a little better than the other one.”

Ezra tried to right himself, but the pinch in his side barked back. He dug his fingers into his abdomen, an old trick from when he was forced to do cross-country in high school for PE credit. He’d never been the fastest, but by his senior spring, he was the one who could push himself through any sort of pain because he just went numb: there was too much else in his life to worry about than the onset of a cramp while competing against Radnor High School. Sometimes, when she was up for it, his mom stood at the finish line with red Gatorade, as if they were a perfectly normal family, as if the two of them weren’t carrying the weight of her mortality on each of their shoulders. He ran faster because of that weight; he pushed himself further for her. But today, Frankie had beaten him.

Across the alleyway, she appeared—Ezra couldn’t believe it—exhilarated. Was she honestly exhilarated? Her cheeks were flushed, she bounced again on her toes, and she had to bite her lip to keep from grinning.

“What was that?” he finally bleated.

“I feel that I should share that I one hundred percent have a concussion,” she said, as if this were an answer to his question. “So I beat you even with a concussion. I’m not a doctor but I play one on TV.” He could tell that she found this fucking hilarious.

“Frankie.” He eased himself to standing. “You just made things considerably worse.”

“Please. No offense but I was seriously underwhelmed with your legal defense.”

Ezra stared up at the gray sky and counted to ten before he absolutely blew his top.

“Like, remind me who not to call the next time I’m in a jam in New York,” she added. Then: “Besides, it’s New Year’s Eve, Y2K, Y2Nay! Don’t you think they’ll have bigger things to deal with?”

“Well, yes,” Ezra said. “That was my whole point. Diffuse the situation, then move on. So now, you’ve made us look guilty.”

“We are guilty. Hello? And I thought lawyers didn’t care about guilt or innocence.”

“You’re the one who chucked the brick through the window! For what? What did you even learn from going to Lemonhead?” Ezra did not want to consider what he had learned: the knowledge that his girlfriend, near-fiancée, had perhaps not shown up by choice. He really needed to find his phone and call her.

Frankie fell quiet, and he wondered if he’d struck a nerve.

“What?” he said. “Tell me or I walk.”