She hated that she said that. She hated more that it bothered her to think he would re-create that moment, that magnificent moment when time had stood still for her twenty-first birthday, for anyone other than her. She’d had a shit-awful summer. Her mom was all over her about returning to the concert stage because in late May, she’d received a prestigious invitation to play at a rising stars event in Aspen. Her mother wouldn’t stop nagging, couldn’t leave it be. She threatened to stop paying for Middleton; she questioned, cruelly, what other skills Frankie had. Which was Frankie’s entire point. She still kept in touch with a few of her peers from back then, and nearly all of them excelled at one thing and one thing only. They were geniuses at the violin or the cello or even the harp, but Frankie’s mother wasn’t that far off: they were in many ways stunted young adults who didn’t have a significant list of actionable other merits. They didn’t seek adventure; they didn’t envision any sort of big, wild life beyond their talent. Frankie had never wanted to be the kid who was brilliant at music but sucked at living. She didn’t want to be the girl who was known simply because she was born with some kind of genius. Because that was actually just luck. Frankie wanted to earn her way through life: that’s what the discipline of long practice days and relentless competitions had taught her. It felt important to her that her future be of her own making. Which was ultimately why she quit at seventeen. Why she woke up one morning and stared at the ceiling and knew she was going to disappoint every adult in her orbit. But she simply didn’t want it anymore. She wasn’t even sure if she ever had or if they were the ones who had wanted it for her.

So when the invitation came to perform in Aspen, all sorts of ugly things were rearing their heads between her and her mom during Ezra’s Fourth of July visit. Explosions of arguments about her talent, about her wasted talent, about what Fred thought (her mom was screwing Fred, so Frankie gave less than zero shits about his opinion), about how she was squandering her life at a liberal arts college when she could be playing at Carnegie Hall. And finally, when her mom really cut to the truth of her accusation, about why she was so wrapped up in a boy who surely was nothing but a distraction from what she should be doing. Was Frankie staying at Middleton for him? Was Frankie throwing away her future for him? Frankie had thought that was pretty fucking rich, coming from her mom who’d gotten knocked up at twenty, and she said as much. Frankie already knew, even though she loved Ezra desperately, even though he was her one real thing in the world by then, that he’d never trump her desire to live a grand life, to grab it wholly and jump in.