This, of all the wreckage of that summer, proved in the end to be the truest thing she learned about herself, though she forgot about it all when she returned to Middleton in August and Ezra threw her a birthday party in Paris.

Today, Ezra, looking noticeably winded, made his way toward her.

“I was not going to propose to her here. I was—” He stopped, and she grinned because she knew she was under his skin. Triumph. Then he took a beat and moved past it. “Don’t shit on that night because you feel like picking a fight with me. That night was perfect. And you can rewrite history all you want, but you can’t rewrite that.” He sighed. “Look, I should have told you this, but Alec Barstow got ordained to be April and Connor’s officiant. It’s not . . . I mean . . . is it totally beyond possibility that we got married?” His voice cracked, and Frankie willed him to hold it together.

Frankie leveled her eyes at him and thought about how cozy they’d looked on the VCR, her memory of the mistletoe, that picture by the pool. Something struck her: a flash, a crystal clear recollection, and she felt her heart accelerate. The start of the scavenger hunt: how they had been at Burton Library, how they had toasted the happy couple, and then April and Connor clinked their glasses and announced that they were going to scatter all over campus to track down clues and win prizes. She and Laila had glanced at each other and rolled their eyes, and then April shouted: “I see you, Frankie Harriman! You are not too good for this! You’re the most competitive bitch I know, so I expect you to bring your A game!” And indeed, Alec Barstow had been there too. Shit.

“Look,” she said to Ezra now, deflecting. “Even if we got married last night, can’t we just annul it? Is that really a reason to panic?”

Ezra laughed, his pitch too high and decibel too loud. He removed his hands from his parka pockets, where they’d been warming, and ran his fingers through his hair, so it stood at attention, then tucked them back away.

“Of course this would be disposable to you, like just another bridge you blew up then walked away from.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Frankie said.

Ezra stared up at the gray sky rather than answer. Frankie knew what it meant; she didn’t even know why she asked. It was a shot across the bow, a shot about their ending.

“Fine,” she huffed. “What’s your advice then? You’re the lawyer here. Please, enlighten me.”

“I’m not a lawyer,” he said, his face a grimace.

“What do you mean, you’re not a lawyer?” Frankie was as surprised as she sounded.

“I’m not a lawyer, ok?”

“So what are you?” Surely, the Ezra Jones she knew had to be something. “A DA? A US attorney?”

“Those are all just different names for a lawyer,” he said.