The snow had begun to slow, and Ezra pushed himself upward and took a few steps east, then west, then east again. He didn’t want to be around when Frankie came to her senses and chased after him. He shook his head. Who was he kidding? Since when had Frankie been in the business of apologizing? Never. Never once. She was undoubtedly stewing back there, waiting for him to return and offer his own apologies. Well, he huffed to himself, no dice.

Ezra scooped up a handful of snow and molded it into a tight ball, then pressed it against his right eye. Instant relief. He moved it over to his left. Then his right. Then his left again, until the snow began to melt from his body heat and was leaving only frigid streaks down his cheeks. Still, he felt certain that his swelling was subsiding. He peered over his shoulder toward the alley. Still, Frankie hadn’t emerged. What was she doing back there now? He told himself not to care.

So he simply began to walk. Away from her. The more distance he put between them, the better. But where to go? Waverly’s. He could try there. Joni from the coffee shop had at least placed him there. He felt his hands shaking and squeezed them into tight fists, as if that could stop him from trembling. He hadn’t even gambled in college. After Ezra moved into Henry’s apartment, his brother had been the one to invite him to his weekly card night, where they mostly played poker but sometimes switched it up to blackjack. At first, the table ribbed him on being such a newbie, and they were more than happy to take what little money he had before he inevitably folded early and then nursed his Amstels for the rest of the evening. But something happened in the weeks that followed. Ezra felt his brain percolating, like a twinge somewhere in his cerebrum that was awakening. He went to Barnes & Noble and picked up a book on card counting, and discovered that he could teach himself strategies in a night. Easy, no sweat. And from there, it was as if he could see the cards, move all the numbers around in his head, and had a sixth sense about who was playing what and which cards were left to be laid down. And then he became unbeatable. Not right away, of course. Poker and especially blackjack weren’t like addition where simple mastery meant you knew everything. But eventually, a few months later, yes. Then Henry took him to Atlantic City, and then they started playing high-stakes games when he had breathers from law school, and one thing led to another. He didn’t have a problem (other than getting caught in Vegas that one time). He merely loved it. He loved it. The rush, the assuredness, the way his brain hummed along like a machine that was built for it.

Three years later, the summer his mom’s cancer returned, the summer he was set to take the bar, he sat in his boyhood bedroom and read some books on coding, which was still the Wild West, and built a new way to play with strangers from all over the world. And then he sold it, and now, he never had to work a day in his life again. But he wanted to. He loved to work, and maybe that was one thing that he and Frankie had in common. They both understood that the work was part of what defined them: he just never thought she’d be a talent manager when she was the actual talent. God, she was so fucking talented. He hated that he still remembered this so clearly about her, even if he’d only seen her play two times in the entirety of their relationship. She was that good; it was that memorable.