The rules were that whoever picked your name was on your team. You then picked another name to kick off the next pairing. Gregory, who Frankie hadn’t seen since graduation and who, she thought, looked exactly the same as when she last did see him, barring a sad wispy mustache, selected her after being partnered with Alec Barstow. Frankie Harriman, he said dryly, his eyebrows raised. But then he found her in the crowd and steered her out to face the basket and slung his arm around her like this whole thing was ridiculously wild and did a little bow as if he were her butler. M’lady, he added for a flourish.

Frankie stuck her hand into the basket—she could feel herself shaking and honestly couldn’t believe that she was going along with this preposterous situation, but Laila was shooting her the stink eye, as if to say: April was a generous friend to you when you showed up freshman year as a moody loner, so you will shut up and enjoy yourself. Remarkably, whether it was because she didn’t have time to recalculate or because she was becoming an actual adult, Frankie understood this. This was not the moment to turn something that could be nothing—a one-in-twenty shot—into a full-on calamity. So she reached her hand into the basket and prayed silently, Not Ezra not Ezra not Ezra. And she pulled out a piece of paper, and she felt her cheeks flush with blood and she said:

“Oh. Ezra Jones.”

And to her right, April squealed, “Your Ezra!” Her Ezra. And Frankie wanted to throttle her because April really did know the weight of their history, but April was also a hopeless romantic who adored things like Valentine’s Day and red roses and believed in the tradition of not letting her husband see her in her wedding dress before the ceremony and also in second chances. If memory served, she and Connor had split for a few months in their midtwenties. No wonder April didn’t give the pairing a second thought. And anyway, Frankie was too shell-shocked to do anything other than shuffle to the side for Ezra to make his way to the front.

Now, on the bench at midday, with the snow beginning to slow, Frankie connected the puzzle pieces to how she ended up with Ezra last night. They had been partners. She tilted over and thought she might be sick. The nausea passed, and she pushed her palms into her knees and righted herself.

Campus was starting to wake now. There was a smattering of students making their way past, a few who looked hungover, a few who looked like they were rushing because they had somewhere to be. Frankie remembered that about college: how even though there was so little that was actually important, everything felt important. Maybe it was because it was the first time she’d truly been in control of her choices, or maybe things like her friendships and simply the experience of being on her own, of being wholly independent, actually were the most foundationally important part of her growth. Since the age of five, Frankie had always been told who she was going to be, and at Middleton, where no one knew what she was capable of at a piano bench—at least until Ezra caught her playing their junior year—she had the chance to be whatever it was she chose.