Finally, she said: “Ask me anything you want to, and then we’ll never talk about this again.”

So Ezra stared up at the ceiling for a long minute and said: “Do you ever miss it? Do you ever feel like you should have made different choices?”

And Frankie, unequivocally, emphatically said: “No.”

So Ezra nodded, and then, because he was a man who honored his promises, he never said another word, not when she and her mom were fighting a few months later that summer in the Hamptons when he visited, not when she was starting her job search their senior year and he could have applied to law school at UCLA or USC or anywhere that they could have lived parallel lives. And years later, it dawned on Frankie that maybe if she hadn’t asked so much of him, maybe if he’d pushed her, they’d have found a better way to battle. Maybe a better way to love. But they didn’t; they hadn’t. And so the next time they did indeed fight, fully a year later, it was the one that broke them.

Today, Frankie stared at the girl whose room she’d crashed in last night, and the girl stared back, unwavering, her flip phone in her hand again, poised to call the cops.

“Look,” Frankie said, “I’m sure we can work this out.” She was tired, so goddamned tired. “What’s your name? I’m Frankie.”

After a long, skeptical pause, the girl said, “I’m Zoe.”

And Frankie said, “Great, Zoe, let’s make a deal. I absolutely must get the CD back. Technically, it’s stealing if you keep it.”

“Technically, it’s breaking and entering if I report it.”

Frankie felt her nostrils flare. She didn’t have time to waste here, and yet she couldn’t keep going without the disc.

“What do you want? Money?” She pulled out her pockets. “I have no money.”

Zoe tapped her foot and stared past Frankie thinking. Then: “If you need this so badly, then this is what I want: I want an apology.”

Frankie flexed her jaw. She could do that. What was so hard about doing that?

Zoe laughed, though Frankie could tell it was pitying, not humorous. It was true that Frankie Harriman was spectacularly bad at apologies, but so what. For her clients, she’d do anything.

“Fine,” Frankie said. “I’m sorry.”

Zoe laughed again and popped the CD out of the Discman, then threw it toward her. “That wasn’t really all that difficult, was it?”

It was, though Frankie didn’t know why it had to be.

“I’m keeping the Walkman,” Zoe added. “Consider it my overnight fee.”

“Sure, sure—” Frankie started, but then Zoe gazed off, distracted by something in the distance. Her eyes narrowed, and she jutted her head forward.

“Isn’t that your boyfriend?” she said, gesturing toward a building down the way. “I’ve changed my mind. I want to hear his side before I agree to anything about the cops.”

So Frankie looked where Zoe did, and there was Ezra, sitting on the steps of stupid Burton Library. Before she could protest, Zoe had mounted her bike, which had enormous treaded tires and pushed through the snow, and was headed toward him like a bullet, Frankie’s apology be damned.