TWENTY

Ezra

Sitting on the steps outside Burton, chewing on the security guard’s new information about the mistletoe, Ezra refused to believe that he had partaken in the events surrounding it, even if they were harmless fun. He suspected this was a lie he was telling himself because he had felt an inexplicable tug toward Frankie back in the alley, when they were pressed against the wall, and he had to stop himself from tilting forward and kissing her. Out of habit, out of nostalgia, he couldn’t say. He’d spent so many years trying to forget Frankie Harriman that now, he couldn’t come up with an answer to a question that he didn’t even know how to ask. He jiggled his toes to keep them warm and stuffed his hands further into his pockets. Gregory should be here any minute, at least if Ezra had calculated his biathlon time correctly.

He pushed to his feet and checked his watch again. Maybe he’d been too generous with Gregory’s physical fitness. Then he saw a figure careening toward him on a mountain bike, waving at him with a mittened hand. He couldn’t make out it if it were a man or a woman: all he saw were bright green earmuffs and loads of layers from the L.L.Bean catalog.

“Hey!” he heard her shout as she got closer. A woman. “Hey!”

She skidded in the snow and hopped off the bike in one fluid motion, then let it give way to gravity, the frame clattering against the steps and onto the ground.

At the sound of her voice, Ezra’s adrenaline kicked in, or maybe it was his fight-or-flight system. The girl from Homer with the pepper spray. He stumbled backward, tripping up the steps, scrambling for the door. If this girl were going to mace him a second time, he had to be better prepared. He honestly didn’t think his vision could take another dousing. It was possible, he thought as he swung the doors to Burton Library back open again and the heat from the lobby assaulted him, that he could go permanently blind.

The security guard looked up at the commotion.

“You get your visitor’s pass?” he said.

“Please,” Ezra panted. “You have to let me in. There’s a crazy person tailing me.” He felt wild; he felt reckless. He wondered if this was what Frankie felt like day-to-day. He wanted to recoil from himself, from this baser side of himself, but mostly what he wanted was to avoid being pepper-sprayed. It was incredible, he thought, how you could surprise yourself when the stakes were higher than you ever imagined. He prided himself on being collected, on being the port in a storm; he’d had to be so for his mom, and later, at the card table, and then at all times with Mimi, a couple always in control of themselves. But it turned out that there was only so much pain he could tolerate before his defenses broke down and he became animalistic. Just like Frankie.