Today, the athletic center was deserted, as expected. In the distance, Frankie could hear the clanking of the weight room—a few athletes who stuck around for break getting in their training. Though the pool was back through the locker room and several long hallways and even a staircase down half a level, the air still smelled of chlorine. Even now, Frankie couldn’t disassociate the scent of pool water from Ezra. That night, the night his mother called with the ominous news of her scan, the first time he ever heard her sing for real because belting in his Jeep didn’t really count, Frankie had pulled him to his feet from the floor by his twin-sized bed and off the rug he’d probably bought at Bed Bath & Beyond, and they walked out of his dorm room without so much as a word. He had woven his fingers through hers and trusted that wherever she was taking him, whatever she had in mind, it had to feel better than how he felt right now. Frankie didn’t remember now—today—why she’d headed toward the pool back then. Maybe she’d been reading some solemn poetry for one of her English seminars about how water was like a baptism, that it could make you feel reborn. Or maybe she was in the middle of her Bruce Springsteen phase and obsessed with “The River” and, in lieu of an actual river on campus, thought the pool water would suffice, even if the song was depressing and had nothing to do with hope, which is exactly what she wanted to offer. Or maybe the idea of skinny-dipping just seemed titillating. The why of it didn’t matter then.

They’d discarded their clothes by the diving board, and Frankie jumped in first. When she emerged, Ezra was standing there naked staring down at her, smiling despite the previous few hours, despite the phone call and the scans and the cancer.

“What?” Frankie said. She felt blood rush to her cheeks and felt a little off-kilter that she could be self-conscious in front of an audience.

“Nothing,” he said, just before he jumped in. “I just love the shit out of you, Frankie Harriman.” Then he cannonballed right next to her, and Frankie had to sink under the water with him so she wasn’t blinded by the spray.

Ten years later, Frankie made her way to the back of the athletic center, the scent of chlorine getting stronger and headier as she drew closer. She didn’t know what she was looking for. She didn’t think that she’d find the answers to the question of their matrimony here, and she doubted their phones were at the bottom of the pool. But she and Ezra had been here last night, just like she and Ezra had been here a decade ago. Maybe that had to mean something.

She knelt down and untied her Doc Martens, which were stained with the salt from the Middleton sidewalks, and she left them outside the pool entrance. The tile flooring felt cool against the pads of her feet. In front of her, the pool was vast and peaceful, the filters churning quietly, near-invisible ripples cresting across the surface.