© Dallas Smith

Ezra

Sunday Night, February 23, 2020

Ryan Coleman
February 23, 2020, 8:53 PM

💬 Ezra Beaumont: Caroline found me.

💬 Ezra Beaumont: Well, actually the private detective she hired did.

💬 Ezra Beaumont: Either way, I’m officially being disowned.

Ezra’s leg bounced as he sat on a rickety folding chair on Alessi’s tiny balcony that overlooked the city, waiting for Ryan to respond to his text. Rome was six hours ahead of New York, which meant that it was mid-afternoon for Ryan in New York and he was still at work. It rarely prevented him from messaging Ezra back, seeing as Ryan did half of his marketing job from his cell phone anyway. Ezra unlocked his phone to check the read-receipt again, then blew out a sigh. He was not usually so impatient, but after the evening he’d had, he couldn’t help it.

He’d gotten off the video call where his mother had informed him over an hour ago that he was being completely disinherited, but then he had to do some damage control. He’d been staying at his friend Alessi’s apartment during this trip to Rome, which meant he was there to witness the drama. His mother had sent a private detective to find him. An actual PI—one that was likely on his family’s payroll already. When the man knocked on the door and realized Ezra’s relationship with Alessi, he’d video-called Caroline Beaumont. Thankfully, Alessi was only fluent in Italian and bare-bones English, so he hadn’t understood a majority of what Caroline had screamed. Nevertheless, Alessi had questions and was understandably shaken, and Ezra’s conversational Italian was mediocre at best, so trying to calm him down was…a challenge.

Although he wasn’t sure if it would have been any easier if he and Alessi spoke the same language. It would likely take him years of therapy to understand the tumultuous history he had with his family, much less explain it to someone else. But he had never been in one place long enough to find a therapist, and even if he did, the concept of being that vulnerable wasn’t something he was ready for. So instead, he sat, staring out at the view of Rome, hoping it would somehow calm his nerves as it usually did. There was something about the twinkling night sky and the antiquity of the cityscape that brought him a sense of peace; it was the main reason he’d stayed in Europe after his university graduation. But tonight, it brought him no comfort. The city was too quiet after the stay-at-home order had gone into effect, making the scene more unsettling than peaceful.

Ezra glanced down at his phone again and breathed out a sigh of relief at the bubbles on WhatsApp that meant Ryan was typing.

Ryan Coleman
February 23, 2020, 9:03 PM

💬 Ryan Coleman: Shit

💬 Ryan Coleman: Sorry I was in a meeting

💬 Ryan Coleman: Where are you?

💬 Ryan Coleman: Are you ok?

💬 Ryan Coleman: What time is it where you are?

💬 Ryan Coleman: Can I call you?

💬 Ryan Coleman: Fuck it, I’m calling anyway

He couldn’t help his faint smile at the barrage of messages, which were immediately replaced with a notification of an incoming call.

He accepted and held the phone up to see his best friend’s face fill the screen. On a normal day, he would comment on the pile of haphazard curls on Ryan’s head that he’d never been able to tame in the 10 years he’d known him, but all he could do was let out another sigh of relief. “Hey—”

“What happened?” Ryan demanded, skipping right over the pleasantries. “Actually, scratch that. First, are you okay?”

“Depends on your definition of okay,” Ezra answered honestly. “Physically, I’m both exhausted and amped up. I feel like I could sleep for three days, but also, I can’t seem to sit still.”

“And emotionally?” Ryan prompted.

Ezra shrugged. “I’ve been worse,” he said, then sighed, taking in the look on Ryan’s face, clearly unamused with his false positivity, “but I’ve also been a hell of a lot better.”

“Sounds about right. So, what happened?”

Ezra ran a hand through his brown hair, which he’d grown past his shoulders in the seven years since his mother was no longer around to force him to keep it cropped short. “I guess Caroline got tired of me ignoring her calls, so she hired a PI to track me down. Not that it’s that difficult to find me. My Instagram is public, and Rome is pretty recognizable.”

“You didn’t tell me she’s been trying to call you,” Ryan said, frowning.

“You’ve been busy with wedding stuff, and I know how you get when my mother is involved. I didn’t want to stress you out because she and my uncle have been trying to get me to come home and—and these are their words, not mine—stop running away from my birthright.”

“I haven’t been that busy with wedding stuff. Anna and Juliet have most of it covered,” Ryan insisted. “I mean, I still go to all the vendor meetings, but I mostly tune out. Side note: Do you know how many shades of white there are? Too many.”

Ezra let out a much-needed laugh.

“My point is, you could have told me,” Ryan continued.

“I had it handled,” Ezra protested. “After the first few calls, I blocked the entire family except for my cousin Josie, which is probably why Caroline hired the PI. I should have just gone completely off the grid, but I didn’t think she’d go through the trouble.”

“Why do you think she did?” Ryan asked.

“Hell if I know. And whatever she was looking for, she won’t get it now.”

“So you’re really—”

“Completely cut off,” Ezra finished for him. “She called for an emergency board meeting to get my name removed from any and all company records right there in the middle of our video call. You should have seen the look on her poor assistant’s face when she walked into the room. I thought she was going to faint.”

“How bad was it?” Ryan asked.

“Remember when we got caught smoking weed our junior year? Worse than that.”

Ryan grimaced. “Fuck.”

“It was also in French—because God forbid anyone in the office overhear her and understand the bigoted nonsense she was spouting—so that was fun to keep up with,” Ezra deadpanned.

“What did she say?”

“The specifics aren’t important. But you know what she’s like, and you know who I stay with when I’m in Rome, so…” Ezra trailed off, letting Ryan fill in the blanks.

Ryan’s golden-brown skin went pale, and he gave Ezra a sympathetic look. “Oh.”

Ezra looked down at his feet. “Yeah.”

“I’m sorry.”

Ezra shrugged but didn’t look up. “She had to find out some time. It’s not like I didn’t expect this reaction, either.”

“Still, it’s not right,” Ryan insisted.

“No, but it is what it is.” Ezra glanced up to see Ryan opening his mouth to protest, so he cut him off. “I’m fine, really. I’m more concerned with the fact that I’m now stuck in Europe without a safety net. My family bank accounts have been collecting dust since graduation, but they were always there in case of emergency, and now they’re not. Also, being able to stay in Europe is going to be more complicated. I’ve been able to skate around getting a visa because of my UK passport and not staying in one place for too long, but now with Brexit and coronavirus…I’m stuck in Italy.”

“You aren’t going to be stuck in Italy,” Ryan insisted as he sat down at his desk and propped the phone up, freeing his hands to use his computer.

“I don’t have anywhere to stay if I were to try to go back to the UK now that I’ve been disowned, and I wouldn’t want to go back to the family home anyway. And I can’t travel like I have been doing with a plague making its way through Europe. Which leaves Italy.” Ezra sank down into the chair and scrubbed his hand over his face again. “Except, getting a work visa is going to be difficult during said plague, and Alessi has been okay with me staying for the past few weeks, but I can’t stay here indefinitely, especially if I can’t offer him anything in return. But I don’t have enough saved to get my own place, either. Ryan, I think I’m fucked.”

“You aren’t fucked. But I think that maybe it’s time you finally come home.”

Ezra let out a bitter laugh. “What home? Caroline made it clear I don’t have one anymore.”

“She’s not the only family you have in New York, remember?”

“I guess I could call Josie.”

“Oh, yeah,” Ryan said absentmindedly. “Not who I was talking about, though.” Ezra frowned in confusion as Ryan pulled his gaze away from his computer to stare at his phone. “I was talking about Anna and me. We have a spare bedroom, and I just looked up flights from Rome, and there’s one on the 28th, flying into JFK, that still has seats. So if you send me your passport number, I’ll—”

“I can’t let you do that,” Ezra interjected.

“Why not?” Ryan asked, but he didn’t wait for him to respond before continuing. “Look, you’ve been abroad for seven years now, and I haven’t seen you in person for nearly four of those years.”

“Don’t you have a wedding to pay for, though?”

“You know perfectly well my parents are taking care of that.”

“But—”

“Just let me do this,” Ryan said, exasperated. Then he softened. “It’s time for you to come home. I miss my best friend.”

Ezra blew out a breath and looked up at the balcony ceiling above him, willing away the tears forming behind his eyes. “Okay.”

“Thank you,” Ryan said. “Just send me a picture of your passport, and I’ll forward you the flight details.”

“Okay,” Ezra repeated.

“Hey.” When Ezra looked back at his phone, Ryan was face-level with the camera again. “It’s going to be alright. We will figure everything out, I promise.”

He simply nodded, because the exhaustion of the past few hours was starting to hit him all at once, and he was no longer able to find any words, much less the right ones, to express his gratitude to Ryan. But Ryan offered him a small smile, and Ezra realized that after over a decade of friendship, sometimes words weren’t necessary.

“Get some sleep,” Ryan said.

Ezra nodded again and took a deep breath. “Thanks.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Ryan said. “I’ll see you in a week.”

“I’ll see you in a week,” he echoed. When they hung up, he dropped his phone on the small café table and bent over, resting his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.

He wasn’t sure how long he sat there, but it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes when the screen door opened and a hand touched the middle of his back. He lifted his head as the hand slid up to his neck.

“Hey, handsome. Is everything alright?” Alessi asked in Italian, speaking slowly so Ezra could understand.

He couldn’t help the soft sigh that escaped as Alessi threaded his fingers through his curls and started scratching his scalp. He nodded as some of the tension left his body.

“You called your friend?” he asked.

Ezra nodded again. “I’ll be—uh—leaving in a few days.”

“Where?”

“Casa—” Ezra started, but he knew that wasn’t quite the right word, so he said in English, “Back to New York.”

Alessi smiled and nodded in understanding. “Paese natio,” he supplied.

His fingers stopped their light massaging of Ezra’s scalp, but he barely had time to miss the feeling before Alessi extended a hand out to him. Ezra swiped his phone off the table and pocketed it before letting Alessi pull him to stand. He sighed and allowed himself to lean into him.

“Vieni. Time for bed,” Alessi murmured in English, then continued in Italian, “It’s been a long night.” He leaned forward to press their lips together.

The kiss didn’t last for long before Alessi pulled him back inside, and as they passed through the living area, Ezra’s heart panged. Alessi was being a lot kinder than he probably deserved, and he was going to miss him. Ryan was right, though, and on some level, he knew it. It was time to go home.

***

Friday Afternoon, February 28, 2020

Josie Miller
February 28, 2020, 2:15 PM

💬 Ezra Beaumont: I just landed. Waiting at baggage claim now.

Ezra sent a duplicate message to Ryan, then shoved his phone in his pocket and leaned against a pillar to stare at the empty, non-moving luggage belt. He’d gotten off the plane as fast as possible, desperate to get away from people who could or could not be sick. He hated flying on a normal day, which was why he’d opted to take the train over flying whenever possible on his three-year post-graduation backpacking-across-Europe adventure, and the rapid spread of the coronavirus did not make him feel better about the method of transportation. Standing in a crowded atrium probably wasn’t any better at preventing virus transmission, but at least it was less cramped.

His phone buzzed in his pocket, and since the conveyor belt hadn’t started yet, he pulled it out to check without fear that he’d miss his baggage.

Ryan Coleman
February 28, 2020, 2:15 PM

💬 Ryan Coleman: How was the flight?

💬 Ezra Beaumont: Cramped, long, and there was a kid behind me that kept kicking my seat.

💬 Ezra Beaumont: But I got pretzels.

💬 Ryan Coleman: Oof, that’s rough. Well I’m glad you landed safely. Have you heard from Josie?

💬 Ezra Beaumont: I texted her when I landed but I assume she’s still driving.

💬 Ryan Coleman: And you’re sure you don’t want to come stay here with Anna and me?

There was a loud clanking sound, and Ezra glanced up to see the conveyor belt kicking in.

💬 Ezra Beaumont: I’m sure. I really appreciate the offer.

💬 Ezra Beaumont: But it’s been so long since I’ve seen Josie and I’ve only ever met Willow via FaceTime since I moved to Ireland for school before she was born.

💬 Ezra Beaumont: Besides I have no idea how long I’ll need a place to stay and I’m sure that once you two get married you’ll want your private space.

💬 Ryan Coleman: Okay. We really wouldn’t mind, but only if you’re sure. Anna just wanted me to ask again. She says she misses you, by the way.

Ezra smiled, then out of the corner of his eye, he saw the first of the bags arrive on the belt.

💬 Ezra Beaumont: Tell Anna-Banana I miss her too.

💬 Ezra Beaumont: Hopefully this whole plague thing will only last a few weeks so we can see each other soon.

A few weeks sounded unlikely based on how the virus seemed to be spreading in China and Europe, but the news sounded optimistic, so he could hope. He pocketed his phone and searched the conveyer belt for his luggage. After about a minute, his beat-up guitar case, covered in stickers and wrapped in twine to keep it shut, came around the curve, followed closely by his massive duffel backpack. Careful not to get too close to the other people waiting for their bags, he grabbed them off the belt. He slung the duffel bag on his back, then made a bee-line toward customs.

By the time he’d made it through customs, Ezra was nearly dead on his feet. It was technically only early afternoon, but for him, it felt closer to nighttime, and he hadn’t gotten a moment of sleep on the nine-hour flight thanks to the kid behind him. But he kept trudging along until he made it outside. He winced slightly at the rush of cold air that hit him. He’d meant to get his coat out of his duffel before leaving the building, but after the extended line of questioning he’d gotten from the customs agents, he’d forgotten. Thankfully, he didn’t have to be outside for long.

Ezra’s phone vibrated in his pocket, and he quickly fished it out and answered it. He glimpsed his cousin’s name on the WhatsApp call before holding the phone up to his ear. “Hey, Josie, are you here?”

“When did your hair get so long?” his cousin asked without greeting.

Ezra laughed to himself. “I’ll take that as a yes. Which car is yours?”

“Sorry, yes, I’m here. Blue Kia Soul.”

He saw a navy-blue SUV a few feet down the curb, hung up the phone, and started walking toward it as a blonde got out.

“Long time no see, Archie,” Josie said with a smile.

Ezra rolled his eyes at the childhood nickname. He’d started going by his middle name as soon as he left for boarding school upstate, but his family had never made the switch. He hated most of his relatives using the name he shared with his father and grandfather, but he’d learned not to bother fighting a twenty-year nickname. Archie was at least better than Archibald, and the “childish moniker” had always mildly annoyed his parents, so there were some positive memories from it.

It had been eight years since Ezra had last seen Josie in person, and before then, he hadn’t seen her very often because of her living in London. He’d looked forward to her moving to the US with her new husband, Ted, but shortly after, he’d left for college in Ireland, desperate to get as far away from their family as he could. Josie had understood that though, seeing as her move to New York with Ted was for the same reason. She was running from the Carmichael side of the family rather than the Beaumont’s since Josie was his cousin on his mother’s side. But the Beaumonts and Carmichaels likened themselves to a dynasty, so it was basically the same.

“God, how is it that you look even more different in person?” she asked.

“How do you look exactly the same?” Ezra replied. She was tall, only a few inches shorter than him, and her face—all cheekbones and severe bone structure, like his own—had barely aged. Her light blond hair was shorter than the last time he’d seen her post a photo on Instagram, but that was about it.

“I don’t know—I’m not as big as a house anymore. I’d say that’s pretty different.” Josie laughed. “Speaking of, Willow has been practically jumping out of her skin in her excitement to meet you.”

“I’m excited to meet her, too,” he said with a smile.

“But seriously, the long hair, stubble, a rip in your jeans, and visible tattoos… How bad did Caroline faint?”

“She nearly did,” Ezra said with a smile that he knew probably didn’t reach his eyes. “But my unrefined appearance paled compared to the shock that I was shacking up with a guy.”

He said it lightly, but Josie’s smile slipped, anyway. She opened her mouth to reply, but he continued before she got anything out. “Can we catch up in the car? I left my coat in my bag.”

“Of course. Give me that.” She stepped forward and gestured for his guitar.

He passed it off, then followed her around to the back of the SUV. She popped the trunk and lifted his case into the car while he heaved the massive bag off his shoulder and tossed it in.

“Oh, also, I’m sure we’re not supposed to hug, but we’re about to be in a cramped car, and I haven’t seen you in seven years, so I don’t care,” Josie said. Ezra laughed and held out his arms for her to step in. Since they were relatively the same height, Josie could easily hook her chin over his shoulder and whisper in his ear. “Welcome to the black-sheep club, Archie. You’re gonna fit in great.”