CHAPTER 20

SEX BREAK

February 21–25, 2024

If everything was going to fall apart, there was nothing Ricki and Ezra could do about it. So, together, they made a mature, adult decision. They decided to throw themselves into each other, no safety net, no hesitation, just full-blown, unfiltered passion. Really, what other option did they have? Were they going to waste the precious days they had left together shaking their fists at the gods and bemoaning their fate? No. There was no point or time.

Most importantly, they certainly weren’t going to commit murder in order to break Ezra’s curse. So for now, they’d make every moment together count.

But the blind panic, anger, and fear were never far. The reality of Ricki’s death sentence—including the knowledge that Ezra would continue to live forever after the bittersweet agony of loving and then losing her—simmered just below the surface. It threatened to explode whenever things got a bit too still, too quiet. Like in the few breaths before dozing off, or the pauses between conversation.

The only way to drown the Bad Thoughts? Fill up every moment with an experience! Ezra and Ricki ran around the city together, hungry to find new ways to entertain themselves, to delight in each other. Together, they did more in the next week than they ever had apart. (Well, Ricki, at least. When it came to lived experience, there was no competing with a Perennial.) If this was the end, they were going to go out on top.

They took a mixology class at Apotheke in Chinatown and delighted in tasting a secret “Dining in the Dark” menu at Leuca restaurant in Williamsburg while blindfolded. They dropped by the Comedy Cellar one night, where they had the honor of being roasted by a famous comic (and occasional Oscar host) for making out during his act. They spent too long driving dangerously at the bumper cars in Coney Island and were gently asked to let the actual children in line get a turn. They watched the sun set over the harbor from the Staten Island Ferry. They broke into the breathtaking, partially hidden, and quite exclusive Gramercy Park for a pizza picnic with Focaccia the dog (historically, entrance was granted to only a few elite neighborhood residents, but thanks to a short-lived 1962 dalliance with the frisky wife of a publishing tycoon, Ezra had a key). They spontaneously joined several out-of-towners on a Doughnut Walking Tour of the Upper West Side, and afterward, on a sugar high, Ricki convinced Ezra to teach her how to play “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” on his old piano.

In the interest of not wasting a moment apart, Ezra unofficially moved in with Ricki. Yes, her studio was a mere fraction of the size of his house, but his place was more of a petrified museum than a home. And besides, she was still running Wilde Things. She couldn’t give it up.

And now, more than ever, she was compelled to whip up more fantastical bouquets and place them at Old Harlem hot spots. It felt like an offering. Like small thank-yous to her adopted city for being so welcoming, so nurturing, even if for a short time. And now Ezra accompanied her on these early-morning missions. Hand clasping hers, he’d divulge insider anecdotes about each place, small details that made her captions pulse with vibrancy, making the Harlem Renaissance feel alive. It was manna for Insta history buffs.

When they were home, they talked and talked, stories spilling from each other in an ecstatic tumble as time folded in on them. They often realized they had the same thoughts in their brains, or Ricki would articulate something out loud that Ezra’d once thought, verbatim, and vice versa. There was an energetic crackle between them, and the charge never abated.

The other thing they did a lot of? Fucking. They’d discovered that truly transformative, life-altering sex made them feel like everything would be fine. It was a heady drug, lulling them into a sweet sense of security. So they kept doing it. They did it on every surface, in increasingly creative positions. They did it half-asleep. They did it after downing two bottles of dry white. They did it in the 145th Street Community Garden at 2:45 p.m. They did it, perhaps, a bit too much.

When they awoke on the twenty-fifth, they were tapped out. So Ricki closed the shop for the day. And the two declared they were taking a sex break. They were enjoying a languid, lazy morning all tangled up in her rumpled linen sheets, warmed by the sunrays beaming in through the window, a porcelain tray of half-eaten croissants and coffee cast aside on the nightstand.

“I don’t know why I wasted so much time hating hugs,” murmured Ezra drowsily. Ricki was little-spooned in his strong arms, her legs tangled with his. Save for panties and boxer briefs, they were in their preferred state: naked. He buried his face in her hair, inhaling the minty scent of her shampoo. “What’s not to love? Hugging is the cat’s meow.”

Ricki smiled widely, burrowing into his embrace. “It’s extremely the cat’s meow.”

“It’s incredible—I don’t feel self-conscious about linguitching around you. It’s nice not having to worry about tripping myself up with extinct slang. Usually, I open my mouth and I fear a pterodactyl will come flying out.”

“I’m just waiting for you to call me a jive turkey,” Ricki said, laughing.

It was a sound now more familiar to him than anything lodged in his endless memory. He let his eyes shut, soaking in how deliciously safe and secure he felt holding her. Memorizing the moment. Basking. This was the only place he ever wanted to be. Time seemed to yawn and stretch, and then, for the first time in the last four days, reality started to creep in.

She must’ve felt it, too. She stiffened a little in his arms.

“Ezra?”

“Little Richard?”

“I can’t die before I’m thirty,” she whispered, barely audible. “I can’t leave you here alone. Without me. And I’m… just not ready to go. It’s not my time.”

It was The Thing They No Longer Discussed.

“I won’t let you,” he said simply. “I won’t let you leave my sight. I’ll check you in to the ER on the twenty-eighth. I’ll do something.”

“Short of committing a blood sacrifice, there’s nothing you can do. We’re not killing anyone.” Ricki turned herself around in his arms so that they were facing each other, almost nose to nose. “I had a thought, though. What if you make me a Perennial? Then we could both live forever.”

“Can’t,” he said, his brow pinched. “It doesn’t work like that. Immortality is something done to you; you can’t seek it out or ask for it. Dr. Arroyo-Abril told me that the day we met.”

“How did she become immortal?”

“You really want to know?”

“So badly.”

“Well, she was a grifter. Too bad this all happened in 1883, or I reckon she’d be the subject of a Netflix docuseries. Anyway, she conned her way through Europe and then somehow ended up in Florida. Saint Augustine. Heard of it?”

“Yeah, it’s where that Spanish explorer, Ponce de León, decided some little spring was the Fountain of Youth,” said Ricki, putting her minor in American history to good use.

“That’s the place,” said Ezra. “By the 1880s, locals no longer believed the well had magical anti-aging properties. But tourists did. And Pilar sold them bottles of the spring water at a roadside stand. One day, she accidentally fell into the well, broke her neck, and drowned.”

“Stop.”

“Well, she should’ve drowned. Instead, she came to, popped her neck back in place, climbed out the well, and she’s been fifty-seven years old ever since. Turns out the Fountain of Youth? Not fake,” he explained. “Trying to game nature rarely works out in your favor.”

“Is she still a grifter?”

Ezra kissed the tip of Ricki’s nose. “Depends on if you believe in life coaches.”

He looked at her for a long time, trying to reconcile the depth of his longing for her with the grim reality of their situation. It felt impossible to face. Maybe he should’ve been used to loss by now. All that practice should have made it easier. But this pain was excruciating, like nothing else. He was going to lose her. Just like his family, and like everyone he ever knew.

For a long time after he became a Perennial, he’d spy on his contemporaries. When he was in Harlem, he’d follow them around—on foot, in a car—wishing he could be living his regular life with them instead of watching them from blocks away. Or he’d track their progress in Ebony or Jet, filled with envy and longing. Lo opened a fancy dance studio—still one of the country’s finest—and moved in with a ballerina she pretended was her “friend” till they died of old age, six months apart. He saw Duke go from a glitzy upstart to Establishment to a well-paid nostalgia act. A brain tumor killed George Gershwin a few years after he composed Porgy and Bess. Mickey Macchione became a wholesale flower trader and never set foot in another cabaret after Eden Lounge burned down. As time flew on, Ezra saw Josephine’s, Bessie’s, Zora’s, and Langston’s names loaned to art schools and scholarships, their legacies now the subject of biopics and documentaries. Today, they were icons, but to him, they were people he’d traded dreams with, caroused with, borrowed and lent a few coins to, run into at the dry cleaner’s. Back then, they were all drinking from the same water. As time marched on, he remained frozen in amber, while they stretched and blossomed and, eventually, wilted. Like normal people do.

He ached to be normal with Ricki. To have a family, put down roots. Go gray, get paunchy, spoil their grandchildren. Sometimes, he even wondered what it would’ve been like if he’d met Ricki a century ago. Who would she have been?

“Who were you, in your heyday?” asked Ricki, mirroring his thoughts. “I’ve been stalking these vintage newsreel accounts on TikTok, hoping to spot you in the background of some glitchy black-and-white clip. I can’t imagine you living in such a buttoned-up, old-fashioned culture. Like, mayhem ensued when a lady exposed a knee!”

“It wasn’t like that, though,” he said, chuckling. “The teens and ’20s were decadent.”

“It’s wild to think of old people being young, doing young things.”

“Is it? Old people are always dismissed as neutered, benign. Like teddy bears. But when I pass an elderly lady on the street, I wonder who she used to be. ’Cause the women I knew?” His expression went wicked. “I could tell you some secrets about these memaws out here…”

Ricki yelped, nudging him with an elbow. “Spare me the details of your ancient ho-ing!”

“Are you really slut-bullying me in 2024? We’ve come too far as a culture.”

“Slut-shaming.”

“Whatever y’all call it. I’m just saying, every generation thinks they invented sex.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know what you’re saying.” Ricki propped her head on her hand. A quiet buzz of happiness thrummed through her. It made no sense. She was knocking on death’s door, staring into the barrel of a gun, but when she was with Ezra, she couldn’t shake the feeling that her demise wasn’t really real. Impassioned love never protected anyone, not really. But with Ezra, it felt like armor.

And it was a dangerous deception.

She chased the thought out of her head and instead soaked up Ezra’s utterly devastating face. How could she never have noticed how sensual the bow of a man’s upper lip could be? She swept across his mouth with her eyes.

“Tell me everything,” she said dreamily. “Were you at Studio 54 when Bianca Jagger rode in on that white horse? Where were you when MLK died?”

Ezra rolled over onto his back, tucking his hand behind his head. “I never went to Studio 54. I wasn’t a disco guy. In the ’70s, I was in London, jamming with British Jamaican reggae bands. I wasn’t in the mood for nightlife; nothing felt new. The ’20s was wilder than the ’70s.” He paused, chewing on his bottom lip. “Hmm. When Dr. King died, I found out on the car radio. I was driving my VW Bug to the Westbury Music Festival. I slammed the brakes, hard, and damn near broke my nose.” He closed his eyes, furrowing his brow a little. “I think Nina Simone dedicated her set to him at the fair. But that show’s a blur.”

“Because of the trauma?”

“No, ’cause I dropped acid,” he said. “I remember I’d just seen Planet of the Apes. The original one, with terrible 1968 special effects. And now I’m standing in this big ole crowd; people are mourning, singing, dancing—but I’m tripping something terrible. My brain was stuck on the visual of apes riding horses.”

“Honestly, that’s an image from hell.”

“Point being, folks are still folks, no matter what’s going on. You don’t perceive history as it’s happening.”

Ricki nodded. “One time, I asked Ms. Della what it was like to live through World War II, and she said her most vivid memory was the nighttime, when everything was quieter, and she was alone in her bed, worrying if Dr. Bennett would come home alive. Even during the biggest thing in the world, it’s about the smaller moment.”

“You should know how that goes. You’ve lived through history, too.”

“Have I? I guess I have. Obama. Katrina. The crash of ’08.” She paused. “106 & Park.”

Ezra laughed and then paused, mulling this over. “Actually, I’ll allow it. Now it’s my turn. I got a few questions.”

“Go.”

“What’s been your favorite moment? Of all time.”

Her eyes met his, sparkling and utterly unguarded. “Other than this one?”

Ezra’s gaze somehow both softened and caught fire. Drinking her in, he rested his large palm on her cheek, lightly running his thumb along her bottom lip. A languid wave of heat rippled through her. Ricki’s tongue lightly touched his thumb, and his expression flared into something primal.

As if burned, Ezra snatched his hand back.

“Sex break,” he groaned, adjusting the massive bulge in his boxer briefs. “Jesus Christ. You’re gonna kill me.”

“Sex break, right.” She sat up next to him and pressed her thighs together. Suddenly hyperaware of her toplessness, she grabbed Ezra’s discarded T-shirt and slipped it on.

“My favorite moment,” she murmured, thinking. “It was my sophomore year in college, back in 2014. I was studying abroad for a semester in Seville. I don’t know how I got my dad to agree to it. I think he thought if he said yes to this one quote-unquote wild idea, I’d buckle down once I graduated. Anyway, I’d never been off on my own. One night, I went out to this nightclub, Club Catedral. It was smoky, loud, sexy. I’m sitting at the bar, nursing a sangria, all by myself. I couldn’t speak conversational Spanish yet, so there was no pressure to socialize. So I just watched. And I experienced all this life, this fucking gaiety, without the pressure to jump in. And I’d never felt so free. And it occurred to me then that no one back home knew where I was.

“I stayed till closing, around five a.m. As I’m walking home along these narrow, winding thousand-year-old cobblestone roads, I was hit with the most intoxicating scent. I followed it, till I found this tiny, hidden square surrounded by these fragrant bushes.” Ricki glanced at Ezra.

“Night-blooming jasmine?” His face lit up with delight.

Ricki grinned. “I’d never seen them in real life. Just in botanical photographs in coffee-table books at our local library. Growing up, I was obsessed with the idea of this unsuspecting bush unleashing all this secret beauty only at night… but meanwhile, no one who saw it during the day could fathom its power. Quite the metaphor for hidden potential,” she noted. “I fell asleep in the grass.”

“Sounds euphoric,” he said, bewitched.

“It was. Till I was awoken by the Policía Nacional. They charged me with drunken vagrancy and dragged me to the station. I was sent home from the program,” she said with a rueful chuckle. “The Seville thing became my parents’ favorite piece of evidence proving that I was an unfit human. But I didn’t feel ashamed, or even sorry. I felt alive. And ever since, I’ve held on to that memory of freedom, waiting for the day I’d feel it again. The ironic thing is, I feel it now. Despite what’s waiting for us.”

“I feel it, too,” he said quietly.

He didn’t tell her what he wanted to say, which was This is all my fault; I ruined you. How in the everlasting fuck do I live without you? More of me belongs to you than doesn’t…

But Ezra didn’t go there, because they’d agreed they couldn’t. So he kept asking her interview questions—favorite movie, favorite place, worst thing she’d ever done, best meal she’d ever had—because Ricki was the most entertaining person he’d ever known, and he had the best seat in the house. And it drowned out their existential terror.

She told him all the stories she could think of until she got drowsy and drifted off into hazy midmorning sleep. Ezra was wide awake. Ricki didn’t know it, but he’d barely slept in days. He couldn’t, because he was keeping watch. He kept his eyes on her whenever she slept. He searched for anything out of the ordinary—her breath slowing down or her heart beating erratically. How could he find rest while she was in peril?

Ricki was curled into him, holding his hand tucked under her chin. The world around them fell still; his fingers twirled into her lush cloud of coils as his mind drifted in and out of a zillion pointless rescue scenarios.

Ezra studied her sleeping face. Her breathing had started to speed up. Her brow furrowed, but her face looked relaxed. He heard her emit a soft, melodious sound. Was she humming? She sighed contentedly. Let out a soft whimper. And started humming again. Then he recognized it.

It was their song. Her song. The one he’d been writing for her forever.

Lost in some dream, she rolled onto her back. She whimpered again and then gasped, her back arching. Her nipples rose to points under the flimsy fabric of her T-shirt. Ezra drank her in, mesmerized and instantly, inconveniently hard.

Brow tensed, her tongue darted over her lips and she moaned a little. She hummed again, her hands running down the front of her body and between her thighs. Biting her bottom lip, she grinded against them, breathing out a shaky “Fuu-uck me.”

Ezra was helpless to do anything but watch, his eyes wide. Dick throbbing. Mouth dry. Hands itching to manhandle her in several unlawful ways.

But then her eyes flew open. In a split second, she realized what was happening, and she clapped her palm over her mouth.

“Wait. Noooo!” She wail-laughed, hiding her face in her hands. “Oh my God… tell me you weren’t watching…”

“That good?” He smirked, loving this.

“I feel so exposed!” She dropped her hands and peered at him, her cheeks sleep-creased and flushed. “Ugh, what did I say? Did I look crazy?”

He fixed her with adoring eyes. “If there’s another sight worth seeing, I don’t know what it is. And I’ve seen everything.”

Before she could respond, he scooped Ricki into a heated kiss. Everything about Ezra was so unruffled and easy, until he kissed her. Then he went torrid. Plunging his hand into her hair, he tugged her head back and positioned her how he wanted her, sucking her tongue into his mouth, practically devouring her as he drew his knee up between her legs. She moaned, grinding against his thigh. He kept at it, kissing her deeply, but slower now, bringing her back down to earth. Lightly, he nipped her bottom lip and drew back a little, just enough to tease her with closeness.

“Who was in your dream?” demanded Ezra, a wicked quirk to his mouth. The timbre of his voice was lust blown, filthy. He pressed further, her heat scorching his skin. She was pinned to the bed, at his mercy.

“You,” she breathed. “Only you could do this to me.”

He held his hand over her heart. It was pounding. “For me?”

Eyes glazed, she nodded.

He slipped his hand into her panties, cupping the heat of her. “For me?”

Gasping, she nodded.

His lips brushed hers. “Prove it.”

Ricki looked up at him. Before he knew it, she’d ripped off his boxer briefs and was straddling his thighs, his dick huge in her hand. With an impatient growl, he ran his hands up under her shirt, cupping her breasts.

Bottom lip caught between her teeth, she positioned herself above him and lowered down till she was flush against his lap. They both groaned through gritted teeth.

Sex break, over.

“In my dream, it was just us two,” she panted out, her palms flat against the corrugated muscles of his belly, rolling her hips excruciatingly slow. “Just us, in the woods together, back home. We were like this in the dream. I was doing this to you.”

Leaning forward against his chest, she lifted herself up to the tip and then sank back down, over and over, taking him unfathomably deep until he moaned openly and uncontrollably, his fingers bruising the soft flesh of her hips.

“And all around us was our song. My song. I don’t know… where it was coming from, but it was perfect, and all around us, and I knew then… I knew…” Ricki lost her words then, because Ezra dragged his hand down to her center, rubbing his thumb over her clit in slow circles. She shuddered and cried out, the friction driving her insane.

“What did you know?” he rasped, barely holding on.

“I… I knew I could listen to it forever. I knew you were music I could listen to forever.”

The cresting simmer of arousal was unbearable now. And that was the thing about closeness, about being in sync, because then Ezra and Ricki dissolved into each other, moving together with instinctual fluidity.

He flipped her onto her back. In one fluid, decisive motion, he doubled her up and thrust into her. It was so good, Ricki blanked out for a moment, muffling her cries against Ezra’s neck. He kept at it until they broke—too soon and almost simultaneously. They gripped each other in an airtight embrace as dizzying cascades of pleasure crashed over them.

Nothing had ever felt so exquisite. Fucking nothing.

Slowly, they floated back to earth, lost in a languid haze of lips and tongues and hands brushing against hot, sweaty skin. And Ricki realized it was always like this with Ezra. End-of-the-world sex. Catastrophe sex. High-stakes sex. They’d never have the chance to have everyday sex, like a long-term couple who’d been in love for ages. Sweet, paint-by-numbers sex on one of their birthdays, because it was expected. A fumbling “this’ll do” quickie cut short by a kid toddling into the room. That normalcy would never happen for them.

She wept then. Silently at first, and then full-bodied, racking, grieving sobs. Ezra gathered her in his arms, sealing her to him as she grieved for a love story stopped short and a life that had never belonged to her at all.

“Thanks for calling me back. This story is going live at four p.m., so you caught me just in time,” gushed Clementine Rhodes over Zoom. She was an entry-level reporter for New York magazine’s The Cut. “Dying to hear more about Wilde Things. Your floral designs have literally taken over Harlem.”

It was now hours later, around 1:00 p.m., and Ricki and Ezra were still in bed. Too lost in the drama of her life, Ricki had only recently noticed that her DMs were flooded with reporters trying to contact her about her Harlem nostalgia floral pop-ups. Her heart leapt at the recognition of her work, but her first instinct was to ignore it. What was the point of doing an interview now? Why spend time engaging a stranger while her fate hung in the balance?

But Ezra, peering over her shoulder at the gushing comments, encouraged her to call at least one reporter back. No one knew more than him the importance of legacy, what it meant to leave a mark.

“Living in the world’s tough right now, don’t you think?” Ricki asked Clementine, balancing the laptop on her knees. She’d thrown on some powder, gloss, and a cute top, effectively masking her postcoital haze for Zoom. “The healing power of nature is real! My goal was to celebrate Harlem’s hidden history and to brighten anyone’s day who walked by them. But the community that’s risen around it, of people taking the flowers and decorating their own neighborhoods with them—it’s an honor. It’s my way of leaving a small mark.”

“Love that. Community building is so important,” agreed Clementine. “So, uh, I read this statistic that less than two percent of all floral designers are Black. Crazy. How does it feel to be a Black-owned floral shop in a white-dominated industry?”

“It’s true; we’re underrepresented in the industry. But look at Justina Blakeney—her Jungalow line is in Target. Hilton Carter’s a magician with green interiors. All over the country, brilliant Black florists are breaking barriers: Andra Collins in Texas, Nikeema Lee in South Carolina, Breigh Jones-Coplin in Denver. Write-ups like yours can only help spread the word.”

“Yes!” On the screen, Ricki watched the reporter nod while clicking keys. “I heard you did wedding florals for quite the elite couple. You must really feel like you’ve made it now.”

“The wedding was so chic. And I’m forever grateful to George and Daniel for the opportunity. They were dream clients, but I don’t believe that because certain people hire you, you’ve ‘made it.’ It’s just as meaningful to me, if not more, that my community has discovered Wilde Things.”

Clementine chewed her lip, tapping a fingernail against her chin. She wasn’t satisfied. “Sorry to ask again, but is there anything you can say about the hardships of being a Black florist? My editor really wants a diversity quote.” She rolled her eyes. “Gen X. You know they need to feel progressive.”

“Girl, I get it. But there is no singular ‘Black florist’ experience. We have varied backgrounds, expertise, influence. And there’s beauty in our diversity. The industry can be racist, of course. Do we get the same funding, gigs, press, or access that white florists do? No, but that’s about white supremacist systems. Blackness itself isn’t limiting; it’s limitless.” And then she added, “For inspo, though, I’d recommend Black Flora by Teresa Speight to your readers. Great read.”

Ezra, propped up next to her against the headboard, reading Flower Color Guide, a coffee-table book from Ricki’s personal library, couldn’t help but overhear the conversation. He was awestruck. It was all he could do not to hop on the bed and whoop for Ricki. In the past few days, he’d made it through almost all her plant books and binged half of The Big Flower Fight on Netflix while Ricki slept.

As he listened, he shimmered with pride. Ricki was able to say all the things he couldn’t to a reporter back in 1928: that Blackness wasn’t a concept, an idea for sale. There is no correlation between our value and white people buying in. Fuck, yes.

Ricki was who he’d always wanted to be.

“Speaking of diverse backgrounds,” the journalist said, “I heard it through the grapevine that you have Mexican ancestry?”

Ricki’s jaw dropped, and Ezra swallowed a guffaw. Her mistaken identity fumble at that networking event was one of his favorite Ricki-isms. It was so endearingly absurd.

As she tried to explain the mix-up, Ezra’s shoulders shook with silent laughter and Ricki struggled mightily to keep a straight face. In that fizzy, light moment, they were finally a regular couple. And they were happy. For that moment, they were happy.

A few hours later, Clementine’s article, “Where the Wilde Things Are,” went live. It quickly hit the top of the “Most Popular” list on The Cut and would eventually be circulated widely by Harlemites, floral designers, FlowerTok, Plantstagram, and a healthy percentage of Georgia State’s 2017 liberal arts graduates.

But that evening, the piece reached one of New York magazine’s most devoted digital followers, Rashida Wilde.

Several states south, she was sitting with her sisters, Regina and Rae, at South City Kitchen in Buckhead, Atlanta. She’d called an emergency dinner to discuss. Their three nearly identical heads were pressed together, peering down at Rashida’s phone, open to “Where the Wilde Things Are,” with intense focus. None of them could believe that their wayward, messy baby sister was experiencing this level of success with her ill-advised, impulsive little flower shop.

“I just don’t understand it, y’all.” Rashida was too shocked to take one more bite of her Local Peach Salad. “How did she pull this off?”

“A goddamned mystery,” breathed Regina.

“Scroll up,” demanded Rae. “See that pic of Ricki with her so-called flower shower? Was that really her idea? She must have a publicist. How can she afford a publicist?”

Stressed, Rashida dropped the phone into her purse. The three women sat back in their seats, silently pushing their food around on their plates. Their bold-shouldered YSL blazers seemed to deflate.

“We need to go up there,” said Regina.

“Tomorrow,” cosigned Rashida and Rae.

Their plane tickets were booked before the check came.