AN: Here's chapter four, I hope you all enjoy it, thanks for sticking with me! Special thanks to those who reviewed the last chapter; dottyberry, jaceyb1, obsessedwithezria, A Pretty Little Love and dalh2755, your encouragement keeps me writing! :)

4. [Ezra]

Ezra spends the week leading up to the move packing his entire apartment into boxes. First, his clothes, then books, kitchen utensils, papers, random knick-knacks Malcolm made in art class when he was younger; an entire life reduced to things stacked in cardboard cubes.

Ezra thinks about the last time he moved across the country, packed up his entire life, left his job, his friends, Aria. That, he thinks, was the turning point in his life, the grand catalyst for all of the change, good and bad, that he's experienced.

Years later he tells himself it was for the best, that Malcolm deserved a father in his life; but he still remembers Aria, thinks about her big doe eyes and pale, milky soft skin, her scent, the perfect mix of vanilla and sandalwood, sweet but dark, mysterious. Most of the time, Ezra tries not to think about her, long for her, but sometimes she creeps into his consciousness late at night when he's alone in bed. He can picture her so clearly, her lying beside him while they watched old movies, her face the last time they saw each other, her sad smile as she looked at him, not knowing it would be for the last time.

Ezra remembers the move from Rosewood, remembers arriving at his new home in Seattle; trying to be excited, hopeful about his new little insta-family, just add Ezra. He remembers walking through the street for the first time, Malcolm's small hand linked with his, Maggie smiling at his side. To everyone, they probably looked every bit the perfect couple; and they were, for a while, lived happily ever after, sleeping side by side in a double bed in a small apartment downtown.

Ezra got a job at a newspaper writing book reviews, human-interest pieces, obits, odd columns no one else wanted. He actually liked most of the offbeat things he got to write about, loved leaving work for an interview, never knowing what sort of characters he would encounter along the way; loved the freedom of his job, being able to see Malcolm, to pick him up from school each day.

Maggie got her master's, finished with honors, took a job with special needs kids; Malcolm grew up, played soccer, guitar, started skateboarding. Time trudged on and Ezra tried to be happy, but trying, he knows, is very different from being.

A few years after the move, they started fighting, loud screaming matches, big blowouts that sent Malcolm running to his room, flying out the door. They fought about money, about the apartment, about Malcolm, about the present, the past, the future; they fought about everything that a couple could conceivably fight about. Ezra was miserable; he stayed at the office until midnight, ate endless dinners out of greasy takeout wrappers, fell asleep hunched over his desk, all in the name of avoiding Maggie.

But still, they stayed together for Malcolm, trying in vain to make it work, to give him a family. One day Malcolm came to Ezra, said he hated them fighting, didn't want to live with them anymore, he wanted to go off to boarding school, one of those alternative learning environments down in California.

Ezra realized then that he had screwed up, that all of his delusions of his happy family had been just that, delusions. He broke it off with Maggie and moved out of the apartment, to a smaller two-bedroom across town, while Malcolm stayed with Maggie at their old place. The split was everything the relationship hadn't been, easy, amicable; they switched off weekends with Malcolm, devised their own custody system, arranged everything via email, a modern parenting success story. It all seemed to work out and Ezra was reasonably content.

He started dating again, a girl named Sarah with long red hair and a penchant for tattoos, a girl named Renee who owned a rescue shelter for abandoned reptiles, one named Chloe who wrote increasingly bizarre haikus, farmed sustainable crops on the roof of her apartment building. None of them stuck around long enough for it to get serious.

Then the economic downturn hit, print media started dying off; his paper folded, along with three others in town. He searched craigslist looking for work, called his old contacts at the paper, applied at schools and marketing firms, for magazines and corporate gigs, temp agencies.

After nearly a year of looking unsuccessfully, he gave in, called his mother, listened to her talk about what a colossal mess he had managed to make of his life, ask questions about when she would see "proper" grandchildren, when he was going to pull it all together, whatever that meant.

Nonetheless, she agreed to pull some strings, get him a new job, provided he was willing to submit to a lengthy list of demands, including, but not limited to, moving back to the east coast. Ezra thought about it, talked to Maggie, talked to Malcolm, spent long nights lying awake in bed questioning the move, his life, his perceived level of happiness. Maggie told him to do whatever he felt was right, reminded him that Malcolm could always visit him back east; after all, he was nearly in high school, old enough to fly on a plane by himself.

After weeks of deliberating, weeks of biting his fingernails down to tiny stubs, weeks of futile searching for a job, he finally called his mother back, agreed to her terms. Two days later he was on the phone for an interview with some girl named Laura, an editor for a publishing house in New York City. She was moving overseas to be with her new fiancé, a Frenchman with a yacht in the French Riviera, and she needed to hire a replacement, ASAP.

Ezra waited nervously, told himself he didn't care about this job, though by that point he felt so exhausted, so discouraged by his job search, a rejection from McDonald's probably would have stung. A couple days after that, Laura called him back, told him he should start packing, told him he should read up on his clients, get ready for his new life back east. He didn't know how felt about it all, so he chose not to think about it, channeled his confusion into preparing for the move.

Soon everything was packed up, loaded into a big yellow moving van that smelled like mothballs, camphor, menthol. Ezra says goodbye to Maggie, tells her to take care of his son. He hugs Malcolm insanely hard, promises to be back for Christmas, to fly him out for spring break next year, to talk to him on the phone, Skype with him and text him, to still be every bit the dad he was before.

Ezra flies cross-country, takes the red-eye on a hot night in mid-August; when he lands, the air is thick with vapor, the clouds in the sky hang low and grey, warning of an impending storm. He takes a cab from JFK to his new apartment, stares out the window at Manhattan looming in the distance, stares at the Queensboro bridge, the Empire State Building, rising up above the other buildings, standing crisp, tall like a toy solider.

His mother finds him a suitable apartment on the upper west side, in a building with a doorman and a gym, marble floors in the lobby, exposed brick walls. When Ezra walks in for the first time, he sees it's furnished with the basics, a bed, a microwave, a desk Ezra knows has been in his family for longer than he's been alive. The Wi-Fi is set up, the electricity, too, cable, heat; the fridge is stocked with milk, bread, bottles of water. There's a note stuck to the front of it, a tiny yellow post-it; welcome home, love Mom, it reads.

He spends his first day in New York watching reruns of "I Love Lucy" and waiting for the movers, his second day unpacking boxes. He emerges on his third day in the city to buy a bagel, poppy seed, with a thick layer of cream cheese sandwiched between the two halves. He picks up some files from Laura, sits at an outdoor café sipping iced coffee and eating croissants, reading up on his soon-to-be clients.

He flips through page after page of rough drafts, notes, thick manuscripts scribbled with red ink, plays from playwrights he doesn't recognize. After a few hours of reading, he sees something that stops his heart right in his chest; there, scrawled crookedly on the tab of a file folder is her name, Aria Montgomery.

He reads the file with rapt attention, shuffles through several rough drafts of her bio, a list of accolades for her books, information on book tours she's done. It isn't anything he doesn't already know, having followed her work for years. He can still remember walking into the bookstore years ago on the release date of her first book, buying two copies, reading the entire thing in his car in one long sitting. There's a recent picture of her in the file, a wallet sized headshot of her smiling, her head tilted to one side, her long, glossy locks tossed over her shoulder, her lips stained a deep burgundy; Ezra slides it into his pocket without a second thought.

A few weeks later when Ezra steps into Laura's office, he's sure he's less surprised to see Aria than she is to see him, but he isn't surprised when she pretends not to know him, remembering her effortless ability to lie on command.

She looks so beautiful, he thinks, every bit as beautiful as he remembers, every bit as beautiful as the picture he stole from her file. Her eyes still pierce him the way he remembers, still full him with this undeniable longing to touch her, to hold her, to kiss her, to be with her.