Page 72 of American Love Story

I didn’t know how much I needed to hear those words from my mother until she said them, and the emotion in her voice made me think she’d needed to say them, too. “Okay. I will,” I said, wanting to believe I could.

After we ended the call, I sat there thinking about my mother’s words, how she urged me to give what I had with Easton a try. I looked at my messages again and saw Easton had left one for me.

See you at home.

I could either walk away from that promise or for the first time ever, let my heart override my head.

chapter twenty

patrice

“You sure you don’t want a glass of prosecco with your slice, P?” Nesto asked as I took a second slice of the passion fruit silk pie thing he’d made for dinner.

I shook my head as I licked some of the crust and delicious filling off my finger. “Nah, man. I’m driving.”

He shook his head like I was the most stubborn motherfucker on earth. “Man, you gotta chill,” he teased and turned to Easton, an eyebrow raised and the bottle tipped in the direction of the flute by his place setting.

My boyfriend smirked at me before raising the glass to Nesto. “I’m not nearly as good as Patrice,” he said as he leaned in to kiss my cheek.

Nesto scoffed and shook his head again. “Yeah, but you had like one glass of wine and now one of prosecco. That’s not exactly getting your drink on.” He got up and slapped a hand on my shoulder. “My man has to relax a little more.”

From the other end of the table Jude protested, “Leave him alone, Nesto, it’s been a bit stressful in this town for the past couple of months. I don’t blame him for being careful.”

Jude was quiet and very mild-mannered, but he did not pull a punch when it came to shit that he felt strongly about. At his words, I saw Easton’s back go up. But Jude had those baby blues right on him. It’d been a few days since that last stop. Eastonhad gone to visit the kid who’d passed out at the hospital, who’d thankfully made a full recovery, but of course, things had died down again.

I could see Easton trying to keep his sigh inward instead of responding to Jude.

“I don’t blame him either, even if he is a little bit more intense than I am with these things,” Nesto said ruefully.

Easton took a small sip then gave Jude a serious look. “Day has finally agreed to take a strong stance and have some kind of diversity training in the department. Honestly, I don’t think that’s enough. He needs to make a statement, publicly.”

He’d been trying to get his boss to say something, too, but so far, nothing. I was starting to wonder if that was where it would stay.

Jude nodded and looked straight at me, as if he knew we’d be on the same page. “I know you’ll try, Easton. I just hope there’s not a tragedy while they’re sorting themselves out.”

“Me, too,” Easton said heavily, pushing his barely touched glass of prosecco away. “It’s what has me considering this run more seriously; maybe I could do some good. Take a different position as DA.” When he looked at me, I reached over and ran a hand over his.

We’d reached a sort of détente since the day Cindy had announced his candidacy. He’d been moving behind the scenes trying to shake things up. I’d ended up participating in the peaceful protest after the last stop, had been quietly helping some local groups organize, and intentionally laying off Twitter, but we’d kept our stuff separate. I wasn’t sure how long it would work to leave things hanging like this. Those parts of our lives were too big to just keep them to ourselves. Eventually we’d either have to bring them together ourselves or they would collide on their own. But the struggle and the law could not go to bed every night, without coming to a standoff at some point.

I heard Jude clearing his throat and looked up to find him looking at Easton and I like that he knew exactly what was going down with us. But when he opened his mouth, it mercifully went in another direction. “Did Ari tell you about the moving date?”

I nodded and smiled over at Easton, who was suddenly super focused on his hands. “Yeah,” I said, pointing a fork in my boyfriend’s direction. “His new landlord made sure the apartment was ready for him within a week.”

Easton rolled his eyes at Nesto, Jude, and me like what he had done was no big deal. “It didn’t need that much work. It’s a studio. Took like two days to get it ready.”

“Uh huh,” Nesto said, putting his arm around Jude. “You’re charging him what he paid his uncle for rent, which I know was not very much, and giving him a brand new place downtown, which happened to be fully furnished. That ain’t nothing, my guy.”

I could see the color rising on Easton’s cheeks like it always did whenever anyone tried to give him a compliment.

After a moment, he looked up from whatever he’d been closely inspecting on the table. “He’s gone through a lot this past month, so I’m glad that I can help on this one thing. It’s not like it comes at a big cost to me.”

Before I could interject, Nesto voiced what I was thinking. “You also got him the immigration lawyer who took his case pro bono. And you didn’t have to do a thing, but you did it anyways. So stop trying to talk yourself out of your cookout invitation, bruh.”

That got us all laughing and moving on to discuss the logistics of getting Ari situated in his new place.

After some more talk about what each of us would get for a housewarming, I noticed Easton’s yawns were coming more and more frequently. I’d been staying at his house pretty much every night for the past month and knew he was back to leaving for theoffice before five in the morning, preparing for his next trial. So, when I saw him nod off, I ran a hand over his shoulder.

“Hey, you want to head home?”