Page 76 of American Love Story

I opened the door and saw him getting out of his car, which he parked on the spot nearest the elevator. As he hurried over to me, I took one breath, then another.

“Are you all right?”

I turned and leaned against my driver door as he stood just a few feet away. Still trying to breathe through the jumble of emotions of the last few minutes. I decided to stay here, to talk to him while we were out in an open space. A place where I’d have to keep my voice down, where I’d have an easier time walking away.

I looked down at my feet as I thought of what to say. Of how to explain to Easton that what he’d done was not even remotely all right. When I finally looked up, I could see the flatness of hismouth, the way his fists were shoved in his coat, that he knew things were not okay.

“You’ve been telling me for weeks now to be patient, that things are just so slow when it comes to these things. Not a public statement, not a word to the community that this was not okay, that they were right to be scared. Your boss didn’t, you didn’t.” With every word I said, Easton got paler, his eyes downcast, and something in me almostwantedto hurt him. When I spoke again, my voice sounded so fucking tired. “But the minute these stops come to your door, you have it taken care of it in three minutes.”

He stepped toward me with a protest in his mouth, but I held up my hand.

I kept wondering why I wasn’t more heated, why the only thing I felt right now was exhaustion. “I want you to tell me, Easton. Tell me how it makes sense to let those stops go on for months now without taking any kind of position, when it was other people’s lovers or parents or kids.”

My voice broke then, and I had to take a deep breath, to finish saying this shit, because the shock from everything that had gone down in the last hour was starting to wear off and I was shaking. “I can’t be that person, Easton. I can’t be the one for whom the rules are broken, while every other fucker that looks like me has to just live with it.”

His mouth twisted then and he took a step, closing the space between us. “That is not what that was, Patrice,” he said, desperation clear in his voice. “It’s not that I don’t care about what happened to other people. I know now how wrong it was for us to stay silent, to not reassure the community.” He fisted the hand he’d been running through his hair. “I freaked out, okay. I got scared. I get that I may seem hypocritical?—”

I scoffed and leaned my head back, starting to feel pissed off. “Mayseem hypocritical, Easton?”

“Patrice—”

“No. That’s the kind of energy you need to have for every single person that is stopped in this town and doesn’t have a boyfriend with the pull to help him out. That’s not how it works. You know what it takes to make this better for everyone? Sacrifices. Your boss won’t say anything because she can’t piss off the police, the sheriff can’t do it because he already lost some votes. Meanwhile black and brown people in this town go on thinking the people who are supposed to keep them safe just don’t care. You knew all along that what was happening was dangerous.”

He hung his head then. What else was there to say?

I wanted to touch him one last time, to run my fingers over those lips one more time. “You remember when you told me that you could go your whole life thinking about the real history of this country?”

He gave a sharp nod in response, his arms crossed tightly against his chest. “We’re not just learning history, we’re making it, too. You can’t just be brave when you’ve secured yourself a soft landing or without making any of your friends uncomfortable.”

“Does anyone get a second chance with you? Or is everything black and white, Patrice?”

I laughed again, pushing off the car. “That may be, Easton, but I also don’t have the luxury of navigating in the grays. I won’t be anybody’s token, and I won’t let you use our relationship as your excuse to not do better.”

I walked away and headed to the elevators, but before I took two steps, he was hot on my heels. “Oh no you fucking don’t,” he gritted out, getting into the elevator with me. I pushed the button for my floor and put in the special access code for him. And almost laughed about the symbolism in that small detail.The fact that Easton had the kind of life where one needed a special code to get to him.

As the elevator doors closed, he got right back in my face. “I’m not going to beg you, Patrice, because I know that there’s nothing I can say that you won’t turn into another self-righteous reason to condemn me and then yourself for caring about me.”

His eyes were a dark green now and blazing, to anyone else, he would’ve looked angry, but I could see that he was hurting. “I fucked up. I should’ve done better, I should’vebeenbetter. I don’t have a do-over, and I have to live with that.” He shook his head as the elevator stopped on my floor. “But there was never going to be a way for me to win when it came to us.”

I stood there not knowing what to say, too tired to try.

“Before we even really begun you’d already decided that I was going to disappoint you. Now I have. I hope your sanctimoniousness keeps you warm at night, because I’m done with begging you to see me as anything other than a vice you can’t seem to break.”

With that, he pushed past me and walked out of the elevator, but before taking the stairs to his place, he turned back to look at me, and in a strangled voice said, “You’re so much stronger than I am, Patrice, because I would never put my convictions ahead of the people I love.”

I opened my mouth to tell him he was being unfair, but before I could, he pulled the door open and took the steps up to his place.

When I got to my apartment, I closed my eyes tight and tried to breathe through the tears that were threatening to spill. I kept repeating under my breath, “this is for the best, this is for the best, this is for the best.”

Easton needed someone who could be with him without reservation, who could love him without conflicts or guilt.

I didn’t know if I could ever be that man.

Easton

“Are you all right?” Pri asked, the naked concern in her voice making me grimace.

I sighed as I tried to sit up on my bed, my muscles achy from lack of use. My head still groggy from all the sleeping I’d done. I debated on what to say but in the end decided I didn’t have it in me to act like I wasn’t wrecked.