I pulled into my parking spot, feeling like my head could snap right off my neck from the tension. I didn’t want to blow up, take things out on Easton. I didn’t want to say things that I could never take back. I thought of the sweet moment we’d just had by our cars, and it felt like it had happened to someone else.

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. Looking at him now I had the same thought that I had when that cop made me get out my car, I don’t want Easton to feel responsible for me. I didn’t want him to have to see me get hurt and then feel like it was his fault. Maybe all this was bigger than the two of us. Maybe this was all hopeless after all.

“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, but that beyond that the reality of where we both stood in life finally sunk in and I was scared for both us. When I looked up I could see the flatness of his mouth, 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 almost wanted to 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 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.”