The color rising on her cheeks told me she’d finally understood just how much she’d fucked up with me. “Don’t worry I still like you a lot better than him.”

She scoffed. “Glad to hear I still make it above that extremely low bar.” She frowned as we made our way down the stairs again. “No matter what you do I’ll support you.”

I smiled at her as we got to the conference room. “It’s killing you not to be able to make me give you a straight answer?”

She pinched my cheek. “You think you’re cute.”

“Not cute enough to keep a boyfriend though.”

She waved her hand around as if I was talking nonsense. “You’re a keeper. Never ever doubt that. Let’s hope the stunner gets his head out of his ass, and does right by you.” She clicked her tongue regretfully, and for a second it felt like it usually was between us. “There’s just been a lot of letting you down going around.”

I shook my head as she straightened my tie. “You didn’t—”

“Yeah I did. I let you down, and we’ll need to figure out how to come back from it. Now, go.”

This time, I did give her a hug and hoped that we could. I walked into the conference room and quickly went to shake hands with the two journalists from the Ithaca Star. I’d done enough of these to know the drill, so within seconds the camera was rolling and a very young-looking Latinx woman was getting on with the interview.

“Thank you for sitting with us today, ADA Archer.”

I nodded and gave her the full, veneer smile. “My pleasure, and it’s Easton, please.”

She gave me a short nod and raised an eyebrow like she was not planning to pull any punches. “You’ve had an eventful couple of weeks. The jury voted to convict in the assault case of Ms. Suarez, and on that same day your intention to run for district attorney was announced.” She said it in a tone I couldn’t figure out, but whatever it was there was a lot of sarcasm there.

I nodded in response to her comment, as she launched into the next part of her question. “You’ve been operating as the interim DA now for a few of months, and know how things work. Can you tell me why you think you should be the next District Attorney?”

I shifted in the chair I was sitting in and angled my head, figuring out how to get out what I needed to say.

“Before I tell you about all the ways that I have been a great ADA, I want to talk about ways in which I need to do much better.”