I smiled at her genuine concern. “He’s not my partner, but yes he is all right.” I was certain the wistfulness in my voice had not gone unnoticed.

She extended her hand and for the first time in the meeting she gave me a real smile. “Thank you, Easton, for being so honest today. I hope you reconsider your run, I think your point of view will add a lot to the conversation.”

With that the camera was off my face, indicating we were done.

As I thanked her once again she gave me a knowing look. “Was the person you were talking about Patrice Denis?”

“What makes you say that?”

She laughed and shook her head, looking a little embarrassed. “Don’t worry, this part is off the record. I’ve just seen you guys around town together, and since he was just stopped recently and said someone intervened, I put two and two together.”

I just nodded, not sure how to respond. “Yeah, I was talking about him. When is this going up?” I asked, wondering how much more time I had before my life got really upended for a few days.

She turned around to look at the kid with the camera. He considered for a moment, his attention still on the laptop in front of him. “It’ll be up by the end of the day.”

I left it at that and walked out of the room, hoping that if my career in the DA’s office went down in flames, that I’d at least done the right thing.

Patrice

I was getting my stuff together to leave my office after a particularly brutal grading session, when I saw my phone screen flashing with Ari’s number. So far things had been calm with him. He’d been mostly staying at Yin’s house for the past week. The new development to his housing situation was that they’d both be moving to the studio in my building in a couple of days. The levels of excitement they had for this big step in their relationship, at least on Yin’s side, were reaching rapture-like intensity. And of course my mind went to Easton’s help, which had really been a game-changer for Ari.

I answered the call, thinking once again that I needed to figure out how to reach out to him.

“Hey—”

He didn’t let me get the full greeting in before screaming into the phone, “Did you see the video?” He was so hyped up I couldn’t tell if the video was supposed to be a bad or a good thing.