“Everything isn’t life or death, but this specific thing that’s been happening here potentially could be. You know that. I don’t need to start rattling off names of people who have lost their lives to get my point across. I’m not saying that Easton is responsible to stop it, because it’s not that simple. But it’s going to cause tension and I got enough on my plate right now.”

I had no idea how Easton was handling any of this and to a degree I almost didn’t want to know. If I began to let things slide because I was involved with Easton, I’d eventually hate myself and him.

It frightened me more that despite knowing all of that, I wanted him anyways.

“This lone wolf shit is a whole lot, P.” Nesto’s exhausted tone made me shake off the overthinking, but I seriously didn’t want to talk about it anymore. The more I did, the less my reasons seemed strong enough to hold me back from getting involved with Easton.

I looked over at Ari and Yin who were now making out more than actually unpacking, then gestured for Nesto to come closer, hoping to get the conversation off me for a minute.

“So how are things going at Ari’s? He said his uncle was still angry about the texts from Yin he saw on his phone.”

Nesto’s face turned sour at the mention of Ari’s uncle. “He’s still giving him a hard time. I don’t want to push him to move out, because the only way he can pay for school is by saving on rent, but at this point I’m almost ready to have him come live with Jude and me for a while.” He sucked his teeth, clearly upset by the situation. “It’s fucking ridiculous, but he can’t burn that bridge because the uncle is helping him with his green card shit.” Nesto’s face hardened at that. “The guy is an asshole and so manipulative.”

I thought about the green card thing for a second. “I wonder if I can help out with that. I mean I can sponsor him, if that’s the issue. We made tentative plans to finally get together this weekend.” Between the move and Ari’s two jobs and school, we hadn’t been able to lock down a time, but we’d settled on dinner Saturday.

Nesto was pleased with that. “Good, I was hoping you could get that going.” He looked over again at the two young men and turned back to me. “I don’t know if you can just switch since his uncle started the process. It’s better for us to talk to him about it.” Nesto squeezed my shoulder. “I’m glad that you’re doing this. The more people he has in his corner the better.”

“He’s a good kid.”