Page 77 of American Love Story

“No,” I croaked, glancing up at the clock on the wall, which was telling me I’d been in bed for almost fifteen hours.

“Did something happen with you and Patrice? I called him after I read his thread about the stop, but he didn’t pick up. Just texted back ‘I’m fine.’ Like the broody asshole he is.”

She sighed again and I could tell she was trying to gauge how much to push. “I didn’t even bother asking him how you were doing, because those tweets about the stop were at an eleven, so I figured at the very least you and him got into something.”

I scoffed at that major understatement and slumped against the headboard, completely at a loss about how to make things right with Patrice. Because no matter how much I hedged, he had been right about me. I’d chosen to let an issue, that at some point would end in a tragedy, slide until it came right to my door. Because it would piss people off.

I swallowed hard thinking about the thread, of what he’d written about the humiliation he felt last night, the things I never got to hear. I opened my photo app and pulled up the screenshot with the tweet that had almost made me weep for him.

That feeling that no matter what I do, how hard I work, how far I climb… It can all be taken away in a moment.

No matter how much I tried to act like Patrice overreacted to my calling Day last night, I understood that it felt like I was adding insult to injury. “He ended things last night. After.”

“What? Why?” Pris asked, sounding exasperated. She let out a long, harsh breath. “Patrice cannot be so fucking unreasonable that he’s blaming you for this?” I appreciated her outrage, but I didn’t have the energy to be mad.

I swallowed past the lump in my throat and confessed to Priscilla. “Patrice got pissed because I reached out to Day to call off the deputy who stopped him.” Pri gasped at that, not knowing it was so much worse.

“That’s not the worst part. I’ve been tiptoeing around all these stops that have been happening in town. There was one earlier this week even.”

“But that’s not just on you to figure out, Easton,” Pri said in my defense, and I smiled at her loyalty.

“It’s not to a degree, but it at least warranted some kind of public acknowledgement from us, and I didn’t say a word. But when my boyfriend got stopped, l literally called on the cavalry. Like Patrice said, it’s hypocritical.”

I could almost hear Pri thinking on the other end of the call. “I can see how he could be upset, but things had been going well. Right?”

I wanted to curl under the covers and not come out until I’d literally slept away all my feelings. “We were doing great.” I ran my hand over the satin-covered pillowcase that still had the imprint of Patrice’s head. The smell of coconut oil still lingering on the smooth surface. “I don’t know how to fix this, Pri. Patrice wants perfection, for every person in his life to interpret things the way he thinks they should and anything beyond that is betrayal. I can’t live up to that. I need him to be able to love me with the flaws I have. I can’t do with Patrice what I had to with my parents my whole life.”

“Fuck no.” Pri’s outrage made a tired smile break out on my face. “Patrice needs to get his head out of his ass, for real.” Shelet out a long breath, deflated by the conversation. “Babe, I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too, but I’m not going to beg Patrice. I own that I fucked up, and I will make it right, but I can’t be in a relationship where I’m constantly one mistake from being iced out.”

“He’ll come around. This time he has something big enough to lose.”

I sighed again, getting up to go look down on the sidewalk behind the building. It was already getting dark.

“I’m not going to pretend I won’t open the door if he comes here with an olive branch, but I can’t keep bending myself to keep Patrice appeased. I have some things I need to take care of and for now I’ll put my energy on that.”

“Okay babe, that’s good. Put that energy elsewhere. If you do need me to come up there, just call, all right? I’m pretty sure I can still kick his ass like I did when we were kids.”

I laughed at that and kept my attention on the sidewalk as I saw a figure that looked a lot like the man I loved coming closer to the building, “Thanks, Pri.”

We ended the call as I saw Patrice finally get to the door at the back of the building. Before he went in, he stepped back and looked right up at where I was. Seeing him still made my stomach flip, even as hopeless as things felt right now. He was in a black parka, his locs unbound and hanging down his back. He looked as stark and as lonely as I felt. Our eyes locked for a few breaths, and I saw the same regret in him that I’d been swimming in since last night. I wanted to lift my hand in a wave or call for him, but I just stood there until he finally dipped his head and walked inside.

chapter twenty-two

patrice

“Can I come in?” I asked after I’d rapped twice on the door of my department’s chair office. He looked up from behind his cluttered desk and waved me in. He was the exact type of man you’d expect to find chairing an economics department in an Ivy League school. In his fifties and had the absent-minded professor look down pat, complete with the coffee stain on his shirt.

“Patrice, please take a seat.”

I lowered myself onto one of the black leather chairs in front of his desk, unsure of what was about to happen, but almost certain it would not be pleasant. I looked down at myself and realized I’d missed a button on the vest I was wearing and sighed. It had been two days since the stop and almost by the hour, my regret for the way I’d handled things with Easton doubled. But since I was pretty sure I was about to get reamed out, I needed to stay focused on this particular fire and not the others actively burning in my life.

“Thank you for coming on such short notice,” he said, snatching me out of my pity party, his voice all awkward, as if we didn’t both know I didn’t exactly have a choice in the matter.

“Of course,” I said, wondering if he was going to straight up tell me to stop tweeting or if he was going to tiptoe around it for the next hour.

He cleared his throat and looked at me, as if he was trying to figure out how to take the first bite out of me. “I saw that you were involved in a traffic stop this weekend.”