Page 42 of Unbound
And he was brilliant.
I'd known he was smart—you didn't get into our constitutional law program without serious intellectual firepower—but listening to him break down complex legal concepts with casual expertise was something else entirely. He moved between cases and constitutional principles like he was conducting a symphony, finding connections and patterns that I would have missed entirely.
"The key insight inObergefell," he said, pulling out a copy of the actual Supreme Court decision, "is that marriage isn't just a contract or a religious ceremony. It's a fundamental liberty interest that involves the most intimate and personal choices a person can make."
He slid the decision across to me, opened to a highlighted passage. I read Justice Kennedy's words:"No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family."
"The Court recognized that denying same-sex couples the right to marry wasn't just about legal benefits," Adrian continued. "It was about dignity. About equal citizenship. About the fundamental human need to form intimate bonds and have those bonds recognized by society."
I stared at the passage, reading it twice. The language was beautiful, almost poetic. It talked about marriage in terms I'd never heard in church—not as a duty or a divine institution, but as a profound human connection that deserved protection and recognition.
"But what about the religious liberty arguments?" I asked before I could stop myself. "The conscientious objections?"
Adrian didn't mock the question or dismiss it. Instead, he turned to another marked section of his notes.
"The Court was careful to distinguish between religious marriage and civil marriage," he said. "No religious institution is required to perform marriages that conflict with their beliefs. The First Amendment protects that. But civil marriage—the legal institution that provides benefits like hospital visitation rights, inheritance, medical decision-making authority—that's a matter of equal protection under law."
He looked up at me, those dark eyes serious. "Think about it this way: if your church doesn't want to marry same-sex couples, that's their right. But why should that religious position determine what rights the government recognizes? Why should your beliefs about marriage dictate what legal protections I can have for my family?"
The question hung between us, and I realized I didn't have an answer. Not a good one, anyway. The arguments I'd been taught—about protecting religious freedom, about preserving traditional values—suddenly seemed thin and incomplete when faced with the constitutional framework Adrian was laying out.
"I need to read the full decision," I said finally.
"Good." Adrian pulled out his laptop and opened it to a legal database. "Let's start with Justice Kennedy's majority opinion, then move through the dissents. Understanding both sides will make our argument stronger."
As the hour progressed, our workspace gradually contracted. Adrian would lean closer to point out passages in his copy of the decision. I found myself unconsciously mirroring him, both of us bent over the same page, close enough that I could smell his cologne—something warm and clean with hints of cedar and citrus that made my mouth go dry.
"See this part here?" Adrian said, his finger tracing a line in Justice Kennedy's opinion. "The Court is saying that marriage is about more than legal benefits—it's about human dignity, the right to define one's own concept of existence."
His voice changed when he was concentrating—lower, rougher around the edges, as if the law required deeper registers than flirtation. I shouldn't have noticed. Shouldn't have traced the movement of his lips as they shaped each legal principle, shouldn't have memorized the way his canine tooth caught slightly on his lower lip when he paused to think. The glimpse of white teeth when he smiled at some elegant argument sent a jolt through me that had nothing to do with constitutional theory.
I told myself it was just exhaustion making my thoughts slip. Just the adrenaline still simmering from the protest, making me hyper-aware of everyone. But the lie curdled in my throat when Adrian leaned closer to underline a passage, and suddenly I wasn't thinking about constitutional rights anymore. I was thinking about the freckle just below his earlobe. The precise angle his thumb made when turning pages. The way his throat moved when he swallowed, skin taut over that elegant stretch of tendon.
This was worse than the gym, worse than the protest. Those had been fleeting moments—heat flashes quickly buried. But here, trapped together with case law and heavy books between us, I had nowhere to lookexceptat him, nothing to doexceptnotice. And noticing—God help me—was becoming its own terrible addiction.
"Jesse? You following this?"
I snapped my attention back to the text, heat flooding my face. "Sorry, I was just—the constitutional framework is complex."
"Here, let me show you." Adrian shifted his chair closer, close enough that his thigh pressed against mine under the table. "If you look at the progression fromLawrencetoWindsortoObergefell..."
He was explaining something about due process, his fingers tracing lines of legal text like a musician reading sheetmusic—confident, deliberate. But his words dissolved into static behind the hammering of my pulse. All I could comprehend was the heat of his thigh pressed against mine beneath the table, the way his biceps flexed against his rolled-up sleeve as he gestured, the rhythmic bob of his Adam’s apple when he swallowed between sentences. A sheen of sweat had broken out at the nape of my neck. My skin prickled as if someone had rewired my nervous system to register Adrian’s proximity as a live current.
Focus, I ordered myself, digging my nails into my palm. But my traitorous attention snagged on the way his lower lip glistened when he licked it mid-explanation, on the frayed edge of his shirtsleeve where it grazed my wrist, on the gold fleck in his left iris that only appeared when the library’s fluorescents hit it just so.
"...which is why the equal protection argument was so important." His knee nudged mine under the table, intentional or not, and I nearly convulsed. "You see?"
An embarrassing noise almost escaped my throat.See?I couldn’t even process how oxygen worked anymore. The musty law book in front of me might as well have been hieroglyphics. All cognitive function had short-circuited, replaced by an insistent loop ofhim—the sharp angle of his jaw dusted with midnight stubble, the flutter of his absurdly long lashes when he blinked, the veins standing stark on the back of his hands as he turned a page. His fingers. God, hisfingers. Slender but strong, the left one tapping an absent rhythm on the tabletop, the right one dragging a highlighter across the page with the same effortless precision he’d used to dismantle my arguments in class.
A reckless fantasy detonated behind my eyelids: those fingers skimming up my arm, tilting my chin, tangling in my—
I moved before my brain caught up. My hand slid across the tabletop, covering his with a clumsiness that betrayed how badly I’d been craving the contact. His skin was warmer than I’d imagined, the ridges of his knuckles subtly uneven beneath my fingertips. His pulse jumped against my palm.
Silence.
Adrian’s breath hitched audibly. The highlighter dropped from his grip as his whole body locked, statue-still, and when I dared to look up, his pupils had swallowed half his irises. His lips parted—not in explanation now, but in shocked, breathless invitation.
Reality cratered through me like a meteor.What am I doing?
