Page 41 of Unbound
The results filled the screen instantly. Legal blogs, news articles, the full text of the Supreme Court decision. I clicked on the first link—a summary from a legal education website—and began to read.
The petitioners argued that the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses guarantee their fundamental right to marry...
Marriage is a fundamental liberty interest protected by the Due Process Clause...
The right to personal choice regarding marriage is inherent in the concept of individual autonomy...
The language was dry, academic, but something about it made sense in a way that surprised me. These weren't emotional appeals or moral arguments—they were constitutional principles, legal reasoning, the kind of analytical thinking I'd been trained to do.
I found myself reading faster, clicking from article to article, following legal citations like breadcrumbs through a forest of jurisprudence. The arguments were more sophisticated than I'd expected, grounded in decades of precedent about privacy rights, equal protection, and the fundamental nature of marriage as a civil institution.
By the time I looked up, it was nearly six-thirty. I'd been reading for over two hours, filling three pages with notes, and I was no closer to understanding how I felt about any of it.
But I understood the legal reasoning. And despite everything I'd been taught, despite every sermon I'd heard about the sanctity of traditional marriage, the constitutional arguments made sense.
The library. I was supposed to meet Adrian at seven.
I gathered my notes and laptop, locked the apartment, and walked across campus in the gathering dusk. The library was busier than usual—midterm season always drove students to the stacks in search of quiet study spaces and reliable Wi-Fi. I found the reference section easily enough, its tall shelves and heavy wooden tables creating natural alcoves for serious research.
Adrian was already there when I arrived, claiming a table in theback corner where we'd have privacy and room to spread out materials. He'd beaten me there by several minutes, based on the stack of books already arranged on his side of the table, but he looked relaxed rather than impatient.
He was wearing a dark blue henley that brought out his eyes, the sleeves pushed up to his forearms. I noticed the way his fingers moved as he turned pages—long, graceful, confident. I noticed, and then immediately tried to stop noticing.
"You came," he said as I approached, and there was something in his voice I couldn't quite identify. Relief, maybe. Or surprise.
"I said I would."
"You also said this was strictly academic and professional."
I set my bag down across from him and pulled out my chair. "It is."
"Then why do you look like you're about to face a firing squad?"
Because I was. Because sitting across from Adrian to research marriage equality felt like stepping off a cliff with no idea how far I'd fall or what I'd find at the bottom.
"I'm fine," I said instead, arranging my materials with the same methodical precision I brought to everything. Laptop, legal pad, pens, assignment sheet. Order imposed on chaos.
Adrian watched me organize for a moment, then slid one of his books across the table. Our fingers brushed as I reached for it—barely a touch, lasting maybe half a second—but I felt it like an electric shock. From the way Adrian's eyes flicked to mine, he felt it too.
"I pulled some foundational texts while I was waiting," he said, his voice perfectly steady. "Thought we might start with the constitutional basics before diving into the specific case."
I looked down at the book, hyperaware of the warmth still tingling in my fingertips:Constitutional Law: Principles and Policiesby Erwin Chemerinsky. A thick volume with sticky notes marking dozens of pages. Adrian had clearly done this before.
"Thank you," I said carefully.
"You don't have to look so suspicious. I'm not trying to corrupt you with dangerous constitutional scholarship." He leaned back in his chair, that infuriatingly confident smirk playing on his lips. "Well...notjustwith constitutional scholarship. I’ve got a whole syllabus of corruption planned for you. The First Amendment is just today’s lesson.”
My face must have betrayed something—horror? intrigue?—because his smirk widened. "Relax, Jesse. I'm kidding. Mostly. The Constitution is strictly PG-rated. I save the real corruption for office hours."
Despite everything, I felt the corner of my mouth twitch. Almost. I quickly schooled my expression back into something appropriately disapproving and managed a stern, "I should hope so."
"That's the spirit," he said, clearly delighted. "Next week we can move on to unorthodox interpretations of the Commerce Clause. I hear it's positively scandalous."
"Where do we start?" I asked instead.
Adrian flipped open his own copy of the Chemerinsky text, pages marked with a rainbow of sticky notes and marginalia in his confident handwriting. "Due Process Clause, Fourteenth Amendment. That's the constitutional foundation for most modern privacy and marriage rights."
He turned to a marked page and began explaining the legal framework—due process, fundamental rights, levels of constitutional scrutiny. His voice was different here than in class or during our previous encounters. More focused, more serious. This was Adrian the law student, not Adrian the charming provocateur.
