Page 45 of Unbound
"A group project? With who?"
"Another student in my class. We're partners for a debate assignment."
"What's the topic?"
I stopped walking entirely. How did I explain that I was researching arguments for marriage equality? How did I tell my girlfriend—my girlfriend who expected to announce our engagement soon—that I was spending my evenings with Adrian Costas learning about constitutional protection for same-sex marriage?
"It's complicated," I said finally. "Constitutional law stuff. Boring."
The lie tasted bitter. What we'd done tonight wasn't boring—it was fascinating, challenging, intellectually stimulating in a way I hadn't experienced since... maybe ever. But I couldn't tell Rebecca that. I couldn't tell her that I'd spent three hours discussing legal theory with a man who made my pulse race, learning about rights she'd been taught to oppose.
"Well, be careful not to let it take over your life," Rebecca said, and I could hear the worry in her voice. "You've been distracted lately. Different. Is everything okay?"
Everything was not okay. Everything was falling apart in ways I didn't understand and couldn't control. But I couldn't say that either.
"I'm fine," I said. "Just stressed about schoolwork."
"Okay. I love you."
"I love you too."
Another lie. Or maybe not a lie, exactly, but not the truth either. I loved Rebecca the way I loved my family, my church, the familiar patterns of my carefully ordered life. But sitting across from Adrian tonight, watching his eyes light up as he explained constitutional principles, I'd felt something else entirely. Something I didn't have words for and couldn't afford to examine too closely.
I hung up and continued walking, but slower now. The campus was quiet except for the distant sound of traffic and the occasional laugh from students heading home from late study sessions. Normal people living normal lives, making normal choices.
By the time I reached my apartment, one fact had crystallized with uncomfortable clarity: I'd lied to Rebecca. Twice. First by omission when I didn't tell her about my study session with Adrian, then directly when I downplayed what we'd been working on.
It was the second lie I'd told her in a week.
I sat on my bed and stared at the legal pad full of notes about marriage equality, constitutional rights, and the fundamental liberty interest in forming intimate bonds. Three hours ago, this had been an impossible assignment, a cruel joke that would force me to argue against everything I believed.
Now it felt like something else entirely.
I thought about Adrian's question:What did you want to be?
I thought about his praise:You're thinking like a lawyer.
I thought about Justice Kennedy's words about marriage embodying "the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family."
And I thought about the look in Adrian's eyes when he'd talked about dignity and equal citizenship and the fundamental human need to form intimate bonds.
For the first time in my life, I'd spent an evening engaged in intellectual work that felt like discovery rather than memorization. I'd asked questions that came from genuine curiosity rather than dutiful compliance. I'd felt my mind working in ways it had never been allowed to work before.
I'd enjoyed it.
More than enjoyed it—I'd felt alive in a way I couldn't remember feeling before. Energized. Intellectually stimulated. Like I was using parts of my brain that had been locked away my entire life.
And that terrified me more than anything that had happened so far.
Because if I could enjoy working with Adrian, if I could find constitutional arguments for marriage equality not just comprehensible but compelling, if I could feel genuine intellectual passion for ideas I'd been taught to reject—then what else might I be capable of?
What other lies might I be ready to stop telling?
11
ADRIAN
Iwalked back to the fraternity house in a daze, my mind still reeling from everything that had happened in the library. Jesse's tentative touch, the way he'd jerked back like he'd been burned, the water spreading across our constitutional law materials like some kind of metaphor I wasn't ready to unpack.
