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“Want to share?”
How would he even begin?
“Why’d you decide to be a lawyer?” he asked instead.
Her smirk said she wasn’t going to forget to drag his answer out of him. “A common theme with the people I spoke to in hospice was that life was okay for them up until a point when everything went wrong. For a lot of them it was something like getting caught with someone who had a joint or a bad traffic stop with a cop picking apart everything, and getting absurdly heavy sentences that made it near to impossible to recover in life. Stories about people who didn’t have an advocate looking out for them. People who wound up with bullshit felonies all because… I don’t know. I don’t want to speculate because that’ll just piss me off. I did a lot of shadowing nurses then cops, but it wasn’t until my dad had this judge friend over for dinner that it really clicked. His wife was a court reporter. She and I got to talking, and she spelled it out for me. These people need two things. First, someone who will fight for them. And second, someone who will change the game for them.”
His mouth went dry listening to her. Her words resonated in his very bones.
“There’s not a lot an eighteen-year-old can do to change how the world works. At best, even if I started working in politics, it was going to be a slow road. But if I went the law route? I can help people while I establish myself. I can touch individual lives and advocate for them. I can argue cases fairly and not how they’ve been handed to me. And someday maybe I’ll be in a place where I can change things for everyone.” She looked up at him. “Your turn. What are you thinking about?”
“I joined the FBI because I wanted to change things from the inside.”
“Have you?”
“I don’t know.” He thought back on how things had been when he first started. “No, it’s gotten better. But the bigger problems are things that one person can’t change on their own. But I will say that the environment has gotten better since I joined. We see fewer racial stereotypes tossed around, and I think that makes us fairer when investigating.”
She beamed up at him. Like she was proud of him.
“Be the change you want to see,” she said.
“What do you do for fun?” he asked. “You know when you aren’t raising money for cancer or changing the world for the better?”
“I listen to audiobooks and sculpt clay.”
“You—what?”
Jessica laughed. “What? Surprised?”
“I thought you’d be a pool league or softball kind of girl.”
“I love pool league and softball, though I’m much better at volleyball. And yeah, I like all that stuff. But if I need to take a break and do something for me? I need to just sit and be creative. Creativity isn’t something I get to express very much. So it’s very zen-like to sit down with some clay and tools, turn on a book, and just see where it takes me. I’m not amazing. I’d say I’m pretty bad, but I enjoy it.”
“What kind of things do you sculpt?”
“Mostly little figurines I smash back into clay. Every now and then something good comes out of it and I’ll keep one. Painting figurines is a whole other hobby I suck at. I wouldn’t even say I’m necessarily good at sculpting, I just enjoy it. And I’m okay with that. If I were good at it, I’d probably feel like I have to hustle and figure out how to market it, which defeats the whole purpose, to begin with. So I stay bad at it and just enjoy the process.” Her shoulder jostled him as they walked. “What about you? What do you do just for yourself?”
He watched the back of Baruti’s shoulders while the reality sank in. “Nothing.”
He was one-dimensional in his own life. Being near Jessica was shining a light on the fact that he’d settled into this head-down-and-work mentality so deeply that there was nothing else for him. Lying next to her had made him want to do other things. And not necessarily things together.
“Nothing? You can’t be serious,” she said. “I’ve heard you are quite the style icon around the office.”
“I told myself when I got into the FBI I’d be dedicated for five years. I wouldn’t let anything distract me…”
“How long has it been?”
Longer than five years.
That wasn’t to say he’d been a machine, but he sure as hell hadn’t made room for things that made him genuinely happy. Even while sitting on the sidelines watching Baruti crash and burn with his husband before figuring it out. Then there was the kids. Samuel had watched it all happen to someone else while he did nothing.
He glanced down at her. “You ever played soccer?”
“Yeah.” She nodded. “I never had the stamina to be really good at it, but it’s so much fun.”
“I’ve never played volleyball.”
Her eyes widened. “What?”