“I’ve never seen you before,” she said.
I smiled, putting on my I’m-totally-meant-to-be-here expression that I plastered on my face at literally every grad school event for the last few years. Hopefully it would work here too. “I’m Mara. It’s my first time.”
“Lily,” she said. She pointed at the woman next to her. “And this is Kiley.”
“Pleasure,” Kiley said through her teeth.
“What brings you to the Afterglow?” Lily asked.
“I’m looking for someone,” I said. Lily furrowed her brows, seeming upset at what I said, so I explained. “Dr. Evans? He’s tutoring my friend Hazel.”
“Dr. Evans?” Lily said.
Kiley pinched her lips shut. “Nate,” she said.
“Oh. Nate. Hazel…” Lily glanced around. “You say you’re friends with Hazel? Is that before or after Eric?”
“Eric?” I asked.
“Don’t get into that again,” Kiley said. I raised an eyebrow, and she added, “People like to choose sides when it comes to her. Them. Whatever.”
“Choose sides?”
“Yeah, because you see, people like me don’t give a rat’s ass about Hazel.”
“It’s not that I care about what Hazel did,” Lily said. “It’s that I thinkyou,” she stared at me closely, then continued on, “should be careful about saying her name to the wrong people.”
“What did she do?” I asked.
“It’s in the past,” Kiley said, swatting a hand in the air. “Anyway, you said you’re looking for Dr. Evans?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Now, that is a man I’ll choose sides on,” Kiley said.
“But what he did to Lisa was inexcusable. You saw how she came back,” Lily said.
Lisa?Kiley motioned for Lily to zip her lips. “Eric is gone. It’s in the past,” she said. “In. The. Past.”
“Who is Lisa?” I asked. “Is that his wife? Girlfriend?”
Why the hell did I care?
“Absolutely not,” Lily said, laughing. “They have a past though. There were some dark times in the Afterglow, before you came here.”
My heart clenched in my throat. Why had I asked who she was? I could only convince myself for so long that it was to have power over him. The more I knew, the better equipped I would be.
Then why was I relieved that it wasn’t a girlfriend?
“Anyway,” Lily said, turning towards me. “He hosts parties at his lakehouse for us. Did one this week, actually,” Lily said.
“A BDSM party, like this?”
Lily nodded. That was strange. It had been a school week, and yet he had gone home to host a BDSM event. It was hard to imagine what someone’s life was like outside of the university.
“What do you need him for?”
“I want to talk to him,” I said.
