Duplicity by Kristina M Sanchez

find herself looking into
very familiar eyes. Trey’s eyes.
    The man in front of her was Trey’s brother, Will.
    “Tell me if I’m right.” He waggled his eyebrows at her. Of course
he was flirting with her. Of course. “It’s on me
either way.”
    “Um.” This was an awkward situation, and one of them knew why. It was very obvious
Will didn’t recognize her. Of course he wouldn’t. She wasn’t dressed as a
little school girl, for one thing, and for another, that had been a good five
months ago.
    Five months. Where had the time gone?
    But
there was no time for that musing. Will was looking
at her expectantly. Lilith felt more on edge by the second. Years of practice
kept her unease from her face. She matched Will’s charming smile. “You’re
welcome to buy me a Pepsi. I’m afraid I’ve pulled DD duty. See, my friends over
there—” she pointed to the booth where Mal and Dana were the center of
attention “—just turned twenty-one, and I’m afraid they expect to be paid
attention to.”
    Will made a mock scandalized face. “Some people are just rude,” he
said, shaking his head. “Well, if that doesn’t deserve a Pepsi, I don’t know
what does.” He turned to the bartender. “One Pepsi on my tab,
please.”
    “And two Mai Tais . I’ll pay for them straight
up.”
    They chit-chatted for a few
minutes while they waited. When her drinks came,
Lilith gave Will an apologetic smile. “Thanks for the Pepsi.”
    He winked at her. “Remember me next time.” He was an easygoing
guy, but then, Lilith had known that. As she walked
back to the table, it occurred to Lilith she knew a lot about Will.
    His full name was William Stephen Bauer—a fact he loved to rub in
his younger brother’s face. His father had been dead set against naming a child
after himself and his father before him only to amend that viewpoint two years
later when Trey was born. Like his brother, he too had graduated early from
high school. He was working toward his doctorate in physics. They might have been trust fund babies, but the Bauer
brothers had no intention of frittering bits and pieces of their fortune away
doing nothing.
    “I wouldn’t put it past Will to build his own lab if he can’t find
one that will listen to him,” Trey had told her once. The pride written all
over his face had been unmistakable.
    Back at the table, Lilith’s mind began to wander again, but not so
far. She looked at each of her friends’ friends, listing what she knew about
them in her head. At most, she knew their first and last name and where they’d
met Dana or Mal.
    Yet she knew so much about Will, who didn’t know her from Eve. If
she’d found herself in a longer conversation with him, she would have had any
number of things to chat about. Her familiarity with Will stemmed from the
startling amount of personal information she knew about Trey.
    She looked across the bar to where Will had rejoined his own
friends. If she thought hard enough, she could probably guess at who they were
based on the stories Trey had told her. What did it
mean that she knew Trey so well his brother was familiar to her even though
they’d exchanged ten minutes worth of words? The only people she knew with any
kind of depth were Dana and Mal; it had been that way for almost a decade now.
    But what did knowledge mean at the end of the day? There was no
reason she should feel so disconcerted at Trey’s life brushing hers outside his
bedroom.
    As much as Lilith tried to tell herself she was being ridiculous,
she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was changing, and she wasn’t at
all sure she liked it.
     
    ~0~
     
    The warmth in Trey’s apartment was near perfect. That was a sign
of how rich he was: When he set his heating unit to 70 degrees, every room in
the place was that temperature and not a point higher.
    The cozy air could be trouble. Sometimes, Lilith got a little too
comfortable. Sometimes, in the aftermath of whatever activity they’d been