“You too.”
Luke walks away and heads to another table, and I direct my attention back to Lily, raising my eyebrows.
“What’s his story?” I ask.
Her face darkens, and her eyebrows lower into a frown. “That’s for him to tell.”
I back off. “Sorry, I just was-”
“Don’t say you’re sorry,” Lily says, but her eyes are thousands of miles away. “It’s just...it’s just something he should say on his own time.”
A blanket of seriousness drapes over us, and I twiddle a warm fry between my fingers. The air is heavy, and even though there are people talking and laughing and enjoying themselves around us, it’s like a switch has been flipped and we’re left alone.
“So my dad is a stock-broker, right?” She looks for confirmation, and I nod. “Well, apparently there’s this thing called day-trading in the stock market. My dad’s pretty good at it.” She makes a face. “Well, he’s actually super good at it.”
“That’s nice,” I murmur. “But where are you going with this?”
“The Jamesons, Whitworths and Blackwaters approached him. They wanted him to day trade some of their companies’ money. You know, the Jameson Automobile Co money. I don’t know how much, but it was a ridiculous amount. My dad refused.”
“Why?”
She shrugs. “Part of the reason we left New York when I was younger was to have a slower lifestyle. Dad’s got enough reserves to keep us going. He wants to retire here soon. He just didn’t want to take on such huge clients...and be responsible for their money.”
“So now they hate him.”
“Hate is a strong word when it comes to The Elites,” Lily says.
“What else could it be?” I bite back too harshly. “Sorry, I’m just angry.”
“It’ll dull over time,” she says, swirling a fry in ketchup. When she pulls it up, the fry sags from the condiment weight. “Trust me, eventually it’ll just feel like a dull ache.”
“So what happened to you?”
She goes silent. A dark shadow crosses her face, and she sips her beer. I have yet to touch the beer. Lily’s hazel eyes snap to mine, and the fury in them surprises me.
“What didn’t they do?” she says bitterly. “It wasn’t like they had any morals or human decency.”
I stay silent. I don’t feel like this is the time to interrupt.
“In the beginning, they toyed with my feelings. They brought me into their inner circle, and I was treated like a friend. Vivan and I actually became super close. Or so I thought. And then Emmett turned his attention on me.”
I watch her quietly, and her fingers start racing up and down the beer glass, wiping away the condensation. She stares at it intensely, like she’s trying to unlock the secrets of the universe.
“I had a crush on him, big time,” she confesses, and there’s color on her cheeks, spreading down her neck. “Like huge. And he knew it. And...he used it against me in the worst possible way.”
Thoughts flash through my head, none of them good. Most of them are worse than the last, and Emmett’s cruelly handsome face mixes among them.
I don’t want to hear what happened. But I do.
“And so, basically Emmett invites me to the homecoming dance. I’m like, so excited and happy and I can’t believe it. Vivian and I like, even go dress shopping together. And then the night of the dance, everything just...shatters.”
“What happened?” I ask.
She gives a curt laugh. “What didn’t happen? Emmett and Trey and Vincent start screaming at me. Vivian and Bernadette tear my dress and steal my shoes. Emmett starts kissing Vivian in front of the whole school. When I try and run away, Bernadette grabbed my hair and dragged me to the punch bowl and dunked me in it. But that was only the beginning.”
“Why didn’t the chaperones do anything?” I’m incensed on her behalf – cruel, heartless monsters don’t deserve shit, and The Elites clearly aren’t human. “Why the fuck did anyone let them do that?”
“The school is funded and ran by their families. No one has the balls to go against them. They have ways of ostracizing people and running them out of town. Sometimes, overnight.”