Page 128 of Sugar

“Late Saturday night. She deleted it by Sunday morning, but I’d already seen it.” Her blue eyes lit as she smirked. “And I took a screenshot.” She grabbed her phone from the counter and swiped the screen a few times before passing it to me.

It was a blurry picture of me laughing up at Easton.

Dammit, Greer.

“You look very drunk but very happy,” Mom said.

“I was and I am.” I stared down at the picture for far too long before something finally occurred to me. “Wait. You and the other OGs are blocked from seeing our accounts.”

Rolling her lips in like I did, her eyes widened. After a long second, she shrugged unrepentantly. “Our real accounts are blocked, not our finstas.”

I wasn’t sure what was more surprising.

That my mom knew the term finsta—fake Instagram.

Or that she had one.

A little of her chill slipped, and she gave me a somber look. “I can’t say I wasn’t surprised to see my college-aged daughter cozied up to an older man. Mostly because he doesn’t seem like your type. But I raised you to be smart and careful. I trust you know what you’re doing.”

“I do.”

“Good… That doesn’t mean that I won’t hit him with my car if he hurts you, though.”

“That’s why you’re a good mom.”

“I know. And that’s why I’m asking this now before your father gets back in here…” Mom paused with a cutting board in her hand. “Does Easton look as good out of the suit as he did in it?”

“Ew, Mom, I am not telling you that.”

But no.

He looks even better.

“Fine.” She might’ve let me off the hook for that one, but she had more nosy questions up her sleeves. “Are you the reason he didn’t take Doug as a client?”

I shook my head.

Not that I know of, at least.

“I didn’t talk to him after that night until well after that when I interviewed him for an alumni profile,” I said. “We just recently started seeing each other.”

Though now that I’m saying it out loud, the timing of running into him on campus does seem a little suspect.

I didn’t get the chance to think too closely on it when she demanded, “Tell me about him. And Wren’s new boyfriend. And is Greer done with Josh for good? Dad said he’s still working for Doug, so that must be awkward.”

“How much have you been stalking us?” I cried with all the dramatic angst I could muster.

“I believe your lawyer would tell me to plead the fifth. But you can’t do the same. Out with it.”

“Are you going to tell the other OGs?”

“Immediately,” she said, again having zero apology about that fact.

“I’ll tell you anyway, but only once you answer a question for me.”

Her eyes darted from the veggies she was chopping, to Dad’s bag, to the hallway he’d just disappeared down. Her caginess at the possibility I was going to ask about him made me want to do just that. My inquisitiveness demanded it.

But I swallowed down the slew of questions. She wouldn’t answer them, and it would just add more stress.