The place was not what Alice had been picturing.
A billiard table in good condition sat in the center of the room. Along one wall, a counter with a mini fridge underneath and a coffee maker on top. A couple of sofas, a standing lamp, a corkboard pinned with various things. The light was good. The ceiling was high.
This existed inside the campus.
"This is the place," Ethan said, with the satisfaction of someone presenting something they were proud of.
"How," Bryan said, looking around.
"Lucas," Ethan said. It apparently explained everything.
Lucy walked straight toward the billiard table like she intended to make friends with it. Alice's gaze moved past her and found Anna on one of the sofas, sitting beside the guy who had walked straight past Alice on the side path without a word. Lucas. He looked exactly the same as he had then. Sharp-faced, composed, resting expression already somewhere near unimpressed.
Anna looked up. She was on her feet in a second.
Alice didn't quite have time to brace before Anna crossed the room and hugged her, both arms, brief but real, the kind that meant she'd been thinking about doing it and had been waiting for the chance. When she pulled back her expression sat somewhere between relieved and a little embarrassed about the relief.
"Thank you," she said. "For the other day. I wanted to say it properly."
"It's fine," Alice said.
"It really isn't, he was about to---"
"I meant you don't have to thank me. Are you okay?"
She looked at him for a moment. "Yeah. I am."
She said it like she meant it, which was all Alice had come here to find out. He was already thinking about the most natural time to leave when something happened behind him.
The first thing Alice heard of it was a hand landing on the back of Ethan's head.
"Why are you bringing strangers here?" Lucas said, flat and unamused.
"They're not strangers," Ethan said, rubbing his head.
"I don't know them."
"You didn't know me either once."
"That was a long time ago and I've regretted it."
Ethan opened his mouth. Lucas had already moved on, casting a single look over the three newcomers before deciding they weren't interesting enough to address directly and going back to the sofa.
Across the room, Steven had noticed Lucy the moment they walked in and migrated toward her with the practiced ease of someone who did this often and well. Lucy received it as straightforward friendliness, because that was how Lucy received most things, and immediately started talking to him about the billiard table and whether anyone here was actually good at it. Steven had clearly not been expecting enthusiasm and it knocked his whole approach sideways. Ethan watched from across the room and found this enormously entertaining.
Xavier came forward from near the counter. One look at him confirmed what Alice had clocked briefly on the side path. Measured the same way Bryan was measured, present and deliberate, not giving more away than he meant to. He introduced himself properly, offered Bryan a handshake that Bryan took without hesitation, said something to Lucy that made her laugh, and then settled comfortably back near the counter.
Alice had turned back to Anna. They were in the middle of an actual conversation and everything was going fine.
"Oi."
Alice didn't turn around immediately.
"Girl with the stick."
She turned.
Lucas was looking at her from the sofa, arms crossed, with the expression of someone who had decided to acknowledge you without committing to being decent about it. "What. I said thanks or whatever. You did alright."
Alice waited for that to be the end of it.
It was not.
"Still don't know what you were doing there," Lucas continued. "That's not your business, is it. Wandering into things, picking up sticks off the ground. Next time maybe let people who actually know what they're doing handle it."
Alice looked at him.
"What if no one had shown up? What exactly was your stick going to do? That's why I hate when people who don't know what they're doing get involved in things that---"
Alice bent down.
Bryan's eyes dropped and went wide.
There was a stick. Right there near the baseboard of the wall, with no clear reason to be inside a room, and yet there it was. Alice picked it up in one smooth motion.
Bonk.
The sound was sudden enough that Lucas, who had not been expecting it at all, startled hard. His foot caught the sofa leg behind him and he went down sideways with a crash that was dramatically out of proportion to what had actually happened, landing flat on the floor with his arms out and a genuinely stunned expression on his face.
The room went completely quiet.
Lucas stared at the ceiling.
Ethan had both hands pressed over his mouth, shoulders shaking.
Bryan stood very still with the expression of a person who had just watched something happen that he could not have stopped and had long since accepted this about his life.
"I'm fine," Lucas said to the ceiling, unprompted.
Nobody had asked.