The affair stopped being secret the day Lila slid her hand under Evelyn’s skirt during a full faculty meeting and kept it there for forty-three minutes.
It started innocently enough. A Thursday department symposium in the oak-paneled conference room. Evelyn sat at the long table in her usual place, blouse buttoned high, legs crossed beneath the cloth. Lila had slipped in late, claiming she was delivering revised schedules, and took the empty chair directly beside her professor. No one questioned it; graduate assistants came and went.
Five minutes into the dean’s budget monologue, Evelyn felt fingers on her knee. She glanced sideways. Lila stared straight ahead, expression angelic, pen poised over a legal pad as if taking diligent notes. The hand crept higher, nails dragging along the ins
