“Love you too,” I replied. “See you at lunch.” He nodded and then turned around and headed off down the hallway. I looked at Avery. “See? I’ve got your back.”
“And I’ve got yours. This new guy is hot.” She sang the word hot, and her eyes rolled back in her head. “And he’s in our homeroom. Methinks it’s your turn to have a little side-action.”
“Yeah,” I said, rolling my eyes with a laugh. “I’m sure that would turn out great.”
We stayed arm in arm until we were walking into our homeroom class, and then we parted so that we could sit down at a couple of desks near the front. We settled in, and then Avery pulled on my arm to get my attention. She motioned over her shoulder toward the back corner of the classroom, and I looked back.
At that moment, everything around me seemed to come to a halt. Time slowed, and I could hear my heart pounding faster and faster in my chest. My breathing hastened as I looked over the new student. He had a full face of facial hair and tattoos that peeked out of the top of the collar of his black t-shirt and out from under the sleeves to curl all the way down his arms and up over the back of his hands. He had his head down, causing some of the tips of his red-orange hair to fall into his eyes.
He looked so different from the last time I’d seen him, like much more than four years had passed.
“Hot, right?” Avery asked, snapping me back to reality. “I think you should go for it, but that’s just me.”
Focusing during homeroom was downright difficult. Despite the fact that I kept throwing glances over my shoulders at him, he didn’t seem to notice me. When I wasn’t looking at him, I was glancing up at the clock to count down the minutes until it was over. What was only meant to be an hour and a half felt more like a month. When the bell finally rang, it actually made me jump. I stood up suddenly, bringing Avery’s attention to me.
“You okay?” Avery asked.
I didn’t respond. I started to thread my way through all of the students filing out of the classroom and made my way toward the back. When I got to the desk he was sitting at, I took a deep breath before speaking.
“Deon?”
His head shot up, and when his eyes landed on me, they got wider and wider, along with his mouth that went agape. “Oh, wow.” He smiled. “Cherri.”
I nearly started crying because it felt so good to see him. “Hi.” The way we’d parted ways didn’t matter to me. There had to be something else to the story if he was so happy to see me too.
Right?
He jumped up from his seat. “Hi!” He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me into a hug, and my whole body started to vibrate. I’d forgotten how it felt to have his hands on me. In four years with Nathan, I’d never felt that excitement. He released me and stepped back. “Damn. You look fucking… Wow.” He laughed. “I tried to imagine it, but fuck was I wrong.”
“Uh, do you know him?” I couldn’t have been convinced that Deon wasn’t the only other person on the planet for a moment, so when Avery’s voice interrupted us, I was borderline confused.
“Yeah. I’ll, uh, explain later?” I asked. Avery hesitated, so I tacked on, “Please.”
Avery shook her head at me. “Okay. I’ll see you at lunch.” With that, she left us alone again.
Deon pointed at Avery as she left. The Royal Court was established not long after Deon and I first met, back when I was still a poor kid in the slums. We’d spent more than one night laughing and mocking the organization, so it shouldn’t have surprised me when Deon scoffed and said, “What are you doing hanging out with someone from The Royal Court?”
I bit my lip. My brain was telling me to lie, but I didn’t want to start our reuniting off on that foot. “Um, actually.” I shrugged. “I’m one of them now.”
4
Deon
Cherri was standing in front of me again after four years of trying to keep my brain tethered to her memory, forcing it to try to show me what she would look like once I finally saw her again. I dreamed of her so many times, and I would never have imagined the person standing in front of me.
Her blonde hair had grown well past her shoulders and now hung down almost at her waist, and her blue eyes and thick lips still took up a majority of her face. She’d remained slender, but the last four years had been good to her in terms of her curves. Her breasts were impressive, and given my circumstances, it was difficult to keep my eyes off of them, but the fact that Cherri had such a beautiful face helped. Her hips curved out, and she wore a sundress that allowed those assets to shine.
Beautiful.
That aside, the information she’d just shared wasn’t just confusing. It was downright disturbing. She was one of The Royal Court. How did that happen? We’d spent a great deal of time making fun of them for the stuffed-up, rich brats that they were, and the last time I checked, Cherri wasn’t rich. Her family didn’t have much more money than me and my mom did, and they lived in a house on the same block as me.
“That’s… How the fuck did that happen?” I asked.
Cherri tilted her head to the side. “Well…”
“Cherri.”
Cherri and I looked over from where we were sitting, and a woman that sent a wave of chills rushing down my spine was walking over. She didn’t scare me, despite the fact that she had on a scowl worse than some of the people I’d spent my last four years with and a switchblade not-so-subtly hanging from
