The room was silent apart from Nathan’s breathing, and I gave him a few minutes to recover, but when I heard snoring, I scoffed. “Seriously?”
I braced my hands on his shoulders and pushed, and his half-asleep body rolled over to the side. With a roll of my eyes, I climbed out of bed, donned my clothes, and left the room with Nathan sleeping in it. I made my way downstairs and through the marble foyer, down into the living room, where I did, in fact, find the rest of The Royal Court.
Brayden, who Avery and I had taken to calling Hollister behind closed doors, was the first to speak up. He looked like a mini-Nathan in a nearly identical outfit and haircut, apart from his light brown hair. “Hey, Cherri. Did good work and passed him out, huh?”
Brayden was sitting on the couch, which was sunken into the floor, and Kyle, Nathan’s best friend, was sitting on the floor above the couch with his legs hanging onto the couch. He leaned forward and smacked Brayden across the back of the head. “Don’t be a douche.” He looked up at me, his milk chocolate skin shimmering in the sunlight coming in through the living room windows. “Hey, Cee.”
I nodded to Kyle. “Hey.” I scanned the group and found Avery sitting in the corner of the couch with Alistair sitting above her with his legs on either side of her. “Oh, hey. Where the hell were you?”
“Sorry, he lied and said you weren’t coming,” Avery replied, her eyes thick with an apology.
Alistair nodded. “It’s true, Cherri.”
Across from where Brayden and Kyle were sitting was Colette. Her dominant Asian facial features made her a knockout, and she had her black hair cut short into a pixie cut to show them off. “It’s for the best, right? You’re the queen, and he’s the king. Queens and kings are meant to be together.” Avery rolled her eyes at Colette, but Colette either didn’t notice or didn’t care because she kept smiling brightly at me. “It’s good to see you. I missed you this summer.”
Colette was vain and very self-preserving. I wasn’t close to her like I was to Avery, but she was a good girlfriend if nothing else. “I missed you too. How was Egypt?”
“Amazing,” she sang. “I’m telling you, you haven’t lived until you’ve seen the great Pyramids up close.”
“I can imagine,” I responded, then let my gaze travel over to the final two members of The Royal Court sat, Nikita and Jaxon, who were Nathan’s knights.
Nikita and Nathan had been friends since they were kids, and I honestly believed that Nikita had a thing for Nathan. She was fiercely devoted to him, by which I mean she’d made herself comfortable with wielding blades of several sizes and would use them in an instant for Nathan’s benefit. She had a punk-girl look with dirty blond hair laced with strands of orange, red, and white. She almost always kept it braided down her back so that it was easy to see the several piercings lining her ears.
Jaxon was a little more of an enigma. In the four years that I’d known him, I think we’d exchanged maybe a hundred words, and his personality was never the same as the last time I spoke with him. Nathan called him a con artist, which had been confirmed in the several items and information the man had lifted for Nathan throughout the years. The only real thing I knew about him was that his name was Jaxon and that he was Philipino. His hair color changed often, but he tended to stick with an understated jean jacket over a long-sleeved shirt and black jeans, with boots as his exclusive choice of footwear.
“Hey, Nikita. Jaxon.”
Neither of them responded to me. Nikita didn’t even look in my direction, and though Jaxon did, it was a brief glance before he turned his attention back to twirling a pen in his hand while not-so-subtly staring at Colette.
“Glad to see we’ve all stayed the same,” I said.
I descended the stairs and went and plopped down next to Avery. Alistair kicked me as a sign of solidarity, and Avery took one of my hands into hers and squeezed. “You sure getting back together is a good idea?”
Even I was surprised when I started laughing. “No. It’s probably a horrible idea, but what have I got to lose? This year is gearing up to be another run-of-the-mill one.”
“At least it’s the last one,” Avery replied.
“Yeah,” I scoffed. “Thank god.”
3
Cherri
A knock on my door made me smear my mascara across my cheek. I growled with dissatisfaction and yanked out one of my makeup wipes, knowing I’d have to reblend my cheek. “What?”
“Sorry, honey! Your friend is here,” my mother called back, and then her footsteps retreated down the hallway.
“Already?” I glanced at the time on my phone. School didn’t start for another hour, and we were only fifteen minutes away. I used a finger to navigate through my phone to Colette’s number and hit the green button to call, pressing the speaker button so I could get to fixing my makeup.
“I’m outside your house,” Colette said in lieu of any formal greeting.
“I know. Why are you so early?” I asked. “Avery’s on the way, and school is, like, fifteen minutes from here.” I used the wipe I pulled to clear my cheek of the smeared mascara and then started to slowly reapply my concealer and blush.
“I can’t help it. I’m so excited to get the year started. As outgoing valedictorian, I have responsibilities that have already started. You may think it’s early, but I’m late!”
I was not a morning person. At my house around my family, I did okay, but I was often a grump all through early school mornings until around lunch. Colette, on the other hand, was the opposite. When she offered to pick Avery and me up for the first day of school
