“I’ll admit, before, I wasn’t really interested in bonding, least of all with you. I mean, you were with Nathan, and everyone loved you…” She looked at Avery and Colette. “These two adored you, so it wasn’t like I could bond with them without you.”
“I’m just gonna say it,” Colette said. “Cherri, I am so happy that you’re back, but you leaving The Royal Court…” She cast nervous glances at Avery and Nikita before settling on me. “It was kinda the best thing that’s ever happened to us.”
“Ouch,” I said. “I deserve that.”
“It’s not meant to be insulting, like I said, I’m so glad you’re back, but The Royal Court was toxic, and a lot of it was centered around you and your relationship with Nathan. You didn’t make us toxic, in fact, you were the only thing that was still kind of good about us, but it was all kind of self-serving, and that always came back around to the fact that you were the queen. I knew I was never gonna be better than you, so I just worried about myself.”
“Yeah!” Avery yelped, then she looked at me with wide-eyes. “I love you, Cherri, so much. It broke my heart when you left, but I get what they’re saying. You and your relationship with Nathan was like this crazy benchmark I was never going to hit. You’re so perfect.”
“Then we saw that you weren’t,” Nikita said with a smile. “We saw you deteriorate and change, and when you were gone we fucking fell apart. I’m not lying, it was like you were the pin in the grenade. Once it was pulled, things went to shit fast.”
Colette started to chuckle. “Oh my god. We used to just sit at the lunch table in complete silence. Seriously. I’d try my hardest to start a conversation, but it was like I was talking to a wall. Nathan was guilty, Nikki and Avery were heartbroken, I was delusional, Brayden was planning our imminent demise, and poor Kyle, Jax, and Ali, they were exhausted just trying to hold us together.”
Avery and Nikita joined in the laughter. “It was touch and go for a while,” Avery said. “Nathan dressed up like Santa in, what was it, January or February? I can’t remember. Time is a blur.”
“Yeah, and Colette trying to give Cherri that box.” Nikita had tears in her eyes. “Remember when Cherri completely ignored her and then she turned around and told everyone she’d talked to Cherri and things were going to get better?”
Colette shivered. “It makes me cringe just thinking about it.”
Nikita shook her head. “I was like, oh man, this girl has really lost it.”
I couldn’t tell if I was warmed or uncomfortable by the conversation, so I just sat and let them toss the ball around. Finally, Avery looked across at me and smiled. “Yeah. Turns out we were all way more attached to you than we realized.” It made me think of Nathan’s confession that he thinks of me like family and it killed him when I was gone. “Ali didn’t want to forgive Nathan for a long time. Nikki either actually.”
“We struggled,” Colette said, “but that struggle led to some pretty astounding changes. We got closer. We became actual friends. Even you, Cherri. You grew and changed so much and now you’re so much more of the person you want to be. That sucked. God, it sucked so much. I think I cried every day for months and got no sleep, but I can’t bring myself to say it wasn’t worth it.”
“Yeah,” Nikita said, “And not just because I’m finally with Nathan, but because it took the blinders off for me.” She smiled at Colette and Avery. “I can’t believe I spent so much time not letting myself get close with these two.” She side-eyed me. “Or you.”
“Wow,” I said. “I guess I’ve been so apologetic this whole time that I didn’t realize the good it did. I’m glad. I’m angry at myself for being such a fucking brat and hurting you guys.” I looked at Nikita. “Or in your case, getting my ass handed to me.” Everyone laughed. “But I’m glad that it made us all stronger.” I lifted my wine glass. “To aging like ten fucking years in six months.”
“Here here!” Colette said, and she, Avery, and Nikita lifted their glasses to meet mine. “Oh! Cherri! Did you see how Nikita looked at prom?”
My eyes widened as I remembered the shimmery ensemble with the first time I’d ever seen Nikita’s hair down or her wearing makeup. “Yes! Oh my god, you were smokin’!”
Nikita smiled. “Thanks.”
“I’m serious, I even told Sicily how amazing you looked, you can ask him. I was seriously like, I’m so angry at them, but damn she looks good. You all did, but Nikita was like…” I whistled. “How did that happen? One of you did it?”
“Well, we convinced her to get dressed up, but you’ll never guess who picked it out,” Avery said.
I tilted my head. “Not Nathan?”
Nikita nearly choked on her drink. “God no. I’ve spent the last six months making his wardrobe less douchey.”
“Jaxon,” Colette said proudly.
“No way.”
She nodded. “Yup. Avery and I kept picking out these poofy dresses, and they looked good on her too, but fortunately Nikita dragged Jaxon along—It was back when we were still navigating our new friendship—and he picked it out. The only thing we added was the headband.”
“I’m impressed,” I said. “Didn’t know he had it in him.”
Colette shrugged. “That’s generally true of Jaxon.”
“Well, you would know. You two are like the real deal now,” I said. “I will never forgive myself for missing that.”
“You know, it occurs to me that we’ve never really talked about it,” Avery said. “How did it happen?”
My eyes widened. “Wait. You don’t know?”
“I know a little bit, but not the full story,” Nikita said. “She’s right, it was just a thing one day.”
We paused the story for a minute while our food was delivered, then Colette perched one of her maki rolls between her chopsticks as she started to speak. “I guess it mostly started during winter break.”
“Bullshit,” I said immediately.
“Yeah. Cherri and I saw you with hickies back in like October,” Avery said.
“Okay,” Colette whined before popping her sushi roll in her mouth. She chewed and swallowed then wrinkled her nose. “I’m telling the story of how we got to official.”
I held my hands up in retreat. “Fine. Sorry.”
“You’re right, we would like makeout and stuff before winter break,” Colette explained, “but that was actually really rare, and usually we would just sort of trip and fall into it.”
“He would trip and his lips would fall onto your neck?” Nikita said.
Colette chuckled. “Damn near. Literally, it was like we would get together to study in a perfectly public place and it would just happen. I swear to god, the first time we kissed I asked to borrow a ruler he had, he reached across the table to hand me the ruler and he kissed me. I was confused, but not unhappy. Then there was this other time we were standing by my locker and I leaned past him to reach into my locker and I brushed a little too close to him, all of a sudden we were kissing. I don’t even know how we got there. He says I started it.”