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 a bracelet around her wrist. My concern was that she might recognize me.
Nikita Glover.
It was to be expected that the different people I’d had in my past would all be under this one roof, but after years of trying to keep the worlds apart, it was a little disheartening to see that they’d gotten together and baked a Fuck-You-Deon pie.
Nikita looked me up and down, but whether or not she recognized me, I wasn’t sure. She didn’t linger too much on me but instead tapped Cherri on the shoulder.
“Hey,” Cherri greeted. “What’s up?”
“You’re wanted,” Nikita replied.
“Oh, um…” Cherri looked at me, then at Nikita, then at me, then at Nikita. “Okay.” She gave me a quick glance. “Let’s catch up more later, okay? You owe me an explanation.”
I nodded. “That I do.”
As disappointed as I was to watch Cherri leave, I was relieved for a little more time to figure out exactly what I was going to tell her. Four years had given me a lot of time to think, but every time I considered that what I may say could scare her off, I changed my game plan. I’d considered everything from outright lying to acting like she should already know. There wasn’t really one perfect option, and ultimately, I was just going to have to come right out and say it and hope for the best.
Flinging my backpack over my shoulder, I followed the few remaining students out of the classroom. All eyes were on me as I walked, and even though I tried to pick an outfit that hid most of the muscles I’d amassed over the course of the years prior, my arms still fought against the fabric of my t-shirt. Between that, my goatee, and my impossible to hide tattoos, it was proving next to impossible to fly under the radar.
“Do you think he was held back?” I heard someone whisper to their friend.
“Maybe he transferred from another high school because he got expelled,” someone else said.
After what I’d been through the past four years, a little bit of whispering and rumor spreading weren’t enough to bother me, so I just ignored them and pressed on. My next class was science, down in the wing opposite the one my homeroom was in, so I had a long walk to draw attention. Hopefully, after a few weeks, I’d be old news, but I’d just have to endure it until then.
“Hey! Deon!” I looked over my shoulder just in time for a kid at least a foot shorter than me to hop up and fling his arm around my shoulders, pulling me down to his level. “How you been, bud? Been a while.”
I thought back to the neighborhood I lived in before everything changed, and I remembered the other kids that lived there that I hung out with, but given that most of them were black, the pasty-white kid with a goatee and newsboy hat looking at me didn’t strike me as familiar. There were a few white families, including mine and, of course, Cherri’s, but her brother was eight years younger than her. The other one did have a son, but he was older than me and would have graduated by now.
Coming to the conclusion that I didn’t know the guy hanging off me, I roughly shoved him back. “Who the fuck are you?”
“Come on, man. It’s me, Sicily!”
Around us, I could see several students rolling their eyes and whispering to themselves while pointing in our direction. Suddenly, I wasn’t the center of attention anymore, and whoever this guy was, he had a reputation around the school.
Again, Sicily reached out and tried to wrap his arm around me, but I slapped it away. “I don’t know you. Keep your fucking hands off me.”
Sicily held up his hands. “Hey, man. Relax. I’m just…” He leaned in. “You’re new, right? I’ve long needed someone with a little muscle to hang around, and you need someone who knows the lay of the land. Let’s help each other out.”
I glared at him. “I don’t like when people use me.” When I took a menacing step toward him, he backed up so vehemently he nearly toppled over. “Bitch,” I growled, and then turned and continued off toward my next class.
So much for not drawing any additional attention to myself. Of course the seediest guy in the entire school sought me out. Anger boiled over me, but I remembered traveling a similar course of protection four years ago and thought that, if he’d been having trouble, it probably wasn’t dumb to seek out someone with some stock to them.