”It’s been a few months since we were last here.
It didn’t matter how many days went by since he was last at The Cove with Marisol, it still felt the same. The secret beach hangout that only a few knew about, those few being the Misfits. It was only accessible through a hidden path along the eastern part of the Crown Heights beach that led down via a spiraling flight of stairs to a casual spot below a deck that had a couple of couches with some shitty table in the middle and other miscellaneous items scattered about.
What Sonny like most about the self-named Cove was one, it was only known to those who actually took the time to make sure it was kept together and not flooded by non-Misfits but he also liked that the sounds of the ocean added a nice ambiance to the whole point of it existing, which was to fucking relax. After a long day at school or a long day in general, before shit blew up — before everything that fucked up his attachment to the group — Sonny would come to the cove either with Marisol and the others or just by himself to unwind.
As he took a seat on the couch to the right, he breathed out a totally relax moan. “Feels nice to be back here,” he mildly murmured, looking at Marisol.
“Yeah, it's been a while…” Marisol said gently, taking a seat on the couch next to him and sliding her legs onto his lap. Her green eyes were staring at the coming and going of the waves, lips curled up in a soft smile. “I've been back a few times by myself, but it was always better when we came together.”
Sonny nodded silently.
He had missed this. Lord knew it took Sonny way too long to get back to a point where he wasn’t a total dick all of the time. Whatever drove him to act like he had to flaunt and tease everything in her face was definitely going to come back and haunt him. But, for the time being, he just wanted to enjoy this moment. Marisol wasn’t trying to bite his head off. She eased into their usual position with her laying back and enjoying the waves while her skinny stick legs were on his leg. As for Sonny, he did what he always did when she did this: start to massage her feet.
“How long has it been? Three months? I can’t even remember if I’m being totally honest with you.”
“Two, I think,” Mari clarified, tilting her head back to rest against the couch before closing her eyes. “Things were already tense beforehand, but everything went to shit after the Diablo party.”
Part of Sonny really wanted to avoid the mention of everything, but that wasn’t going to be likely, so better get it out of the way first before Marisol mistook his silence for cowardice. “So, I suppose we should talk about how our shit got so shitty, huh?” Sonny asked, now looking at her.
At his words, Marisol let out a long, deep sigh. Although it had been her idea to confront their issues in the first place, there was no denying she was nervous to talk about things. “Let me just start out by saying I’m sorry,” she began, staring at her lap and picking at one of the holes in her shorts. No matter how many times she’d rehearsed this in her head for weeks now, it still felt weird saying everything out loud. “I know I should have just told you how I felt right after the camping trip, but the last thing I wanted was for you to think I was being pathetic or crazy or something…”
To prevent the risk of ruining things even further, Sonny chose not to make any backhanded comment about her being crazy. Instead he chose to not be a dick for once and say something he never thought he’d say. “And when you did tell me, I shouldn’t have blamed it all on your pills making you say that. For that, I am sorry.” Sonny sighed, taking his eyes from the beach on her. “And for the record, nothing you ever did would make you pathetic. Pathetic is Victoire purposely kissing me to get on your nerves, not you deciding to not tell me how you felt almost immediately,” he tried to assure her in his own, weird way.
The short girl shook her head while letting out a chuckle at her best friend’s words, thinking of her impulsive response to the snogging news. “And pathetic is taking a bat to Vic’s car just because she kissed you,” she admitted, finally looking up at Sonny with an amused smile. “I mean, I know it was a shit move and I was lucky her dad was cool enough to not press charges, but you gotta admit it was cool.”
“Thinking back on it, it was pretty hilarious. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that girl lose her shit as much as she did when you started going full Carrie Underwood on it.” He had to laugh at that. “I’m sure she was wishing Jesus would’ve taken that bat away from you, huh?”
“Probably,” she replied, joining in Sonny in his laughter for a few seconds before sobering up, getting nervous again. “But anyway… I also want to apologize for not being upfront with you about why I ghosted you. I just-” she hesitated for a moment, biting her lip while deciding whether to come completely clean or not and choosing to do so anyway. “I knew I should have just told you I needed some space. But you made me feel so stupid when you said it was the pills talking, that I figured the best thing was to do away with the mess of emotions as soon as I could. So I thought that if I ignored you and was alone long enough, the feelings would go away, and you would realize that’s why I was pissed at you. A stupid plan, now that I think back on it, but at the time all I wanted was for everything to go back to the way it was.”
“Same.”
Sonny didn’t know exactly what he should say or what he wanted to say. He knew she was right about everything. Be it the divide he created or how poorly he handled her confession to him, Sonny could have done it all differently. He wished he could go back in time and redo a lot of what went down between them but he knew that wasn’t possible. The only thing that he could do was put his best foot forward and make it right in the now.
He took in and exhaled a breath. “I’m not sure we can go back to the way it was. The only thing we can do is just go forward with a slightly smarter game plan. With less flexing, if at all possible,” he joked but also spoke a truth he believed to be a fact.
“Honestly? I think we can,” Mari contradicted, a frown in her face as she mulled it all over for a moment. “We’re both on the same page about not wanting to fuck up our friendship again, right? So that’s that. I mean, I’ve kind of already started moving on from all of that mess…” she admitted, looking away before Sonny could see the small blush on her cheeks as a quick memory of her night with Salem flashed before her eyes. “And from the looks of things, you have nothing to move on from, because nothing ever changed for you. So, basically, all we need to do is stop being little bitches, move the fuck on and go back to being the fucking hailstorm we are together.”
“I guess you have a point,” Sonny breathed out a chuckle. “But what about the people who were caught up in our little war? I mean, when we were, as you put, being little bitches, it wasn’t exactly a clean battlefield.”
The girl let out a long sigh, the mind immediately jumping to Archer, Salem, Julie, and -surprisingly- even Victoire. As much as she hated apologizing and admitting her wrongs, she knew that it was the least each casualty of their war, as Sonny put it, deserved. “We take up the same stance: we stop being little bitches and say sorry,” Mari finally said, looking at her friend with a determined expression. “It’s not their fault that we were acting like petulant children. They should at least get an apology from our sorry asses.”
“I doubt Vic wants to speak to me or you for that matter. So it’s probably best we both stay far away from that particular brand of deceptive crazy,” Sonny laughed, “I prefer the upfront, in your face kind of crazy,” Sonny grinned at Marisol, though he winced a second later because of his nose.
Again, Mari laughed along with him, thinking about just how pissed Vic would get if she or Sonny even attempted to breathe the same air as her. Apologizing would probably cause Miss Stuck-Up President to say something that would piss the shorter girl off, thus the whole intention of her selfless action would probably end in more violence. “You're damn right about that. I mean, I've still got at least two more months of work left to finally pay off the fees of fixing up her stupid Mercedes, so that should be enough of an apology, don't you think?”
Sonny didn’t want to ask just how much the repairs were. That kind of Mercedes was top of the line. Being from a family of mechanics had taught him at least that much. Victoire Bailey’s Mercedes was no junk car. So whatever the price was, he knew it was no joke. “Yeah, I think that’s an apology enough. But I’ll let you in on a secret,” Sonny leaned close, “Vic wasn’t that great of a kisser.”
Marisol’s eyes widened, letting out a small giggle at both Sonny's confession and his breath tickling her ear. “Really, now?” she asked him, green eyes sparkling with mischief. “So does that mean that Step Sister Dearest has her beat on that field? I'm sure you guys had more than enough time to have a few tongue wars on the way to the dance, that trip to the hospital and the time spent waiting for them to fix your nose.”
Of course she had to mention Nadia. Sonny rolled his eyes. “What exactly do you think happened?” He asked, smirking.
“How the fuck am I supposed to know? I wasn't there. That's why I'm asking you,” Mari replied, raising her eyebrows at him. A tiny sense of dread ran cold and fast down her spine. Part of her wanted to know everything that had happened between him and Rainbow Brite that last night, while the other part was telling her there was no purpose of knowing things that could hurt her. But it shouldn’t hurt, because she and Sonny had just agreed they were nothing more than the best of friends. And this was the perfect chance to show him she had meant what she said.
Sonny shrugged. “Well, since you’re so dying to know, I’ll tell you,” he said, sighing. “We haven’t kissed yet. She went with me to the hospital because she was worried about my nose and after we left, I took her home. That’s it.”
“Oh…” was all Mari would say as she kept her face as expressionless as she could, afraid that her glee might shine through any further words she dared speak.“Okay. Cool.”
“Now it’s your turn,” Sonny said after a long moment of awkward silence passed. “What’s really going on between you and Salem?” He asked point-blank.
Marisol pursed her lips together, debating whether to own up to everything, some of it or none of it. But if Sonny had been honest with her about Nadia, then she needed to return the favor.
Finally, after a few more seconds of silence, the brunette finally spoke up. “There's nothing going on per se. We're just friends-” she began, and upon noticing his skeptic expression, she quickly added, “Now that doesn't mean nothing happened between us! After the fight you guys had, we went over to his place to watch John Wick, but one thing led to another and we ended up… You know…” Mari admitted, cheeks blazing scarlet now. “That's why I didn't make it home last night. I actually left his place like two hours ago.”
“So you two fucked.” Sonny didn’t mean to say it so distastefully, but now that it was out, he couldn’t very well take it back. “Cool. I’m happy for you,” he said, smiling at Marisol.
There was something about the way Sonny was smiling at her that made Marisol feel incredibly guilty about what she's just said. She couldn't quite put her finger on it, but she could tell he wasn't feeling as happy for her as he said he was. Eighteen years of being friends with the guy was enough for the green-eyed girl to know when he was and wasn't being completely honest.
“Thanks,” she said slowly, biting her lip again and shifting her eyes to stare down at her shorts again.
The way she seemed to be acting, one would think she was just punched in the gut or something. “What’s wrong now?” He asked her.
“It’s nothing,” she told him, looking up at him with a soft smile before curling up next to him with her head on his lap. “I just want to chill with you right now. Fuck everyone and everything else. Let's just enjoy being together again.”
There was something there. Sonny knew Marisol too well for it to be as she said. As much as he wanted to press her on it, he knew she would talk about it when she was just damn near ready to. So he wouldn’t do anything to force yet another round of ‘fuck off, Son’ like the past couple of months had been. No, he would just give her a nod and lean back, patting her legs.
“Then, that’s exactly what you’re going to get, little missy. One serving of exclusive chill time with The Other Sonny D coming your way!”
Marisol groaned loudly at his terrible attempt at humor, but eventually let out a loud laugh. “Shut up, dipshit,” she ordered with a smile, grabbing a nearby cushion and softly whacking Sonny's face with it.
And right then and there, Marisol and Sonny's worlds were finally at peace again.
For now, at least.
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