The past month had been particularly brutal for Jubilation Lee. Following Kat Pryde’s rejection of her, Jubilee’s outlook on life changed and suffered. Her grades slipped. Her relationship with Everett Thomas crashed and burned, but it was three weeks before the breakup finally happened. Everett had been the one to end it, citing the lack of interest Jubilee seemed to have in anything, least of all him.
Her ability to be in the same locker room with the other girls suffered as well. Whereas she had once chalked up to her admiration of the female form as hero worship or a form of competition (can’t let Paige or Monet be in better shape than me), now she just saw it for what it was: wanting something she couldn’t have.
Even her relationship with Logan had been affected. He was still the father figure he’d always been; they still saw each other some weekends. But their usual routine had been to hang out outside or in a garage with Jubilee babbling away about twenty different subjects while he grunted his responses now and then. Lately, they both sat in silence, and Logan definitely noticed. Last week he taught a week-long self-defense seminar, and Everett came out of it with equal parts pacifism and PTSD. Apparently Logan blamed Jubilee’s broken heart on Everett, which Jubilee supposed she should have seen coming.
But the approach of the Independence Day weekend brought Jubilee out of her doldrums and back to her usual self. There was a massive party to plan. And if the e-mail tag she played with Bobby Drake in the X-Men, Tabitha Smith in X-Force, Jamie Madrox and Guido Carosella in X-Force, and Kurt Wagner in Excalibur were any indications, the entirety of all the X-Teams were going to converge at the X-Mansion. It was going to be amazing.
She even got so caught up in her party planning mode that she didn’t even think of Katherine Pryde as anyone but another Excalibur name on the guest list. She dipped back into the gossip pool, realizing she’d missed out on a lot in the past few weeks. Like Colossus had joined Excalibur, which meant she was on the team with some of his old X-Men teammates! Like, Kurt, and … and Kat.
Colossus and Kat on the same team again. Chances were, those two would start dating again. Maybe they already were. Jubilee tried to get confirmation from Kurt and Meggan about whether or not Kat and Piotr had gotten back together, but she didn’t receive a response before her arrival at the X-Mansion. And then there were too many people to catch up with.
The plan was for Jubilee to arrive early to help set up decorations, and once the party was over with, she was going to stay for the rest of the summer at the mansion and return to Massachusetts in the fall. So she was rather busy with unpacking and reconnecting with old friends and decorating for most of the first day. She’d been hearing for most of the day that someone had been asking about her, but it wasn’t until late afternoon that she found out that it was Kat. Kitty. Katherine. She found herself standing face-to-face with the young woman, unsure of what to say. Her cheeks heated up with a blush.
“Oh, uh, hi, Kat.” After an extended awkward silence in which the tingly feeling in her tummy wasn’t going away, she added, “Um… wanna … go somewhere an’ talk?”