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Jacqueline Laurita and Teresa Giudice’s reunion lunch surprised many Real Housewives of New Jersey fans because Laurita and Giudice vowed to never speak to one another again.

The friendship ultimately crashed and burned during Giudice’s criminal trial and subsequent sentencing. Laurita left RHONJ for Las Vegas and it appeared as though the friendship was dead. So when Laurita and Giudice posted photos at lunch with their husbands, fans were a little stunned.

Laurita says that the now infamous lunch isn’t the first time they connected and that Giudice reached out years ago, shortly after she moved to Vegas.

Teresa Giudice reached out to Jacqueline Laurita before their infamous lunch

“She’s not the type to make the move. She was putting it out there. Maybe hoping I would reach out, but like, I had already removed myself from all that, so I wasn’t gonna reengage it again,” she said on the Behind the Velvet Rope with David Yontef podcast.

Teresa Giudice, Jacqueline Laurita pose for a photo
Teresa Giudice, Jacqueline Laurita | Andrei Jackamets/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images

“I did get a call from her once when she was in Vegas for something because I saw her picture. She called me and I saw it ringing and I didn’t answer it cause I got like … I don’t [think] nervous. [But] Nervous with it.”

Laurita recalled that Giudice reached out shortly after her Vegas move. “Like when I first moved out here, I think it was years ago,” she said. “I’d been here four years, so it was probably the first year I moved here. I don’t know if maybe it was a butt dial. Because why would she call me? Like I thought it was a butt dial. I didn’t even ask her about it.”

Jacqueline said she was ‘excited and curious’ to reconnect with Teresa 

Laurita recalled that Giudice would simply call her in the past. “No voicemail, nothing, no voicemail, no text, nothing. Maybe a butt dial,” she wondered.

They finally connected and made plans. “I wasn’t nervous. I can’t explain it. I feel like I was a little more excited and curious,” she said. “Like, what is she gonna say? Like what is this about? It was more curiosity for me than being nervous.”

“I was excited to see her because I was like, yeah, this sounds friendly,” she added. “So I’m like what’s going on? In my head I was like, does she have another motive? But then when I sat with her, she didn’t have another motive there. It wasn’t about Melissa [Gorga], it wasn’t about, other things. So I was like this is genuine. And it really felt genuine. It wasn’t about anything. It wasn’t like, I need you to do this for me or that for me. It wasn’t like that at all.”

The ‘RHONJ’ former friends are forging a new friendship

“So now we keep in touch. We do text. We’ve talked on the phone a few times,” Laurita said. “She called me when she had her stepson in the car. She was on her way to pick up her daughter from dance class. We just talked the whole way there and back.”

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She said they essentially picked up where they left off. “Actually our husbands are getting together very soon. They’re gonna go golfing together,” she said. “And she’s on vacation and her husband. And actually, his older son and my older son will meet too. The four of them are going golf together. We just sort of keep in touch now and that’s good.”