Secret Admirer

5 - Permanent.

"Dad .... how come mom didn't come home yet?"

Though he kept his eyes on the road, he never bothered to turn his head or even acknowledge my question. For the past three weeks he's been dodging me every time I bring mom up and I'm getting tired of it.

"Did you and mom break up?"

Although his reaction was different this time. He looked like he actually heard me for once.

"Lucy .... whatever you saw that night ...."

"I know what I saw Dad. You guys were fighting and things got .... scary."

"Yes .... and I'm sorry that you had to see that."

That's all. That's all my father managed to say to me about my mother for awhile. We never spoke after that for a bit, only when I would occasionally ask where mom was again. But he would give the same dry answer and the same cold expression, "We'll go see her soon."

So now every night I had to go to sleep, wondering where she was and what she was doing. After that night .... hearing that slap .... seeing a hand raised in the air and slapping the others face in the living room haunted me.

"Layla stop this."

"You can't even keep us happy anymore! You're no help to this family!"

"Layla!"

I was afraid of what my father did to my mother after that because that was one of the last nights my mother was okay.

-------------

"Hm, he's not answering his phone." Sting muttered, shoving his cellphone back into his pocket. Both him and Gray looked at each other before guiding me out of the building and down an unfamiliar path.

"Where are we going now?"

Sting stretched before wrapping his arm around my neck, "Well, we coulddd go back to my room." a sly smirk grew on his face.

"Or," Gray pounded his fist on Stings head,  now slinging his arm around me. "We could go back to mine."

They exchanged glares at each other, growling and getting ready to fight until I flicked them both on the head and carried on. "Come on, we're wasting daylight."

"Hai hai ..." They mumbled before dragging on behind me, still uttering curse words to each other under their breath.

And so we carried on down the path, tall trees leading down and partly covering the sky with the branches and leaves above. It was a nice day out and so far, it has been one of the best days of my life. I've been reunited with two of my old friends and it feels so good to have them beside me again.

"Lucy, do you even know where you're going?"

"Eh ...?" I sweatdropped, frantically shaking my head to find where we were. I heard them chuckle but quickly shut up the second I sent a glare there way.

"Where are we going anyways?"

"We could go find Natsu."

Once again, my face lit up with excitement. They both said that he's most likely at the dining hall stuffing his face with food, but this of course didn't phase me one bit. So we started to make our way there and tried to catch up with each other;

"So Lucy, you make any friends since you've been gone?"

"Nope. Not even one."

"Well, you got us now." Sting ruffled my hair playfully earning another glare from Gray. They're still the same as ever, whenever one of them would even get close to me, the other would get mad and pick a fight. This often happened with all the boys, but Sting and Gray were the worst with each other.