(in)visible

eightteen

She was sitting with Michael in her favourite coffee shop. It was the day after Christmas, which had been lovely, but a bit strange. Rebecca, Luke, Calum and Michael had all been together, exchanging gifts and having fun and mostly eating a lot of cookies.

Since Lyanna and Michael weren't that serious yet, she had given him a simple but beautiful leather bracelet. It was a pretty small gift, but she figured the thought would count.

But then she had opened Michael's gift for her. It was a silver necklace with a little silver charm on it. A bunny.

Not only was it way too expensive for her to possibly accept, and she had felt really bad about getting him a much cheaper gift, it was also downright ugly.

She had no idea what had happened in his mind that made him think a bunny that horrible looking would be cute, but clearly he did. She tried to tell Michael that it was too much, but he insisted, saying that even if he wanted to return it, he couldn't, because it was custom made.

So now she was sitting in the coffee shop, fingering the stupid necklace around her neck, while Michael kept talking about some New Year's Eve party he wanted to go to. She wasn't really listening. His talk about this huge party didn't really interest her, and her mind was once again wandering towards Sparrow, and strangely, towards Ashton.

The last time she had seen Ashton had been so strange, and she found herself wondering if he had had a nice Christmas.

A phone rang, pulling her back into the present, and for a moment she thought it might be Sparrow, but then she realised it was Michael's phone.

He checked the caller ID, before apologising to her, saying he really had to take the call. She smiled thinly as he picked up. She didn't really care.

"Oh, really? Okay, yeah, I'll be right there," Michael said into the phone.

He hung up and smiled at her apologetically.

"I'm really sorry hunnybun, but I've got to go. You're coming to the New Year's Eve party right? I uh... I thought we might start the new year with a bang, if you know what I mean."

He smirked at her, and it took her a minute to figure out what he meant. When she made the connection, her mouth fell open surprise.

"Uhm, Michael, I'm not sure I'm ready for that yet. You said it was okay to take things slow, we've only been dating for a short while..."

His face fell into a frown momentarily, his eyes growing dark. But just like that, his smile was back, and she wondered if she had been imagining things.

"Of course! Yeah, we're taking it slow, whatever you want."

He stood up, put on his coat and grabbed his half-finished coffee before kissing her on the forehead and quickly walking away.