Two and Three

Wait, what was that noise?

"Wonder where she's off to in such a hurry," Micheal mused as the door swung shut on Debbie's departure.

"I have no idea what you mean," Tony replied and glanced down at his phone. "It's only one in the morning and she only left the keys to her restaurant with a bunch of public disturbing teenagers. I don't see any difference in her behavior at all."

Ian glanced over to Lisha. "Was that sarcasm? I not sure if that was sarcasm."

"Who knows," Abbie chuckled over the mouth of her glass. "Maybe she got herself a dangerous uptown boyfriend who kills people in his spare time and can only see her in the dead of the night to protect her from his boss."

"Yes," Lisha rolled her eyes. "That's definitely it." With a wave of her hand, the sax player dragged herself up from the table.

"Now where are you going, gorgeous?" Tony called after her.

The overhead lights seemed to flicker as Lisha shot a strange, twisted smile over her shoulder before jangling the keys over her head. "Wouldn't want any ax murderers to stroll right through the front door, now would I?" She quickly locked the main entrance then jogged across the room before shouldering her way through the kitchen's double doors to lock up the back.

"I guess," he sighed in belated reply as he slouched down in his seat. Maybe the others didn't notice, but his pout seemed genuinely sad as he tucked his chin into his chest stubbornly; the movement threw a lock of his black hair down into his face. Tony was skinny kid, Abbie noted as she took a sip of her water. Under his quirky grin, messy hair, and brown eyes full of life, there was something stirring, something she just couldn't place.

As she finished her pie and sipped at her glass, Abbie took the time to analyze her friends from a distance. They had been through so much together, she and them. The five of them had been friends since the time they still swung on monkey bars and thought heelies were cool. Time was said to ruin all company, but in their case, it only seemed to bring them closer.

A silent laugh echoed through her head as she watched Ian fork a grape at Mike's head. The two them immediately launched into some sort of argument, but whatever it was about, she clouded her mind to it.

Those two always argued, it's what made them...them. But by the end of the day, they always came out closer than when they started. Sure there may have been a few bruises on Michael's jaw or an evil glint shining in Ian's strangely almond shaped eyes, but they were buddies. And if it really came down to it, they could really depend on each other.

Abbie's eyes wandered a bit as she looked for Lisha. The copper haired sax player had been her friend since she had moved to their small town in second grade. Lisha had always been around for her, even in those bleak times when Abbie wanted nothing more than to leave the earth and end whatever agony she was in.

Lisha was the reason she had joined color guard in the first place. After the school cut the orchestra budget, all string players were forced to either switch to a wind instrument or leave the ensemble. Being a violinist with no air support whatsoever, Abbie chose the latter of the two options.

Unknowingly, that decision almost completely cut her off from her best friend. With the marching season taking all of Lisha's time, and their class schedules forking in completely different paths, Abbie found that what little she did see of her friend, was an exhaustion on Lisha's part. The next year she signed onto the color guard.

The rest is high school.

The group had been through everything together, be it birthdays, hard days, or fun days, when something went wrong, even Tony and Ian grew up and somehow made the sun peek through the clouds.