The Rules and Regulations of Love (Nalu Fanfic)

Chapter Nine

Lucy

Rule Number Nine: When Someone Says Nothing's Wrong, Something's Wrong

I was having so much fun! I was here at the gym watching Gray and Juvia wrestle, dressed in the girliest thing I owned, sitting next to a guy that smelled great. No seriously, I've smelled some good guys in the past, but Natsu topped them all. He smelled like yummy Irish Springs soap and apple shampoo, along with a scent that I couldn't peg but wished I knew. It was the greatest scent on this earth. I wish he told me so that I could go buy it and smell it all the time. I wasn't sure if it was just the way Natsu smelled or if he actually bought a product that smelled like that. I was extremely worried that it was just the way he smelled.

I was staring out the window, watching the last sliver of sun disappear over the horizon, feeling both happy and confused. I was more confused than I was when my mom told me we couldn't sell Loki to the circus when I was five. That had to be the most heartbreaking moment in my life. I was devestated and confused. Why the heck couldn't we give Loki to the circus? He was weird enough, that's for sure. I just didn't understand why my mom would not give away the little devil. That wasn't why I was confused now. True, I still don't know why she hadn't given him away when she had the chance, but that was over with.

Right now, I was confused about why I felt so happy to be sitting next to Natsu, joking with him, and-dare I say it?-flirting. I don't know if what we were doing was flirting, but Juvia always said that I flirted by smacking people and smiling like an idiot, which I think I was doing a few minutes ago when Natsu suggested we make out like Levy and Gajeel were doing. No way was that going to happen though. I knew Levy, and things between her and Gajeel got pretty hardcore. They'd been dating since freshman year, and a few months ago she'd confessed to me that they'd had sex, but that she felt really bad about it because they hadn't used organic condoms. Obviously they'd gotten some, because from the looks of things, they looked like they were getting really into their relationship again.

Sighing contentedly, I looked out at the now dark night, wishing I were out in the summer air, running around, just having a good time. I loved the feel of the heat on my skin, the careless feeling that came with the beginning of summer, the joy I felt just being outside. We'd be graduating in a week, and then prom would be coming up. Our school system was really gay. They held the senior's prom in summer after graduation, in the hopes that not many people would attend and the chaperones wouldn't have to pay much attention. That didn't usually happen though. Instead, people came back and brought boyfriends and other friends, and it always turned out to be this huge chaotic mess that always ended up with at least one person leaving in a police car or ambulance.

A few years ago, Loki had been the unlucky person to be leaving in a police car. He'd come to the prom drunk, with a girl on each him, cigarette in mouth and looking like he could barely stand. He hadn't been there for five minutes before the cops had arrived, working their way through the crowd, wearing their uniform blues, hands on gun holster in case he tried anything funky.

"Wazzup, cop dudes?!" Loki had called out, cigarette dangling from his lip moving as he talked. He dropped it from his mouth and crushed it with the heel of the army boots he'd worn with his tuxedo, smiling that boyish smile he had that almost made you forgive him. The cops hadn't said anything, just grabbed him and slipped the cuffs on him, reading him his rights as they dragged him to the car.

And that was that. I briefly thought about who would be the lucky person that was going to be hauled off to either the jail or the hospital this year, but then I forgot about it, because it was a surprise each year. My brother had been to jail eight times, three times for driving drunk, twice for disrupting the peace, twice for public indecency (he peed on someone's dog because it had been yapping at him and he'd run up and down the main street of our small town without any pants on), and once for harrassment. Granted, he'd been harrassing me, but he'd really scared me, so the police hauled him in and I didn't do anything to stop them.