*weeps profusely*

I'M SO SORRY, OKAY?
JUST ENJOY THE CHAPTER.
I LOVE YOU.

- RD :)

13th Street

Chapter Twenty-One: Lucy, Levy, and Lisanna, Queens of Clubs

Erza opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling for a good two minutes before she realized that it wasn't her ceiling.

Upon this realization, she nearly jumped out of bed. But then, she realized that she was not on a bed, but a couch! And this was not her apartment, but Gray's house!

She did all she could to keep herself from screaming.

Delicately, Erza got up off the couch and looked around the room. She didn't see anything important of hers; she must have left all her belongings in her purse. It was sitting in a chair across the room, and Erza tip-toed over to the chair to get it. She was quietly making her way to the door when she heard, "You're awake!"

Slowly, she turned to face Gray. "Yes." However, her eyes grew wide as she noticed a few very important details: Gray was not wearing a shirt, he looked wet, and he had a towel slung over his shoulder. Erza felt her face flush bright red as she screamed.

"Put a shirt on!" She turned away to hide herself from Gray and to hide her blushing face from him.

Gray looked at himself before yelling, "Oh, my gosh! I'm so sorry!" He ran to his room to put a shirt on while Erza just stood there, lost in her thoughts.

"Why, oh, WHY is he good-looking?" She had never admitted it to herself before, but she supposed there was a first time for everything. For the first time since she had come to Magnolia, Erza was admitting that a guy – not a movie star or a singer or a professional athlete, but a guy she knew – was good-looking! "The last time I thought this way about someone was with… Jellal…" But it made no sense! She had never cared before if he were wearing a shirt or not.

"Erza, do you want me to take you home?" She turned around again, and Gray was wearing a shirt this time.

"No, thanks!" she said. She was not sure she could endure a whole car ride with him after having just admitted to herself that he was attractive. "You take me home a lot, so…"

"I really don't mind!" he added, stepping closer. "I mean, I'm not a cab driver, but I really don't mind taking you home. I'll go get my keys and–" Gray stopped when he felt a small pressure on his chest and looked down to see Erza's hand stopping him from coming any closer.

"No, thanks," she whispered.

He tried not to get too embarrassed. "Okay."

Erza walked all the way home from Gray's house that day. She wasn't sure how long it took her to do so, but it seemed worth it. Her heart felt heavy from the memories of Jellal, but if she was going to live on like he told her to, she couldn't spend the rest of her life hung up on her broken heart. She thought she could have, but recently, her heart had been getting confused.

"You just had to ruin it, didn't you, Gray Fullbuster?" she mumbled to herself.

At the start of the new semester, Lucy had decided on joining the planning committee for the school's cultural festival. The responsibility for Magnolia University's biggest annual event fell on the freshman class each year, and Lucy had been looking for opportunities to get more involved in school, anyway.

The committee's first task was to pick a theme for the festival, or a culture to feature. The meeting had provided no consensus, but a few ideas were suggested. After most of the committee had left, Lucy and her new friend Levy stayed behind to go over the suggestions again.

"You work at Fairy Tail, right?" Levy asked. "I go there all the time, but I never see you there."

"Lately, I've been working in the kitchen a lot," Lucy explained, still going over all the ideas for the Culture Festival. "Ever since my boss tried my cooking earlier this month, I've been helping out more and more."

"Ah, okay. Let me see that list." Levy glanced over the piece of paper before saying, "I think we should go with the American culture option."

"Why?" Lucy asked. "Isn't that boring? We already know about American culture."

"But I don't want these cultural festivals to be like the other ones. Lucy, you didn't live near here last year, but I'm sure you've heard the stories. Everybody brings a lot of Mexican food or a lot of Chinese food and calls it a day. Let's do something different this year! We can do stuff that has to do with farming. Hay, corn, plaid, the whole nine yards!" Levy sounded so excited about the American culture idea that Lucy could not help but agree that it sounded fun.

"Alright. I'll vote for that. We can convince the rest of the committee in a couple days."

A few days after the incident at Gray's house, on his way out from school, Gray ran into Erza. He didn't see her most days, seeing that their school was big, and due to their different schedules, they didn't always finish their classes at the same time. However, all their classes were over by four, and Gray knew that Erza was headed to Fairy Tail just like he was, so he ran to catch up to her when he saw her.

Erza had her head down, so she didn't immediately realize that Gray was even there. He noticed this and smiled to himself. "Wonderful weather, isn't it?" he asked in a strange voice. Erza, being forever cautious, jerked her head up to see who the owner of the weird voice was. However, when she saw it was only Gray, she whacked him on the head. Gray laughed loudly and she frowned at him.

"Don't scare me like that," she said, pulling her coat closer to her. It was still so cold every day; Erza didn't think the weather was wonderful at all. She rubbed her hands together until Gray reached over and grabbed them.

"You look like you're suffering," Gray said with a chuckle. He began to rub her hands against his.

"I am!" Erza retorted as she pulled her hands away. "Not everyone's immune to the cold like you are."

"Yep," Gray said with a nod. "Mom used to tell us that we'd have to be able to brave any kind of temperature if we were going to survive in the world. I don't know why she told us that…"

Erza laughed. "You sure have been talking about your mom a lot lately."

He shrugged. "I guess that ever since she came back to live with me, I've been thinking about her a lot more. Before, I still called her a lot and stuff, but I guess she wasn't on my mind as much because she wasn't a part of my everyday life anymore. And now that she is again, I think about her a lot."

Erza brushed her hair from her face and nodded. "It's a good thing. I mean, she's not your real mom, so it's good that she's been a good enough mom to be that important to you." Erza wanted to ask a question, but stopped herself. She wasn't sure how much Gray wanted to let her know about his life, since he knew virtually nothing about hers. She knew that he was a good friend of hers, but they were friends on a different level; they weren't the sort of friends who knew everything about each other and had a deep, old, connection. They were the sort of friends who barely knew anything about each other's likes and dislikes yet still had a connection.

Erza smiled at the thought of having such great friends. She hadn't had any friends when she moved to Magnolia, and even when she wanted to be nice to people, she usually scared them away or didn't know what to do around them. But her new friends had accepted her despite her awkwardness and made it easy for her to spend time with them.

Suddenly, she felt herself being poked in the side. "You're spacing out, Sparks. What's up?"

"I thought you stopped calling me that. And why are you touching me so much? It's weird." Erza saw a glint in Gray's eyes and immediately knew she had said the wrong thing. Soon, Gray's hands were trying to tickle her. Erza squirmed as best she could, but Gray was still winning. The tickling continued until they almost plowed into someone else on the street. After that, Erza began to punch him in the arm mercilessly.

"Ow! Truce! I call truce!" Erza smirked and continued to walk, but Gray quickly linked his arm through hers.

Erza looked at him and smiled. "This is okay," she said as she patted his arm. "I can deal with this."

"So can I." He smiled back down at her and felt that he was on top of the world.

Erza, on the other hand, was still not sure how to feel about Gray. Even though she did not doubt that they were friends, Gray was different from any of her other friends. She didn't blush after close contact with Natsu, for example. She just felt nothing. But with Gray, her brain got all scrambled and her stomach felt tight. And he was good-looking. That certainly did not help her predicament.

So for the time being, she just took a deep breath and dealt with the confusion.

When they got to work, Gray repeatedly banged his head on the wall in the employee room. Natsu wandered his way back there at some point to see Gray damaging himself and said, "Gray! You're doing it wrong! I'm supposed to beat you up, not the wall!" Gray stared at him in a deadpan manner, but Natsu seemed as serious as ever.

Gray gave up on his friend and just slumped against the wall again. "Natsu," he said slowly. "Don't tell anyone, but I am hopelessly in love with Erza."

Natsu blinked twice before saying, "Duh." The two stared at each other for a second. "Do you have any food?"

Gray hit his head on the wall again.

Meanwhile, Lucy was sitting out in the main part of the shop, not working. Instead of working, she was chatting with Lisanna. And she had a plan.

"I'm on the planning committee for our college's Culture Festival. They have it every year. I'm pretty sure you've heard of it."

Lisanna nodded. "Yeah! I've been going with my sister and brother for years."

"Well," Lucy began slowly, getting ready for openly surrendering Natsu to this other girl. "This year, we have a bunch of couple events. The leader of our committee just started dating someone, so she's super excited and wants to have all this couple stuff. And…"

"And?"

"I think this would be a good time for you to get closer to Natsu," Lucy said in a low voice. Lisanna simply stared at her for a good thirty seconds until she began laughing so hard that she was pounding on the table.

"What's so funny?" Lucy demanded. "I'm being serious! You like him, right?"

Lisanna recovered from her laughing fit and leaned forward. "Lucy, I've only known you for a few months and I already know that you are desperately in love with Natsu."

"I am not!" Lucy yelled, waving her hand back and forth. "What makes you think that?"

Lisanna just shrugged. "You're really obvious. And besides, Natsu doesn't like me. I mean, he used to when he was younger, but he doesn't anymore. Plus, I have a boyfriend."

"What?!" Lucy yelled. All this time, she had been thinking that she'd been getting in the way of a slowly-blossoming romance, but it wasn't even there. She knew that Lisanna and Natsu had been close, and had assumed that they would at some point get together. But now, it sounded like all hopes of romance between those two were years behind them.

Lisanna smiled. "Yeah. His name's Bixlow. Weird, right? But he's a real sweetheart, and we've been dating for over a year. He goes to your college." Lucy's mouth was still open in surprise. She couldn't believe this. Lisanna laughed again. "Look, Lucy, I'm pretty nice! So I'll do you a favor."

"What?"

Lisanna smiled. "Ask me anything. I'll tell you everything you want to know about Natsu."

From her conversation with Lisanna, Lucy had learned that Natsu had had extreme motion sickness since he was young and the only transportation he could stand was his motorcycle. There was medicine he could take to help him, but he always forgot to take it. His hair was naturally that weird pink color. His scarf was a special gift and he always wore it. The apparent stupidity was not an act; he was smart, but only in some ways. He was protective of his friends and ended up in many a fight on the playground when he was younger. He cared, but had a strange way of showing it. And most importantly, by the way he acted, he probably liked Lucy, too – or at least that was what Lisanna could tell.

But what would she do now?

No review replies this time... Because I have a special mission for you, instead! :D

I want to put together a soundtrack for this story, and I want you to help me!

RULE 1: the song has to actually remind you of a point in the story or of a character. It can be any point in the story!

RULE 2: try to stay away from songs with cursing and such. I purposely keep this story clean, so I'd like the soundtrack to reflect that.

RULE 3: the song can be in any language, though English subtitles would be nice for those who understand English (I'd imagine that if you're reading this, you at least understand English a little). If you find a version with English subs, please tell me!

RULE 4: you can submit the songs in review form or you can PM me. Either is fine ^^

Does this sound like fun to you guys? I really want to do this!