Olly: I'm back!!!! i'm SO sorry to have kept everyone waiting for so long! i know i hate when authors delay their stories. i finally got my internet back, at least for a while, so i'll try and get as many chapters up as i can! thanks to all those people who favorited my story or put it on alert. i can't tell you how proud it made me feel. now, without further ado...CHAPTER 14!!

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Disclaimer: don't own naruto, but if i did i'd probably be filthy rich. can you believe all the naruto merchandise? i mean seriously!

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Gaara was able to make it into the trees before he doubled over with a cramp. He gasped and tried to calm himself down, realizing he shouldn't have kissed her. As soon as he had he saw her in that towel and he almost couldn't hold it in. He held his head in his hands and took deep breaths to stop his heart from beating so fast. After a while he was able to sit up straight again. The word 'pervert' flashed through his brain, but he tried to shake it out. I'm not a pervert. I'm just seventeen years old.

Another car pulled into the driveway, making Gaara sigh with relief that'd he'd hidden his bike. Mr. Haruno stepped out and strode up to the house. Again, the thought of Sakura trying to explain her hair and new room to him made Gaara smirk. He waited a few minutes longer before running across the driveway and finding his bike. He rolled it a little ways down the street before he pulled his helmet on and drove home.

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"I'm home!" Mr. Haruno declared to the entire house itself. He could hear the voices of his wife and daughter emanating from the kitchen. He hung up his coat and placed his briefcase on the floor.

"Sakura, it's just so flashy."

"It's not flashy, mom."

"Yes it is! It's what, five different colors?"

"Look, I was just tired of the pink. Geez you're acting like I tattooed my face like Kankuro."

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Kankuro sneezed.

"How surprising, someone just insulted you again." Gaara announced deadpanned as he strode into Kankuro's room and started emptying his pockets of the cameras and microphones. The older brother grunted.

"Shaddup, Gaara. I'm not the one thinking dirty thoughts." He smirked at Gaara's confused expression. "Next time wear looser pants."

Gaara stared at his brother in shock before glancing down. He growled and ran out of the room, Kankuro's laughter taunting him all the way through the house.

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"But pink is such a beautiful color. That's why we named you Sakura, because your hair was like a cherry blossom." Mrs. Haruno continued.

"What's going on then?" Mr. Haruno asked as he walked into the kitchen. He stopped in his tracks when he saw Sakura turn around and display her multicolored hair to him.

"What in the world?!" he demanded. "Sakura! What did you do to your hair?"

"What? I like it."

"Well I don't! I want you to change it back tonight!" he walked over to look at it more closely. Sakura turned away. "I expect to come home and have a nice dinner with my family and here you have…this."

Sakura was hurt. "But my friends worked really hard on it. Besides, it'll wash out in a few months."

"Your friends?" he asked.

"Yes. Before you said I couldn't have people over I had already invited them. All of them. We painted my room and the girls spent the night and we dyed our hair and baked cookies and all types of fun stuff."

Mr. Haruno's eyes widened. "You mean to say you had a party while we were away? And you invited boys?" His face was red with anger.

"Dad, stop jumping to conclusions! I was tired of my room being white so I invited my friends over to help me paint it. Then we watched a movie and the guys left. Really the spend the night thing was a whole spur-of-the-moment decision. And it was only Temari, Ten Ten, and Hinata."

Ok…so that was a little bit of a lie…-cough cough-...ok, BIG lie...but there was no way in hell Sakura was going to tell her parents that the guys had taken them hostage then ended up spending the night as well. And she also couldn't say that Gaara had come back to finish her room and then saw her in a towel and then left. And since we're going through the list of things she couldn't tell her parents, let's also throw in that she couldn't tell them Gaara was secretly her boyfriend. Maybe her mom wouldn't mind but her father would take the moment of awkward silence to go buy a gun and find the directions to Gaara's house.

Well…back to the conversation…

Sakura's dad was fuming over the fact that his respectable, obedient daughter had done one of the things that parents hear horror stories of from other parents and then say prayers of thanks that their children wouldn't commit such crimes. She had thrown a party while they were away. Who knows what they did? For all the trust he had in Sakura right now, he thought it perfectly possible that she was lying through her teeth about what they did at the party.

Thank the heavens. It was sakura's mom who broke the tension. "You say you painted your room?" she asked. Sakura nodded. With a quick glance from parent to parent, Sakura was bid to follow her mom and dad upstairs to her room. Mr. Haruno burst through the door Mission Impossible style as though he were escaping from something that was exploding. Mrs. Haruno filed in behind him like a Charlie's Angel. Sakura rolled her eyes and simply walked in like it were her own bedroom (oh wait, it was!).

Sakura's parents stared at her room. Mrs. Haruno was the first to notice the tree. "Sakura, who did this?" she asked, gazing at the huge heart that occupied a fourth of the wall. Sakura smiled warmly and answered, "Gaara did."

Sakura's dad looked at her. "Gaara?" Sakura nodded. "Yeah. He's an amazing artist." She pointed to the picture above her bed while her father stepped up to take a closer look at it.

"Don't you like it?" Sakura asked. "It was so fun. We all wore dirty clothes and went crazy with the paint. We had a huge paint fight. It was awesome."

"You did all this while we were away?" Mrs. Haruno asked.

Sakura didn't really like lying to her parents. "Well yeah. Like I said we watched a movie afterwards and then the guys left and the girls spent the night."

Mrs. Haruno looked at the ground sadly. "I'm very disappointed in you, Sakura. Do you really wish so much that we weren't part of your life?"

Sakura was taken aback. How had her mom reached that conclusion? "Mom I never said that! How can you think I don't want you in my life when I actually wish that you were in my life more!?"

"Sakura, you took the advantage of our long work hours to throw a party while we weren't here. You painted your room without our permission. You dyed your hair without our permission, in colors we disapprove of as well. You had people come over, including boys, without our permission. You even had people spend the night without our permission. Sakura, before we moved here you were a wonderful child."

Sakura couldn't believe what her parents were saying. Just because she had her friends over to paint her room and dye her hair, they thought she had become a child to be looked down upon? "What are you saying?" she asked hesitantly.

Sakura's father put an arm around his wife's shoulder. "Your so called friends have changed you, Sakura." He said sadly.

"For the better!" Sakura argued. "Before I met them I wasn't really able to be myself."

"Sakura, you think it's for the better, but think about how society looks upon you. How you dress…and your hair…it all spells out trouble for you in future."

"Ah! You don't know anything! You're never even here!" Sakura screamed, holding her head.

"Sakura, don't you dare go into that! You know the only reason we work so hard is to take care of you!"

"I don't need to be taken care of!"

"Yes you do! Without us you wouldn't have clothes on your back, food on your table, or a house to live in!"

"Stop it!"

"Sakura, I think it would be for the best if you changed schools."

"What?! No! y-you can't! All I did was paint my room and dye my hair! Why are you making it such a big deal?"

"You went behind our backs!"

"Only because I knew if I asked you would say no! Honestly this is insane! You're insane!"

"Don't talk to us like that young lady!"

"Why are you so upset with it? It was a bonding experience. All my friends even signed their color to make it a memory. And it's not like I was the only one to dye my hair! We dyed Hinata's, Temari's, and Ten Ten's too! I haven't changed as a person. Please, why can't you understand that?"

Sakura's father only stared at his daughter. After a moment of looking into Sakura's pleading eyes, he walked out of her room and down the hallway to his own. Sakura's mom took her daughter's hand while the owner's eyes filled with tears. "Do you really feel like that, mom? I never really had friends before now. Please…please don't make me change schools. I'm sorry. I'll repaint my room, a-and dye my hair back and everything. I promise."

Sakura looked at her mother. She looked so sad. She never meant to make her mom look like that. After a minute or two, Mrs. Haruno heaved a large sigh and hugged Sakura. "No. I don't think you should change schools. You do seem to have lovely friends, and I would like to meet them. I'm sorry for what I said before, but you're father does have a point. Society doesn't usually look upon people like your friends in a good way, even if they are nice when you get to know them. And you're room looks great, and I'm happy that you've become bolder in your life."

Sakura blinked…once…twice…three times. Doest thou ears deceive her? Only a few minutes ago her mother had told her she was disappointed in her. "Mom?"

Mrs. Haruno hugged Sakura. "You'll have to excuse your father. Sakura, would you like to hear a story?" Sakura couldn't tell what her mom was up to, but she hadn't told her a story since she was four. Sakura nodded and sat down on her bed to listen.

"My parents," her mom began while taking the seat next to sakura, "were like your father and I are now. We moved a lot. We settled down once in a town near here…well not very near, but a couple of hours away at most. When I went to the school here on eighth grade, I felt so dumb because I knew nothing about public school life. It's when I meant Kurenai. She was my first friend. Her boyfriend was Asuma. The other girl in the group was Rin, whose crush was Kakashi, whose rival and best friend was Obito. Somehow Iruka fit in there as well, and we all became good friends, except for the one guy I couldn't get the attention of. He was my idol. The hippest cat on the block (Sakura smirked at her mom's funny choice of words). He had a motorcycle, and cool hair, and oh! He once 'rescued' me from a date with a kid named Gai. Do you know who that man was?"

Sakura looked at her mom questioningly. "Oh god mom, if you say it was dad…"

Mrs. Haruno laughed. At that moment Sakura realized she hadn't really heard her mom laugh before. It was a hearty laugh, a jingling chuckle like rice falling on tin. It seemed as though it didn't get exposed very often. "Yes Sakura," she continued with a smile, "whether you choose to believe it or not, your father was once a very groovy person. It took me practically all of my high school years to ask him out, and when I finally did, I found out that he had been hiding his feelings for me the whole time as well. It was a mixed up mumbo-jumbo of emotions and awkwardness…but all that became memories. Now Rin and Obito are dead…I heard everyone else became teachers and moved away. With all his friends gone, your father broke. He came to me one day and said he had an awakening. Being cool and scary wasn't going to get him anywhere in life, so he sold his bike, changed his hair, went back to school, and got a job working for a small lawyers office; the whole she-bang. I was afraid he would leave me if I didn't follow suit, so I did the same. Changed my wardrobe, put up the eyeliner, and burned all the lyrics I wrote for songs. Eventually we both ended up with good jobs and he asked me to marry him. When we had you he was determined to give you a better life than he had growing up. I thought it was the right thing to do…but perhaps I was wrong?"

Sakura smiled and gave her mom the best hug she could manage. "Thanks mom. I'm sorry for all the stuff I did. Next time I'll ask permission before doing something like that, ok?"

"Of course, and if you like, I'll try and talk to your father for you." Sakura's mom smiled at her daughter and gazed at the wall that Gaara had painted. "You know, that really is a wonderful piece of art. Who did you say drew it?"

Sakura couldn't help but blush. "Gaara did it." Mrs. Haruno cocked her eyebrow. Stupid flushed cheeks!

"So you like him, huh?" she asked. Sakura sighed in defeat.

"Yeah…" Maybe now was the time to come clean? "Actually…mom," Maybe? "He's kind of…" Possibly? "Well…he's kinda my boyfriend."

"Oh? Well I'll have to meet him sometime."

Wait…that was it? Sakura nearly collapsed from shock. All this hiding and being secretive…and all her mom said about her daughter's first boyfriend was 'oh, well I'll have to meet him sometime'.

"You're not going to interrogate me?"

"No. I figured you wouldn't want me to anyway. Besides, if I don't cool down your father quick he might actually try to switch schools."

"Alright. Thanks mom. Sorry I ruined dinner."

"It's fine, Sakura. We'll try to do that tomorrow. Good night." Sakura's mom stood up to leave the room, but not before kissing her daughter's forehead. Sakura piped up as he mom was just about to exit. "Hey mom! The Kakashi guy you knew, was it Hatake Kakashi?"

"The same. You know him?"

"He's my English teacher. And if we're talking about the same Gai-sensei, he's my gym teacher."

"Really? That's amazing. I'll have to tell your father. I'm sure he'll be so happy to know about his old friends."

Sakura smiled as her mom disappeared into the hallway and closed the door behind her. She thought about everything her mom had told her. It all sounded so much like her own life now. She wondered if she would end up like her mom and dad as well. Once again she sighed and then changed into some pajamas to go to bed.

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-sighs- wow, again i'm sorry about the delay. R&R please!