~* ^_^ *~ oh, oh, oh! Who's back with another chapter? I AM! That's right, me! So I didn't keep the cliffy from the last chapter. Oh well, but there's still the drama and tension. Remember that I decided to change a few things... well, okay. A lot of things. But it will be just as good, and not as immature as when I started it.
Enjoy yourselves.
Chapter Three:
Sakura couldn't focus.
She sat in front of her drafting table, with her head in her hands, staring at a blank piece of paper in front of her. There were no thoughts running through her head except for the events earlier that week. Sakura was losing focus.
Disbelief was the form of her concentration. She absolutely despised Eriol, just thinking about having sex with him made her skin crawl. Not that Eriol was ugly, he was anything but unattractive, but his aura was repulsive to her.
Well, at least if it had been what she had dreamt it to be, it couldn't have been that bad... no! Bad mind! bad! She couldn't think that way!
Her cell phone rang.
It was Beethoven's 5th Symphony... the dreaded ring that she chose for Eriol's number. He used to call her when he couldn't get a hold of Tomoyo. Sakura used to be civil in situations like that... but now she didn't want to answer it. The ring continued, and Sakura's pulse quickened. With a deep breath she grabbed her phone and answered it. "Hello Eriol," she said.
"Hello, Sakura." He always spoke so seriously. "I need to talk to you."
Sakura licked her dry lips; "I'm a little busy." She lied looking at the paper before her.
"I won't take long, I promise." He said. "I just want to ask you a question..."
"About Tomoyo-chan?" she inquired.
"Well... no." Eriol mused from the other side, listening to her quiet voice. "Did... were you at my house last night?"
Sakura has two options. One: lie and try to forget this. Two: face the music and get rid of this heavy burden.
"Yes I was, Eriol." She admitted.
Eriol was not in an awkward position. "Were... you or myself drunk?" he continued.
"Incredibly wasted." He heard her mumble. He felt his heart stop, and he feared that he might suffer from cardiac arrest right at that moment.
"Sakura..." His lips were dry, he couldn't speak well. "What happened last night?"
"This is your chance, Sakura!"
Her voice screamed inside of her head. She couldn't bring herself to tell him... he'd want to talk more. He might even tell Tomoyo! "I just slept over. Thank you for your hospitality." She said clearly. Maybe she put a bit too much emphasis on 'just'.
"Oh!" he sounded shocked.
"Yes, oh!" she responded sarcastically.
"Well, you're welcome." He told her.
"Yes. Now, I need to get back to work. Goodbye, Eriol." Sakura said and then hung up before she heard his voice again.
And she cried.
"What on earth was I doing last night?" Eriol howled at his reflection in the mirror. He had woken up naked this morning, and there was evidence of an activity other than just sleeping... Perhaps Sakura was lying.
Or maybe Eriol was just a man.
Sakura had moved into her apartment a few days after the incident. It gave her a new phone number which allowed her to avoid Eriol. Unfortunately there was still the case of her mobile phone, and he kept calling her. Of course, she didn't answer it. She usually hung up on him. The last thing on Sakura's to-do-list was talk to Eriol, but she was worried that Eriol might call Tomoyo.
Tomoyo was supposed to call Sakura once she was settled in England. So far, there hadn't been a call, but Eriol knew where her fiancé, Chris, lived. Eriol had done an exchange there in college, and later introduced Tomoyo to Chris. In a way, Eriol had dug his own grave. If he hadn't introduced Tomoyo to Chris, they wouldn't have met. Tomoyo and Eriol wouldn't have fought, and then Tomoyo and Chris wouldn't have fallen in love... then Tomoyo wouldn't have left.
So then Sakura wouldn't have gone drinking and she wouldn't have slept with Eriol! It was his entire fault!
Sakura allowed that thought to ease her mind until one particular thought flickered on... she might be pregnant... and she flipped!
The scream that erupted through her room was shrill and terrified, but then a knock suddenly came at her door.
"Sakura! Open up, Sakura!"
It was Syaoran. This also shocked Sakura and she gawked at the door for about a minute or so before realizing that he was banging on her door quite loudly and was probably causing a huge disturbance. She rushed to the door and nearly ripped it open to prevent him from banging on it any further.
"Sakura, what's wrong?" He gasped, grabbing her shoulders.
"Wha?" she blinked at him, not knowing what he was talking about.
"You screamed! Are you alright? What happened?" he shook her slightly, worried about her wide-eyed state without realizing that she was just in shock of him being her. "Why did you scream?"
"Uh… there was a spider?" she offered as an answer, because she wasn't about to discuss the possibility of being pregnant with Li Syaoran at this point and time. He released her shoulders and sighed heavily in relief. "What are you doing here, Li?" She closed the door behind him, resorting to old formalities they used when they were children.
Syaoran looked at her with a hurt look on his face. "Sakura-chan, I had to see you again." He said so earnestly. "You weren't answering any of my calls so I resorted to drastic measures. Tomoyo-chan gave me your address."
Sakura grumbled and rolled her eyes. She figured Tomoyo would do something like that. Deep down, Sakura believed that Tomoyo was in denial about her and Syaoran ever breaking up in the first place. After all, Sakura and Syaoran had been together happily for nearly seven years and then one day he was going to Hong Kong without her and she hadn't seen him since. He had called her one night and told her that he was marrying Meiling due to family duties and he was sorry. That had been it.
"Could you please leave, Li? I have work to do." She told him, trying to get him out of her apartment.
"Not without explaining myself, Sakura-chan." He begged, grabbing her hand and looking desperately into her emerald eyes. She began to protest but he cut her off. "I only married Meiling because she's pregnant."
Sakura's eyes widened even more. "She's what?" was the only thing she could manage to speak. Meiling was pregnant? "How is that possible?" she managed to continue. "You were always with me..."
"No, the child isn't mine." He corrected her.
Sakura squinted as though she weren't seeing things clearly. She didn't understand what he was telling her. True, they were speaking the same language and he was speaking clearly, but it wasn't making any sense. "So… you married Meiling because she's pregnant with another man's child?" she asked.
"Sakura-chan, she was so humiliated with the whole situation. I originally went to Hong Kong to speak with my mother, and then Meiling told me her predicament. I couldn't let her face our family and leave her to face their wrath. They would have never let this child into our family, that's just how they are. You must believe me. I only did this to save Meiling. No one at home ever believed us when we told them we were no longer engaged, so they just assumed be had premarital sex." He sat her down and explained this to her.
Sakura took all of this in very slowly and accurately to understand it fully. So Meiling had gotten pregnant and, because Syaoran cared for her, he married her to save her dignity. At least someone had it worse than Sakura. "When were you married?" She found herself asking him. He looked at her oddly and she just shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know what to say to you, Syaoran. This is all a lot of information to process."
Syaoran smiled at her and held her hand. "I still love you, Kinomoto Sakura. I want you to know that." He told her, and then kissed her.
"Here is the tape you requested, sensei" Mokoto handed Eriol a video, who was seated on a love seat twirling a champagne class around absent mindedly.
"Thank you, Mokoto. That is all I need for now, you may take the rest of the day off." Eriol sighed as he took the tape from his butler. Mokoto nodded and then left the premises. Eriol leaned forward and then popped the tape into a VCR. As old as the machinery is, it was the only way for Eriol to view his home security tapes.
This was the tape that filmed his bedroom.
Sakura felt dirty.
She had now showered for the fifth time that night, and she still felt like there was filth on her skin. She decided she would soak in the bathtub until she felt clean enough.
Sakura sat on the edge of the bathtub while it filled with hot water. She stared at the water swirling in the basin and slowly rising, and couldn't find anything to distract her from her thoughts. She was worried about her entire situation with Eriol, with work, and now with Syaoran. In reality, her situation with Li shouldn't have caused her so much grief, but it still bothered her immensely.
Who was she to kiss a married man? True, he had kissed her first, but she had not pushed him away or made him stop. She let him kiss her. Syaoran was unhappy with his current predicament in truth but it still gave Sakura to no right to let him kiss her. He was Meiling's now, not hers to kiss. Yet she felt secretly jealous because she enjoyed kissing Syaoran.
Sakura sunk into the hot water. It was almost too hot to touch, but Sakura didn't care. She was bound to be sitting in the tub for a long time, so it was best for her to begin with very hot water. She had to clear her head of anything and start focusing on her own life rather than all of her problems. Looking on the Brightside, at least she knew both of these men that she had had these ordeals with. Syaoran was her ex boyfriend, and Eriol… well, he wasn't her ex anything, but she still knew him at least.
Okay, she had kissed Syaoran, but why did she feel so guilty other than the fact that she could be pregnant? Was that she felt that she had betrayed Syaoran by having sex with Eriol? Eriol and Syaoran were best friends throughout high school, after all. Was it a bad thing that she hadn't told him, or Tomoyo-chan, for that matter. But if she told them, would she still feel horrible about the situation? Yes.
Sakura feared that she would always feel terrible about having sex with Eriol. She hated him. If anything, she had betrayed herself by being weak and drinking to the point of delusion and then slept with Eriol, who was also drunk.
"Argh!" Sakura slapped the water, splashing herself in the face, in frustration.
She had been over this before. It was no one's fault. It was her own fault for acting out of stupidity, but other than that it was no one's fault. She just felt awful about the entire situation.
Her phone rang.
Sakura grumbled and pulled herself out of the tub. She pulled on her bathrobe and then hurried out into the living room and picked it up. "Hello?" She answered.
"Hey hey, stranger!" came Tomoyo's cheerful voice from the other end.
"Hey Tomoyo-chan," she smiled. "How are things on the other side of the world?"
"Terrible!" Tomoyo cried in vain. "Do you know how hard it is to plan a wedding with people who don't speak your native language? It's awful! Nothing is going the way I want it to and I just want to speak some decent Japanese with someone! Help me, Sakura-chan!"
Sakura couldn't help but laugh at her best friend. "Tomoyo-chan, you're just being a typical bride."
"But it's harder when you come home and your own fiancé doesn't speak your language either! I don't want to speak English anymore! I want to speak my own damn language! Talk to me, Sakura! For the love of all that is good, please speak to me and I can listen to the gloriousness that is your voice in Japanese!"
Sakura grinned. "Tomoyo-chan, you're overacting." She heard her whine and then snickered. "Seriously. If you're going to live there for the rest of your life, then what do you expect?"
"Please come to England and help me plan my wedding, Sakura-chan! Please!" Tomoyo begged, extending the vowels in her last "please" until she ran out of breath. "I need you here! As my maid of honor I command that you put off everything else you are doing and fly here immediately before I go insane!"
Sakura scoffed, "there's a thing called work, Tomoyo-chan. You know what I mean, right?"
"You work on commission! You'll be fine, you'll just be poor for a few weeks. I'll pay for everything in the mean time!" Her best friend pleaded. Deep down, Sakura pitied her and couldn't help but oblige. "Yes! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! When can you get here?"
"I'll be there as soon as I can, Tomoyo-chan." Sakura smiled against the mouth piece.
That is the end of this chapter. In the next chapter, Sakura goes to England and has an unexpected seating neighbor on the way there. Dum dum dummm!
