Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Or the plot of this story. They belong to their respective owners (Masashi Kishimoto and Jennifer Echols).
******************************************VERY IMPORTANT AUTHOR'S NOTE ******************************************
STOP RIGHT THERE.
DO NOT KEEP SCROLLING.
YOU.
YES, I AM TALKING TO YOU.
THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT.
HENCE ALL OF THE ASTERISKS.
PLEASE READ THIS
okay, I'll stop speaking in caps now.
So I know that it's been a while since I've updated this story, and for those of you who have been following this, I apologize. I won't bog you down with excuses because there are none. I am writing this to tell you all that I HAVE CHANGED THE STORY. I have made serious alterations to some of the earlier chapters, and I strongly recommend that you all go and read them before you progress any further. Otherwise things will not make sense, there will be mass confusion, I will get angry reviews and PMs, the world will stop turning on its axis and we will all die, etc., etc. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a little bit on that last one. Anyway, please take the time and re-read those early chapters (most importantly Chapter 5) because it really does matter to the story. Thanks!
xx Bethany
Now, to finally get on to the story...
The Boys Next Door
Chapter 8
Friends, Lovers, and Angry Mothers
Itachi gazed down at me, his dark eyes contrasting harshly against the bright blue sky behind him - an eerie combination.
"Sakura," he shouted above the drone of the boat motor. "When we're old enough, I want you to be my girlfriend."
My heart leapt with joy. All of my hard work had paid off! Itachi had finally succumb to my womanly charms, the poor fool. I could already hear the wedding bells.
I opened my mouth to respond, and got a mouth full of hair. Smooth. I choked and gagged, trying to free the hair from my mouth. So much for my womanly charms.
"Define old enough," I said, spitting a piece of hair out of my mouth. "Because I'm older than Hinata, so if she's old enough, then so am I."
Itachi leaned toward me and whispered. "Great. I'll pick you up at seven."
I almost couldn't believe it. Itachi had just asked me out. I could already feel myself grinning like an idiot. Only, those were the words I had heard. What he'd mouthed was something completely different, kind of like one of those bad voice-overs they do in old kung fu movies. He'd been playing me the entire time, pretending to whisper sweet nothings into my ear…
My eyes snapped open.
"Asshole!" I yelled, jerking up in bed. Or at least that was what I intended to do. However, I was so tangled up in my sweat-soaked sheets that I ended up pitching sideways over the side of my bed, head first. Before you can ask: yes. I really am this graceful all the time. I groaned and sat up, rubbing my head. Then I realized what I'd yelled.
"Whoops, sorry mom." I said sheepishly, looking at her picture on my bedside table.
I quickly shut off my alarm clock, which was blaring some chirpy pop song about love and hesitation.
Speaking of which, it was about time I got serious about this whole 'make Itachi my boy-toy' thing. I vowed to get a move on with my plan today at work. Unfortunately, as soon as I stepped in the marina office that morning, I was presented with a very large obstacle. Namely one seething Uchiha matriarch.
"Sakura!" She barked, whipping around in her office chair. "What are you doing?"
I froze, one foot in mid-air.
"Uh, going to work?" I asked, faking confusion.
She narrowed her eyes at me, clearly seeing through my farce.
"You and I both know that is not what I meant." She stood and strode toward me. "It was bad enough when I found out yesterday that Itachi stole Sasuke's girlfriend. Sasuke wanted me to ground him."
I took a step back as she loomed over me. If she grounded Itachi, that would mean that he wouldn't be able to go and hang out with Hinata, which was good news. Instant break-up! However, if she grounded him for the whole summer, that would also mean that he and I wouldn't be able to get together. Not good. "Did you?"
Were she not too dignified for such an action, I'm fairly certain Mrs. Uchiha would have been grinding her teeth in aggravation at this point. "I can't ground my adult son for stealing the other's girlfriend!"
She sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. "But clearly I have to do something. Sasuke's eye is black and Itachi is holding his jaw at a funny angle, and he won't even let me look at it. The two of them can't even be in the same room together without a fight breaking out! It was bad enough when the two of them were only torturing each other physically, but now it's mental too?"
Where had she been for the last 15 years? For as long as I could remember, Itachi and the other boys had been tormenting Sasuke about his ADD. Clearly Itachi made sure not to do it when their mother was around. Somehow though, I didn't feel like pointing this out would help my cause, so I chose to remain silent and nod my head sympathetically. "Do I have gas?"
She folded her arms and glared at me, not going along with my attempt to change the subject. "And to make matters worse, I find out this morning that now you and Sasuke are going out?"
I swept my hand over my body in the 'all this can be yours' gesture. "Don't say I didn't warn you," I sing-songed.
"You. Were. After. Itachi." She ground out, emphasising every word.
I blinked innocently. "Who, me?" Okay, so maybe Sasuke was right. I wasn't about to win an Oscar for that performance. Whatever. "I was after Sasuke."
Mrs. Uchiha rolled her eyes. "You took an extra 30 minutes of lunch yesterday, to stare longingly out the window and wait for Itachi."
I raised my chin haughtily. "You people are slave drivers. Can't a girl get a break to watch What Not to Wear?"
"Besides," she said more calmly, examining me a little too close for comfort, "if you and Sasuke were really about to get together, Sasuke wouldn't have come to me yesterday and complained about Itachi stealing his girlfriend. He would be happy to have you and he'd forget all about her."
Okay, this was a valid point. Speaking of Sasuke, now would be a great time for him to walk into the marina office and divert some of the maternal wrath onto himself. I looked around futilely. Damn it. I decided to give part of the truth. "It's the principle of the thing. Sasuke's still mad at Itachi for breaking his remote control truck when we were 8."
She went limp with exasperation. "Sasuke broke that! Itachi told me that Sasuke broke it. And Sasuke told me that Itachi broke it. I believed Itachi."
"Exactly."
She stared at me hard, waiting for me to crack. I resisted the urge to shift uncomfortably. Finally she nodded at the door and said, "You're in the warehouse. With Itachi."
A fate worse than death, I can assure you. Things were falling into place better than I could have expected. Today would be the perfect opportunity for me to move things along with Itachi. We would have plenty enough time to talk and flirt in the warehouse, considering all that we really had to do was help the full-timers take boats out of storage. Then we would clean them off, top off the fluids, and hand them over to Shisui and my brother for them to deliver across the lake. Sasuke had gas. I think more than putting me with Itachi out of spite, Mrs. Uchiha was just trying to keep Itachi and Sasuke as far from each other as possible.
But, despite my best efforts to move things along with Itachi, he was the same as always (apart from two days ago in the boat). He was perfectly nice, and sometimes he would do things that were really sweet, like pick me up a drink from the office when he went to get one for himself. But that was it. He spoke to me the exact same way he spoke to elderly customers. And his mother. Goddamn it. Maybe he didn't know that Sasuke and I were going out yet. I can't imagine Mrs. Uchiha sharing this tidbit of information with him, especially if she thought it would just add fuel to the fire. Meaning that Itachi had no idea yet that I was perfectly fine, date-able material. And as skilled as I was in the womanly arts (namely of manipulation and seduction), I had no idea how to pass this information along to him other than telling him outright, which would totally blow my cover. So I was perfectly sweet right back to him, and generally just pranced around the warehouse in my tank top, acting like I didn't have a care in the world.
Later in the afternoon we went wakeboarding. We'd skipped calisthenics yesterday, and no one seemed to be in the mood for them today either. Neither Naruto nor Shisui brought it up, and Sasuke and Itachi were too busy glaring and pitching life vests at each other to notice much else. Understandably, we were all a bit on edge by the time we set off. But Itachi spotted first, and Sasuke sat way up in the bow, so we all began to relax marginally. Plus, it wasn't very likely that Itachi and Sasuke would get into it on the boat anyway. Shisui and my brother could easily forestall any potential fist fights– Naruto was bigger than all of them.
As for me, I wanted so badly to sit in the aisle across from Itachi, but I knew it would be moot point. Itachi was too concerned about messing up his 'relationship' with Hinata to fool around. Especially while it was having the desired effect on Sasuke. So, instead of giving into temptation, I walked right by the aisle seat and hunkered down in the bow with Sasuke. Unfortunately Itachi was looking the other way, so he didn't even see the knee-weakening look that Sasuke gave me as I sat down. But Shisui, who was driving, definitely did. Hopefully he would be kind enough to relay that information to Itachi when the time was right. I wondered what Sasuke would want to do with me. He and I both knew that it was a bit early in our faux couplehood for PDA. It would look suspect if after almost sixteen years of friendship, Sasuke and I just suddenly started making out in the boat with my brother and his brothers watching. Ew. Sasuke seemed to be thinking along the same lines as me, because he made no effort to initiate contact of any kind. He seemed to be content to watch me darkly from across the bow. I shifted uncomfortably, unused to receiving that kind of look from Sasuke. Maybe we weren't thinking the same thing after all.
However, that was not my biggest problem at the moment. Sasuke had told me yesterday that Itachi would have no interest in asking me out now that I had taken his place in the wakeboarding show. And as much as I didn't want to believe that Itachi was that petty, I had to admit that Sasuke had a point. Which lead to my present dilemma. Maybe I should purposefully bust ass in front of Mr. Uchiha, and lose my spot in the wakeboarding show to appease Itachi's ego. But you know what? I had another run so fantastic that I decided I didn't want to screw it all up just to please a boy. Even a boy this important. In fact, my last few runs had been so great that I decided that the next time we went out, I was going to attempt an S-bend. This would mean actually landing the S-bend, unlike some adrenaline junkies I knew. Unfortunately, Itachi had another awful run, as did Sasuke – ouch. And Itachi didn't even seem to mind that I had another great run and he didn't. He was the same as always, polite and a bit too distant for my tastes. He must have really been enjoying the fact that he got Sasuke's goat. Er, girlfriend. Whatever, it didn't matter. I would get Itachi in the end.
I was feeling hopeful about my situation when we docked at the marina later that afternoon. I was in such a good mood that when Sasuke helped me out of the boat and we did our secret handshake, I didn't even care that Itachi wasn't around to watch. It felt nice that someone valued me enough to want to do a secret handshake with me.
"By the way," I asked, mid-high five. "What was with that look you were giving me in the boat?"
Sasuke had the decency to look embarrassed. "What look?"
"This one," I said, giving him my best demonstration.
He furrowed his brow. "I'm not a doctor, but it looks to be a case of mild constipation. Or possibly a stroke."
I shoved him, and he laughed, touching his elbow to mine in the final stage of the secret handshake. We parted ways on the wharf and I began to make my way to my house, taking big sniffs of the warm evening air, enjoying the scent of cut grass and flowers. I didn't even mind when I had to stop for a few minutes and blow a gnat out of my nose. I really wished that it had been Itachi who had asked me out tonight, but if I had to go on a fake date with anyone, I was glad that it was Sasuke.
After having dinner with my dad and Naruto, I treated myself to a deluxe beauty routine, which included exfoliating, shaving, plucking, and moisturizing every square inch of my body. Then I moved on to the hair and makeup, finishing up my look by teasing my mascara-coated lashes with the comb extension on my brother's razor. Men really have no idea how easy then have it.
Even with all of that, I was still ready in plenty of time. I had an hour to kill before Sasuke would be coming over to pick me up. I peered out my bedroom window, looking in the direction of Sasuke's house, wondering what he was up to at this very moment. Was he getting ready too? Maybe he was in the shower. The water cascading down through his soft, dark hair, down his sculpted shoulders and chest, to his abdomen and then–
I took a step back from the window at the force of the picture and the realism, even though the image of him in the shower was entirely in my imagination. Surely I must be picturing Itachi in the shower. I didn't have these kinds of thoughts about Sasuke. Plus, the boy in the shower wasn't wearing a skull and crossbones. Sasuke wore that thing everywhere – even while wakeboarding and swimming. I felt it was only right to assume that he wore it in the shower too. Although in all the times we'd worked together at the marina, I'd never noticed a dirty patch in the shape of a skull and crossbones on his chest. Okay, enough about Sasuke's naked chest. I seriously didn't think I could stand another minute of torturing myself like this.
So I did the only thing I could do.
I grabbed my phone and punched in a number.
It only took three rings for the person on the other end to answer.
"Hello?" Shizune answered, her voice polite. Clearly this woman didn't have caller-ID. Although, this was probably better for my purposes; I don't think she would answer half of the time if she knew that it was me.
"Well, this time I've done something that definitely isn't covered in the child-care manual. Go ahead. Ask me what happened. Ask me where I'm going right now. You're going to love it."
She sighed, before asking wearily. "Do I really want to know?"
I explained what had happened at the party with Itachi and Sasuke, and how I was about to leave for my first fake-date with my best friend turned lovah. As I got to the end of my story, I could hear the sound of deep, meditative breaths and knew that Shizune was practicing her relaxation techniques. She was taking this better than I had expected.
After a few minutes of silence, I took a deep breath and yelled into the receiver, "WELL?"
I didn't have to see her to know that she had probably just jumped a foot into the air. "Doesn't this sound like a supreme girl adventure? My life is like Gossip Girl. Only slightly less bitchy and more glamorous."
"There's something going on with those boys," Shizune said, completely ignoring my previous statement. Clearly she wasn't up-to-date with the latest teenage fads and trends. Actually, that wasn't really surprising. Knowing Shizune, she was probably never up-to-date with the trends, even when she herself was a teenager.
"Like what?" I asked.
"I'm not sure. It's been years since I've given Itachi or Naruto or Sasuke the evil eye… WE DO NOT EAT THE SAND!"
I winced as Shizune's voice reverberated through the speaker, before growing fainter. Obviously one of Shizune's new charges had broken the first cardinal rule: we do not eat anything that has not been directly placed in front of us for consumption. Growing up with four boys, that was a rule that I grew to understand and appreciate at a very early age.
Finally, after a pause, she returned to the phone. "Yes, as I was saying, I really have a hard time believing yours is the only plot at work here."
I rolled my eyes. "Uh, hello? Of course it's not! Itachi has been the one plotting from the very beginning. He stole Hinata from Sasuke as revenge. Itachi has always been the instigator of the plot, even from when we were kids."
Shizune hummed thoughtfully. "I don't know about that. After all, it was Sasuke who put the firecrackers in my homemade cheese."
"OH MY GOD I COMPLETELY FORGOT ABOUT THE HOMEMADE CHEESE." I laughed until I choked.
"I always loved Sasuke though," Shizune continued.
"Wait, what?" I stopped laughing abruptly. Where the hell was this coming from? Shizune wasn't the type to freely profess her love of anything.
"But Sasuke had room to grow. And it sounds to me like he still does."
Feeling strangely defensive of Sasuke all of a sudden, I said, "Everybody has room to grow."
"And don't let yourself be his field." Seriously, where did this woman come up with her analogies?
"What am I, a crop of rutabagas?"
"Do you understand what I'm saying?" Shizune ground out. I could tell that she was probably trying to resist losing her temper with me on the phone because there were children around her.
"Not particularly," I said. "Are you trying to forbid me from seeing Sasuke?" How romantic. I forbid you from seeing the boy next door! I'm sure that would work out well.
Shizune sighed. "Sakura, I'm not trying to forbid you from doing anything. You and I both know that I have no authority over you. I'm not your caregiver anymore. I am merely saying this because I'm concerned. I don't want you to get involved in something that might end up hurting you in the end. Just… watch out around those boys."
I hung up the phone and stared at the receiver.
Why did Shizune have to be so serious and cryptic all of the time? I knew what I was doing. I just had to go above and beyond conventional means if it meant that I would be with Itachi in the end. I wasn't going to hurt myself. I think I would end up more hurt in the end if I had to watch Itachi be happy with some other girl and know that I never even tried to make my feelings known. And if I could help Sasuke win Hinata back in the process, that was even better.
Before I had the chance to think on the subject any further, my thoughts were interrupted by the chime of the doorbell.
Oh crap.
Sasuke was here!
End of Chapter 8
