WHAT THIS IS STILL ALIVE. yes, and I am so sorry for abandoning this thing for so long.
Anyway, I will be replying to reviews in the last chapter, yesh. Also, this is a long ass chapter that is extremely condensed,
because all the emotional twists and turns I originally intended for this chapter became lost in a blackhole of childish sadness.
Yes, I am a real human being, I am susceptible to what we may refer to as unhappiness. Also: writer's block = hard times.
Hate as much as can on this, it's definitely not the greatest and you will see why, but truthfully, I'm sick of this story.
Disclaimer: Card Captor Sakura belongs to CLAMP.
The first thing on my mind? Sakura. That's what.
And I think it was the frothy sand sinking the rosy tint of her nails that kept our sun a secret.
The waves crushed the dreams that would ensue June 29th. I knew I hated odd numbers for some kind of fateful reason.
"This is so nice" the sigh of her lips brushed softly against the words that fitted sweetly. No, they weren't sweet because the moment they left her tongue, the words were kissed with salty lips of the beach. Our sticky atmosphere and secret sun ached in loneliness even with the ocean.
It's like they knew the sentimentality of today.
"Yeah.." I wanted to mumble because I didn't want any more words. I wanted more time.
I would have gladly burned my two thesauruses in last night's bonfire for more time or less miles.
Sakura's legs dug into the clear sand, pushing against the creases her feet made and curled into the mounds that lay in turn. Her towel had been tossed aside, our bags were locked in my car (an exchange gift for graduating high school), and so we did nothing beneath the sun.
Our sun.
I liked thinking that we were being clever. Today, society had rejected us. Today, we had unlocked the stupidity that fleshed memories.
And today, Tomoeda existed in the attics of our past (though presently, our past was approximately two and a half hours away without traffic).
"I feel so lazy...is this even healthy? Oh my God, what is this, heaven? Uunf" the sun had long since kissed Sakura.
She had been made love to by it, and the side-effects were visible.
I sat up, if only to remember the sky was not ours, and searched for the beginning or the end across the ocean. I found nothing but beach dreams.
As far as my eyes could see...they didn't, because Sakura stood between the distances. Her lips were a hazy 70s pink begging to flourish in my eyes.
I let them.
Standing up, I dusted the bits of sand that clung to my navy blue shorts.
My beach towel had been lost somewhere, perhaps tangled with Sakura's, as if the two could provide each other company.
"Ah, where are you going?"
Sakura slid her sunglasses away from her eyes, and though she tried to shy from a high maintenance appearance, they were indeed her Ray-Ban pair.
"Oh, just nowhere" I unlocked the car and scrolled through a list of songs I hadn't entirely handpicked for my sunny adventures featuring Sakura (yes, I can see that the playlist title is Sunny Adventures with Honey, what's your point?). My mind had found itself a new room with delicate wallpaper because I was stupid sometimes.
After an indecisive attempt with the playlist that was a little too much of Best Coast, I closed my eyes and hit shuffle.
Fate didn't matter today, and so I let it decide.
"Besty Coasty all day, err 'day" Sakura walked towards me. She leaned in with curves that melted all of my composure beneath the shameless summer/beach heat, and grabbed my wrists in a swaying motion. She danced to the puppy-love and dank inspired Bethany Cosentino melodies and invited me in her clumsy hips and swings.
"This song makes me so sad…" She tried to muffle her lips upon my bare shoulder, eyelashes and teeth and all.
"We're not supposed to be sad" I felt the warmth of her cheek and leaned my own against her messy hair.
The tips of her fingers found the imprudent appearance of my hair.
"Yeah, but, this is a really soft, plushy sort of melancholy. Like that storybook in Chobits…the one with the bunny and the city, remember?"
It wasn't even that I had fallen for the girl, because too many days confirmed it, it wasn't the disappointment her eyes begged to release, not even her wavy hair I couldn't keep away from. There was something soft and velvet about the way Sakura Kinomoto spoke today.
The words resonated in her throat and vocalized under tender occasions by the beach.
Brittle, brittle, fucking brittle. I couldn't feel my bones without feeling her own.
"I wish you would tell me, how you really feel...but you'll never tell me…'cause that's not our deal~"
Under bright days, where Sakura wore less sunscreen and dresses with lace, we pretended so much.
Laughter for ages that kissed our lips without hesitation and all we could afford today were tears, so many for the ocean and maybe for us too.
"Syaoran..." Wet. Down my chest and lost in the trail that it created, a few tears were dismissed and Sakura could only lean in further.
"Aw, c'mon now...I'll change the song" I wanted to be delicate and natural, too, but there was a screen blocking the door.
And I couldn't open it without revealing more than enough.
"Change the date while you're at it" she sniffled but smiled closely to my chest. Today was an even number day.
Sakura moved away, her hands steady on my own. There was a certainty in her melancholy. Amidst the light and sweet fluff she surrounded it with, Sakura had agreed on one thing. We would become a sad and dusty happiness.
The next song played. A couple passed by, giggling ribbons and thoughtless sandals, their eyes slept within the others and they were awake only in their dreams. The man dropped a can by our car because there was a trash can beside it. It was a miss that suited us.
The next song played and it was slow and Coasty and broody.
"I want you..so much, and aaahh-I want you so much, and aaah-I want you…so much~" my voice sounded chalky and battered by the closing of June.
Returning to the slow tempo, I held Sakura's hips and swayed until Bethany told me otherwise.
A ghost, her salty lovers vanished as she reprimanded all negativity aside, even though they would have been proper.
"We should be heading back soon..I'm pretty sure you haven't finished packing" my suggestion arose from an artificial desire concerning bravery
(or any other virtue willing at the expense of my sake).
"That doesn't matter so much…besides, I told Touya I would be spending the night at Tomoyo's"
she hummed the repetitive tune, pulled away from my reach and met the high tide.
"I just don't want you missing your flight" following her footsteps, we stood in the waves. They battled against our knees but found no relief.
"You don't?" She splashed a mediocre amount of water at a lazy speed.
Her two piece bathing suit faded from the racks of Pacsun or Urban Outfitters and gracefully fitted her sun-kissed figure.
"Well, don't tease me like that" I said a little too warmly. The sun wore out the grin we would pretend when time didn't matter.
"Sorry" because she would always be Sakura Kinomoto, her rosy lips delivered the same smile the sun could not defeat.
My own delivery was accomplished, though late. Our teal parasol leaned forward, heavy with the discoveries of our summer. Is it a scientific, emotional or spiritual matter when you acknowledge your future? In any case, when do you say it? This biological, chemical, poetic disarray or occurrence completely insensate of life despite its dependency on it…why can't I just say it?
Fucking say it.
More thoughts through gritted, mental, metal teeth.
They weren't chewed away though. All these clustered words and sentimental attachments lay beneath the three pm sun and in my hair.
"You know what would be incredibly useful right now?"
She looked around but heard no ice cream truck.
"I could name a few, but no, not really. What?" Her eyes wanted to know.
"Time travel" the answer hit her like the salty water trickling on her back and sticking like glue.
An illumination paraded in her festive eyes but they settled for a modest glow.
"Oh, if only. Would life ever begin then?" She spoke in her diplomatic tone, smoothened by the charisma in her tongue.
"Not without you and me" the grin returned. She splashed a considerable amount of water this time around and dragged me into it.
"Stop being so cheesy, Syaoran! Seriously, who would have known.."
Her staccato sentence was held by giggles and the Hello Kitty clip she loved so much (but more so, her hair loved so much).
We tugged at the water slipping in our tangled hands because pretending to drown suddenly appealed to us. Sakura stood with swift in her pace and tackled me further into the sand and waves. In the process, I gripped onto her waist and tickled through the splashes and salt.
"W-why! N-no, haha, aga-again?" Her lips struggled in the indecision of forced laughter and comfort in composure.
"Alwaaaays" I kissed onto her cheek, she fell onto my lap, and we forgot about the 29th, even on the 28th.
Our legs tangled on a piece of earth just for two, we clung on to our sticky and grainy skin. The inconsistency of the waves, we didn't even bother to organize with patterns, washed against our legs and left a residue of today. I wanted to tug on those waves, like a blanket, cover ourselves and spend our frozen eternity warm in the sun.
But they always left and they always teased us, and the sun overheated our exposed limbs.
It was never in limbo, it was always at some end of the spectrum.
"I can't believe I'm really doing this" she sighed in proper discomfort. She would leave the country and so her nerves were proper.
"Then stop believing!" I muffled via kisses on her honey hair, and she sprinkled water on my cheek.
"Make me!" And that's just what I did. What I had been hoping to achieve all summer. When the days with the heat wave introduced words like 'summer is forever', there was nothing more that fucked with my ideals. But I never made her do anything, and we would be like the tide brushing up our legs.
"Please" I kissed her once more on the surface of her lovely mind. She had pages and pages worth of beauty; our coexistence had only shown me her hard cover. Pastel and old, delicate with a prim fashion sense: Sakura Kinomoto, I love you.
So fucking say it.
Oh, these gritted thoughts and invisible commas.
"I want to go back to the first time, the first place, I want to go back to the first time, the first pla-aaaace~"
Little tunes for deft hearing, and nothing of the intrusive three little words were heard.
Sakura Kinomoto and Syaoran Li remained close and the punctuality of June 29th arrived no second later.
She didn't look back.
She missed the three words pinned to my chest.
I didn't look back.
I missed her soul and short skirts.
But don't get me wrong, we fleshed out every inch of stupidity we could on our last summer's day, if only to compensate for our distance, and conceive new words and definitions. It was her favorite thing in the world: words, words, words.
"So...you left just like that?"
Her eyelashes batted the sun away while she thought for her response.
"The things you do for some, eh?"
Funny, she never really noticed.
The sidewalk cracked with aging moments, small moments, where I wish people were fonts.
Only then could I dismiss them just because their appearance isn't fitting.
"So, hey boy, are ya' listenin'?"
Spit. Lots of fucking spit. Let me remind you, font cannot physically spit.
"Yes, yes, so I turn left afterwards, right?" I replied to the stocky, stuttering fool who had initially tried to sell me a fake Rolex, but because he is mostly human, I could not dismiss him for simply not fitting. He was no Comic Sans that I could save for my ten year-old tastes and now find inappropriate. The man imitated an old New York of newspapers and Wall Street with a soggy cigar boasting from his pocket. So it only seemed appropriate to ask him for directions.
"Aye, noothin' to et" his parents might have been Irish, but the man's words crunched in his lips, roughly making their way to my ears.
"Thank you, good day sir" I left sooner than I thought to ask for help because I was already a little more than late.
The sky hid under a pattern of indecisive hues, all dying into a lavender that would consume the day. I can't remember the exact hour I had stopped counting time because it became nonexistent once my feet met New York. Once my eyes found that spark in rude remarks and filthy hands groping for more, once my instincts stuttered and surrendered, I at once regained confidence. I would meet the girl that inevitably broke my heart each time she was claimed by a city beyond our love. I ached to argue because we needed as many words between our lips, so then to eat them all up, until they were only murmurs muffled between our lips. Everything would escape and nothing would be left.
I clung on to the edge and she taunted me at the top, reaching but never grasping. I loved her all the same.
Turning left because the frumpy old man said so, I reached a gloomy coffee shop brightened, coincidentally, through the reflections of poets and other depressing words hung upon the walls. Her tendencies for a shining demeanor with glum and opposing words grew inch by inch, or perhaps, mile after mile.
But it mattered little what she said for plenty was her presence. Laughing at the artist's melodic wounds when he waved his arms and wailed into the mic, pretending to be idle, Sakura Kinomoto caught my eyes from across the street and fell apart.
It reached her wide eyes and parted lips, that soon she stood up and ran for the door and crossed the street, commencing a mess of cars and profanities.
"Hey, watch it, will ya'!" She shouted against her own fault, but ignored it all the same.
It may have been a little strange that whenever I dozed off in the airplane my dreams always clouded the imperfections of our distance. I dreamed of honey and emerald, a friction between the two splattering against the walls of my mind, only to argue all the more. Argumentative she remained in my dreams. Imperfection at its finest, and still the girl before me did not register.
"Syaoran...I missed you so much" she clumsily fell into my chest and tangled herself with my neck and hair and breath. I nodded into her loveliness and the rosy steps in her mind reconnected with mine. The bridge was built and we met on a grey and sad day. There was no pitter patter from the skies but I could have sworn I felt something wet.
"I missed you too, you have no idea" drip drop went her eyes. Salty remains of uncomfortable thoughts seeped into my jacket, but I only held on tighter, pulling in as much happiness and sadness as I could. Memories knitted together in our pockets, knowing we would always reach in.
The sidewalk no longer cried with our lover's spit.
Footsteps, barking, chattering, bustling of any kind cringed around our bubble and eventually reminded us.
"Do you want to go inside? Get some coffee or something?" Sakura, though in her meek reluctance, finally let go, offered.
I debated with my facial gestures, pursing my lips, and twitching my eyebrows a little too freely.
"Oh! I so hate how you do that" She tenderly pounded her fist against my chest and scrunched her nose.
"Whatever do you mean, dear?" Flamboyantly, I pursed my lips tighter as if to kiss the sadness in the sky.
I ended my facial antics with a shameless wink and she ended it all in a fist pounding manner.
"Don't be ridiculous! Those weird faces you make, they're funny" her fists melted into my hand.
We began to walk somewhere.
"It's good to laugh, it's healthy, anyway" I sneaked in my prying fingers upon her sides and gently tickled because Sakura had the nerves of a Chihuahua.
"Gah! S-Syaooran! S-stop it, it tickles!" She slid away from my reach, but I kept her caged in with my other arm, her body twirled into a tickling fit.
"Nope. This is your punishment for leaving me alone three whole months"
we finally arrived at a bench near a park rid of joggers because it was a little too breezy.
"Hey, it's not like I wanted to. Besides, you have all those other girls to please you"
it was with light intentions, I knew, but her mild emphasize on a misplaced jealousy ate her up bit by bit.
"Oh, come on, Sakura, they just work with me during internships" I eased my way into her wavy locks, twirling carefully.
"Must be quite fun then, hm?" She leaned her puzzled mind onto my shoulder, a combination of words and actions that cried against one another.
"Fuck yeah, a total blast" I leaned my head against hers with deliberate sarcasm in our air.
She giggled her lips further into my shoulder, perhaps avoiding the cruel intentions of her wretched envy.
It colored her green with plenty of chaos.
"I'm sorry, I hate it when I get that way" it was a possibility that I did too, but she knew of it. There was a mess in her eyes, cluttering photographs of memories and hands miles away, and it seemed she had run out of storage for them. I tugged at her hair as a lazy cat played with a ball of yarn, and she didn't flinch. I pulled harder, trying to pry away the sensitive demons clawing at her eyes. The yarn was stretching too far.
"If anything, I should be the one feeling insecure. Is that guy still all fuckin' 'ooh hey derr bb grl' with you? That, what's his name?"
She immediately bounced off my shoulder to glaze my view with lidded eyes of disbelief.
"Julian? He used to be one of my roommates. How exactly was I supposed to avoid him?"
The name reeked with rock n' roll infamy and every European alley of it. But maybe I'm thinking about The Strokes.
"We should have, like, printed a huge poster of me, maybe get that shirtless picture you couldn't get over -"
"I said you looked good. You simply outstretched the compliment for three days" Sakura's countenance blushed with the reliable embarrassment I had always known throughout high school and summer. (Thank the lawd for Skype).
"Alright, whatever helps you sleep at night...because I know thinking about me shirtless must keep you up, ahem - " she gently nudged at my side, looking away until the blush did too, as I continued, "Anyway, we could have hung that poster on your door, drawn a bunch of hearts and cutesy little shit around so it's like you're so helplessly in love with me that no one can build any sense around it"
Her deadpanned expression cleared any misunderstandings.
"Oh, I knew you would understand" and I pressed her face close and kissed it lightly.
Her lips grumbled insults too soft to be directed towards me (if I happened to understand her childish vocabulary when profanity was necessary).
"What was that?" But I poked into her eyes and smiled casually at her brewing charisma.
"I said you're crazy..." She half mumbled but half didn't care as she lazily looked away and pretended to invest her interest upon a sole jogger and his loyal dog.
"Yes. Yes I am, but -"
"Oh please don't say it, Syaoran"
"If I am, it must be -"
"Your madness is nonsense if you say it" Sakura's lips pushed a delicate smile of flattery in denial.
At some point, the two of us didn't care but loved all the same. It was a blessing, this distance that now betrayed us, it was a curse.
"I'm crazy for you, Sakura Kinomoto" I winked with the most absurdity in my lips and eyes, flashing teeth and leftovers from a 70s swingers party.
"I suppose you've made me just as crazy, Syaoran Li" her sighs slept in my chest, ignored the evolutions of our romantic statements, and produced heart beats a little too fierce for numbers.
Flickering moments passed with each blink, our heat exchanged unspoken sentiments from a caged distance, and they didn't mind the solitude that would return. We knew, we knew all too well.
We just didn't want to.
"I missed you too much, Syaoran.."
She whispered withering sentiments that flaked each time they were typed.
"Yeah, me too"
But the hurt was always there, always shaking in our throats, always poignant and sharp in our words and gestures.
"Do we have to go?"
Sakura sprayed a perfume of roses and pretty girls.
"Oh, come on, they're my friends, and you'll like them, trust me" she dangled two different earrings, modeling for a nonexistent audience.
I sighed and fell onto her bed, and massaged my face just to feel satisfied with other people.
And not just her.
"Sure, sure I will. I just thought today would be about, well, us"
but the dissatisfaction corrupted the beauty in Sakura's evening glow, and the rest of the gray weather ate up her blushing nude lipstick.
"It will be! But just these couple of hours, they can be split, can't they?" She sat beside me on her French polished bed and slithered her hands on mine.
Fashion remaining a top priority, it didn't surprise me to see a nude palette of colors for the fall season.
All the floral left on summer's closet, Sakura brushed aside her mousy waves and wanted to smile. Anything for the comfort. I wanted to press my fingers against her firm confusion, push against her cheeks and complete that smile, but my bones were fragile and my tongue let her know.
"I guess"
And thus ensued a night of faulty stares and a little less than sober words.
Somehow, the way Sakura's hands stuck with my own served as a sure reminder of our unity, especially when we left her apartment and men discovered the gem embedded in my heart (but mostly by my side).
But the gentle greetings and all too familiar faces I could not distinguish in my own mind compensated in Sakura's lips and pearly white replies.
Amongst the foreign peculiarities Sakura loved in the crevices of Manhattan, I found a pleasant distaste for the sights. A baffled animosity harbored woes for the romantic I liked to hide. A simple, imaginary heartbreak secluded in the filthy corners she kept pointing at. Her nails were too polished and her eyelids were too bright for this city. But she loved it all, she laughed upon recalling antics of strangers she called friends, she tugged tightly against my arm and snuggled bits of newly stitched memories within the past three months in Manhattan. By the end of her happiness, I didn't even feel like capitalizing the first letter of the borough.
"Hey, Syaoran, you alright?"
We made a stop at another old building (because I had stopped caring for the monumental history and superficial attractions, every building aged roughly).
I was trying to be alright, so I told her, "Yeah, I'm good" but the wording was below her ivy league standards and my mind became sour and I didn't want to talk or use commas because she would realize how broken my sentences were in every step we took.
Sakura's countenance drained every ounce of enthusiasm for the colorful environment.
She released my arm and buzzed for apartment number fifteen. Huh. Another odd number. But it was more like, another fuckin' odd number.
"I'm sorry...I'll make it up" she quietly spoke avoiding the disregard in my stare.
Our rings were finally answered, and before Sakura could identify herself, the door loudly unlocked for us.
She glanced back at me in hopes that all apathy escaped my face, and she did nothing but smile.
"Well, here we are" and those mere words unfolded into memories. The small announcements we liked to glamorize with fancy gestures at our doorsteps lit her eyes up. I grinned lazily because the strict weather bothered me but standing and holding hands with the Sakura Kinomoto didn't.
The white corridors elongated the ennui I once experienced in one of Sofia Coppola's films, which was to be expected, but certainly not anticipated. Wallpaper detailed with thin, baby blue pin-stripes did nothing for me. Chalky, tasteless, I was devoured in my own jaded vitality for a city I quickly grew to resent.
Looking ahead, a cascade of careless curls and loose, pale, off the shoulder sweaters proceeded to reach out for me. There was a trimmed vibrancy still upheld in her lovely face, a maturity that slept evenly in her eyes, lips and cheekbones kept the beauty she found with Tomoeda.
The difference was that she did not belong there anymore. And I think that's what hurt, too.
We reached the apartment and before she could leave the discomfort and tension I managed to fuck with, I decided that acting like a little bitch would lead me nowhere.
"Sakura" my hand found her shoulder empty and cold.
Eyes all over and uncertainty well-read on her features, Sakura responded in gestures.
"Before we go in, I'm sorry. For, for acting like a jerk, I -"
She giggled midway and I cut my own sentence.
"Syaoran...seriously? Don't worry about it. In your position, my girly hormones would have driven me crazy. You're doing great my kitty cat!"
The light shimmer on her eyelids did not lie. Sakura's looks spoke kindly for her words, and her words knew exactly how to soothe my own.
Nodding because I was preparing conversations in my head for an evening of social strangers, I held her hand and tucked away the bitterness.
She turned the doorknob but also kissed me into simplicity.
"No, no, no, you, my sweet friend, are certainly drinking tonight!" Oh you son of a bitch, Rostam.
Words don't mean anything. And you know they shouldn't have when five tequila shots, three margaritas, and several Smirnoff's later, I abandoned a polished sophistication of le heart. An exchange of diplomacy became fuzzy and incomprehensible. A starry-eyed evening of moi je jou! coupled with resentment for ladies with C-cup perfection shook my inhibitions bravely.
You see, shy in the spring, I nurtured my summer and fall wounds with nature's loophole, because nothing should ever feel natural when you're drunk.
And therein lay the beauty: an artificiality I could never pretend.
"Whoa, hey there, you OK?"
Syaoran's hands settled on my shoulders, an attempt to hold any sense of sobriety that my stumbling vocabulary clearly displayed.
My thoughts were contained, but my lips spilled and spouted, spouted, spouted a fountain of flustered sentences.
"I am totally cool. Totally. Am I cool, Syaoran? Yes. I AM." without a trace of reluctance, I grinned grand ideals in the few days I would know him. The few days we sealed for the two would be kept locked in some drawer in my apartment. Suddenly, the Polaroid's we'd be sure to take could be the only thing left in that drawer.
Or maybe it's the senseless inebriation I adore a little too deeply for a relevant night.
"You're not, but you are funny" amidst the young folk laughter with their flushed, pasty faces and dances to Toro y Moi, the party enthusiasm surged with a trembling confidence all through me, but Syaoran remained with the loose smile falling off his awful facade. He spun around in his stool, and called for a shot of something or another and my eyes lit up because alcohol is friendly. But instead of offering my slippery lips a sip; he shoved the burning concoction down his handsome throat, and faced the party like he had faced most Tomoeda Academy classmates.
Apathy.
Apathy resting on his reliable features, pronouncing the impatience his thick eyebrows wore out during the first hour.
You would think by now I'd have him figured out, at least the instant I caught him outside of the cafe.
"I can be cool. So, let's dance!" The psychology Syaoran Li preferred became tiresome, but the pretty stereo beats bounced off his shot glass and straight down my throat. Right where I wanted to be, I stood on the last remains of trust my legs promised, and pulled Syaoran towards the dance floor.
"Sakura, I don't dance"
Yep, rigid he was.
"You do with me, because when we're dancing, we are happy!" I pressed my fuzzy state of mind against his body and hoped he would melt.
"Not in public" he muttered and cared for the other inebriated bodies grooving around us.
Nobody cared.
"Oh c'mon, who's watching? Your pride?"
Sleaze. Sleaze in my shakes and forceful rhythm.
"24/7 vigilance, I'm afraid"
I felt like crying.
Feeling the floor moving beneath my cute, velvety pumps, I followed the gliding floor wood, tracing every speck of glimmer flaking from the disco ball.
"Sakura, hey, what are you- gah, hold up!" I wanted to swim on the dance floor and hope every spot of disco magic kissed my sad eyes, more so than any drink I had abused tonight. But the only thing that kissed me, kissed me a bit too feverishly, was the flooding in my mind.
I think that's why I wanted to swim.
"Sa-ku-ra! There you are, Estella was just asking me about you, and fuck, I realized I hadn't seen you all night! How you been?" Five inches above me, a boy I had met through some excellent fascination and depression for domesticated birds, babbled social speak at my face. Those tears?
A beautiful disguise, they morphed into a sparkle, something for my charisma.
"Oh, just been around! Tryin' to get tah' know the city folk" I managed to smoothen out my flailing grammar because it was somewhere gasping for breath beneath Mr. Jose Cuervo (you tricky, warm, bastard).
"Cultural shock, much? I bet Japan's on another level, aye?" I pressed the mute button on his lips and offered a convincing gesture of interest. Around my head, somewhere in my chest, I felt the need to pout and sulk, vomit on this man's pretentious flannel (it's fucking New York, go die in Seattle, grunge-)
"Sucks, man, you know?" The last bit was the only bit I wanted to know.
"Oh yeah, totally" I didn't think, so I spun around and shoved my body away from the conversation.
I wanted to cry.
I also wanted to vomit every word I found myself attached to. Ideals for my own mind and beliefs every other drunken fool chose to identify themselves with. There was a sound recognition in all of this: I became bitter when I believed everything that buzzed through the cracks of my thoughts.
Thoughts raging with alcohol.
All those pretty drinks only made me feel pretty when I knew I was drunk.
Now I believed it, and I believed it so much, I may as well have found my own religion.
Chained to my own thoughts, my bitter and melancholic thoughts, they were all I knew.
I believed so much in so little, or so little in so much, tonight.
Some Washed Out track bounced off my skin, but it floated right through me. Syaoran's voice followed after.
"Oi! Sakura-"
He switched to Japanese.
The language filled my overly confident mind with sharp nostalgia, mutilating those refined dreams of Columbia and working at some fashionable magazine, typing words for the price of another pearl necklace. And as it tore those beautiful dreams, Syaoran's autumn eyes appeared. The composed frustration and awkward impatience faced me. He shook my shoulder, and I shook my pride away. I was drunk enough, and it's all I believed.
"So, then?" We vanished from the apartment, and my body skipped the transitional steps from the dance floor and drinks and slut-waves, to the same pin-striped hallway. The ennui drilled a hole into my skull, and a minor headache followed because the interior design was awful.
"So. Kiss me" I giggled as my fists clenched the negativity slipping from my mind, it was a grasp before they reached Syaoran's ears.
Believing in whatever I said, I pressed Syaoran's stiff body against the wall, and fell into his chest, lips and grins against bits of his neck.
Groaning because the seams of his patience became loose, or because he liked my tongue, Syaoran pressed me tightly, a violent urge from his hands forced our heartbeats against each others. My arms hung around his body like a flimsy Christmas tree decoration, wanting every pulse in his warm skin, breathing in the old scent I cried for the past three months. A scent of soft unhappiness was all I caught.
"You didn't answer my questions"
The same unhappiness slept comfortably in his question; nearly in the same manner I closed my eyes against his jacket.
"What did you ask?" I mumbled because I had given up.
Syaoran and I never let go of each other.
I think he was afraid I would float back into the glamorous red lips kissing and singing and dancing inside.
I just wanted to cry.
"I don't want to repeat it all..." There was a thin sigh following his words, a shaky sigh, a contrast to his limp body and slow hands.
There wasn't much movement to Syaoran Li tonight.
"Is it embarrassing or something?" For all the drinks I could remember, my lips organized every word precisely against the pronunciation I needed.
I didn't hear anything else, but Syaoran's riveting pulse, bouncing back and forth with mine, and nuzzling the painful tears glossing my eyes.
From the hallway, we could still love each other the way I loved him from across the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, any ocean willing of more salty water. Nodding off into his chest, I realized crying was all I missed.
There were some chimes and then some smoke in the air.
And then there was a lot of darkness.
"Bro, wicked shit went down, that's what"
I really wish the guy with Skrillex's haircut would just shut the fuck up.
But he never did, all fucking night, and truthfully, I wanted to curse with my fists and make sure every swear would reach his lips, or his eyes, any part of his face would be ideal. He reached for his red backpack next to Sakura, just as he nudged her from a tunnel of sleep.
"Himay, or princess, I forgot what it was called, you're on my shirt"
Her waves rested on her flushed face, rosy even in the dead of morning when we all felt like broken mannequins. Yawning, Sakura stood up, limbs stretched in a newborn kitty cat fashion, only to rest back down on the mustard colored sofa we found somewhere in the night.
"Ah, sorry" but she sprung back up for Skrillex-man's shirt.
Glossy eyed fashioned with smudged eyeliner, Sakura resisted the sleep monster, and reluctantly faced some bit of Tomoeda.
She meekly smiled at my morning hair and looked down, avoiding, perhaps, what she may have considered a night of lights and casual sex.
But because her clothes remained, she didn't worry.
"So…" I started but never finished. My mind felt soft and foggy, still in the mist of the Manhattan rich kid atmosphere, because somewhere in the recesses of last night's glitter and whatever the fuck was on my face, I missed walking Sakura home.
A small whimper arose from Sakura pouty pink lips as she rubbed away the smearing of last night, she said, "I feel like Kesha" and then a finished burp.
"Did you say that with a dollar sign?"
"…no, sir"
A tiresome and playful sigh, and I replied, "What are we going to do with you?"
Between the fuzzy, emotional gibberish mumbled and shouted throughout the night, Sakura's unapologetic charisma evolved into an American sense of flippant youth. Giggling into a ball of comfort, she lay on my lap and pressed her fingers on my cheek.
"You've gotten so handsome…" I grabbed her fingers and cupped my own face with her hands, holding on to the frailty of her wrist. Muñeca.
The stone-carved, rhinestone bird chimes bounced off her countenance and illuminated the vitality she lost somewhere in the disco grooves.
"It's only been three months" I lay my head on her hand in attempts to replace my heart, or Manhattan.
"Three long, awful, slow, cold, sad months" I bent down and met her just inches before her lips.
"You were sad?" it felt like a frothy whisper kissing her lips where my own should have melted them.
"Mhm..." she mumbled and her breathe felt like a heat wave trying to reel me in.
For all the shine in her hair, I couldn't fathom any sense of dull melancholy.
Maybe it washed down the drain in her shower, or it was beneath the faint scent of cigarettes containing fragments of ideals.
She looked too pretty to even be remotely sad.
One of the fragments cut through my chest and made a bloody nest in the shelves of my heart.
"Don't be" I leaned down to kiss her forehead, but I also knew that if my words were ink of a pen, the ink would not show up, so I would have to scratch at the paper, roughly indenting my words, wanting them to be displayed. Truthfully, I preferred to remain invisible because the paper was delicate.
Sakura's giggles reached my ears at about the same time.
"Hey, origami love cranes, get up, up, we need to fix this place before Rostam gets back" my tunnel vision of Sakura's face expanded into the flooding of red cups, cigarette butts and lingering bodies on the verge of purging last night's recreational laughter. The offensive girl before us had dark, long hair sweeping at her waist where it faded into a silky lilac. I almost couldn't tell the color of her skin because of all the ink echoing into different corners of her body. I had collected her name somewhere in Sakura's introductions, and still, the only translation from inebriation to English I could conceive was koi fish girl because she had once eaten raw koi fish even though she was now vegan.
Some of these Manhattan tales left me in a brick-like state of dust and confusion. Their contradictions bore absolutely no crack in my eyes, they hit and hit, and no sense of comprehension broke through. It was the same contradiction of Sakura and I that battered me into more confusion.
A spectrum of missing, and loving, and hating, and crying.
I'm sure we missed and loved and cried and hated the same things by now.
I wasn't sure what I missed or loved more, Sakura or Sakura and I.
"Sorry, wait, where exactly did he go?" Sakura dusted herself off the sofa and regained the usual prim and proper composure I hadn't seen since Tomoeda.
"Went to pick up Julian from the bus station, he should be back in a couple minutes" koi fish pinned her hair up in a floppy pony tail and shoved about some of the slumbering guests about until she found enough space necessary for cleanliness.
"Julian? That's great! I haven't seen him for a while now, man, I bet Brooklyn was good to him" the sudden, smooth and melting sigh dripped from Sakura's lips and bounced off my ears in a manner most screeching and bothersome, I almost felt jealous. Julian this and Julian that (alright, some are exaggerations on my part; still, I wanted to punch this asshole for two months now).
"Oh, God, no, if you thought he was in love with you before, just wait till you see the new lucky lady in his life"
koi fish laughed and it sounded like growls to my sentiments.
Sakura nervously glanced back at me, her eyebrows knitting into a self-assured anxiety she might have rehearsed forwards and backwards in her mind. Fucking Julian, dis guy.
A trembling half smile and she shrugged off the uneasiness.
Secretly, the expectations of my mind waited for a kiss or some other prettier bit of apologetic remnants.
"And by lady, I mean man"
Koi fish struck a solid chord in Sakura Kinomoto's posture.
She dropped the white trash bag clutched firmly, and her knuckles loosened and her eyes did too.
The lips that hung loosely for too long, suddenly slipped too easily into a smile convinced that Sakura loved me and no other Julian wannabe Casablancas could sway her into an indefinite oblivion of dirty, secluded, New York corner of love.
"W-wait, wha- what is this?" her stutters maneuvered through my relief and she made me a mess once more.
And then I felt too old to be insecure, and afterwards, I felt like my father before meeting my mother.
"Chill! Ha ha, I meant to say, the only person he'll ever be in love with from now on, is himself"
she picked up Sakura's mess from the sofa and more bodies disappeared from the ground to the white beds clogged with other guests.
"Right, because he wasn't before" the two girls giggled and girly-sparkled into their hands over an invisible man I had designed already in the obscurity of our relationship, where infidelity existed and I could almost strangle it.
I wanted to prod around their words and secrets, wonder and dissect their comfortable conversations where I became an outsider and Sakura morphed into a Manhattan building and I was just a small prick insulting a homeless on its corner. So, I did another sensible act and left the room, unexcused.
If I wasn't missed then, I couldn't be missed now.
Tracing the pin-striped walls leading me towards the exit, an after taste regarding my resentment for this place struck me like a tidal wave. I could have been cleaning inside, and then holding hands with Sakura while she missed me some more even while I could mold her hands into my own and kiss her like she existed in the same air that I did.
Walking into the street, I disappeared and became a miniscule particle of sadness.
I don't want to see you, I thought last night;
I don't want to see you building your own empire of happiness while I can't even form a structure that you're not a part of.
"Syaoran!"
Her voice was soft and velvety with sadness like a Camera Obscura song.
Sakura rushed to my side despite her unkempt morning appearance.
Her face was an island amongst the waves of her honey hair, eyes shone like a field of wispy grass, fragile and thinly layered by her uncertainty in me.
"Oh, hey" I mustered for the only girl I loved.
"Um, why did you, or um, what are you, uh, doing?" she didn't even know why she followed me, just like I didn't know why she giggled and twirled her hair so much when she was supposed to be sad. I felt possessive and unfair and manipulated by the very sweetness she lived with.
"I just, um, needed some fresh air, I guess…" and still, the words that came out of my lips lied some more and grinded into a matted pile of suppressed sentiments. And here I thought we had bottled all our sentiments for the sea that beach day.
"Oh, well, are you okay? You've been acting a little strange since you got here, I think" I felt chimes in her lightly colored voice. If she were a color, she would be rose and I would be bitter and green. Even when I wrote down every moment she smiled and pointed out the quirks of her new home, I would easily find a flaw and stretch it for miles until it build a bridge back to Tomoeda.
We leaned against the apartment complex and settled in the comfort of my silent response.
"If I have done anything to upset you or…you know, if something is wrong, you can tell me" when did she grow up before me? Last night had not been about us, it had been for Sakura and all the disco ball youth gathered on a dance floor rid of Sakura's former inhibitions.
My fists felt Tomoeda when her hand brushed by.
And I felt like a childish, fucking idiot.
"No, it's not you, it's everything else"
I pressed my palm against hers, and hoped to God she knew what I meant.
Her lips remained sealed and her eyes looked glossier than before.
"Is this everything…bigger than us?" she shook a smile on her face in attempts to shake away any embarrassing sentiments that could invoke tears.
I squeezed tightly onto her hand.
"It's about 6,000 miles bigger" I was an architect and a lover of numbers.
More than that, I was a lover and Sakura was my favorite number.
"Oh…" but she loved words and there were more poets in New York than I could have imagined.
"I'm sorry" as much as I didn't want to ruin our time together, I wanted to ruin Manhattan to pieces.
I wanted Sakura to hold a piece and carry it with her back into Tomoeda.
"Well, I mean, we have another day together, right? It doesn't have to be so horrible, Syaoran, you know. We talked about this, before I got here, we talked so much, don't you remember? Things would be okay, and you would love me from afar even when you thought I couldn't feel it, I would, because I'm doing the same" her skin felt like marshmallows and she plunged into the melting pot of romance and ideals. New York was a bus station for idealists getting from point A to point B, and I felt the capacity reach its maximum.
"Sakura" I brushed our hands together like a paint brush to canvas.
I felt like the canvas and Sakura was a rosy paint brush leaving traces behind.
She looked up and her mousy nose and lips scrunched whenever she felt nervous.
"Please don't fall in love with anyone else"
I felt silly and child-like, but Sakura stood on her toes and kissed me into her marshmallow skin.
"Why, rain, why today!" a pouty, pretend kitten Sakura grumbled into the curtains of her stained window. Somewhere in the inner workings of my mind, God had ventured into and left thinking, 'A-ha! This fine, young, non-pagan, bright man's love for the cherry blossom must be kept inside a room for some time, now, what does this lovely young lady despise more than math homework? Why, of course, rain!'
And so we remained in Sakura's bedroom for the rest of our happily melting lives, the end.
(loljk)
"Oh, come on, we could stay in and nap on your bed like two warm churros" I grinned a broad sense of happiness into Sakura's messy hair.
"Syaoran, that is the cutest and absolute worst analogy I have heard all day"
grinning back, she fell onto her bed and stretched because our morning jog had gotten the best of lengthy limbs.
I fell beside her and brushed aside a couple wet strands of hair off her face.
"I don't see why we couldn't have showered together"
A bright, luminescent blush covered her from head to toe at the very idea of purely naked skin.
"Because you would not have let me wear my swimsuit" she replied in a faux-upset manner and turned her back to me.
Today, Sakura opted for an off the shoulder, black sweater and teeny-tiny shorts that loved me so.
I traced zoo animals onto her exposed shoulder and she suppressed a giggle onto her hand, delicate in her own ways.
"Now, why should that even be an option, I'm sure you don't normally shower in your swimsuit"
Her coy countenance turned to my own, and her lidded eyes were warm with curiosity.
"I don't normally shower with handsome men" she bit her thumb and looked away.
"Phew, and here I was worried" I received a playful punch for that one.
"Pft, whatever, you're too jealous for your own good, Syaoran"
Her fingers laced my t-shirt with a heavy look in her eyes. They swirled with late adolescent sensuality. Or so I hoped that's what it was.
Because one time, I dreamt of Sakura on a pink, almost frothy, cloud in Tomoeda and I was the only boy worthy of her naked company.
She was naked and it was beautiful and the dream ended in my favor.
"And you, missy, are too pretty for your own good" I leaned in to complete that dream.
Dreaming was fucking right.
"Mou, Syao, it's only 12 in the afternoon" but pretended to protest my warm advances before meeting my lips in a gentle agreement of souls.
Daydreaming was fucking right.
"And what time is it in Tomoeda?"
With a couple swift movements, because I was clumsy and completely uncool, I pinned the cherry blossom onto the crisp, white bed sheets and examined her like one of the butterfly exhibits I had seen in Hong Kong when I was five. The only difference became evident in the caressing of thighs and shaking sighs, and other soft beauties of Sakura Kinomoto.
I took a breath of reality and ventured into a secret place Neutral Milk Hotel once told me about.
Something broke into me, something that tasted like flesh and purity all at once, something that clashed what I once felt ideal and now bit my lip into reality. She pressed tightly into the friction our lips sweetly increased, her tongue lightly touching the surface of my lips, in exchange; I invited my own and tasted more reality and more idealism that ever existed in my floating mind.
Hands all over, all over my beating chest, clutching on to the fabric of our distance, Sakura strummed with my feelings more and more with each and every teasing touch, but she didn't care. My shirt didn't either, and so it left.
"Mmm…Syao" I took her words as a granted access and plunged into her neck.
Nibbling quiet sentiments, I felt her stomach and the butterflies and all those other fuzzy associations that latched themselves to us.
"Come back with me, yes?" I didn't look to her flushed features for an answer. I searched in her neck and in her collarbone and anywhere else but her eyes. There was a rush in feeling Sakura's eyelashes brimmed with nothing but sweet fidelity and sweet purity for the one thing she could not say yes to, even if she wanted to. I refreshed my broken thoughts of the party's emotionally quenched question I presented to her.
Will you stay with me?
Wait for me, please.
If you wait, I think we would be so very happy together.
I love you.
Do you love me?
She mumbled her invisible answer into my forehead and found security in my hair.
Her hands needed to keep busy, but in between lips, she found a proper response.
"I love you, I love you to pieces, Syaoran"
I don't know where we loved more.
In our innocence and rosy days where walking home and holding hands became a habit,
In our European hysteria of genetic disappointments and heart-shaped deception,
In the very room in which we melted every bit of nostalgia onto the bed and never looked at geography
to determine the distance of our eyes and lips and tears, or that at any moment, I would be torn.
So when the morning would arrive, I would pack my sentiments and pretend reality existed still.
And when everything would align,
Sakura would look around and realize reality and expectations were different rooms, with different people and different intentions.
And I would still want to stretch the flaws existing in our realities far into Tomoeda,
because dreaming was fucking right, even though reality was an eyelid away.
The morning arrived, my flight awaited in its New York punctuality, and Sakura Kinomoto became a dream in Tomoeda soil compiled with aching heartbreak.
Well. That is the second to last chapter. OoOoOh, what's going to happen guise? Do they work at the long distance thing or is Syaoran's heartbreak beyond repair? Hmmmm, well, the last chapter is next and it will definitely tie everything together...like it should. Feel free to flame, this chapter is long and stupid. xoxo