Chapter 14:

Naruto & Sakura story

Naruto looks through his wardrobe for something decent to wear. Old and beaten up pants hung by the sides of his bed. Tacky shirts were littered across his room. He kicked over clothes to get around his own bedroom. The ticking from the clock was the only sound he could hear. The thumping and crawling around in his room was the only movement coming from that house.

After a few minutes, he finally discovers a nice plaid shirt behind the mountains of garbage. He throws it on as quickly as he found it and goes downstairs to the kitchen. He pulls the keys hanging next to the front door, locking it behind him. He rushes past the other homes in his community until he reaches the bus stop that will take him straight to downtown. His fingers were pressing on his body melodically, and his tongue was growing numb from his biting.

Sweat beads fell from his forehead. He wipes it with his hand and dries it off by the sides of his shirt. Once the bus reaches his stop, he goes over to the side walk and jogs down it. Eventually he arrives to a cafe. He checks the time on his phone several times, making sure his eyes aren't playing tricks on him.

"I cant believe it!" he tells himself, still looking at the clock on his phone screen. "I'm late, but she's even later than I am!"

His rests his head on the brick wall out of annoyance. After a few minutes he hears a heavy breathing from behind his point of view.

"I'm sorry I'm late." Sakura says. Her tone wasn't apologetic, more accusatory than anything else.

"Whatever." he replies while rolling his eyes.

Inside the cafe people chatter from their tables. Indie music is playing in the background with the sound of a guitar being strummed by a long-haired musician panhandling outside. They walk up to the glass case full of cakes, cupcakes, sweets and many other different types of desserts.

Naruto points at the slice of chocolate cake. He says, "I'll take one. And what about you Sakura?"

She shakes her head and replies, "No you don't ha-"

"Go ahead, hurry up. I'm buying, so don't make me wait." He says, interrupting her.

"Well… I… uhm..." she says indecisively, with a fumble to her voice.

He rolls his eyes again and says, "She'll just take a slice of chocolate cake like mine." Naruto again sets his eyes on Sakura who is still dazed and lost in an indecisive rambling of a thought, unable to form a complete sentence, let alone make her order. He adds, "And two caramel macchiatos with whipped cream please."

After a few minutes, they call his name and he picks up the tray with their desserts and hot drinks. He brings it over to their table. People surrounded them from every angle due to the lack of space in the cafe. They felt uncomfortably close to each other.

A few minutes in, Naruto decides to say, "You're as indecisive as ever, I almost forgot that little quality of yours." he puts his palms on the table and adds, "So?"

She sets her drink down, with some caramel stuck to her cheek, and replies, "So what?"

Naruto sighs and points to her cheek. She wipes the drink residue with a napkin as he says, "Where did we go wrong?"

"Where did we go wrong? What do you mean by 'where did we go wrong'? You know exactly what you did!" she says, almost yelling at him.

"Oh come on now, Sakura! You know you weren't completely innocent!"

The events they were referring to happened a few weeks earlier in school. Sakura sat in the seat next to him in class. He enjoyed talking to her, whenever he had the chance, and they were starting to get to know each other. On this day they had a substitute teacher who was oblivious to the students wants and needs. This substitute didn't know about the cliques and friend groups of the class.

While the sub was passing the assignment slips down the rows of students he says, "This is a two person assignment. I'm pairing you with the person immediately to your right. So the first row has this group." He then points at the third row and says, "And you all with everyone here."

Naruto immediately knows this was his opportunity. He was officially paired up with Sakura for this assignment. He couldn't let this pass him up. While Sakura is pushing her seat over closer to his, he skims the assignment sheet and reads its aloud:

Write an essay on why you love life

Naruto sighs and throws the sheet onto his desk.

"What's wrong?" Sakura asks, now to his side.

"It's just a throw away assignment. It has nothing to do with anything!" Naruto says with frustration.

But in his head he knew this was going to be easy. This kind of school work was a walk in the park, especially for him. He was a decent writer who could stretch out the most minute of details into long winded soliloquies of nothingness.

Sakura scratches the back of her head in confusion and says, "You're not wrong. At least this should be easy. I'm terrible at writing so I'm glad I have you here."

Naruto then puts his fingers together and focuses his attention on her and asks in his best teacher voice impression, "Tell me, Sakura, why do you love life?"

She tilts her head to the side in thought. Naruto waits patiently for her to answer. He then repeats the question saying, "Why do you love life?"

She clears the air in her lungs and says, "To be honest, I don't know if I do love life. I mean, what is there to love? People are jerks. Parents suck. Almost all the teachers here suck. Friends are never there for you. And boys..." she stops herself from continuing on. Maybe to avoid hurting him.

"Boys will be boys." Naruto jokes.

She shakes her head in agreement. Naruto doesn't fully understand what she is trying to tell him. He couldn't tell if she was depressed, or sad, or maybe just annoyed. Either way, he wanted to say something inspirational that would perhaps impress her.

"Listen, Sakura." he goes on, "Yeah, life isn't something that's always going to be worthy of our love. But it's the moments in between the crappy parts that makes it worth it. Things like the good times you spend with your family. Just hanging out with friends and taking some time off. Vacations, nature, trips, and more, oh, so much more! When we look at only the bad things, we can get tunnel vision. We make it impossible to see the happiness and true joy that comes with life. You can't let those sad things linger and rot inside you. If you do, you become your own cause of sadness."

The words Naruto spoke resonated with her. She had never seen the world like that before.

"You're right, Naruto. You're so right!"

They have a long discussion on the things they hate and the things they like. Their worries and fears. The more they spoke, the more they found they had in common. In fact, they spoke to each other so much that, before they knew it, the school bell rings and class was over. Naruto takes a look down at his notebook paper and it was blank. They hadn't written a darn thing. Sakura starts pulling her seat back to its original location with an unsatisfied smile.

The substitute teacher yells out at the exiting students, "Now, don't forget! Bring your assignment tomorrow for the teacher to grade!"

Naruto gets up from his desk and grabs his backpack. Before he gets far he sees Sakura in front of him, stopping him at the door.

"Why don't we finish this assignment up together?" she asks.

Naruto's heart skips a beat. "Sure. Did you want to go to my place?" he says nervously.

"Mhm!" She says, grabbing him by the hand and taking him to her car.

He steps inside her pink convertible. The seats were pink, the dashboard was pink. Everything, pink. She drives all the way to his house. Once they arrive, he hops out the car, pulls out his keys and opens the door for her. She checks out the place and looks around.

"No ones home?" she asks.

"Nope, just us two. I live with my dad and he works all day and gets home pretty late."

"Oh, okay."

"So." he asks, "Did you want to finish this up in my room? It's right upstairs."

"That works."

She follows him closely as he goes up the stairs and into his bedroom. He was grateful that his dad made him clean his room up the other night, otherwise it would be a total wreck. She sits on the edge of his bed while he sits on his Indian style on the floor.

"Your room is surprisingly organized, I was expecting it to be a little messier than this." She says jokingly.

"To be honest, you caught me on a good day." They both laugh at the idea of walking into a dirty bedroom nightmare together.

"Before we finish this thing, can I ask you a question?" he say inquiringly.

"Go right ahead."

"What did you mean earlier when you said 'boys'?" He replies. Sakura stays silent so he clarifies his questions by asking, "Were you talking about boy trouble? Like boyfriends and stuff like that?"

"Kinda. I just haven't had good luck recently."

"I totally get it." He says. This was a lie, he didn't really "get it".

"Let me ask you." Sakura says, "What do you love about life?"

"Me personally? Where do I begin? To be frank, I mostly like relaxing and enjoying the simple things in life. Like spending time with good people, especially my dad. You see, my mom left us a while back. Ever since then my dad has had the fend for the both of us. Even so, I'm not mad at her. I wish her only the best. I just hope that one day we can see each other again."

Sakura goes onto the floor, in front of him and says, "Naruto..."

"Yeah?"

"Even though you could be angry, stay pissed at your mother for abandoning you, you don't stay resentful. I admire that! I only hope I can learn to do the same." she says.

"You can! And you will! Every person is an individual, so we take things differently. But you're smart and stronger than you appear, I'm sure you'll see things differently soon."

She blushes and gets closer to Naruto, now invading his space. He's never had a girl get this close to him before, unless it was at school or work.

"Naruto..." she says, quietly and almost in a whisper.

"What's up?" he asks.

He barely even finishes his sentence before she kisses him in the mouth. Her tender kisses causes him to lose his balance, making her fall on top of him. She looks right at him. Naruto was so nervous he couldn't look back at her. She then proceeds kissing him again. His hands move on their own and find their way down her long flowing hair. He runs his fingers through it until he reaches her back. He wrinkles up her shirt from behind and can feel the texture of her bra strap.

He goes lower down her back and under her shirt. He starts to pull it off while Sakura is moving her hips down to his pelvis. She sucks on his ear, then his neck. The warmth and feel from her lips give him a euphoria he's never felt before. Sakura loses herself in the moment and takes off her shirt and tosses it aside. All while Naruto still has his hands on her bra strap.

Sakura puts her hand on his arms and says, "Go ahead, unstrap it."

Right as he gets to the small hooks on her bra strap he drops his arms and squirms away from her. His heart beats with intensity and starts to hurt his chest.

"We can't do this!" he screams at her as his voice cracks with ferocity. "I'm sorry, Sakura, but we can't! It's not right."

She lowers her head and says, "You were going to be my first."

"I'm sorry." he repeats, now in the fetal position and looking up at the ceiling. "I'm sorry."

Sakura grabs her shirt, throws it on and runs out the door. Once shes in her car, she races out his driveway and leaves in a hurry. The wheels screech loudly as she zooms off into the distance. He could hear the engine rev up from his room. He crawls his way over to his bed, pulls himself on it and yells into his pillow. He wonders

Did I do the right thing? What was I supposed to do?

He looks away, out his door, and see's a cross hanging on the hallway just outside his room. He wonders again:

Did I do what was right

Naruto eventually filled out the assignment with an asinine explanation and the typical tripe that teachers love to hear. After a few weeks they decided to meet at this cafe and talk things over. The situation had gotten tense and awkward between them.

"You think I don't know that!" Sakura says in anger. Biting her bottom lip. "I was so vulnerable."

"I was too." he replies. "I didn't know what to do. But I value our relationship right now."

"What do you mean?" she asks.

"Look at us. We're angry, upset. In reality we should be happy." he puts his hand over hers. He continues, "That's if, you feel how I feel."

Sakura looks at their hands together. "I do. I really do." she says as she turns red with embarrassment.

"Then lets do this, lets see how this goes. But let's do this the right way. We don't need to rush things." he says.

Sakura thinks this over for a moment. She replies, "You're right, Naruto. We should do this the right way."

They continue drinking their macchiatos. Sakura finishes hers first. Once she does, she gets up and kisses Naruto directly on the cheek. He turns red and hot from the show of affection.

It was then that she says, "Naruto?"

"Yeah?"

"Can you tell me now, why do you love life?"