LOOKING FOR MR. RIGHT
STANDARD DISCLAIMERS APPLY
(Un-edited version)
WARNING: Major OOCness
CHAPTER 4
The moment had come. The diamond ring burned a blistering hole in Kenshin's pocket. He'd outdone himself to make the occasion special. Fragrant flowers spilled out of a sterling bowl. Tall red candles flickered on the spotless white linen tablecloth. He had asked the restaurant's chef to prepare all Tomoe's favorites. Her dark eyes sparkled at him, reflecting the candle flames over the red roses. Perfect. So why did he have a sudden irrational craving to be somewhere else?
"Tomoe," Kenshin took her hand across the table. Her smile gleamed, wide, expectant. She knew what was coming. A light sweat broke out on Kenshin's forehead. He took a sip of wine.
"You wanted to ask me something, Kenshin?" Tomoe leaned forward encouragingly.
"Yes, I…..yes, I did." He shifted in his chair. Come on, Kenshin. How hard could it be? Will. You. Marry. Me. Four little words that would seal his fate forever.
Kenshin ran his fingers under his collar. It felt unusually tight. He unbuttoned the collar and loosened his tie.
Tomoe's expectant smile dimmed. "Are you okay, sweetie?" Her voice dripped pure gold honey, a sure sign she was upset. The madder she got, the less people could tell, unless they knew her. Kenshin knew her.
"Sure, of course. Maybe a little too much wine." He gulped a little more and tried to take a deep breath. The air must be leaving the room somehow. He glanced around, half-expecting to see some air monsters crouched outside the window, sucking out their precious oxygen with a giant vacuum.
He forced his attention back to Tomoe. What the hell was the matter with him? He'd already agreed she could move in next month; it was only right to ask her now. "Is it warm in here or is it me?"
Her smile remained fixed in place. Was the light playing tricks or had her teeth suddenly sharpened into pearly points? "I'm perfectly cool."
He nodded weakly. No surprise there. The Sahara sun couldn't unfreeze her. She made cucumbers seem like hot coals. He glanced at her through his wine glass. She still stared, eyes calm, wide, unblinking, waiting, waiting. "Is that all you wanted to ask me, Darling?"
"No, of course not." He chuckled involuntarily and cleared his throat. "Tomoe, will you…..will you m—m—m--?" His throat clenched convulsively on the word. Married. To Tomoe. Locked in an eternal gavotte of comfortable, predictable sameness. Finally having to give up his dreams of blind love and all-consuming passion.
Kaoru.
He exhaled breath he didn't know he'd been holding and pointed to his coffee. "Will you pass me the sugar?"
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It was déjà vu all over again.
Kaoru sat across the linen-covered table from a man she normally would've crossed the street to avoid.
"Serious" was the word that came to mind. Everything about Saitou Hajime was too serious. He even had serious hair. It contained enough grease to avert an oil shortage that winter. He also smokes like a malfunctioning motorcycle.
Right now, he's wearing a suit that made him looked like a mortician. 'Hey, Saitou, any dead bodies, lately?'
She and Saitou have been seeing each other steadily for a month now. Steadily, but not often. Once a week at the most, which, to be honest, is fine with her.
Saitou's a police officer with the Tokyo Police force. She met him on an Internet matchmaking service, no thanks to her meddling best friend, Misao.
--------------FLASHBACK--------------
"Misao, what happened to your date?"
"It's a long brutal story." Misao said bitterly. "I was hoping for an Anthony Perkins-look-alike, but instead I got Norman Bates from "Psycho." I should have known. Anyone who dances like that isn't mentally stable."
Her anger had carried over to the following day, and it seemed as if she couldn't do anything wrong on the bowling alley. She was much more focused than she'd been in her few previous attempts at sports. Maybe it came from imagining Enishi's face on every one of those pins.
"Kaoru I think we should sign up for an Internet matchmaking service. A lot of girls I know have signed up with a matchmaking web site, and they're meeting some great guys," Misao said suddenly perking up. "The web site is called and I really do think you and I should join."
Kaoru didn't even want to think about what the org stood for.
At the time, Kaoru knew that she should've been feeling happy that Misao was finally cheering up after her disastrous date with a weirdo, but to tell the truth, it was pretty annoying. When you're feeling kind of down yourself, the last thing you want to hear is just how great somebody else is feeling.
Up to that particular evening, she and Misao had a lot in common.
Both of them currently had no man in their life.
Both of them were pretty angry at the last guy they'd dated.
And both of them felt like crap.
"Matchmaking service?" Kaoru tried to keep her voice calm. "Have you gone completely insane?" OK, so maybe her voice wasn't all that calm. She was not yelling her head off. Kaoru had merely increased her volume just a bit in order to emphasize the point.
Misao had the unbelievable gall to smile at her. It was quick, tight-lipped smile, but it was most definitely a smile. "Well, Kaoru," she said, "I guess it won't be exactly a shock to hear that I'm getting very tired of sitting home, feeling depressed, every single Saturday night. So I thought, why not?"
Dating isn't exactly a new experience. But now, Misao's looking at each man as a potential husband and father. Not that she's going to ask for a sperm count or character references, but there are certain traits she wants in a man. Commitment is a biggie to her.
"You know, I'm starting to think about babies. I really think I want some."
"Some? How many did you have in mind, Misao?"
"Oh, I don't know. A couple. I've been looking at men lately, trying to picture them changing diapers. I used to just picture them without any clothes on."
"A naked man changing diapers? That's kinky, Misao, even for you."
"Don't you even think about it, Kaoru? Kids, I mean not naked men."
"Oh, sure, who doesn't? But I'm not going to go out and get in a lousy relationship so I can have kids who will be miserable." She decided living by herself wasn't so terribly awful. At least she had plenty of time to devote to her hobbies. Or to develop some hobbies. One day, she really was going to get herself a hobby.
Kaoru had been lonely since her breakup with Kenshin. Having a comrade in arms at her side helped a bit. The world always seemed a little brighter through Misao's rosy lenses.
To Kaoru, the emerald-eyed girl has been a comfort to her. Misao was Kaoru's childhood friend. Their friendship had grown closer as they grew older. Kaoru had much more in common with Misao than with her other friends. Their thoughts often followed the same paths. They read the same books, enjoyed the same movies, and had many of the same tastes.
As career women, Kaoru and Misao shared a great many similar experiences. Over the past couple of years they'd become a support system for each other. In fact, they both are planning on setting up their own fashion company since they're both successful in their own fields.
Kaoru had a lot of friends since childhood, but she laughed more with Misao than she ever had with anyone. Laughed and cried. Misao was that kind of soul friend. That kind of real friend.
"It's too bad virgin births went out of style. It would save a lot of trouble," the green-eyed girl sighed.
"Misao, the almighty has to get you pregnant for a virgin birth. It's not a do-it-yourself thing."
"I know, but seriously, Kaoru. I want it all. Husband, traditional family, the whole thing. Am I being selfish?"
"No," Kaoru said, her voice rising with the strength of her conviction. "But, aren't you afraid that you might be making a date with a serial killer? What if he's an ax murderer? Or the next Freddy Kruger?"
Misao gave her best friend what she hoped was a reassuring smile. "Kaoru, not everyone you meet online is a psycho. Come on," Misao insisted, "it's high time you and I stopped moping and started living again."
"I don't know, Misao. Internet dating? It sounds like a great way to meet weirdos."
Misao laughed. "Kaoru, a singles bar is a great place to meet weirdos. The mall is a great place to meet weirdos. The grocery, for goodness sake, is a great place to meet weirdos. So what's your point?"
Kaoru had to smile, in spite of herself.
"Besides," Misao hurried on. "you can find out more reading a guy's profile on the MyTrueLove Web site than you can in an entire evening talking to him in some smoke-filled singles bar."
Kaoru was still skeptical. "Like what, for instance? What could you possibly find out that you couldn't find out just talking to him?"
"You can get an idea how smart the guy is; you can tell if he can actually construct an entire sentence; you can see if he can spell—"
Kaoru shook her head. "I don't know, Misao. Whenever I've been thinking about what I wanted in a guy, the ability to spell just never seemed to come up."
Once again, Misao had laughed. "Come on, Kaoru. MyTrueLove is a really good deal. For just a few yen a month, the site acts as a go-between for single people. And part of that money goes to research into heart disease."
"Heart disease," Kaoru repeated. "That certainly sounds appropriate."
Misao ignored her. "MyTrueLove lets you send e-mails to whomever you want, and they can e-mail you back, but you never, ever see the other person's e-mail address. And they don't see yours. MyTrueLove gives you an anonymous e-mail address to communicate through. So it's really very safe. Nobody knows your real e-mail address or your real name or where you live, unless you tell them yourself."
Kaoru knew a diversionary tactic when she heard one. "Cut the commercial, Misao," she said. "Get online and show this thing to me."
"OK, I'll show you the Web site," Misao said, now sounding a little testy herself, "but, really, Kaoru, is it absolutely necessary? Can't you just take my word for it? I'm telling you there's nothing to worry about. Don't you trust me?"
Kaoru looked at her. "Yep, you're right," she told Misao. "I don't trust you."
Misao was quite indignant. "Humph! Some best-friend you are!"
When Kaoru persuaded Misao to buy a new computer, she never dreamed that she was creating a monster.
A cyber monster; to be sure, but a monster, nevertheless.
"Don't be too quick to judge the men on the Internet dating service. Who knows, one might turn out to be Mr. Wonderful."
"Why am I having trouble believing that?"
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Why the hell am I doing this?
The mind supplied answers, true or false, to fill the nothingness. To show Kenshin. She can't cower in her house every day in case she bumps into him again. She has to do something. Meeting other people made life easy to manage, but not exactly brimming with spontaneity. That was one thing she'd loved so much about Kenshin.
The moment Kaoru had met Kenshin, she'd known he was her soul mate. He was intelligent and ambitious, as orderly as she was, and just as dedicated to his career. They'd both been able to—
Kaoru gritted her teeth, resisting the urge to growl. Forget it. The whole relationship was a fake. Why couldn't she remember that?
What was even worse, it had been months and she still missed the guy. And his damn wow kisses. She still couldn't walk past her phone without wishing it would ring and it would be him. She'd actually found herself thinking one day: OK, he's a cheat and an asshole, but what did I do wrong? Why doesn't he phone and try to make up?
Dr. Laura would've slapped her. Hell, she wanted to slap herself.
That old saying is simply not so. Love is not blind. And it's certainly not deaf. It's just dumb. Really, really dumb.
The expression madly in love is apt, for it describes a form of temporary insanity.
As Kaoru studied Saitou, she sensed a neat freak like herself, except this one had fallen into a bad spell.
Having dated him for several centuries one month, she knew she had to end it now.
Every time she tried to hold his hand when they were in a darkened movie theater, he would always whispered "NPDA." The first time he'd whispered it to her, pulling his hand away as if her own hand were something unclean, she'd thought that the initials probably referred to some New Police Department Act—no doubt relating to the necessity of a cop keeping his hands free in case he might be called upon suddenly to fire his pistol. At least, she'd thought that until Saitou thoughtfully decoded the letters for her: No Public Displays of Affection. It was apparently a rule he lived by.
How cute.
Right now, their relationship is still a bit awkward. He kissed her for the first time last week—on their third date. It was all right. It's come as something of a shock to realize how wildly romantic she was. She wanted a man panting with desire for her, one who won't be able to remove that silk nightgown fast enough. The nightgown that's lying untouched in her bottom drawer. The one she'd been saving for Kenshin.
For reasons she has yet to understand, she can't imagine Saitou panting with desire for anything. Try as she might, it's difficult to think of Saitou getting excited about anything. Nor can she picture him nude.
Her father always said still waters run deep. If that's the case, Saitou's deep all right, so deep she wonder if it'll ever touch bottom.
So, after a few weeks of NPDA, she now came up with a few initials of her own: AA (Adios, Amigos); HTRJ (Hit The Road, Jack); and, her personal favorite, DLTDHYOTR (Don't Let The Door Hit You On The Rump).
"Saitou…..I think you're a wonderful person," she said, focusing her eyes on the ceiling, praying the gods would forgive her for this lie. "I think it would be best for us both to move on and date others." In case there was room for misunderstanding, she added, "Not each other."
Her announcement was followed by a stiff silence. "You mean to say you want to break up with me?" He sounded aghast. Shocked. She'd say one thing for Saitou, though. He had the most expressive eyebrows she'd ever seen. Right now, they rose all the way to his hairline.
"Yes," she replied meekly, then hurried to say, "I don't want to hurt your feelings. I'm sure there's someone perfectly wonderful waiting to meet you."
"That's what my ex-wife told me," he said gruffly.
"I'm sorry, but there just isn't any…..spark between us."
"If you're looking for sparks, I suggest you sleep with a high-voltage power line. Not only will you get sparks, but it will also be an electrifying experience."
"This is one cranky man," Kaoru muttered as she stood.
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As Kaoru exited the restaurant she saw a familiar car sitting smugly at the curb. It was Kenshin's car! Kaoru glared at it. She strode over and stood beside it, unable to control her fury and loathing. The red-hot anger turned white. Without even thinking what she could possibly accomplish, she slammed her foot against the fenders with all her weight behind it.
To her horror, the car moved. It moved forward and out from the curb, narrowly clearing the bumper in front of it. In a slow turn, it glanced gently off a car on the other side, straightened and began a sickening, accelerating, driveless descent down the hill toward the traffic on Chiba Street.
The car hit the concrete divider bisecting Chiba Street with a loud splinter of metal and glass. Half a second later another car, screeching to avoid the accident, smashed into the BMW, crumbling one side: crunch.
Silence.
The driver of the second car climbed out and started shouting obscenities at the totaled, empty BMW, searching the small crowd of pedestrians for someone to hold responsible. Kaoru swung around to see Kenshin and Tomoe frozen on the sidewalk, the red-head's mouth open in shock and disbelief.
And then, through her agony, her mortification, her horror, came joy. Joy so vicious, unbridled and intense in its purity, she could barely keep from shouting it out. Triumph. Victory. And justice for all.
She smiled secretly and hugged the delicious, unfamiliar feeling of empowerment tightly to herself. When his car crashed into that barrier, once she realized no one was hurt, she felt free and strong like she would not believe. Whoever said revenge wasn't sweet never had that awesome a sugar high.
All she could think of was his agony seeing his prized possession reduced to a ball of tin foil. It was exquisite. It was ecstatic. It was……TOTALLY AWESOME.
Hell had no fury like Kaoru scorned.
"Oh, Kenshin! Your car…..it's horrible!" Tomoe embraced the red-head, sympathy and regret etched into her features. "Oh, Darling, you must have really loved that car."
Kenshin smiled. "It's okay, Tomoe. To be honest. I hated the damn thing. I always wanted a nice unpretentious dark-colored Toyota."
Kaoru froze. A Toyota.
She crumpled: Betrayed, humiliated, and deflated.
Why, when my whole life should be coming together, it seemed to be falling apart!
TBC
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
Hiya! Thanks to everyone for being so supportive. (HUGS & KISSES).
Sorry for the long hiatus. I don't have any Internet access. Hopefully, everything is okay now.
BTW, I need a beta-reader. Just check my grammar and spelling. I'm not that confident when it comes to my grammar, since English is not my first language. (my E-mail address-- next time!