A/N: Sorry it took so long. I was busy being a hipster and reading books and downloading indie music and feeling whimsical. Thankfully, not much of it overflowed and tainted this.

Right. This is where I try not to be too predictable.

People are liking Sai way too much. What have I done?

. . .

Wasted – Chapter 11

Wobbly

. . .

"What do you remember?"

Could he stop laughing? There's a hole in my memory, I got home without my socks or my shirt under my coat last Friday and now I can't find them. This is not funny. Sai's just laughing his ass off in his corner of the art room while I look through every drawer and cloth bin to find any remnants of my shirt. I can only imagine what art students might have done with it in the two and a half days (the weekend and this morning) it took me to realise I didn't have it anymore.

Sai and Gaara keep telling me that I took it off on my own when I got too warm, but of the few things I remember throughout the whole evening, one of the clearer memories I have is making out with Sai. So, really, I'm not sure I should believe them. I mean, I know myself. Maybe being high was a new experience for me, but making out is not and getting my clothes taken off in the process is very probable.

"That's the problem, I don't remember anything."

It's weird, too, because I remember being so lucid. I mean, I was tripping, but everything I did or said was deliberate. I could think through something I was about to do, on the contrary of when I'm drunk, where I just do stuff and make interesting discoveries when I'm sober. And while drinking leaves me with splitting headaches, I'm usually sober by the next morning. Saturday morning, not only did I have the worst hangover of my life, I still felt some effects of the weed. It was as if I were still high. And I didn't like it.

Then again, I don't like alcohol hangovers either.

Sai's gone back to working on my Poptart. Kankurou and Gaara are helping Gaara's girlfriend – Matsuri, as I found out five minutes ago – cutting fabric to make our movie's costumes. My notes from my New Cinema class lie open on the table next to Sai's and my laptop sits with them, diligently waiting for me to get back to my research about the French New Wave. My phone's right next to it, keeping my pencil case silent company.

I haven't heard from Sasuke since Friday. I can't decide if he's giving me the cold shoulder or if he's just busy. When I last spoke to him, he seemed tired and angry, but he never explained why he was. I figured that he'd call me when things were better, so I decided to wait. No need to hassle him, it might only make him angrier. He still hasn't called, though, and I'm worried. It's not even because I miss the sex – even though I kind of do – but because something really seemed wrong. He's the one who wants us to be friends, and while we were getting closer to actually being the "buddy" part of our deal, I feel like I'm falling short. He's the actual friendly one, and "friendly" here is not meant as a double-entendre (because if it were, I'd be very friendly too). So, I want to help him. Or at least cheer him up; get his mind off what's upsetting him.

I tried calling and texting him, yesterday, but he never answered. I tried Facebook, but he never logs on. I tried emails, too. Doesn't answer those either. I'm just about to send him an owl or a pigeon or smoke signals or Morse code or something. I can't seriously be the only one out of the two of us who's still holding on to our deal. He suggested it! And the least he could do is tell me he's out.

And what if he finally decides to call me when we've started filming? Then I won't be available and he might give up on me. Not that, you know, I'd be sad if he did, but I... wouldn't... want to disappoint him. Yeah.

I give up. My shirt is nowhere to be seen and I really need to get back to my homework. I go to sit back down next to Sai and get back to my research. If there's one good thing about Sasuke going MIA, it's that I get to spend time with Sai. His company's very enjoyable and he's a great listener. Well, that or he's too high to answer what I say with longer words than "No!", "Yeah?", "That's cool" and "Haha!". But I've witnessed him being perfectly capable of longer sentences while intoxicated, so I think he really is just a great listener.

I don't want to tell him about Sasuke. Not only is it really none of his business, but I'm kind of worried about how he'd react. Would he understand? Or would he think badly of me? I think he'd be disappointed. I mean, to him, I'm freaking Rococo! He said it! And I looked it up; I'm supposed to be about gallant wooing and coquettish bashfulness, not sex in exchange for professionally-made breakfast.

Sai hasn't asked me if I have a boyfriend, yet. You'd think it'd be his concern, considering he made out with me last week. Oh, fine, he was giving me more smoke. Still! I could've pushed him away or slapped him or yelled... Or all three. Maybe because I didn't do anything to stop him, he understood that I'm not taken. Does everybody around me really only rely on the Schrödinger's Cat approach to things? Because, seriously, it's become the least nerdy intellectual thing to be aware of in this day and age. And besides, if you put any living thing in an enclosed environment with components that in any other context would affect, maim or kill it, chances are, the results won't be positive. No need to try to guess.

That cat was dead.

Poor cat.

"Hey, Sakura? Was your shirt grey and white?" Kankurou asks from the supply room.

"Yeah, stripes with a bunch of flowers. Why?"

"Flowers in the middle, right?"

"Yes, with their leaves, why?"

"What colour were the flowers?"

"Gold and blue, why?"

He emerges from the supply room with a brown-haired girl whom I have never seen before and hey! She's wearing my shirt! Well, if you can call the torn, mangled, slathered in bright green paint piece of grey fabric with gold and blue writing and two holes that resemble the former three-quarter sleeves it once bore a shirt. The girl's orange (orange!) bra can be seen through some of the rips and the bottom half of my shirt is gone, revealing a flabby (I swear, it's flabby, I'm not being mean; only observant) stomach. The fabric bunches up at her sides and seems about to burst at the seams around her shoulders.

Sai bursts into a new fit of laughter, quickly followed by Gaara and Matsuri. Kankurou just stands, a smirk on his face, with the girl who looks completely confused. I'm stunned, rendered speechless by the carnage my shirt seems to have been a victim of over the weekend. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Matsuri wiping tears of laughter out of her eyes and Gaara holding his sides from the pain in his abdominal region. Behind me, I hear a stool fall over with a clang and a loud thud, indicating that Sai has just thrown his head back with laughter so hard it enabled him to get to know the floor more intimately.

The noise makes me snap out of the staring contest I'm having with my former shirt and the others' laughter only doubles in intensity. The girl seems to take it as an offense and stomps back into the supply room. I roll my eyes at the spot where she stood and turn back to my homework.Sure, I'm not happy about losing that shirt and I want to tear her eyes out for stealing and butchering it, but the Art kids' hysterics are only going to get worse if I act on it. Besides, in all honesty, if that's the worst that's going to happen to me for doing drugs in school, I'm not that peeved.

I expected someone to walk in on us, someone to get a whiff of the smoke and come barging in, screaming at us about our mental stability. Even now, it doesn't seem possible or even remotely fair that we weren't punished for what we did. And the fact alone that it wasn't the first time they smoked in the art room and that I decided to try it that particular day was reason enough to cause a quintessential TV drama scene when someone barges in and jumps to conclusions, those conclusions either being that I've done this as often as the others and we're all addicts, or that I'm a poor victim of peer pressure and I'm being forced to smoke up against my will and other such redundant things, but absolutely nothing happened. Besides the shirt casualty.

No matter. I shall now swear to myself that I will never, ever do drugs inside the school again. Even if it was pretty fun.

Sai and I haven't really talked about the kiss. And it's not like we haven't talked. We spent most of the weekend texting and talking with the Facebook chat. Admittedly, it's not the most personal way to converse, but I find that it allows me a lot more freedom in what I say, how I reply to what he says. I have time to sort through my thoughts, to decide what the best answer is, to make sure I don't ridicule myself.

He's also a lot more talkative that way. His abuse of basic grammar annoys me a little, but I try to forget it. It's not like he's completely incomprehensible. And he's nice. He says nice things, genuinely nice things. He doesn't take himself too seriously and basically puts me on a pedestal for my "flawless colour palette" and the "absolute grace of your whole being, Sakura", as if I had anything to do with the colour scheme I was born with and how graceful I look when I do homework. Really, he should be congratulating my gene-givers, they did all the work.

Ew, mental image of parental intercourse.

Anyway. Yeah, he also asked me if I was okay, if I recovered well from Friday night. He wanted to make sure I was alright! Really, that's just sweet. Then we talked about movies and music and art (another good thing about chatting: I can use my course notes and Wikipedia without him knowing) and food and school and people, besides Sasuke, and our families and by three o'clock this, I knew practically everything about him.

He was born on November 25th. He lost his parents when he was really young and he doesn't remember them. His foster father, Danzou, is very strict and controlling, and art is his way of escaping that. He has a foster brother, Shin, who was the one to discover his artistic abilities. He convinced Danzou to let Sai apply to our school's art program, to which Danzou agreed under the condition that Sai pay for it. Shin helped Sai gather the money for the program, which is a lot cheaper than art school and almost as good. He already knows he's getting a scholarship to go to a prestigious art school next year. Shin is studying abroad, now and they barely see each other.

As I already know, his favourite artistic period is Rococo, his favourite movie is The Naked Island, which I'm surprised he's seen because it's an old Japanese art film from 1960 and which I'm surprised he liked because it has absolutely no dialogue and barely any action. I know this because we watched it in class last semester and I personally found it extremely boring. When I pointed it out to him, he said that from an artist's point of view, it was "easier to see it as the masterpiece it is". Right. The interminable shots are very beautiful, indeed. But they're interminable. He doesn't have a favourite colour and his favourite band is one I'd never heard of before. He's quite proud of his abs – his foster father put him in karate lessons as soon as he was declared his official guardian – and has a tendency to make jokes about other guys' penis size, although he never talks about his, not even to brag.

He buys weed only from people he knows in reasonable quantities, he doesn't have a secret stash and he doesn't deal. "What I buy, I smoke... Or let other people smoke," he says. He doesn't drink and only smokes up when his school day is done. He'd rather go for the brownie route in school, to avoid the smell, but he can't bake to save his life.

He once went to extreme lengths to get a girl to go out with him, drawing and painting for her, taking pictures and making beautiful, heartfelt cards that he slipped into her locker. She took that much persuading because she was convinced he was gay, which, when she admitted it, turned him off her instantly. He instead decided to focus on art and buried himself into his work for his portfolio and the money for college. And when he got into the program, he was so far gone that girls just slipped off his radar.

Until I came along, he claims.

I told him of my ex, the year that followed our break up and the bad habits I picked up along the way. He doesn't condemn them and says that while he really likes me, he'd rather we be friends (without benefits, as was implied) before anything else. Get to know each other, then decide if we're worth a shot. He has no interest in sleeping with me as long as we're not in love.

I don't have the heart to tell him it might never happen.

. . .

Sometimes, you have dreams so vivid, it takes you a while to realise they haven't actually happened. When you wake up, you remember feeling everything as if it were real. Then later, you struggle to remember if you were asleep or awake when it happened. And you think of Inception and you try to think of what was out of place, what gave away that you were only dreaming. Sometimes, you don't find anything. Sometimes it's just too realistic or too simple to have impossible elements.

I have such dreams. I've had them forever. I have dreams in series, too. Not ones that pick up where the last one stopped, but the same ones over and over again. Good dreams and bad. When I was a kid, I had a nightmare about being in my basement and the lights went down. I called my mom for help. She came down the stairs in complete darkness, then her face caught a ray of light from a small window and her face was that of an evil clown with pupil-less eyes. My basement creeps me out and I'm not too comfortable being alone in the dark, now. And when the lights go out in my dreams, I know they're about to turn into nightmares and I've developed the ability to wake myself up.

I have series of good dreams, too. Like the one where I was sitting in a flower field in a pretty yellow dress next to a man, a different one each time, and I was pregnant. It was pleasant because it was peaceful and bright, but a little spooky because I could actually feel the baby kicking inside of me, which is not something to take lightheartedly. I could also feel the man's big, warm hands holding me, making me feel safe and at ease. That dream started when I was fifteen, at a moment in my life where I was most anxious to grow up and get pregnant. The pregnancy-craze passed, but the dreams remained.

Sometimes, I have dreams that make me feel vivid emotions. Fear, yes, but also anger, happiness, nervousness , hope and most powerful of all of them, heartache. I swear, I can wake up and still feel a pain in my chest and have an irresistible urge to cry. Sometimes because of what happened in the dream and sometimes because I didn't want to wake up.

But the most confusing of all are the dreams about practically nothing. There's no action, no dialogue, no touching, no fading of light. I just see things that I mostly can't place, that I don't remember seeing while I was conscious. However, when I do recall what I'm seeing, it gets even more confusing.

And last night, well, last night gave me one of those. Actually, I had it all week. Usually, my dreams are dictated by what's going on in my conscious life, like stress, fatigue, hunger or happiness, or by what I thought about while falling asleep, like school, people, parties, food, a book I'm reading or a movie I've seen recently. On Monday, I even worried I'd dream of my parents having sex.

But this week, I dreamt of Sasuke.

Not Sasuke in his entirety, though. Parts of him. His eyes, his hands, his shoulder blades. I didn't see them as cut-outs, each as individuals, though. It was more like he was all there, but only those parts of him were in the spotlights, the rest of him being drowned in darkness. I wanted to touch his hands, his big, warm hands, and the smooth skin of his upper back. I wanted him to touch me with those hands of his, brush my jaw and my neck and my shoulders and slip down my back and then back up again. I wanted it, but nothing happened. I couldn't feel anything. And I had no physical representation inside the dream, so I couldn't reach out to him. I just saw.

In my dream, his eyes kept changing colours. Sometimes they were gray, sometimes they were blue or brown or green or just black, and sometimes they had this tinge of red that soothed me and scared me at the same time. The muscles on his upper back were clenched, as if he were straining against something, making some sort of physical effort that involved his shoulders. I could see the muscled rippling under his skin and my urge to touch him intensified, but I was still paralysed. Because that's what I realised I was when I woke up. It's not that I wasn't in the dream; I simply couldn't move.

I've been brewing these thoughts all morning. We're Thursday and I still haven't heard from Sasuke. Thanks to Sai, though, I've been spending less and less time thinking about him. I'm more irritated at him than anxious to get a vital sign, but when I'm alone, it's difficult to keep him out of my head and to not worry. I haven't had the chance to ask Hinata if he's still going to his classes, but I haven't seen him in the school either. It's ironic, how when I didn't want him to find me, I kept running into him, and now that I want to see him, he's nowhere to be found.

I'm walking to the library to pass the time until my first class of the day. It's the only other way I've found to keep my mind off Sasuke and I really need a distraction. My phone vibrates in my jeans' pocket, indicating I've received a new text. I'm expecting something from Sai, but it's Ino – I've really gotten close to him if I think of him before I think of Ino. It's really cryptic.

FROM:

Ino

Be careful at school.

8:26A Thurs Mar 03

What? Careful? Why? Is there a serial killer out to get all of us? Is a hurricane about to hit the school? Has the floor really become lava?

I push the door of the library open and step inside. I stalk to the Art History bookshelf and try to find books about Rococo. According to the course outline, it's the next thing we'll see in class and I want to know as much as possible about it. And it may or may not have something to do with Sai. I gather a good pile and walk to a table. I get my notebook out and open the book on top of the pile. I flip the pages, trying to find interesting content and zone out.

I don't know how long I've been sitting there before some taps me on the shoulder. I finish writing my sentence into my notebook, make a mental note of which paragraph I was reading and turn around to see who's bothering me.

My heart stops and my stomach sinks into my heels. And not in a good way. Then anger shoots up into my chest and my blood starts to boil. Because standing in front of me is the one person I didn't want to see. Not just this morning, but ever. It's actually someone I didn't expect to see here. Here in the library and here in school. I want to pounce at him and scratch his face off with my nails. I want to kick him in the balls and then rip them off his body and make him eat them. I want to scream, scream so loud his ears start bleeding, so loud the windows explode and bits of glass lodge themselves into his skin, his lungs, his brains, his heart.

"Hey, Sakura."

"Idate."

It's my ex.

. . .

He's coaxed me out of the library with the promise of breakfast in the school cafeteria – without Sasuke, I don't get breakfast in the morning – and is keeping a respectful distance from me. I glare at him the whole way, still debating whether I should attack him now or wait until there are no more witnesses.

I usually have pretty tame feelings about him. Thoughts of mild annoyance, at worst resentment for two years of my life wasted on someone who was with me only for sex – oh, the irony – but just the sight of him, right at the moment I'm not on good terms with my source of satisfaction and on too nice, not-going-anywhere terms with my source of happiness, makes me tap into my most primal urge to slaughter.

We make it to the cafeteria and as promised, he buys me French toast. It's not as good as at Sasuke's place, but oh well. At least I'm eating for free. We walk to a slightly remote corridor lined with tables, where only a handful of other students sit, and we settle down face to face. My seething expression must be comical as I pour syrup onto my breakfast and cut a piece of toast to stuff it in my mouth, but I really can't get my face to do anything else.

He watches me eat in silence, which leads me to wonder why he wanted to buy me breakfast in the first place, but once I'm done, he takes my tray and brings it to one of the garbage bins where we can leave our trays, then sits back down in front of me.

"So..." he starts. "How are you?"

How am I? HOW AM I! I'm a mess, thankyouverymuch! I've barred love out of my life, my bed-buddy won't talk to me, I've slept with more guys than there are pages in my pre-prod paperwork in the past year and I don't even know to whom I lost my virginity. All because you made me feel like a worthless piece of nothing by cheating on me and blaming me for everything that's wrong in the world and then disposing of me like a dirty, torn sock a fucking week before my fucking birthday! And I thought I was done with you! I thought you'd left forever! But nooo, you just waltz right back in like you fucking own the place and you buy me breakfast and have the balls to ask me how I am when you just know how anyone would be after being betrayed by someone the way I was by you.

"I'm fine."

Okay, so maybe I don't exactly have to guts to tell him all of that. So what? He doesn't even deserve it. There's an unbearable silence and I know I have to break it.

"What are you doing here?" I say as dryly as I can.

"I'm meeting someone," he says matter-of-factly.

"Who?"

"A friend of mine," he looks at my face. "Male, if you must know." Pff, I don't care. His tone is so lighthearted, I want to suckerpunch him. "But I saw you, and I wanted to check up on you."

"Why?" I can practically hear the venom in my voice. Good.

"Well, I... I didn't exactly make it pretty when I left you, so..." Oh, perfect, he looks uncomfortable.

"Nope, you did not." My turn to be lighthearted. I feel like I'm gaining the upper hand.

"So?"

"I still hate you."

"Yeah, that... That makes sense."

He doesn't avert his eyes, but I just know I'm on top, now.

"So, what? You want me back?" The idea makes me want to vomit.

"No."

"Good."

"But... I saw Ino on the way. We talked."

Oooh, that's the reason for the text. I bet he ambushed her and forced her to tell him about me and how I'm doing. I'll have to remember to buy her ice cream tonight.

"So what?"

"Sakura, I realise that what I did was the worst thing I could've ever done to you and you didn't deserve any of it."

"Understatement of the decade."

"And I understand that you might want to rip my head off, right now."

"Yeah, amongst other things."

"With reason," he takes a minute to look at me carefully. "But you can't punish yourself for what I did. It doesn't make sense."

"Who says I'm punishing myself?"

"Sakura," he sighs. "Your sleeping around really doesn't do anything to me. It's yourself you're hurting the most. You can't keep going like this. You're throwing yourself away."

"Well, you should've thought of that before." I sound like a child. Damn.

"I know! I know and I'm sorry. This is me making up for it."

"How are you making up for anything you did to me?"

"I'm here to help you."

"I don't need your help."

"Yes, you do. You can't shut love out forever."

"Says who?"

"Says me. It's not who you are."

"You don't know me. Don't pretend like you do."

"Of course I do. We dated for two years. Of course I know you! You're not this kind of person!"

"What kind of person?" Goddamnit, he's winning. I'm shrinking down.

"The kind who doesn't care. You can't not care, Sakura. You know it, because unless it's a somewhat stable relationship, you have to be inebriated to be close to someone. You need that stability and you use alcohol to forget that you do. I made you scared to let people in and for that, I'mso very sorry, but you're the kind of person who falls in love."

I stay quiet, because he makes too much sense, and I don't want him to know. Anything I'll say now, he'll use against me, so I just listen. I feel tears well up in my eyes and I can't decide whether it's because of what he's saying or because he's saying it. And he's winning. No, he wins. I give up. I can't win this conversation anymore, so I'll just let him have it. Whether he's right about me or not, I don't want to argue. I'm suddenly too tired and too weak to fight him.

"Ino told me about Sasuke. It's not right, Sakura. It's not who you are. And you might think that you're playing him and that you're in control, but eventually, you'll realise or accept that you feel something for him and that day, you'll understand that you never had any control at all. And he might not feel the same way and you'll feel as betrayed as you did with me."

I close my eyes and open then just as quickly because I saw Sasuke's face and I can't. I won't. Tears flow freely down my face and I don't even bother to wipe them.

"And if it's that other one, Sai, I think, then it's him. But you have to let yourself feel. If you just let them in without any consideration for what you feel, you'll just get hurt. Don't do this to yourself."

He stops. I think he's done. I don't remember him being so smart, so eloquent, so insightful. He sends me a small, sad smile, gets up and leaves. I sit there for a while, my body jerking with each sob that I try to contain.

I hurts. It hurts because I thought I'd become the kind of girl he wished he had, the kind of girl that's strong and confident and in complete power of herself and her sexuality. It hurts because in just ten minutes, he's yanked me from the pedestal I'm not entirely sure who put me on and hurled me to the ground, battered and bruised and begging for mercy. It hurts because after all this time and all this change and all these guys, he's still the superior person and he can still see right through me.

It hurts because, goddamnit, I can't tell whom I want to see most, Sai or Sasuke.

Instead of deciding, I pick up my bag, pull my phone out of my pocket and as I walk, I dial Ino's number.

. . .

A/N: So. Sakura's ex. When I wrote the ninth chapter's Author's Note, I checked back on the previous chapters to see if I'd already decided who was Sakura's ex, because my memory's not awesome. Apparently, I did a really crappy job of it because I had and I didn't find it. So, I wrote the A/N to ask you guys to help me, then I posted the chapter and went on with my life.

However, before starting to write the tenth chapter, I did another check for continuity and I found that I had in fact put Idate as Sakura's ex in the third chapter. I panicked for a few seconds and went to change the A/N, but I got the first review for the ninth chapter that suggested another character. Apparently, I'm not the only one with a really bad memory (but I guess I'm worse because I'm the one writing it. Sorry about that).

So, I left it as is and decided to see who would remember and figure it out. Henceforth, if you got a "Thanks for your suggestion, I shall consider it" or something resembling that, it was me telling you that we have the same terrible memory.

Two people did get it right, and that's Sapherindrial (whose name is just really epic), although she initially sent me suggestions too. She sent another review from the third chapter where I indeed had written that Ino said to Naruto "She vowed she wouldn't fall in love after what that asshole Idate did to her". The other person is Freud. Yep, Sigmund Freud reads my stuff. So, yeah. We all have amnesia (Alzheimer's is too tragic) but their case isn't as bad as the rest of ours.

Thank you all for reviewing, though, and I really appreciate everyone who sent in suggestions. Had I not written that it was Idate, your reviews would've helped a whole lot!