VitaminWater Fact Number 12: LIFEWATER WILL NOT COMPARE! (Even though it is really good.)

Like VitaminWater
x. by ANGELforSHOW

Chapter Eleven: Charge.
Purpose: More Electrolytes.

-

He was stupid.
He was stupid.
He was stupid.

Sakura cursed under her breath as she ducked under a random overhang in the streets. She had just been desperate to get away from Sasuke, the supermarket, even the VitaminWater.

Sakura smoothed down frazzled pink hair and took a deep, shaky breath as she examined the chocolate stain the little boy had left on her coat – it had already soaked in because rainwater had pounded the milky blot into the very fibers of her ivory coat.

It didn't matter though. The thing that really mattered was the fact that Sasuke was fucking moronic. Seriously – why did he just go and kiss her? With one simple gesture, Sasuke had wiped away an entire year's work.

An entire year of avoiding as many possible boyfriends as possible had gone completely down the toilet. It wasn't even in the toilet anymore. It was down rotting in the sewers and being pumped out into the Pacific Ocean. And she hated it.

The worst part was, she hadn't pushed him away the second his lips had landed themselves on hers (smearing her lip gloss, by the way). No, she kissed him back instead. She had enjoyed the first kiss she had received in ages, when she wasn't supposed to. SHE was the one who was fucking moronic.

But the worst, worst part was how he made her feel after he kissed her. When he had kissed her, she felt butterflies explode in her stomach, her head start to spin with hormones, her blood start to rush in her veins – every single cliché that people had said about the "perfect kiss" seemed to have happened to her. Her pulse started to jump, her lips were scorching – even if only for five seconds, her eyes closed on their own, warm tingles creeped up her spine. He made her feel beautiful, as stupid as it sounded.

Sakura really, honestly didn't appreciate that.

He was not in shock.
He was not in shock.
He was SO NOT in shock.

Sasuke blinked (in shock) at Sakura's retreating back, quickly running away from him, her coat billowing out behind her like a cape. She weaved in between those damned last-minute shoppers and disappeared.

He didn't know if what he did was right or wrong, but he did know that he was really freakin' relieved that he had kissed her. It was like a giant weight had been crushing his chest, and with one simple contact of skin, it had dispersed in midair.

Shaking his head and pulling himself out of his reverie, Sasuke bent down and slowly picked up the bottles of VitaminWater Sakura had dropped when she had made her great escape. Exchanging the dented bottles for fresh ones, Sasuke gathered as many bottles as he could (in varied flavors – particularly Charge, a rarer breed of the much sought after VitaminWater species. Very violent in temperament, but quite delicious when tamed correctly).

After standing in line for nearly ten minutes (the woman in front of him had enough food to feed the entire continent of Africa), Sasuke finally paid, dumping all of Sakura's VitaminWaters into an eco-friendly canvas bag.

Shoving the receipt into his pocket, Sasuke paused outside the store, looking up into the dreary gray sky. Rain was starting to fall in slow, fat droplets, splashing onto the dirty city streets and running into pungent sewers.

He supposed he should find Sakura, work things out with her, and dump some VitaminWater down her throat before she could yell at him.

…Yeah.

--

Sasuke wasn't stupid.

He knew that calling Sakura on her cell wasn't going to do much good. So, he did the next best thing – he texted Ino, and told her to ask get a hold of Sakura and then report back to him.

Naturally, the blonde had been suspicious, but eventually he got Ino to tell him that Sakura was sitting in the park, blasting her iPod and texting her back so fast that Ino was afraid that Sakura was going to snap her EnV in half.

So he did what anyone who cared remotely about the girl he maybepossiblysortof liked – he went to the park to haul her ass home and tell her that just maybe, just maybepossiblysortof…he liked her. A lot.

Sakura pulled her (still very stained) coat tighter around her body as she waited for Ino to text her back. She had already told Ino basically everything.

The blonde's response was predictable. As a best friend, she hissed in anger when Sakura had been caught off guard, her resolves shattered. But as one of the few romantics left in the world, Ino had swooned and secretly urged Sasuke to keep going. Because Ino knew that Sasuke was good for Sakura, even if Sakura didn't think so, and best friends knew best.

Sakura knew that Ino wanted her and Sasuke to date. She knew that Ino thought Sasuke, the cold, stoic hero and Sakura, the girl whose heart had been shut off from love, would make the perfect couple – to frosted souls to finally come together and melt the ice away, creating true love.

Sakura also knew that if everything Ino thought was good came true, the world have no politics, every place would be transformed to either a beach or a flower garden, and Shikamaru would've had green eyes like her. ("So our babies can have AQUA eyes!" Ino exclaimed excitedly. Too bad Sakura was the one passing biology – she wasn't sure if eye colors being mixed were even genetically possible.)

Setting her iPod to shuffle, Sakura scooted a bit over on the park bench she had claimed as her own, sitting under the minimal cover from rain the snaggly, bald tree overhead gave her.

She smiled when she heard the next song on her iPod begin to play. It was like her iPod knew her better than some people did – it always seem to shuffle to the right song every time she was feeling lonely, or tired, or depressed.

And with a growing smile on her face, she began to sing.

Sasuke shuffled into the park quietly, hands jammed in his pockets as he looked for any sign of Sakura – a flash of pink hair, a glimpse of white coat.

"Hey, didn't need you anyway,
I'm get better everyday.
Don't you think it's funny how it all works out?
Yeah, I finally got a life.
I go on every night.
Now I've got so much to say, so much to do.
This is life, life after you."

Or a sample of her voice. Sasuke wondered if she knew she could sing so well.

As he approached the bench she was sitting at, pouring her heart into her song, thumbs flying over her cell phone keyboard, she seemed to be more content than she had been the past two weeks.

Until she saw him.

And without a word, she scooped her technology into her purse and ran as quickly as he had come.

"Sakura, wait."

Sakura tried to pull further ahead, running as fast as her Birkenstock'ed feet could carry her. "Leave me alone, Sasuke," she said icily as she fled.

Despite the fact that she had been in track in high school, Sakura had been a sprinter – she didn't handle long distance running too well. And this proved to be an issue right about now. She had been evading Sasuke for about two miles now. She was out of breath right now, but for a might-as-well-be-pro soccer player like Sasuke, it was a piece of cake.

She cursed very loudly when he caught up with her, forcing her to stop in the middle of another abandoned park. The rain had also begun to pick up again. Damn.

"Sakura, we have to talk," Sasuke said to her, shaking his wet bangs out of his face. He grabbed her arm gently, just to make sure she wouldn't run away again.

"What do you want?" Sakura asked coldly, gripping her nearly frozen fingers tighter around the leather handles of her purse. "I don't really want to talk to you."

Sasuke led her over to a rickety park bench, sitting down and pulling her down to the bench to join him. "Too bad. We have to talk," he told her, not letting go of her sleeve.

"No we don't," Sakura whispered. She knew what came next – this was the part when he told her that it was all a mistake, and that he didn't actually like her like that, and how he just wanted everything to go back to the way it was before. He was breaking up with her, and they hadn't even dated.

"Why are you so afraid of commitment?" Sasuke asked, his eyebrows furrowing into a puzzled 'V'.

Sakura rolled her eyes, sighed exasperatedly, and looked away, refusing to meet Sasuke's warm black eyes. "You try having your heart broken," she told him bluntly, staring at a tree's leaves, dripping with water.

"You can't let one asshole ruin the rest of your life," Sasuke told her as equally frankly. "You can't let it control you forever."

"It's hard not to!" Sakura hissed out, glaring at Sasuke.

Sasuke looked at her. He looked past the smeared mascara, the rain drenched hair, the stained coat, and he looked at her. He saw the pain she was holding on to, the last bit she had of the love that once was, and he saw how broken she was, her fragile heart dropped and crumbled into a million pieces, each one sharp and jagged, trying to protect what was left of itself.

He shook his head, and this time it was he who looked away. "You aren't trying though," he said quietly, in his deep, soft voice.

Sakura dropped her head, shaking it. "I'm too young to be jaded," she told him. "I'm tired of love, like, relationships. I can't do it again."

"Who says I'd hurt you?"

"Because you don't like me Sasuke," Sakura whispered into the rain. He barely caught her words. "You don't like me enough to stay with me forever and never break my heart again. Commitment for eternity is something no one has, but something I'm looking for. And…I don't think you're someone who'd give up his freedom just to stay with me." She slowly stood up from the bench, backing away a few feet as if distance would shield the pain that was inevitably going to happen.

Sasuke laughed. It was short, bitter, and thick with angst. "You just assumed that?" he asked. He ran a hand through his rain drenched hair, somehow still sticking up in the back, and a little too long in the front.

Sakura shrunk into the rain a little more. "It's true though, isn't it?" she asked, her face crumbling slowly.

She knew it was going to happen. She felt her heart start to crack, her shoulders start to sag, her eyes start to tear.

She had already experienced heartbreak once – she was a big girl. She could do it again. She had Ino, she had VitaminWater, she had ice cream, and she had a credit card. She could do it.

So she braced herself for the pain, the hurt, the disappointment –

Sasuke laughed again. "Of course not," he said.

Sakura blinked, her large green eyes searching his face for any hint of a lie.

Sasuke reached into the bag next to him on the bench, and stood up, holding out a bottle of VitaminWater towards her, the faintest smile on his face.

Even as the fuzzy rain picked up even harder, Sakura could tell what it was. It was lemon-lime flavored, slightly yellow, with a label the color of clovers. Charge.

Approaching him slowly, she took the bottle and fell clumsily into his arms, burying her face into the crook of his neck and his shoulder, smelling the faint scent of aftershave and rain. His strong arms holding her tightly, she smiled as she opened the Charge and took a sip, touching it to his lips, offering some.

Sasuke shook his head, smiled, and instead, locked his lips on hers once more. He didn't like clichés, but he liked this one – kissing in the rain.

Sakura smiled into his lips, and this time, she didn't run away.

-&-

And in the middle of an abandoned park, next to a rotting bench, a wise oak tree, and in rain pouring down straight from the heavens, a broken girl and an ice cold boy embraced each other, with their lips, with their arms, with their hearts.

They started to mend, they started to melt, and they never seemed to let go. And slowly, they became alive again.

No, it's not over yet.

Three things I'd love for everyone to read and review (aside from this chapter):

01. The asjdklajAMAZING collaboration between Miss Aerith and I. It's called "Be My Striaghtener," and the only thing flyer than it are the two authoresses. Winkwink.
02. A oneshot of mine titled "AntiWings".
03. The first chapter of the new multi-chapter I'm going to work on after Like VitaminWater is finished, called "Bombshell Records".

…por favorrr?

Review. (:

Oh, and who can guess what song Sakura sang is, and what song the line "I'm too young to be jaded" is from, and who they're both sung by? Smileyfacesmileyface.