Sakura eyes the boy in front of her warily.
She feels betrayed. Heartbroken. Deceived. But, in retrospect, she guesses she really should have seen it coming.
Her horrible, awful friend is sitting in front of her, downing his second chocolate-flavored frappé, like the human vacuum, bottomless pit that he is.
Sakura, on the other hand, hasn't even touched her matcha latte.
“So…” Naruto looks up from his drink, “what did ya want to talk about?”
Right. The thing.
She doesn't know how to bring it up. All she really knows is that, one moment she's enjoying herself at Ino’s house party, and the next, she's seeing Naruto and Sasuke desperately making out, the latter perched on the hood of the blond's beat-up Toyota Corolla.
The moment is permanently engraved in her mind.
She eyes her stupid friend again. Can't stop staring at him, really. She looks at his big blue eyes and blond hair, the beanie on his head, the piercings in his ears, his nails– painted a vibrant shade of orange, his lips incessantly sucking at the plastic straw…
“Why didn't you tell me?” She blurts out.
Naruto’s lips drop the straw.
“Huh?” He asks dumbly.
She hates having to do this. But she hates being left out of the loop more. This sucks.
She blurts it out anyway.
“Why didn't you tell me you're gay!”
(Thank f*ck it's three in the afternoon and the cafeteria they're in is nearly empty.)
Naruto chokes on his drink.
“Huh?!” He asks again, this time while coughing.
This sucks so much.
“You heard me, why didn't you tell me?!" She whisper-yells this time.
The coughing goes on for a while. When Naruto manages to stop, he looks at Sakura like she just told him she killed someone and currently has the decomposing body in the trunk of her car.
“What are you talking about?!” He also whisper-yells.
“You're gay! And you never mentioned it! We've been friends since we were twelve, Naruto, and you seriously never bothered to tell me something so crucial about yourself! You're awful..."
“Um, I'm not gay.” He interrupts her rambling.
“Maybe this is on me. I should've seen the signs…"
“I'm not gay.” Naruto repeats.
“You were obsessed with Sasuke when we were kids. You still are.” She points a finger at him accusingly.
“He's my best friend!”
“You know all the words to Shallow by Lady Gaga.”
“It's a great song.”
“When we went to the karaoke together you made me sing Bradley Cooper's lines.”
“That doesn't mean anything.”
“Your ears are pierced.”
“So? Sasuke pierced them for me.”
Sakura gives him a dull look.
“Okay, I saw you and him making out at Ino’s party last week.”
“Oh yeah. So what?”
"What do you mean so what?”
“We're friends.” Naruto shrugs.
“Wha– when you went back inside to Ino’s house you were holding hands.”
“Sakura, we're friends.” He repeats, “It's, like, normal to do stuff like that.”
Sakura wants to kill him and hide his dead body in the trunk of her car.
“You two live together… in a one bedroom apartment.”
“We're saving money to move into a bigger apartment.” He says as if it's the most obvious thing in the world, and goes back to his drink.
Sakura pinches the bridge of her nose.
“You share a bed.”
“You can't have two beds in a one bedroom apartment. Doesn't make much sense.”
Naruto’s phone pings. He grabs it from his pocket, and Sakura spots the bracelet he's wearing– it's black, and has a little uchiwa charm on it. She's seen it before– it's Sasuke’s.
The blond smiles fondly at his phone, turns the screen off, and puts it away in the pocket of his jeans.
“Look, Sakura, I think you got confused. I'm not gay, and honestly you're being kinda hom*ophobic right now. Not cool.”
(Sakura feels a headache beginning to take hold of her.)
“Thank you for inviting me. We should do this again sometime! Except for the gay stereotypes… you should work on that.”
(She has never been more confused in her life.)
“Now, I gotta go. Sasuke and I are doing a spa day at home and watching My Own Private Idaho after, and y'know the wife, he hates tardiness so he'll kill me if I'm late. See ya!” Naruto grabs his jacket from the chair, doesn't even wait for an answer, and leaves the cafeteria.
Sakura sits there, dumbfounded and silent, until a waiter interrupts her thoughts, asking if she wants to order something else.
Later, she stalks Sasuke’s Instagram profile and scrolls through his feed. There are several posts of him and Naruto together– on the beach, throwbacks to their high school days, at a picnic, hugging each other, at a museum, at an aquarium.
For a moment, Sakura feels a little bad for Sasuke, and wonders if he is aware that Naruto and him aren't dating.
