Cherry Blossom Girl Ch. 01

In the end, it took but a few words and a few minutes to dismantle a relationship that spanned six years of love, laughter, sorrow and friendship and everything in between. Dreams of a white wedding and the children they'd have, crumbled. After months of living with uncertainty, despite Alex's assurances that everything was fine, the fight provided a bizarre relief. But it didn't blunt the pain of having her heart shattered and it didn't stop her from feeling like she was now living with the fragments shoved in her chest.

She looked beyond the windshield to the trees shivering in the February cold outside the garage. The little moments, the silences over the past year told the real story: They'd broken up in degrees and she couldn't pinpoint the exact moment when everything had slipped away.

Now here she sat all alone with an Aqualung CD on the passenger seat. He'd gotten rid of the last thing in his apartment that belonged to her. The realization of what it symbolized snuck in and gently delivered its truth.

An eerie calm took over as she tossed the disc along with the last of her hope, in her handbag. Time to end old Sascha and Alex traditions: like calling him whenever she got home from leaving his place. Time to move on, that was reality. She tried to convince herself it was the only reason she wouldn't return his text until tomorrow.

But the perverse thrill she got out of the idea that Alex was waiting for her call and worrying lay closer to the truth. You're so pathetic it's scary. Whatever. At least it lifted her spirits. Better that than bawling in her car.

She checked the garage before she got out of her car and took the four flights of stairs. There was no way she'd risk being caught in the lobby or elevator looking like this. Her uneven breaths made her pause halfway across the corridor. Home free. A door slammed shut. Her heart almost burst with fright, making her falter. Great. Just great. The noise had come from Noah Jameson's condo.

She slowed her steps to miss his posse of post-grad frat boys. Their voices and laughter were so obnoxiously happy, they mocked her mood. Noah lagged behind them with his cowboy swagger and what appeared to be his latest good time under his arm. The times she'd seen him with a woman, he'd been with the same brunette. There was no way to avoid passing him without it being obvious. Just her luck, she lived next to an oddity in this building: someone who always said hello. If she sped up it would be over quick.

"Hey, how's it going?" Noah asked her.

Sascha kept her gaze on the courtyard below and replied with a tight "hi" as she flew past the couple.

"What a stuck up little bitch."

Maybe it was the need to lash out at a safe target, maybe it was her Irish-Caribbean DNA that made Sascha stop and turn around. Blotchy face and vanity be damned. If this size zero snot had something to say, she better say it to her face before she slinked off to the clubs tonight.

"Excuse me? Is there something you'd like to say to my face?" she demanded with calm menace.

The blonde and Noah shared a glance, before she looked over her shoulder, her carefree expression now gone. His bright green eyes warned Sascha off after he tucked her target behind his back. Screw him. She adjusted her stance until she locked onto that Nordic face again.

"What. Nothing?" The fountain gurgled below, blending with the voices down the hall as she folded her arms and waited for a reply. "I didn't think so."

The Nordic milkmaid couldn't even look her in the eye. Good. She didn't care if it was because she looked like a wreck or if the girl was embarrassed. Someone had gotten a taste of her Friday night. Whatever Noah intended to say got stuck while he studied her face. She tagged him with a hard glare to let him know what she thought of his "friend". Then she dismissed them both with a quick turn and headed to the shower where she washed off a night of mistakes.

* * *

Four months later.

It wasn't the nightmare that woke her this time. But a mixture of habit and instinct made Sascha touch her neck anyway. The throb in her ears matched the pulse lower down. The alarm-radio read 2:32. And then she heard a groan. Excitement bloomed, heating her from the inside out. Her sleepy mind deciphered what her body instinctively understood and responded to. It was a man—Noah Jameson, deep in pleasure.

Sascha pulled up her shirt and slid her right hand under the elastic waistband below her navel. She found the swollen nub that ached to be touched, nestled within her warm, moist flesh. Her middle finger started working in the tried and true pattern. She called up a fantasy to project onto the blank screen behind her eyes, one that would hurtle her to orgasm. She needed to come. Oh, how she needed to come.

Her eyes fell shut and her phantom lover appeared.

She didn't see him as much as she felt him. She imagined him above her, his weight bearing down on her, her arms around his back, her legs brushing his. Her finger moved in a frenzied pace to match his conjured thrusting. His lips pressed against her neck, his hushed moans just like the ones behind her. She came quietly in the dark, the coiled energy burst into dots of hot sensation. The climax was fleeting, efficient but enough.

Sascha opened her eyes again. The red numbers on the clock had advanced to 2:58. She always looked at the time after she came, always calculated the difference. And it never took less than twenty minutes. Why that mattered, what was the reason behind this habit, she didn't know.

She heard the mumbling of voices, Noah's and a woman's, followed by silence. She heard the woman's laughter and felt her delight despite the layers of drywall separating them. Her she was, a lonely voyeur; intruding. A familiar hollowness rose up to snuff out the fading embers of pleasure. Even during the best times, she couldn't recall laughing like that after sex. She shuffled to the bathroom and washed her face and hands. Was she capable of it though? The question replayed as she crawled back under the sheets.

After six years with Alex she doubted she'd ever get to experience something like what was happening on the other side of that wall. People experience sex differently. Besides, she'd choose a caring companion over porn star sex any day. She wanted someone she could laugh with and be close to, someone to hold her late at night when words didn't matter.

Female laughter broke the silence. Sascha wished it were her.

Soon.

Such a random thought, who knew what inspired it but it shined the light on her loneliness, on what was missing. When would life be more than waking up and going to work? There was no answer, just more laughter.

The sound was another wound to a heart desperate to mend. She curled in a tight ball as tears followed—a frequent weekend visitor. She got by during the day but the nights... There were no people, no distractions at night, just time to think. The weekends were way worse because she used to live for the whirlwind of activity. Now she lay crying in the dark on a Saturday night, wondering if she'd ever be free of this ache.

Soon.

She fell asleep vowing she'd find joy again.