Elevator Love
acaylee

chapter one

Something’s not right. There’s this little fear inside me telling me that there’s something wrong. And something wrong means that I broke it. I broke Tomoyo’s laptop.

Hoee...

I hit my forehead on the laptop in resignation. Tomoyo’s going to kill me. She’s my roommate, by the way. And childhood friend. And my second cousin. And basically everything a single, unemployed twenty-one year old girl wants in a best friend. Actually, scratch the unemployed part. From this morning on, I’m actually employed.

For the first time ever. Well, sort of. If you’re not counting all the other twenty-eight jobs that don’t count at all. The point is that this is the first ever proper job, which is why I’m going to be fully prepared. Which brings me back to breaking Tomoyo’s laptop.

“Sakura, are you still here?” comes Tomoyo’s voice as she walks into the kitchen.

I don’t know how to break it to her. I lift my head off her laptop and give her the biggest smile I can muster. “Tomoyo, I don’t know what happened, but your laptop...it’s broken.” I try and lift the top part up (you know, the screen, or whatever it’s called) except, like it was ten minutes ago, it won’t budge. “I know you really liked this laptop, Tomoyo,” I continue, “but maybe it’s time for change. After all, laptops are like boyfriends. They don’t last forever. Unless you stay boyfriend and girlfriend forever without being married, which is completely ridiculous because –”

“Sakura.”

“– can you imagine the tombstone? Here lies ‘insert name’, faithful boyfriend and ‘whatever else he is’. The point is, Tomoyo, just because your laptop won’t open, you shouldn’t be attached to it. Most boyfriends don’t last forever. You need to try a few out, and then decide which one you want to spend the rest of your life with. Just like laptops. How do you know you’re a HP person? Maybe, for all your life, you’ve been waiting for a Mac. Or maybe, if the worst was to happen –”

“Sakura! It’s not broken,” she says quickly.

“– you may be a comp...” I trail off. “It’s not?”

Tomoyo walks closer to the bench where I’m sitting at. “You’re actually opening it the wrong way.” She demonstrates by lifting it open from the other end, while I was before trying to press the hinges and everything to make it happen from this end. “And just what are you doing with my laptop?” she adds casually while taking a seat next to me.

“Ah,” I say just as casually, “nothing.”

Tomoyo nods, and we’re both very casual. “I see.”

“Yep.”

I won’t tell her. Even though she always says that I can’t help but tell her everything.

I take a sip from my strawberry milk. “Just to let you know, Tomoyo, I’m not going to tell you anything, because nothing happened. I’m not going to tell you I was thinking of taking it to her work – because I wasn’t thinking of that at all. So if you’re thinking what I wasn’t thinking which I told you I wasn’t thinking, then what you’re thinking is wrong because what I’m thinking is what I’m really thinking.”

Tomoyo looks at me.

“Okay, okay! Stop looking at me!” I blurt out, and she smiles in satisfaction. “I thought I’d look the part of a business woman and carry a laptop around.”

“My laptop.”

“Yes.”

“I see.”

“Yep.”

“No.”

“Yes?”

“No!”

“Yes!”

“No!”

“No?”

“Yes!”

“So I can take it!” I say in the satisfaction Tomoyo had before. She narrows her eyes.

“What?” I say.

Tomoyo gets up from her seat so I think we stopped being casual. But then she opens the fridge and opens the chocolate milk carton, and she begins her casual voice again. “So how were you planning on carrying it to and to?”

I was getting to that part. Really, I was. Right after I had worked out how the laptop opened...

“Okay, so no laptop,” I say.

We’re both silent for a moment. I take a sip from my strawberry milk and she takes a sip of her chocolate milk. Then Tomoyo breaks the silence.

“Um, if you’re thinking of getting there in time, I think you should leave now.”

Another reason why Tomoyo is my bestest (I still think they should make that into a word) friend in the world, is that she cleared the unemployed part of my problem. You see, I called her, and she called someone (her boyfriend), and he called someone, and I got it! It’s like an important people grapevine. You can get favours like that when you have money. Which is what Tomoyo has a lot of. Money, that is. Even if Tomoyo wasn’t a famous designer, she was the daughter of media giant Daidoji Sonomi.

And there was me, a nobody who still can’t hook her bra strap in one go.

Actually, it’s not funny. At all. It takes me five minutes to get it hooked up at the back, which in the mean time has me falling over in front of the bathroom mirror. There probably are men in the world who can hook on and take off bras faster than I can count to one. One. I’ve actually tried counting, and then I keep repeating one over again, because I get frustrated when it doesn’t get hooked up in one go and lose count. One. One. One! One. One!!.

Which leads me back to the fact that I still need to:

1. Learn to hook bras from the back with my eyes closed.

I’m actually starting to make a list of things I need to accomplish now (while I’m waiting in line at Starbucks for the moment).

I tap the pen on the pad. My list actually looks a bit bare with only one thing. So I add another one.

2. Get a job.

I think having half of my list completed just gives me more incentive to finish it.

There’s a man next to me and he smiles as we both wait for our coffees to be made. I smile back at him, and drop the pen and pad into my bag. There’s something about being in a coffee store in the morning, with people having breakfast and the beans grinding and milk churning under the frothing handle. The man and I stand there.

He tries to make conversation. “So you work here?” he asks politely.

I nod, just as politely, even though I don’t understand what he’s saying. Is he asking me if I worked at Starbucks? “In Starbucks?”

Oops. The man gives me a weird look. “I mean in the building, Li Corporations.”

Oh. “Yes,” I say. At least I think I am. Tomoyo gave me a business card and the level where I’m supposed to meet my new boss this morning. “I’m starting work today, as Mr Li’s secretary.”

The man whistles. “Good luck.”

This time I stare at him weirdly. “Why?”

“Nothing.” He picks up his briefcase. “I think the lady behind the counter’s calling for you.”

Then I remember we’re waiting for coffee and I turn towards the counter where the lady hands me the coffee.

I take a sip. Big mistake. On instinct, I spit everything out.

And it just manages to land on the man’s shirt. His crisp white shirt.

3. Learn to not splutter coffee on to the shirts of businessmen.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry! I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean it! Even though you were given me weird looks! It wasn’t intentional! I’m so sorry! So sorry!”

The man looks disgusted, and I can’t say I blame him. On his shirt now lies my spit and whatever I just drank. Whatever it was. I actually don’t know what I ordered.

“What was that?” the man asks in irritation as I grab napkins from the counter and try to rub it off.

The lady at the counter has an amused expression on her face. “A small double-shot decaf latte, extra frothy, at exactly sixty-five degrees on low-fat soy milk plus seven teaspoons of sweetener.” She smiles at the look on both of our faces. “I would have warned you, honey, but you were writing something,” she says to me.

Long story short; I thought that since I didn’t have a laptop to make me look smart and successful businesswoman material, I thought I’d buy a cup of coffee to look like a successful businesswoman. So I just told the person serving me to give me what the lady in front of me ordered, because she looked like successful businesswoman material.

“Shit,” the man says, “it’s nine already. I don’t have time to change.”

Wait. Nine? Hoeee. I’m late!

I quickly grab my coffee and everything else and make a dash towards the elevator next to the concierge table. I can’t believe I’m late! My watch only read eight forty when I entered Starbucks.

One of the four elevators’ doors is opening and I’m nearly there, and I’m only a few feet away – I’ll make it! – but then the sharp heels Tomoyo made me wear slips on the polished marble floors and I begin to fall just as I make it into the elevator.

“Hoeeee!”

Everything happens in slow motion. All the things in my hands fall from my coffee to my handbag to my newspaper to my notepad and then my hands are grabbing onto something for balance. My hands slide down a pole, but it’s not a pole, and there’s a ripping sound and then I’m on the ground with my eyes shut tightly.

Somebody growls, “For fuck’s sake.”

I peek through one eye. I see a black shoe. I open the other eye and I see my hands are holding on to cloth. I move my eyes up a bit and then I have a feeling my face is flushing red. Before my eyes roam any higher, I get on my knees and stand up. Like...like a successful businesswoman. And talk sense with the person like normal adults.

But glaring at me furiously and making a growling sound at the back of his throat like he was going to slit my throat in any second, was the most pissed-off, most dreamy, most gorgeous guy I’ve ever seen in my life.

So maybe talking sense won’t work...

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a.n. -smiles- To my old readers, I’m sorry if you clicked on this story because you received a notification for a new chapter. I’m actually re-writing this. I’ve been re-reading things I’ve written in the past, and came to the fact I’m extremely unhappy with what I’ve written, so if you bear with me, I’ll be re-writing everything. Give me two weeks, and I’ll be spitting out new chapters regularly if anybody wants to read them still. It was just that the old version of EL gave me headaches when I tried to write new chapters and I came to a wall where the story couldn’t advance any further. Putting it plainly, I made Sakura so dumb that the feminist in me rebelled. Also that my old laptop died, so I’ve lost everything I wrote (which wasn’t much except for my earlier works when I was thirteen).

If you’re a new reader, yes, this story is being re-written. It previously had five chapters, so that’s where the reviews came from :)

Leave me a bit of feedback, and I’ll see you at the next update in one-two days.