You know what? I know that hardly anyone is reading this.

You know what else? I don’t care.

:D

The first thing Meroko noticed upon waking up was that she had a really horrible headache.

Oh my God, I feel awful… she thought, groaning as she pushed her groggy eyes open.

The second thing she noticed was that she wasn’t looking at her ceiling.

She was looking at someone else’s ceiling.

A very specific someone else’s ceiling.

Meroko’s eyes went wide with horror.

Oh, crap…Don’t tell me…

Very slowly, she turned her head. Sleeping next to her in the bed that was not hers was an extremely familiar blonde-haired guy.

Izumi.

Aw, shit. Meroko winced. Not good, not good, not good.

Carefully, so as not to wake Izumi, Meroko sat up and looked around the room (his room). Their clothes were strewn all over the floor. Along with a couple of empty sake bottles.

Meroko’s memory of the previous night wasn’t completely clear, but she knew exactly what had happened.

Izumi had pestered her until she had come to his apartment. And then they had gotten drunk on sake and ended up having sex.

Again.

Damn it.

Sighing quietly, Meroko got out of bed and began fishing her clothes from the floor. She kept glancing nervously at Izumi, afraid that he would wake up, but he slept on.

She couldn’t believe that she had let this happen again. They weren’t even dating! It was not proper or right for two people to have sex when they weren’t dating.

But they had dated—once, for nearly three years. Izumi had ended it pretty coldly, and Meroko had treated him badly for a while after. It had been nearly a year since then.

And lately, Izumi had been acting like he really wanted her back.

And ever since he had started acting like he wanted her back, a pattern had entered Meroko’s life.

Every few evenings, Izumi would come over to her apartment (and she had no idea where he had gotten the address, because she had moved after their breakup and he had to have been a freaking stalker to find out where she lived) and basically flirt the hell out of her. He would beg and plead with her to come to his apartment, and eventually she would relent just to shut him up.

And then, somehow, copious amounts of sake would be pulled out, and Izumi and Meroko would start drinking. And then they would get drunk.

And then they would end up in Izumi’s bed.

For the umpteenth time.

And if Meroko had had any common sense, she would have left the city. Or maybe the country. She wouldn’t have let herself be persuaded time and again to come to Izumi’s apartment. She would have locked him out every single time he showed up at her door. She knew that leading him on like this was wrong, and sometimes she felt really bad about it.

And yet every single time, she ended up having sex with him.

Because secretly (or maybe it wasn’t a secret, what with all the sleeping around they did), Meroko was still in love with Izumi. Absolutely, completely, head-over-heels in love. She still was. She always had been.

But even though she loved him with everything she had, she didn’t trust him. Not one bit. The reason she treated him with scorn by day was because she had pride and common sense. He had played with her heart like it was a toy; he had treated her like crap and there was no way she was going to come crawling back into a relationship with him after what he’d done.

So I don’t want to be in a relationship with him, but I really love him and I have sex with him every couple of nights. Does that make me a slut?

Fully dressed, Meroko headed resolutely for the door, like she’d done every other time this happened. She looked back, but not at Izumi—at the clock on his bedside table…

…Which said that she had ten minutes to get to work before she was late.

Damn it, damn it, damn it.

One foot went out the doorway to the bedroom.

And then she stopped. Her eyes were unwillingly drawn to Izumi’s sleeping face. For once in his life, he looked innocent, unguarded, and completely at ease.

Izumi…

Despite the fact that she really hated him sometimes, she really did love him. When he wasn’t being a jerk, anyway. He could be sweet and funny and really nice when he tried. And on a deeper level, she liked the fact that he was chasing after her for a change.

(And he was good in bed. Very good in bed, as a matter of fact, but that wasn’t the reason she was in love with him. No, really. It was just a nice perk.)

A smile tugged at the corners of Meroko’s lips. Oh, Izumi.

“I love you,” she mouthed silently.

And then she turned and walked out of the room.

I’m sorry, Izumi. I do love you, but I’m just not ready to trust you again.

But maybe…maybe someday I will be.

As she drove to work, the smile still lingered on her face.

And then maybe we can have sex without me feeling guilty about it afterwards.

Despite herself, she laughed.

Ah, Me-chan. Silly, silly. Of course you love him.