Happy Accidents

Chapter 21: Gossip Girls

There's leftover lasagna in the fridge when you get home. Ino and I are going to be at her place for the evening doing girly things. We shouldn't be out too late, but if it's really late I'll let you know if I stay with her. Hope work isn't too stressful.

There. One text message: one simple text message. It'd been a few days since the nighttime incident with the firecrackers; she and Ino had been forced to postpone their girls' day at least twice because of cases that went late in deliberation for her, though Sakura was quite used to it. She was the district attorney, after all; any and every deeply high-profile case came across her desk and was prosecuted by her.

The moment she heard the horn outside she was up with her purse, making sure she did a quick check of everything for Sasuke's sake and setting the alarm and locking the door. She was in the passenger side quickly, relieved to be doing something other than sitting around going crazy.

"Hey there, pretty girl," Ino greeted with a chuckle, pulling out of the driveway and turning toward her own home, which thankfully wasn't too far; about a five-minute drive at most. "Finally, finally we can talk about this juicy, juicy gossip you've been holding out on. You seriously couldn't tell me over the phone, forehead?" Ino seemed pretty miffed her best friend was holding something juicy back; she was always in for good gossip.

"Yeah, but not until we're painting each others' nails, duh. I told you. This is something that requires a girls' night with bad romance movies, ice cream, and nail polish. Besides, we never get to do that anymore. If I'm stuck with this mandatory time off, we might as well take advantage of it." It felt good to get out of there for a bit; things were getting awkward between them, to say the least.

They pulled into the driveway of Ino's home, making their way inside as Ino flicked lights on. Her place was very different decorated; pretty much everything was a shade of purple, and there were various floral arrangements everywhere one could look. A small flower arranging table sat in the front room, though it was devoid of any flowers; clearly, Ino wasn't working on any of her side projects at the moment.

"Okay. I will get the ice cream and you can set up the nail polish and the movie stuff. Oh! I stopped by and grabbed a few more of your things. You'd left most of your polish and vinyls behind, and there was absolutely no way I was letting us have a nail polish night without your jelly stamper. That, and you have that super cute purple holographic polish I really like that I'm still mad you won't tell me where you got it so I can buy like... fifty bottles." Sakura laughed as Ino teased her, setting her things out.

"Well if I tell you, then you'll just go and do your own nails, and that's no good. How can I lure you in for nail polish nights if I don't have your favourite polish on lockdown?" She let out a few more chuckles as she finished setting up, seeing that Ino had grabbed basically her entire collection. The blonde was back with a tub of ice cream for each of them—cherry for Sakura, ube for Ino, of course—and two spoons before sitting down and presenting one hand. Time to get started, it seemed.

Sakura worked on her friend's manicure, first working to tidy up her cuticles, moisturize with nail oil, file and shape her nails, and remove her old polish as she spoke. "Okay, so the other night, I..." Sakura sighed, suddenly feeling glum. She still felt guilty about being such a scaredy-cat, but it wasn't something she could voice to the detective. "Well, as made him dinner, and he seemed to really like it. I mean he actually genuinely liked it. He looked so... happy, sitting there and eating a home-cooked meal. I don't think I've ever seen him smile—ever—before that night."

Ino gasped. "What? Detective Sour-Pants can smile?" Ino asked in a shocked, almost mocking tone. "He always looks like he's got a lemon in his mouth to me."