Chapter 16 We're still in flashback to April, 2016

Last time Freddie had just received a call from a young lady who informed him he was a father.

Ten more minutes of conversation and Freddie was brought up to speed with what was happening, hung up and pulled his car back onto the roadway. Rather than going straight home to Sam, who was anxiously waiting for him to return, he decided to drive around the outskirts of the city to clear his mind.

This was all a lot to process. First off, he had a child. That was the big one. Secondly, the baby was sick, which was tragic in and of itself. He couldn't help but wonder if she wasn't sick would he even know about her. It hit him that his lifestyle a couple of years ago was risky at best. And poor Sam. How could he ever tell her about his this? She knew little about his past, other than the fact that he had "been with" Wendy and went out with her sister for a short while around the time they were getting out of high school and starting college.

Sure, there was nothing like drug use in his past, habitually skipping classes or more than the occasional drink, but his life was full of risky behavior to say the least. There was no excuse for the kind of things he did. Luckily, he realized in short order that he couldn't continue to act like that. Hopping from bed to bed, girl to girl, one weekend to another was so wrong it wasn't funny. It wasn't cool and it didn't make him a man. And now that he had a relationship with the one girl he ever truly loved, this could all bite him in the arse big time.

Looking back, some were easily justified, Melanie was his girlfriend. They had dated for months, he thought there was a future with her. His mom even liked her for goodness sake. Of course they were going to be intimate. But sleeping with Wendy? The sex buddy thing was not only out of his character but something he was completely ashamed of more now than ever. How could he ever face her at their high school class reunion? The only thing worse would have been drunken college orgies.

The one night stand with Valerie was his low point. He had no intention of getting back together with her like she wanted. In truth he planned and used her for sex and never call her afterward because of the way she used him years earlier. An eye for an eye, right? Wow, how that night haunted him and apparently always would.

Then there was the 'casual hookups with Melanie' phase. It wasn't long lasting, nor was it committed, and he had been under the impression she had other boyfriends, or possibly even boy-toys, too. Maybe he was wrong, maybe she wasn't a player like him. Either way, what they did, didn't last long, just a week or two but it still happened and now he was very happily seeing her twin sister and very much committed to her. With the end of his undergrad studies on the horizon, he even strongly considered talking to Sam about their getting a place together. Having been with both of the sisters would make for some very awkward Thanksgivings or family reunions in the future. If Melanie and Sam ever patch up there differences and talk, that is.

Sam made no bones about the fact that she hadn't spoken to her twin since she and Freddie broke up in the middle of their first year of college. The few times Melanie tried to call her, Sam hung up. Even going as far as blocking her number and instructing Cat to do the same back when she lived in L.A. and Spencer as well after she moved into his extra room.

The young man's thoughts turned to how he even got himself into this mess. Why he did what he did back then. Was it because of his over protective mother? Probably to some degree because he had trouble establishing normal relationships with females because of her, but Marissa couldn't be assigned the blame. Was it because of his father's absence? Not really. He certainly couldn't have influenced Freddie's choices so many years after his death. After all, his dad had been gone since he was in elementary school.

It couldn't be blamed on bad influence from his male friends? Other than Gibby and Spencer, how many guy friends did he really have? Sure, there were acquaintances in the train club or from fencing, but no one he was chummy with. Perhaps his own insecurities led to his decisions. Maybe he was the biggest culprit he could think of.

What affected his life more than anything was that fateful night in the fall of senior year? The twenty-four hour period in which he lost nearly everything. The web show that was part of his life for all those years was done. Carly, his closest friend, was not even on the same continent. To top it all off, the one person that he thought he could lean on, the girl he thought he could be there for, for her to lean on, was gone as well.

She left like a thief in the night and she took his heart with her. A note taped to the inside of his locker at school (and how the chiz she even got into the school over the weekend to place it was anyone's guess) was the only explanation as to her absence. "Going for a drive on the new bike. See ya when I see ya." The final sentence ringing in his memory to this very day. She even got in touch with Ted Franklin and asked him to make sure Freddie was alright.

Before he knew what happened, hours passed and he had burnt off nearly half a tank of gas. He had been starving when he left work but was not in the mood to eat any more. Maybe he never would be again. As his cruising drew him nearer to home, he wasn't even aware of the time. It had been dark for quite a while when he pulled into the parking lot of Bushwell. He was met in the lobby by a frantic Sam who had locked Lewbert in his office hours earlier for some peace while waiting by the main door for Freddie.

"Fredward Karl Benson! Where the hell have you been?" She barked at him, running closer as soon as he came through the door. "I've been calling your for hours."

"I, uh, guess my phone died." He lied. In truth he had turned it off after the phone call with his ex.

"Spencer's out looking for you, and we can both be lucky your mom isn't here to know you're late or she'd be filing a missing person report. I was seriously thinking of calling her."

He looked dead in his eyes and blinked, trying to form a logical excuse, remaining silent.

"Aw, was it that bad, baby?" She asked, seeing his facial expression. The blonde could only assume he had a bad day at work. "Say no more. Momma will take care of you."

She put her arm around him and the two walked toward the main elevator. "I was going to see if you wanted to go out to eat. But maybe we can order Chinese or something and just stay in. You said your mom's not coming back until Monday, right?"

One thing was for certain, Freddie didn't say anything to his beloved Sam about the conversation he had with his, whatever she was - ex-girlfriend, former lover, used to be bed buddy, young woman he simply used for sex, whatever she was to him it was nothing compared to how he felt about Sam.

"I'm sorry, baby. I should have called or texted or something. I didn't mean to worry you." He begged off as soon as the elevator doors closed. "I'll never do that again."

The two settled down for the evening with no mention of the news he was privileged to earlier in the day. He couldn't drop this on Sam. With any luck, once he filled out the forms, his daughter's baby mama would crawl back into whatever hole she had been in for the last year and a half and stay there. At least until he was ready for her to see the light of day. If it weren't for his love of Sam, he could never think this way. If he weren't in a relationship with her, he'd be on the first flight out to help with his sick child but now things were different.

That thought alone made him insomnia. He wanted to protect Sam, not bring this mess upon her but on the other hand he owed it to his daughter to be there for her. He did not want to be an absentee father like Sam's and Melanie's dad was. What he needed to do was find a way to break this news to Sam without crushing her - and their future together - completely. Maybe in time he could ease her into the idea. For now, he couldn't bring himself to even try. He had to try to think of a way.


The next week, an envelope arrived from his baby's mother. Freddie had instructed Lewbert to hold it for him and even slipped the ill-tempered doorman a twenty to make sure he kept it back and away from Marissa when she picked up the mail.

As luck would have it Sam was working late the evening it arrived and he knew he had some time to himself. He began pouring through the myriad of paper. Questions about his health, any developmental tests that were done when he was a toddler and the results, his progress reports from school and milestones from every time he went for a regular checkup were all there. Lucky for him, with his mother's neuroses, these were frequent and documented thoroughly. Most people take their kids in for annual checkups. Marissa Benson took him in monthly.

After ten or twelve pages, when he got to the part about health history of his father, he could go no further. From what he recalled about his dad, he was the picture of health. He fenced, played tennis and jogged several miles nearly every day, he ran track in college and liked to play basketball with his old school mates when they got together. Well, he was the picture of health until the drunk driver that crossed the center line smashed into his car at nearly twice the speed limit.

Some of these questions would need to be run past Marissa, particularly those about her family. He would find a way to work this into conversation. Fortunately, his mother was never shy about information regarding her health, or the health of her family, with anyone who asked.

He put all the papers back in the envelope and stashed it safely in his top desk drawer. When he started college, Marissa had pledged to not go through his things in order to have him remain at home instead of living on campus so he trusted she wouldn't see it.

After she got home, he quizzed his mother about some of the things he could remember from the sheets before making a quick stop in apartment 8-C to visit Sam briefly after her shift. Over the course of several days he checked on facts he needed to document, even going so far as to call his grandmother to ask her a few questions, claiming it was for a survey he was taking for a classmate.

He promised, via text, that the documents would be in the mail first thing the following morning. Copies of all the forms had been made at the self-service copier in the college library and he was in the middle of compiling it all, sitting at his desk when Gibby called to ask him a question. This led to a meeting at Spencer's to help his friend assist the artist in getting his hand unstuck from the exhaust fan in his bathroom.

By the time both of the younger men were ready to give up, Sam returned and with a quick spray of cooking oil and after flipping the older man completely upside down, he was free. Granted, he fell to the floor and landed on his head, but he was free. Freddie had forgot all about the papers he had spread out all over his desk when he invited Sam back to his place.

They stopped in his kitchen for a snack and walked through his bedroom door ready for a little one on one time. As soon as his eyes landed on the desk, his heart skipped a beat. Sam, of course, made a bee-line for his bed and flopped down, cold pizza slice in hand and reached for his TV remote.

Freddie felt sick to his stomach at the sight of all those papers lying spread out on his desk. Maybe he could manage to gather things up and stash them away without her noticing. He would have to very methodical in his actions in order to not raise suspicions. As he began straightening up, Sam called out for attention.

"Yo, Fredbag. You can clean up any time. Mama's been itching for some Freddie time for two days." She patted the bed beside him. "You're not gonna hold out on me are you?"

"Ju-just, uh, give me a minute, baby." He kept working and didn't notice her getting up.

She snuck up behind him and as soon as she dropped her napkin in the trash can, wrapped her arms around him. The contact made him jump and he dropped all the paper right on the floor.

"Gheesh dude, jumpy much?" She snickered as he bent down to pick things up. "You're making more mess than you're cleaning. Forget this and let's get busy."

"Sorry. Just let me get all this straightened up. It-um, it's due soon and I need to get it organized."