EDIT (1/24/15): I've edited this chapter some, and took out the parts that I didn't like. Let's all collectively pretend that the end of this chapter, which I wrote in 2013, never happened.

~And then she would smile, to show me how, and it was the saddest smile I ever saw.~

~Charles Bukowski

Fabian

Chapter 22: "The Breakup"

"Nina."

She, apparently, didn't hear me, even when I called her name quite loudly. A few heads whipped my way — some probably recognized my face, and others probably had no idea who I was — but none approached me or called me out for the rumors that had been circling around the world. I saw a teenaged face approaching me, so I walked closer to Nina, on the other side of the Laundromat.

"Nina!" I called out, louder than before. She stopped walking away for a moment, but as soon as she stopped, she continued walking.

I exhaled through my nostrils, my blood boiling by the second. I didn't want to lose my temper again, but Nina boiled my blood like no one else. I continued to follow her as she walked throughout the building, but she was showing no signs of stopping. "Are you listening to me?!"

"Oh, I'm listening to you," was Nina's retort, responding to me without even turning around. I still didn't see her face as she grabbed her basket from on top her machine, removed the clean clothes, and started to walk out without acknowledging me at all.

That did it for me. She wasn't allowed to act like I wasn't there at all. I jogged to catch up with her, and by the time I was a few meters away from her, I sneered, "Look at me when I'm talking to you!"

I grabbed her wrist,which might not have been such a good idea. I whipped Nina around to see her face, and in that moment, I couldn't have wanted to punch a wall more.

It was only a second; a mere second, nothing more or less, but I caught it. When I grabbed Nina's wrist and twirled her around, the terror in her eyes was evident. I had never wanted to punch a wall more than now; it hit me that I was the reason she was so afraid. I had yelled at her, I had invaded her personal space, I had once again lost my temper and was about to bring it out on her.

Silence ensued between us. I tried to show her I was sorry, that I apologized for what I had just did, but she didn't seem to catch my gaze; Nina was too busy staring at the floor and shaking in fear. "Yeah," she whispered, probably too afraid to speak any louder, her voice shaking like she was standing in the cold all morning. "Okay."

"Um..." I started again, feeling like that was my only response in a sticky situation. "Let's, um, go out. To — to talk," I suggested.

She nodded slowly, not daring to look me in the eyes. "Yeah," she repeated, her voice almost inaudible. "Okay." I could feel her tearing up my heart with her words.

I let go of her wrist at once. Nina, still shaken with fear, turned away from me slowly and continued to do her laundry. I pretended not to care, because I couldn't stand going near her and seeing her too terrified of me, the father of her baby, the person she had a one-night stand with three years ago and was so interested in that she agreed to go to his house even though she didn't even know his name; so I left her alone with her thoughts.

I leaned against another machine a few meters away from hers; I stood, scratching the stubble on my chin, thinking of how I hadn't shaved in a few days; not since I learned the photograph of Emma had been taken when we were out in the town.

It seemed like so long ago, when it really wasn't; everything since then had happened so fast that Nina leaving town only seemed like a few hours ago.

I was watching her fold a shirt when a teenage girl approached me with a younger boy; he could have been her boyfriend or her brother, but I didn't care enough to ask. She asked for a picture and an autograph, which I gave gratefully; but I enjoyed the hug she asked for the most. When she pulled away and thanked me, I grinned, but I didn't deny I noticed that Nina was staring at me when I wasn't looking at her.

When she finished, I walked over to her.

I felt the need to steer her out, but I didn't know why; in the last four months, whenever I had met Nina in person, I had always placed my hand on her back, to steer her into or out of wherever we were. It was a strange habit of mine; it was almost like I didn't want her to escape, to leave, for her to go anywhere when I had just found her again.

I decided, however, at this moment and time, it wasn't such a good idea. Nina was mad, she was afraid, confused, and upset. I felt like if I steered her out of the laundromat, she'd yell at me that she wasn't a dog and she knew where the door was.

So I walked next to her all the way to the car out front. I presumed KT had walked to the frozen yogurt place, since she had no other way of transportation; the frozen yogurt place wasn't far from the laundromat, according to KT, so it wasn't a big surprise.

I didn't open the door for Nina. Instead, I watched her bend over and sit down, making sure to tighten the seat belt before sighing and sitting up straight. I got in straight after, not saying a word to the person sitting next to me.

Silence ensued once more.

It wasn't awkward in the least, but I couldn't explain it properly; the silence was apprehensive, hesitant, like not seeing someone for quite some time; you're not sure it's them, but you keep moving forward anyway, just to see if their features are the same, if they have the same color eyes or are wearing the same smile you remember them by.

Nina was staring at the window; there wasn't much to stare at on the side roads, just trees and bushes, the red and orange leaves resting on the ground, their final resting place. But somehow, she found it more interesting than talking to me. I felt the need to start a conversation with her, to ask her if we could start today over and pretend like we never saw each other at that laundromat.

If she would only look away from the window, maybe I could've, but she seemed more interested in the scenery than by the person next to her. When I stopped the car at a spotlight and the road to my right read 'Flaxwood Drive', I blurted out, "Oh, crap" before my mouth could stop me.

"What's wrong?" Nina asked, tearing her gaze away from the trees for once.

"KT, I..." I muttered, pointing to the road. To my right stood the frozen yogurt shop, and inside, KT was waiting for me. My mouth was now failing me; I wanted to tell Nina something, anything, to say that everything in these past two weeks had been a mistake, but I couldn't find the words.

"Oh," she murmured.

"Yeah," I responded, the only word I could manage.

The silence between us turned from a hesitant silence to an awkward one, finally. She turned away, her eyes wide and disbelieving, disbelieving in the fact that she had witnessed a sixteen-year-old girl tell Nina, a seventeen-year-old mother, that she hadn't had sex with me three years ago, and this new girl had. The light turned green, and I stomped on the gas pedal, thinking that where Nina was from, they drove on the other side of the road.

At first, when I first reunited with her back in August, I still thought of her as a new resident of Liverpool. I had lived here all my life, and to see an American was a weird experience; I knew, when I first met her in 2009, that she was new. At that time, she had lived here for two years — Nina moved to Liverpool when she was 13, in 2007, and now it was 2012; she had been here for 5 years — but somehow, I still felt like she was Nina, that girl I met in the coffee shop, the American, the outcast in Liverpool.

I caressed the steering wheel in an attempt to keep my hands busy, instead of moving them around. My eyes moved in any other place than in Nina's direction; the road, the mirror, the window.

"Well, go and get her," Nina commanded, her voice as soft and hesitant as our first silence.

"But, you—" I attempted to try to distract her, to convince her that getting Nina someplace was more important, but Nina wasn't taking any of my bullshit.

"Can wait."

Silence.

"Are you sure?"

"Positive."

"Okay." I took in a deep breath, turning the steering wheel in the direction opposite of the frozen yogurt place. I didn't know myself where I was going, but the nearest place where Nina could stay was an Applebees on the corner, which is where I turned.

I drove up to the entrance and stopped the car; before I could get out and help her, Nina opened the door by herself and walked onto the pavement. I watched her walk to the doors, but before she opened them, she turned around and jogged back to my car. "What — um, what do I do?"

"Uh — go and ask for a table," I suggested, finally meeting Nina's gaze; but as soon as I looked into her eyes, she turned away, maybe in embarrassment, maybe in anger, I'd never know. "Say the other person who's coming will be a little bit late."

I fumbled around in my pocket for some change; it took me a little bit to reach it, since the seatbelt was digging into my hands. I saw Nina hold out her hands in protest without saying a word, but I finally reached some coins and dropped them into her unwilling palms. "Here. Buy a drink while you wait on me."

She smiled, and just a for a moment, I did too; but as soon as her smile came, it vanished. "Thanks."

She walked away without another word. I waited until the front door of the Applebees closed before I drove away, exhaling slowly as the car droned along the road silently. I turned the radio on, but I wasn't really listening; I was pretty sure "Every Rose Has Its Thorns" and "What Makes You Beautiful" came on, but I ignored them, as it only took about five minutes to finally re-arrive at the frozen yogurt shop.

When I pulled up, I saw KT immediately. She was sitting alone, staring into her vanilla frozen yogurt, as if she could see the future in it.

I couldn't deny the guilt I felt, seeing how lonely she was; I wasn't sure how long she had been waiting for, but I took extra time to close the door of my car, stalling when I was putting the keys back in my pocket; I walked in through the door rather slowly, hearing the bells above the door jingle as I walked in.

I stopped for a moment when my phone buzzed; it was Aaron, calling me to the studio to do the final checks on the album that was scheduled to release in a few weeks. I had anticipated the release of my album for a long time now, but Nina sending me the photograph of Emma back in August had stalled me quite a bit. The album, titled "Not a Heartbreaker" was originally supposed to be released last month, in October, but things got in the way.

I sat next to KT in the booth she was sitting in, sliding in right next to her. "Hey," I greeted, grinning at her.

She glanced up from her frozen yogurt cup, and I could honestly say that I was anticipating a reaction better than the one she had given me. KT sighed impatiently, making me know I was much too late. "Hey," she responded, smiling only a little bit, trying to look mad at the same time.

I didn't realize I was drumming my fingers on the table until she asked me, rather politely, to please stop. I stopped doing that at once, and suddenly, the area seemed eerily quiet without my constant tapping. "Sorry about all that before, I — I don't even really know what happened back there. But...could we just put all that behind us and start the day over?"

"Fabian," she scolded, but she didn't sound mad at all. "I'm not mad," she confirmed, "so please don't think I am. But after all that just happened, I just have one question: Are you a father or not?"

I breathed, meeting her gaze and seeing her beautiful dark brown eyes; her eyes, so full of wisdom. "I am," I told her, trying not to sound ashamed. I'd hate myself all that much more if I sounded the least bit ashamed, the least bit embarrassed or uncomfortable. I had known I was a father since the 7th day of August, and had been dealing with that since then; I'd come to terms with that.

KT paused; in that silence, she started drumming her fingers on the table like I had, but realizing that she had become a hypocrite, she stopped at once. "Tell me about the kid," she said, both a question and a statement at the same time.

I smiled; for one having a subject I could talk about. While I still barely knew about my daughter, as I didn't live with her, I loved talking about her. If I could, if it was accepted in society, if I could say it without having Nina be judged by the entire world, I'd talk about my child on every interview, talk show, or concert I could.

"Her name is Emma," I told KT, my smile never fading. "She turned 2 in May...light-brown hair, pale-blue eyes, egg-shaped head and this tiny little nose — god, her nose is like minuscule — but she's already so beautiful, I can't wait to see what she's going to look like when she's older — she likes horses and music, especially my music, as she had been a baby when Nina started listening to me. Nina also raised Emma on oatmeal, so she likes that...she likes toy cars and dolls, but she doesn't speak very often...I guess I should get her to talk more...

"But, at first, it was hard to take in. After I reunited with Nina, the first time I had seen her in three years after our one-night stand in August of 2009, Mick, Jerome, Alfie, and I were driving home, and I denied having anything to do with Emma. I think the exact words out of my mouth were, 'I refuse to have anything to do with this. I can't. It's probably just a trick to meet up with her again and the little girl in the photograph is her niece or something', but, now, I've considered telling the whole world that Emma Grace Martin is my daughter. I love her more than anything in the world, I really do."

I knew it must have been a lot for her to take in, especially after having so little time to adjust. However, KT, always the optimist, smiled. And it wasn't guilty or jealous or anything; it was a real, genuine smile. "That's great, Fabian. Really. But you need to ask yourself: who would you most regret losing, the mother of your child, or me, who you've known for five days?"

I sniffed. Paused. Thought about it for a second, and then realized that was stupid and I should know the answer right away.

"Be honest, Fabian," KT interrupted me, just as I was getting ready to talk, to say the honest truth. She seemed almost amused as she spoke to me. "I'm tough. I'm a big girl, I can handle the truth."

I stared at KT for longer than I probably ever had in the business week I had known her; I was soaking in all her features, her glorious, amazing, remarkable features. And then, finally, I answered, "Nina."

In KT's smile, I saw happiness and sadness, confusion and understanding. "Well, Fabes," she started, repeating the nickname that had been given to me by my sisters that had gone viral, the nickname that I despised with every fiber of my being. "We had a good run for five days," she joked, tearing out a napkin from the holder on the table. From first glance, I thought she was going to wipe a tear away; thinking that I had made her cry, I wanted to run out screaming. Maybe my album title was a lie; maybe I was a heartbreaker.

However, I was proven wrong when she wrote seven numbers and handed me the napkin. "Here's my number. Call me sometime. Bye, Fabian," was her final words, inserting the folded napkin into my palm and kissing my cheek.

I watched her as she walked out of the shop, out of my life forever. I felt the sudden urge to run out to her, to say that I wanted her more than Nina, but something made me stay seated.

/o~~~o/

By the time I mustered up the strength to get up out of my seat, get into my car, and drive back to the Applebees, I must have left Nina sitting there alone for a good half hour.

I got lost in my thoughts on the way back to the restaurant, wanting to go back to KT, but the same ominous feeling buckling me back into place, like an invisible conscious telling me to do the right thing. However, I knew that the 'right thing' was not the same thing as happiness.

KT made me happier than Nina, that was for sure. That was one thing I was absolutely positive of. I knew that made me sound like an asshole, but it was true; there was no drama when I was with KT. She wasn't yelling at me because I went out in public with our daughter and accidentally let Emma get into a photograph of us together. KT wasn't making me call her a mistake when I got angry; for one thing, KT didn't make me angry in the first place.

Physically getting out of the car took much more energy than when I was getting out to see KT; the ominous feeling lingered with me, so I didn't really want to get up and walk into the restaurant to meet Nina, wherever she was sitting. It took me a little bit, but I eventually forced myself to stop pretending to look for something underneath the car mats and walked inside the Applebees.

The first word said to me when I walked up to the counter was, "Oh my God, you're Fabian Rutter."

The woman behind the counter looked about my age; but I learned not to judge based on how old they looked, because I thought KT was nineteen, and she turned out to be sixteen. "Yeah," I told her, a bit distracted, looking around the building for Nina. "That's me."

I ignored her for only a little bit, and after I decided that Nina was sitting out-of-sight, I looked the woman, wearing a name tag reading Melani :), in the eyes, and said, "Um, I was supposed to meet someone here. She had brown hair and green eyes, much smaller than me, curly hair, American accent?"

Melani pointed to me in realization and said, "That girl? Oh, yeah..." She glanced around the seating area and the booths, but then looked down at the seating chart. "Could you tell me her name?"

"Nina," I suggested. Melani pointed to the area to my left and instructed me to walk all the way down. I thanked her, but not before she poilitely asked me for an autograph, supposedly for her neice; but I didn't care if it was for her or her niece in the first place. I walked all the way down the hallway, ignoring the stares from strangers, my heart pounding in my ears.

I couldn't explain why I was scared, but I was. I was terrified of going back and seeing Nina, sitting all alone, stirring the straw around her drink, her hand on her chin, waiting for me. There was a strange sense of anticipation in the air as well, settling alongside the fear, but all I could think about was how scared I was to approach her, to say that I picked her over KT, to sit her down and ask her what was coming next in our relationship.

However, if I knew what I was walking into, I would've never sat down next to her. Instead, I would've walked away and avoided a fight, avoided all that pain, avoided the month that we ignored each other and hated each other and realized things that had never been true in the first place, only appearing out of anger.

/o~~~o/

When I finally walked to the end of the hall, I was going to sit right across from Nina, say, "Hi," and figured she'd laugh and know I was greeting her the same way she had greeted me when we met in 2009.

I liked that plan. I actually liked it a lot, but the plans had crashed and burned when I turned the corner, expecting to see Nina — which I did see, only to see she wasn't sitting alone. No, apparently, in the forty minutes I had left her waiting, someone different had come to take my place.

I only glanced the guy that was sitting across from my Nina once, but at the simple glance I never wanted to push someone out of a window more. While the guy couldn't have been less interested in her, Nina seemed invested. I felt jealous, seeing her so happy, laughing so often at the jokes the guy was telling her. Her smile seemed so real, so genuine, a smile that she never gave when she was around me...

I cleared my throat when I approached the two of them; they didn't seem to notice me at first, but at the sound, Nina turned around and blinked as the realization hit her. She leaned over and whispered something to the person sitting across from her; he glared at me for a moment, then got up out of his seat and walked away.

Nina didn't look the least bit happy when I sat down across from her with a smile on my face.

"What's wrong?" I asked her, once she had turned away from me and rolled her eyes. I rolled mine, also, and continued my speech when Nina refused to speak. "Who was that guy that was sitting here a minute ago?"

"Dylan," Nina answered immediately, sneering at me. As angry as she must have been, this wasn't Nina. I knew that much. "And he's very nice, so don't try to pull any 'he's probably an asshole in disguise' bullcrap on me, because if anyone's an asshole, it's you. You said you'd be back in a few minutes, but it's been forty! Dylan was comforting me when I figured you'd just abandoned me and got really upset."

I exhaled slowly, drumming my fingers on the table once again. "Look, I'm sorry for taking so long. But I had just let go of KT, and I realized I had to come back here, and I got nervous...and that sound really lame but it's true." When I saw that she wasn't taking it lightly, I diverted my gaze and raised my hand when the waiter walked by.

I ordered a Coke, but Nina didn't order anything, since she had already drank a lemonade. I cleared my thoughts as I took a sip, glancing at Nina from the corner of my eye; her hands were folded in her lap, and I could see it in her gaze that she was trying to do anything but look at me. I might not have enjoyed eye contact, but from four months of knowing her, I knew Nina did.

"You know," Nina started, sneering, "I guess I should have known you'd be a little late. I mean, I am a mistake, right?"

I groaned and rolled my eyes, staring at the ceiling; I wanted to do some bad things at that moment, but I pushed them to the side. Just when I thought I could talk to Nina calmly and without a fight, as soon as I locked eyes with her again, all that anger came rushing back. The anger about before, the anger about now, and the anger about four months ago, when she ruined my life by sending me the photograph of Emma.

"Come to the bathroom with me," I growled, pushing my seat back and starting to walk away; but when I looked back, she was still sitting at the table. At that moment, I just wanted to scream, to yell to the whole entire restaurant that Nina Martin was an annoying, selfish, irritating, frustrating, nasty, and malicious person, that she didn't deserve to have any friends because she was such a horrible person.

I sighed, and I knew my anger was once again getting the better of me, but when I saw Nina, glaring at me, just sitting there, I didn't see any other way. I walked back to the table and gripped her wrist tightly, dragging her to the bathroom, ignoring her protests; her shrill complaints and oppositions as my anger got the best of me once again. Nina's protests weren't loud; at least, not loud enough to attract a crowd. I'm sure some people looked our way when she shrieked, "I'M NOT A DOG, FABIAN! GET YOUR HANDS OFF OF ME!" But no one blinked an eye or cared enough to intervene.

I locked the door once we had stepped foot in the one-stall bathroom, as to make sure no one interrupted our fight. I knew we were going to fight, I could feel it, but there was nothing I could do to stop it. My anger was, once again, getting the better of me. "You are never to see another boy again," I growled, placing one arm on the side of her head. "I forbid it."

She snorted, making me want to wring her neck. The problem with Nina was that she made me so mad; she boiled my blood more than anyone else. "You forbid it?" she laughed, amused as ever. She continued laughing for a bit and then, suddenly, her expression turned serious and she faced me with a glare just as intense as mine before. "You can't tell me what I can and cannot do, Fabian," she sneered. "I'm my own person. You don't control me."

"Well, I very well should," I muttered, mostly to myself.

"Maybe you shouldn't, because according to you, I'm just a mistake."

"Don't bring that up again!" I groaned, leaning my head back in exasperation. I removed my hand from the wall beside Nina's head, pacing the small bathroom in which we were enclosed in. "God damn it, Nina. Will you ever let that go? Will you hold that against me for the rest of my life?"

"You called me a mistake," she growled, unmoving from her spot against the wall. The fear I saw in her eyes when I dragged her by the wrist, and when I turned her around in the laundromat was long gone, replaced by anger; I could see it in her eyes she wanted to wring my neck just as much as I wanted to do to her. "Don't try to deny it."

She sucked in a deep breath of air before continuing with, "I heard it with my own ears. I listened to you scream to your sisters about how you regretted ever talking to me in the coffee shop in the first place, how, if you had the chance to go back in time, you wouldn't even go to get coffee at all. And I know you, you wanted me to feel pain. You threatened to make my life miserable because I was crying and you didn't know what to do, so you got angry and yelled at me."

"You also want this to come as a shock to me, but it doesn't. I always knew I was a mistake! How couldn't I be, when the person I had sex with didn't even tell me his name?"

"YOU DIDN'T ASK!" I retaliated, the first real scream that had come out of my mouth since I saw her sitting with Dylan, the person whom I knew nothing about. My blood was curling in fury for her ignorance.

Nina, however, stayed silent with her arms crossed; we seemed to be mocking each other. "I didn't mean to call you a mistake!" I attempted to persuade her, but Nina wasn't taking any of my bullshit today.

"Really?" she questioned, her green eyes scanning my face for any sign I was telling the truth. Which, in all honesty, I wasn't, and Nina knew that. "I know you. I know you wouldn't say something if you didn't mean it."

"...Okay. maybe I did," I tried to make my voice lower, as not to attract a crowd. "I don't know. I was angry, because you were rambling on about how bad of a person I was, and how I'd never love you, blah, blah blah..." At my statement, Nina seemed to retract a little bit, like her response was coming back to bite her in the ass.

"Nina, this whole shenanigan, our one-night stand back in 2009, is just as much as your fault as it is mine," I spoke slowly. "I asked you to come with me out of the coffee shop, and you agreed. I started to unhook your bra strap, you didn't protest. I said, I'll do it if you want to do it, and you said, 'I WANT TO DO IT'!"

She retracted even more, slinking away towards the door. Before she reached the knob, however, I stood in front, blocking her path out. The fear in her eyes returned, and something in those green pupils, full of terror, stirred something in me (that wouldn't last for long, though).

"Look...I was angry." I told her.

"That's no excuse. All throughout my pregnancy, I knew I was a mistake," Nina started again, like she hadn't listened to my speech at all. I stood in front of her, my arms crossed, just waiting for her genius explanation. She delivered, just as expected. And the birth? You should've seen the way the doctors looked at me when I told them I didn't know who the father was. They looked at me like I was something that belonged in a dumpster, something that only existed at the end of someone's list. They asked me if I knew was raped, and when I had to say no...maybe that's why I'm so bitter today," she exclaimed, finally looking away from me.

"If you knew you were a mistake, then why are you acting like this?!" I responded, unsure as to how she was truly acting. I refused to go on another guilt trip, and Nina wasn't about to send me down Memory Lane. "Why are you so upset about this ? Because, if I'm being completely, 100% honest, yes, Nina, you were a mistake." I spat at her.

I didn't stop to be remorseful at her reaction, how she turned away so I wouldn't see her get emotional. My anger, my resentment, had come up once again. I didn't want to be angry, I really didn't, but Nina kept giving me 101 reasons to be. "I met you when I was sixteen. I had gone through puberty like two years ago." Nina rolled her eyes at my statement, knowing I was just making another excuse. "My hormones were raging wild. You sat down next to me, I made a mistake by talking to you and asking you to come with me, back to my house. I knew what I was doing, I'm not dumb! While I liked you at the time...I'm older now. I'm smarter. I'm famous now."

I worked my way closer to her, pinning her against the wall; I could see the tears forming in her eyes now. I placed one arm on the side of her head, just like I did before, just without all the wrath overcoming me. "I'm not an idiot," I breathed, "I know how the world works. And yes, I'd take it all back if I could. But..."

"But what?" she retorted, her anger rising as well.

"I...I don't know."

"You never know anything!"

"Because I'm not sure of anything! I didn't want to be a father!"

"And I didn't want to get pregnant! I didn't want the entire school to turn their backs on me! I didn't want to have to give up my entire academic career because some asshole got me pregnant, but it happened!"

She had good reasoning, but I was too ignorant at the time to see it. I never once stopped to think how much pain she must have been in.

Silence ensued, once again, between us. I turned away from her, my arm still on one side of her face, and Nina was too afraid to slink away from me. My anger, at the moment, faded when I turned back to her; she wasn't crying, like I was expecting her too. Instead, she looked me in the eye as soon as I turned around to face her. "I...I just don't understand how you can talk to me about this casually. I mean, this is such a big deal, as we're making it a big deal, but..."

"It was three years ago, Fabian. I've come to terms with it. I've shed my tears. I've lived with the fact that you never tried to find me."

All of the anger came rushing back in colors. "YOU never tried to find ME."

"How could I, when you didn't even tell me your name?"

"Once again, YOU. DIDN'T. ASK. STOP trying to make me look like a bad person, because I'M NOT!" I cried, throwing my arms around uselessly. I was famous, I was known worldwide, and I knew media could take something innocent and turn it into something I'm not, but I knew who I was. And I wasn't a bad person. I wasn't the antagonist in a novel. "I...I don't see how you're taking this and turning it into me calling you a mistake repeatedly."

For the first minute, she waved her arms around uselessly, just like I had done, searching for words in a time of panic. "BECAUSE I AM!" she finally settled on, screaming the words out of her mouth. "I know I am...a mistake is all I am...it's all I'll ever be."

I turned back around to face her once again; in the moment I looked at her, all I could see was the girl I had met in the coffee shop three years ago, and maybe that was my problem. I was refusing to admit that Nina had changed; she was practically a different person. I supposed pregnancy at fifteen could do that to you, even if it was partially my fault.

Did I really think of her as a mistake?

Nina was right about the part that I never said something if I didn't mean it; I had learned what to say and what not to say in public, just in case I was being followed. But in private, with only my sisters could hear me...could I have admitted the truth, could it have been sitting with me all this time and I just hadn't realized it yet?

"Nina," I breathed her name, which caught her attention. "When I met you in 2009, I thought you were the most amazing, astounding, wonderful girl I'd ever known. And in the past 3 years, I had yet to meet someone I liked, or was more interested in, than you. And then, when I reunited with you, that feeling stayed."

She smiled at my words, and it made me feel guilty to know what was coming next in my speech. The truth was being revealed. "I...I thought I was in love with you. You were just as amazing as the night I first met you, if not more. You were more mature, older, and much more beautiful. And...and as we grew closer, I realized you were what I needed. Nina, you were what I needed, but...you were not what I wanted."

As the tear that was forming in her eye finally fell down her cheek, I knew I was speaking the truth, even if the truth hurt like a bitch. "Happiness, to me, is more important than what you supposedly 'need'," I reasoned with her; as she soaked the words in, I could see the realization hitting her.

"So...I don't...make you happy?" she asked, quiet as a mouse.

"No," was my final answer; Nina, already crying, turned away once more, but I didn't know if she turned away to sob or to collect her thoughts. As we weren't making eye contact, I figured that was the best time to continue. "Not as much as KT made me. With you...it's hard. You have the understand. I'm not just a name; I'm more than a famous face. I'm a person, I have feelings! And...you...are not a good person."

"I thought you weren't supposed to change who you were for anyone," Nina told me, not a question, but not a statement, either. She wouldn't turn around, wouldn't let me see her face.

"But what if you're a bad person?"

"I don't want to be a bad person," she choked, still facing the wall instead of the person she was talking to.

Silence once again. I had no idea how to continue except to watch her, to watch her just stand with her back to me, her curly light-brown hair falling on her back, because she never wore it up in a ponytail. I decided to take a chance and place my hand on her shoulder; when she didn't show any reaction to that, I asked out loud, "What's wrong?"

"What's wrong?!" Nina exclaimed, finally turning around to face me once more. "How would you feel if you had to leave town because the taunting was so terrible, only to come back to see the father of your child looking real cozy with another girl, and then only to find out he slept with her?!"

I looked down at the ground, away from Nina's piercing gaze. I could hear her breathing hard from where she was standing, trying to catch her breath and sort through her thoughts.

"You'll never imagine what I was thinking when KT joked that she was pregnant," Nina choked back again. My anger and my sadness were overruling me, so I wanted to both strangle her and hug her at the same time. I had no idea what to think. "It broke my heart.

"The shocking part, though, is that I wasn't mad at her — I was mad at you," she sneered. I finally looked up, to see a few tears on her cheeks, but her eyes were unforgiving. "I wanted to scream at you for not learning from the past four months, and for having sleeping with another girl as your response to me screaming at you over the phone.

"I was jealous..." she admitted, "I didn't want you to get over me so quickly. And that sounds so incredibly selfish, but it was true. I was so mad at both of you, and now especially KT; she stole the only person I could fall back on—"

"What, you can't fall back on Eddie or Mara?"

"Are either of them the father? No." I lifted my head to see her again, and she looked as mad as ever. She was making me mad, as well, with how upset she was. I didn't want her to be upset. I didn't want to be upset now.

"I didn't meet Eddie at that coffee shop, I met you. My heart broke a little more everyday while I was pregnant, until I finally saw your face over that computer screen, and suddenly I didn't feel like...I didn't feel empty anymore." she explained, breaking my heart a little more. My emotions were doing a gymnastics routine.

"I didn't know where you were, but I was with you somehow. And then, just before in those forty minutes I was waiting..." she hicced, "I realized that KT had stolen that all from me. All of those old feelings returned. I was alone again, as you were taken by someone else."

I just realized that everything, everything since August, had been tearing us apart. I never wanted to be half of a star-crossed lovers pair, but I supposed we were now Romeo & Juliet; destined by the stars to keep us apart.

"So, now you're mad at KT instead?!" I exploded, confused as to why she was bouncing around.

"Oh, no, I'm not mad at her," she stated calmly.

"Make up your damn mind! What do you feel?" I asked her, my voice gradually getting louder and louder like before, except now, it didn't dim down.

"I don't want to be in pain anymore," she answered, silencing me once again.

She was close to crying now, and I didn't know what to feel about that. "Oh, you don't want to be in pain anymore?!" I started to yell, unaware of the ruckus I was causing. "What about me? I'm NINETEEN, I'm FAMOUS, and I have a CHILD! Not just the neighborhood could hate me if this gets out, the whole WORLD could."

"And what about me?!" Nina screamed back, equally as loud. "I was the one that was pregnant, I had the whole school turn their backs on me! I can't walk down the street holding the hand of my own daughter without being judged. And what sucks even more, is that you, the father of my child's family wants nothing to do with me or Emma!"

I groaned, turning away, thinking of a witty and smart comeback; I always knew this was going to come up. Nina had never once talked to me about it before, so I guess she figured now was the best time to speak of it. "It's not a big deal," I whispered, realizing that my tone of voice had been wavering for minutes now. If I didn't speak in one tone continually, my voice would be hoarse for the rest of the week.

"Oh, it's not a big deal?! Well, I think it is! I've been in contact with you for FOUR MONTHS now, and your family hasn't even warmed up to me!" she defended herself this time, pointing to her chest while the waterworks began. "And to know that they hate me...and wish I was gone...Emma's aunts wish she wasn't alive...and her only uncle died in the same car crash my parents did, throwing his body over little 11-year-old me."

"What?" My eyes crinkled and my eyebrows furrowed in confusion; now Nina was diverting the conversation again. "You...you never told me about that...?" I was a bit afraid to be challenging her, now that she was crying, and now that she had just admitted something she probably wouldn't admit if we weren't in a fight.

"Yeah, I didn't tell you that, did I?" she breathed heavily. "Well, I didn't tell you a lot of things. You think you know me, but you don't."

I rolled my eyes, silently thinking Oh hon I do, but Nina wasn't finished talking. "And your parents don't know me, either," she continued. "Who are they to judge? And why does your damn father hate me so much?!" She choked up again, and I watched a few tears fall down her face; I could tell she had no idea what to do.

"I don't deserve to be hated," she whispered, "I'm not a bad person, Fabian! I try as hard as I can! My grades are falling, I'm seventeen, I have a two-year-old child, an eighty-six-year-old grandmother who I have to keep alive, and I'm expected to deal with Emma's grandparents hating her? I can't do that, Fabian. I just can't."

She faced me without turning away this time; I saw the tears, I saw how upset she was and that she needed someone to assure her that everything that had happened since August wasn't her fault. However, in the silence that once again issued between us, I had time to think. I thought about how Nina was never emotional about the two photographs that were taken, never showed any sign of guilt of anxiety.

"You think the photographs are my fault, don't you?" I wondered aloud, bringing her attention back to me. "Wow. I can't believe you!" Nina seemed just as confused as I was before and she mouthed, "What?" through her tears, but I pronounced, "This was never my fault."

She remained silent as I said, "You invited me to the park, you let Emma out of your sights, and you started to scream at me of how horrible of a parent I was, you caused a scene, and you forced someone to take out their camera phone and snap a picture of me comforting you with our daughter in my arms. I hope you realize that everything that everything that happened since then: you leaving town, me meeting KT, and us screaming at each other in the bathroom before...this is all your fault.

I laughed without humor. "It's actually funny. You sent me a photograph of Emma and it started our relationship, and now two photographs of the same girl are tearing us apart. I mean...I'm done fighting. I've beaten myself up hundreds of times for missing the birth, first steps, etc...and I'm done. I am done, Nina."

A few more tears fell, and once again, the anger was eating me alive. Nina shook her head in disbelief for a moment, sniffling before she yelled, "I trusted you! I left Emma at my house for you to spend time with her, because you had been asking me for months for a weekend alone with her!"

I cringed, completely forgetting about my daughter. I realized that no, everything that had happened since August wasn't Nina's fault; it was Emma's. True, she had no say over being born, but she was tearing Nina and I apart minute by minute. With every breath she took, she was ruining my career and Nina's academics.

"And now..." Nina breathed, sending me on another trip down Memory Lane, "you're telling me that if you could, you'd go back in time and throw out the photograph of her, tell Jerome and Mick that you had never met someone named Nina; you'd deny me once again." I remembered how, back in late October, when the first photograph of us at the park was released to the world, Aaron had me go on a talk show to deny Nina, to say she was just a friend. It was the hardest thing I'd had to do at the time, but now, she spoke the truth. If I could, I'd go back in time and never meet Emma or Nina at all.

"And yes, I admit that the first photograph, taken of Emma at the park, was completely my fault, but the second photograph, honey, was all you," she scoffed. "You knew you were famous, you know there are cruel people out there that just invade your space without your consent. But you took that chance, and that chance bit you in the ass."

I sighed as I looked away, realizing how done I was with all of this. I was sick of the fighting between us. Right now, all I wanted was to go back to the start, to be sitting at that table, across from Nina. I wanted to go back to when the days were simpler, when I didn't know I had a child; when I was performing concerts across Liverpool, and when Nina was feeding an infant. Before the fighting, before the crying, before everything.

I wanted to go back to the start, but Nina wasn't letting me interrupt. And frankly, I wasn't in the mood to speak up at the moment.

"And don't say that I don't understand your reasons for denying me in front of the entire world, because I do. I'm not an idiot, either," she told me, as if I didn't know already. A few tears of my own fell, tears of exhaustion and annoyance. Now two of us were crying, two of us were breaking each others hearts. I asked her how she wasn't in a rage about this, because I knew if I was in her position, I wouldn't have taken the subject of the photographs so lightly.

"Why am I not in a rage about this?" Nina repeated my question. "Because, like I said, I'm not an idiot. I knew this was coming. And I should've seen this coming, too. And yes, I am mad about the fact that you exposed my two-year-old's life for anyone and everyone to see, but—"

"Nina, she's my daughter too."

"Really?" she asked incredulously, laughing. "I don't see your name on the birth certificate. And I don't see you offering to write it in, either. I mean, you didn't even need to take a paternity test back in August, because you knew you were the father of that child. But you haven't acted like much of a parent in these four months, either."

And that was when I knew I was done. I couldn't take any more of Nina's ignorance. "I'm done with the screaming, the guilt, the fighting," I told her, bringing the subject up out of nowhere, "How you ALWAYS try to make me out as the bad guy . . . I am finished." I told her, jeering. I could feel my body trembling in anger.

"Yeah, and what are you going to do about it?" she taunted, however upset she might have been.

I was so tempted to just hit her at the moment; she didn't know what she was saying. She thought I was weak, she thought I loved her too much to do anything to hurt her. "I don't know..." I muttered, balling my fist, ready to throw the first punch at her face. "I don't know!" I screamed, throwing; but instead of hitting her face, I hit the wall, and the pain followed as well.

"Fuck!" I cursed, cradling my first in my other hand, the hand that I didn't use to punch the wall. I jumped around the room a little bit, somehow trying to alleviate the pain by moving my body around. I was mumbling incoherent words, loud enough that I couldn't hear Nina sobbing right behind me. I was jumping around too much to know that she was standing with her chest against the wall, turned away from so I couldn't see her and I couldn't hurt her.

I brought the subject of Emma back up to attention, not paying attention to Nina who was still cowering behind the wall by saying, "You know...I really can't stand Emma right now. She's tearing us apart. I DON'T DESERVE THIS. I deserve to be happy! This girl...that thing...does not make me happy. The Martin family doesn't make me happy in the least," I spat at her, finally bringing her around to see her bloodshot eyes, the tear-stained cheeks.

"I don't care what you say," she spoke shakily, choking back the tears, sniffling every few seconds. "YOU'RE A FATHER, FABIAN!" She screamed out loud, the first really loud thing she had said since I dragged her in here. "The least you could do is — hic — act like one."

"I'M TRYING TO DO THAT!"

"NO YOU'RE NOT! AND THAT'S THE PROBLEM WITH YOU! All you care about is your career. Emma could die in a car accident next week, but if it conflicted with your concert, you'd put it OFF!"

"ARE YOU FAMOUS? DO YOU HAVE TO WATCH WHAT YOU SAY SO THE ENTIRE WORLD DOESN'T HATE YOU?"

"I MIGHT AS WELL HAVE, SINCE YOU JUST EXPOSED MY LIFE TO THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE! I LEFT TOWN, FABIAN, BECAUSE PEOPLE WERE SENDING ME DEATH THREATS!"

"THAT IS NOT MY FAULT!"

"NOT YOUR FAULT? YOU JUST SAID YOU WOULD DENY YOUR OWN DAUGHTER AGAIN IF YOU HAD TO!"

"WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING?!"

"IT HAS EVERYTHING TO DO WITH EVERYTHING, FABIAN, GOD DAMN IT—"

\

Our argument would continue for much longer, alerting others, until finally two employees broke us apart and threw us out of the building. We both took off in different directions.

\