A/N: Guess what time of the year is coming soon? *slips on a santa hat* 'CAUSE THAT'S THE WAY THINGS HAPPEN ON THE POLAR EXPRESS. (I saw that movie in 2004, when I was in kindergarten, and it's remained MY Christmas movie throughout the years. 'Hot Chocolate' is my jam.)
I'm laughing so hard because I love One Direction so much and one of my all-time favorite songs by them is Diana and Brad Kavanagh coVERED IT AND THAT SONG EXPLAINS THIS STORY SO MUCH AND NOW IT'S LIKE FABIAN IS SINGING IT TO NINA I CANNOT (Brad is like One Direction's biggest fan watch him become the sixth member ALSO I SHIP ZARAD (ZAYN/BRAD) NOW
I AM ALSO SEEING CATCHING FIRE TODAY AND I AM SO EXCITED. #joshiferiscanon #soispeenis
/o~~~o/
Fabian
Chapter 24: "The Makeup"
In my entire singing career, never once did I think I'd ever have to dress up in a bow tie.
"Okay..." Aaron muttered under his breath as he straightened the bow tie around my neck. My manager stepped back and admired me from a distance, making a picture frame with his fingers. He had dragged me into my dressing room, so it was just me, him, a bowl of fruit punch, and a worn-out, ripped brown couch. "I like it. What about you, Fabian?"
I turned myself around to look in a mirror, and the first thing I saw was my straightened, neat dark-brown hair and pale-blue eyes, the eyes that had been passed on my daughter. I shrugged when Aaron came up next to my shoulder, his expression blatantly giving away the question You like?
I nodded, partially just to get Aaron off my case, but he'd told me, "You shine up like a new penny." And we'd shared a laugh before he'd twirled me around and looked me dead in the eye, brown-on-blue. "Alright, Fabian, Confidence Lesson time."
"I thought we were done with these!" I groaned, complaining by throwing my hands around uselessly in the air. He straightened me back as he pointed to the door.
"You see that door?" he asked and I nodded again, peeved off that Aaron was putting me through another Confidence Lesson. He hadn't given me one since October 21st, and I knew that day because it was the day I first met Nina's friends and — oh, yeah — it was the last Confidence Lesson I'd had until now. "That door has a star with your name on it on the other side. And it's well deserved, old sport. You've worked hard for this day. You've earned that star, and you've earned all those people out there who came to see you on such a cold day." Aaron shivered, even though we were indoors, to prove a point.
It was the last day of the year: December 31st, 2012. It had been a week since Christmas, and while Nina and I had talked during that time, it just didn't feel right anymore. We had mended a large part of our relationship, but something still felt off.
"Thanks," I commented sarcastically, "I needed that. Anyway, I should really get going before Matt murders me, Aaron."
"All right, all right," Aaron waved me off; I began to walk to the doors with my bowtie and dress suit, something I always wore to the beginning of my concerts and as the songs continued, I changed into something more comfortable. It was just the way Aaron had always told me to do those sort of things. "You know, Fabian," he'd called for my attention one last time with my hand on the door handle, "You deserve this. You really do. And I know I haven't been all that welcoming to Nina, because of all she's done to you in the past couple of months...
"...But all those people out there took time out of their day, took time out of their New Years Eve festivities to see you, Fabian. And you do, you really deserve this. You deserve this more than anyone in the world right now."
/o~~~o/
I was alone by the fruit punch bowl in my dressing room, the lonely red juice swooshing in my moving hand. I ignored the door opening, thinking it was just Aaron, but when I heard a feminine voice scream, "Hey!", I turned.
There was Mara Jaffray, smiling, jogging toward me with her arms open; by the time she approached me, I was enveloped in a big hug. "You'll never guess how long it took me to get past security. Aaron had to break up a fight between two of the guard things! It was cool!" She laughed, pushing me away from our embrance so she could get a good look at my face.
"Why are you here?" I asked her, grinning. Don't get me wrong, I liked Mara, I really did, but I would much rather have been seeing Nina in my dressing room right now.
"I bought a ticket like months ago!" She laughed again, somehow joyful through all of this. "The concert was a nice way to come back to England after my week in Australia, too. I bought the ticket even before Nina sent you the photograph! So, if Nina hadn't sent it at all, I'd still be here and Nina probably would, too." She shrugged her shoulders and moved away from me, pouring herself a glass of fruit punch.
A sudden vision popped into my mind: me, today, not knowing I was a father, seeing Nina on the ground of my concert, staring up at me on the stage. What would I do if I saw her there? Suzanne Collins once wrote that you don't forget the face of your last hope. In August 2009, Nina was my last hope. She was the reason why I stepped up in January 2010, four months before my child was born, and asked her a record deal.
I still remember myself trembling outside that building in early 2010 , thinking of the mysterious Nina I had met almost five months ago, the person I had a one-night stand with but hadn't seen her since.
The electric clock on the table changed from 9:26 PM to 9:27 PM. The two red dots between the numbers were blinking in the dim florescent lights of the dressing room. 2 and a half hours before 2012 ended and 2013 began.
"Where is she?" I finally spoke up. Mara turned around, some of the red juice spilling on her yellow and black sweater. "Nina, I mean."
"Oh, out with Dylan," she answered nonchalantly, wiping the juice off of her shirt. "She told me the other day they were going to spend New Years Eve together." I didn't even say anything, much less change my expression, but somehow, Mara took that the wrong way (And how can she take nothing the wrong way?), laughed, and told me, "Oh, you could at least try not to be jealous."
"What?" I asked incredulously, laughing quite unimpressively. "I'm not jealous," I defended, but Mara only guffawed and walked around me, to the table where Aaron had given me a box full of pink-frosted sugar cookies. I watched her as she completely ignored my protests against my jealousy; but, and of course people could see, I was head over heels in jealousy.
I knew Nina had good reasoning to go to a random stranger to talk to when I showed up forty minutes late back in November, only a couple of minutes before our big fight, but I still wished she could see my feelings for her, which, she did so rather impressively; back on Christmas, only six days ago, before we had fallen asleep on the couch, Mum had not-so-subtly hinted at my feelings for her, making all of my sisters laugh, confusing Nina even more that day.
I knew something was wrong when I watched Mara lick the crumbs off of her fingers; she hadn't even asked for permission to eat a cookie, much unlike the Mara I knew when I met her on October 21st. She had grown more comfortable around me, and while I was thankful for that, if Nina were here she'd ask a thousand times for permission to eat the cookie before she actually took a bite."
"Does she like him?" I spit out, making Mara face me with a confused look on her face as she stuffed another cookie into her mouth, the pink frosting staining her lips a bit.
"What?" she questioned, her bite of the sugar cookie finally down her esophagus.
"Does she like him?" I repeated as Mara took yet another bite, the cookie growing smaller and smaller each day. "Does Nina like Dylan?"
"Dylan?" she questioned. I nodded. "Oh, yeah. They've been talking since November, when you two split up."
"We were never really dating..." I murmured, holding my own pity party. It still made me a bit mad to know that I've been reunited with Nina for about five months now, and every now and then we've been this close to kissing, but I've never even attempted to press my lips to hers. Kissing was such a simple thing, it was just two lips touching, and yet it was how humans show affection. I had a large amount of affection towards Nina, and I'm sure she cared for me as well, but every time I moved closer, she moved farther away. "Wait...did Nina tell you what happened...that day?"
Mara knew what I was talking about. "Of course she did." Her voice was quieter now, now that we were on a more sensitive subject. I was too cowardly to ask her what she felt during the month and ten days we were apart, even when we were eating supper alone since every one had eaten while we were asleep. I asked Mara why she was in my dressing room now, thinking she'd be mad, since I presumed Nina told her friends about what I did to her, and she shook her head in agreement.
"Well of course I'm mad," she answered my second question, "but Nina and I have discussed that day so many times. I'd never tell her this, but after like the fourth week you two spent apart, I began to see your side of the argument when before I was a hundred percent with Nina on that one. But Fabian, you have to understand that even when you're mad, that's no excuse to hurt someone like that, especially Nina.
"You weren't there when she had to call me to pick her up from that restaurant, since she can't drive," Mara reprimanded me, "She was weeping when I walked into that bathroom It took me like fifteen years just to calm her down. She was a mess, she didn't speak to me on the ride home, and when we finally got to her house, she ran up to her bedroom and locked the door. She wasn't in school the next day, and I didn't even speak to her for another four days, even when she showed up to classes. It was horrible. And you did that to her."
I blinked, exhaled, all before trying to comprehend what I was saying in my head before I announced it out loud. "Okay. And I know what I did was wrong. But she's the mother of my child, I have to be on speaking terms with her twenty-four seven. I said in August I'd take responsibility for Emma, and if I'm not there for my daughter, than that's not honoring my promise. And besides, this Dylan guy seems like an asshole."
"He's less of an asshole than you were last month."
"He didn't look like he was paying her any attention when she was talking to him!"
"He was busy, his mum was ill!"
"I was busy the night Nina and I met too! I was writing a song!"
After our short argument, Mara scoffed and shoved another cookie down her throat before saying, her mouth full of sweets, "Aww, Fabes. It's so cute seeing you so jealous!" I didn't even try to protest this time. "You know, Fabian, you could just admit to your feelings for Nina. I'm pretty sure she shares them with you."
"I don't have feelings for Nina."
"Oh, so they went away then? It isn't a big deal now, so she can go out on a date with Dylan and you'd be perfectly fine with that?"
"Okay I love her is that such a big deal?"
Mara's mouth widened into a huge 'o' and I knew that what I had just blurted out would be used against me for the rest of my life, but — and I thank the Lord for this — there was a pounding on the door; Mara jumped in fright, somehow forgetting to interrogate me about what I just said. I assured her that everything was fine as I walked to the door with the incessant knocking, opening it with a swing as it hit the wall behind it. And there Aaron stood, sweat pouring down his forehead. "Fabian!" he smiled, almost evilly, and slapped my shoulder one last time. "I'm proud of you, m'boy. You've come a long way. Will we be on our way?"
"Our way to where?" I asked him, walking back inside the dressing room to collect my coat and throw Mara hers, from where she'd dropped it on the ground. "Back to my house, to signings, or...?"
"Whatever you'd want to do, mate," he'd argued with me, his brown hair and brown eyes not seeming to make any actual differentiation between us. While I had a darker shade of hair and a lighter shade in eye color, Aaron didn't particularly stand out in a crowd. "Just tell me. It's New Years Eve, so most of the fans have gone home to celebrate the beginning of 2013 coming soon; however, it wouldn't hurt to look outside, and so we did.
Just like I had thought, no one was here. I still remembered one of my very concerts, tons of people with cameras were here to record me, as it was back in 2010 and I was just starting out as an artist. Now, however, I didn't care that no one was waiting out front, since it was about two hours until the new year rolled and most of them probably wanted to be with their family and friends.
Mara had decided to ride with me back to where she lived; I knew her, Eddie, and Nina all lived in the same neighborhood, so I hoped I could catch her before she left to spend the rest of the evening with Dylan, who, apparently, wasn't as much of an asshole as I thought he was.
She told me to turn the corner before her road, telling me to stop at Eddie's place because he had just gotten back from his week-long fishing trip with his dad, and they were 'bound to have an entire freezer devoted to the fish they caught'. A little curious myself about the fish, I missed Mara's house and continued speeding down the road, arriving at Eddie's colonial in mere seconds.
She slammed the front door open after getting out my car, laughing as she walked in without knocking. I could hear her giggling as a masculine voice exclaimed, "Hey, what are you doing here?" very angrily while a more feminine voice yelled, "Hey, what are you doing here?" with excitement, much unlike the masculine voice.
I was a bit nervous to be going in there, uninvited and unexpected, but I figured no one would care; they'd probably be wondering how Mara had been transported from the concert to here anyway, so of course I knocked before walking in.
And, much to my surprise, Eddie nor Mara didn't answer the door. It turned out that the feminine voice had belonged to Nina, whom I thought (and Mara also thought) was out with Dylan, the not-asshole that didn't pay her any attention. Her expression quickly turned from a happy and curious one, the expression she usually wore, to a more cautious and anxious look. "Hey," she breathed, not scared, but not quite courageous either.
"Hi," I smiled, trying to turn a situation away from getting awkward. "What's up? I drove Mara home from the concert, if you were wondering. She said you were out with Dylan, but you're at Eddie's house, apparently...?"
She bounced on her heels in the doorway; as she thought her answer though, I shivered a bit in the cold air of the last day of December 2012. Nina chewed on her lip for a long second before coming to her senses and exclaiming, "Come in!" and pushing me inside the heated house of the Sweets.
"Fabian?" Eddie's very distinguishable voice asked, appearing through the small crowd of Mara and Nina. I presumed Eddie and Nina had just been hanging out, friend to friend, probably chatting about how despicable I was to do such a thing to her back last month. If she had told Mara what I did, then there was no doubt she had told Eddie as well.
Eddie and I were on good terms as of right now, but on October 21st, we really weren't. I had already scolded myself multiple times before he told me about Nina's pregnancy, in detail, since Nina herself would never tell me about it. I understood and respected her in what she wanted to say around me, since I was half of the reason for our unique predicament, but I still wanted to know what had happened.
We exchanged numbers on the day we met as well, so when I tried to call him the day after that, he didn't pick up until I called him for the 9th time and all he said was, "I'm not Nina and she's not here so please stop calling because you're interrupting my time destroying balloons," whatever that meant. I felt like he constantly despised me after what I did to his friend, and I didn't blame him, but it took me a whopping two weeks to finally get him to simply warm up to me.
"Hey," I greeted him, moving closer to Nina in which she stood next to me, across from Mara and Eddie. After he awkwardly grinned, and Mara wandered off into the kitchen looking for the fish freezer, an older man walked into the room. Eddie greeted him politely, and after I asked him who he was, he shook my hand and introduced himself as Eric Sweet.
"You're Fabian Rutter, right?" he questioned, and I nodded and chuckled. "So...you're the missing father of Nina's child...hm...yes, yes, Edison, I can see the resemblance between him and Emma. So, Fabian, would you like to spend New Years Eve with us? It's less than 3 hours until the new year, of course."
"New Years Eve!" Nina exclaimed, suddenly realizing something very important. "I was supposed to meet Dylan! Eddie, when you're free after the new year hits, could you go to my house and check on Emma and my grandmother?" She moved away from her spot next to me and gathered her stuff from the ground, like her rucksack and books and slinging the bag over her shoulder. She kissed Eric lightly on the cheek as a goodbye, before hugging both Eddie and Mara and coming to an abrupt stop when I stood in front of her.
"Go," I told her, pointing to the door simply, showing her the way out. It probably seemed rude out of context, but in, I was really letting her leave, letting her go. She left without another word, much less a hug. I watched her helplessly, wanting to run out to her, to tell her how I felt about her, how in love I was with her, how I wanted to mend everything and start fresh, kiss her and hold her hands and do everything that a stereotypical couple would do.
It wasn't even funny how in love I was with her. I don't know what I was thinking in the past month or two, but now when I looked at her, I couldn't imagine not being in love with her. She might not have been the best person, and she certainly had her flaws, but she was also brave, strong, caring, and loving. She was an amazing mother when she wasn't afraid she was messing everything up, and she certainly had enough good qualities to attract me to her back in August 2009.
I started to lick my lips, hesitating before telling her. I had been working so hard on the song; should I just tell it to a complete stranger? Would she give the idea of the song away? Judging by her curious expression, it was hard to tell. It was evident she wanted to learn more about me, but I wasn't one to just come out and tell people about me. My answer to her question was, "I don't know myself yet. I'm just trying to write a song."
Her smile stayed plastered on her face, never once faltering or giving away the impression that it was fake. Her green eyes shone like emeralds, analyzing my face. Her gaze never left mine.
"Will you show it to me once you finish it?" she inquired, only blinking once. It was like she didn't want to tear her gaze away from me. I didn't want to stop looking at her either.
"Sure," I said right after she asked her question. I wasn't sure where this conversation was going, or where this girl was headed, but I was sure it wouldn't be any good. I finally tore my gaze away from hers and started typing on my computer again.
"I'll check on her," I suggested, "Emma, I mean."
"I'll go with you," Mara contributed, walking along with me as I stepped out of Eddie's house and started to walk down the road to Nina's house, which wasn't all that far down. Eddie caught up with us after saying goodbye to his father, telling him he'd back before midnight, and sucked in a large breath when he finally caught up with us.
"Emma's still in there?" I asked the two of them; Eddie nodded, and pointed to the house thirty meters ahead of me. I walked up the steps, flashing back to the seventh day of August, the first time I had climbed these steps, not knowing what I was stepping into. I hadn't even met my daughter at that point.
I knocked on the door and waited for Nina's grandmother to answer; when he stood waiting for a long amount of time, Eddie announced that there was a key hidden in the leaves of the fake plant out front on the porch; before he could grab the key from under the leaves, however, there was a loud pounding on the other side of the door and a small, little, high voice screaming "EDD! MAR! FABE RUT! DADDY!"
"Emma," I breathed, smiling the slightest bit as Eddie fumbled around the plant, hurrying when he saw how anxious I was. "I'm back," I breathed, completely to myself, but I didn't lower my voice enough for Mara to not hear what I said. I couldn't explain what I was feeling myself; I had saw my daughter a week ago, and she even slept over my house with extra pampering from her aunts, but during the week between Christmas and now, I had realized that I didn't spend nearly enough time with my own child.
And I knew I was busy with all the concerts and interviews and album releases and shit, but this was my child. Through it all, I was a father, and I needed to make more time for my daughter.
The door swung open after Eddie announced that her grandmother must have been sleeping (and also adding that she could sleep through a tornado), and I smiled even wider and breathed, "Hey!" and letting Emma run straight into my arms, kicking her legs in delight and squealing like Amber did when she realized that I was in love with Nina.
"Hey, kid, how are you?" Eddie pinched my daughter's cheek lightly as he walked into the kitchen, scanning the fridge, even though he was just in his own house two minutes ago. Emma laughed as she craned her neck to look for her mum's best friend; Mara greeted the toddler a quick hello as well, but stayed by my side as I tilted Emma's chin to look at me. She wasn't all that heavy, but I wasn't strong, and I knew by the time she hit five years old I probably wouldn't be able to carry her anymore.
"I want carrot," she commented uselessly, making me laugh and walk with her in my arms as I followed Eddie's path into the kitchen. I told Eddie that she wanted a carrot; in response, he laughed at my comment and opened a drawer to find a carrot, handed it to my daughter who started biting softly on the side of it like an ear of corn, when Eddie guffawed at absolutely nothing.
"What was that for?" I asked him, shifting Emma up just a little bit higher.
"Oh, nothing," he laughed lightly, leaning against the counter and continuing, "I was just thinking about this time in early 2010, before Emma was even born, and Patricia and I had just started dating. She thought I was having an affair with either Mara or Nina, and my comment was "Patty, my two best friends are girls. One of them is a lesbian and the other one is pregnant." And she didn't think it was that funny but jeez, I haven't stopped laughing over that in almost three years."
"You know, it's strange," I began, "You've known Nina since she was thirteen and I—" I was interrupted by Emma trying to wriggle her way out of my arms; I didn't want to let her go, but she found her way out of my grip and dropped to the tiled floor with a thud.
Mara gasped when the sound echoed, but Emma only laughed and muttered, "Ow," before laughing some more, finding her way into the sitting room and plopping down on the carpet, playing with the white strands and slowly pulling them out one by one.
"Aw, come on, Emma, that's not fair," I know I should have been concerned for Nina's carpet, but as I got my daughter and lifted her up on my lap, the little two-year-old murmured, "I miss Mommy."
"Me too, kid," I agreed with her, flattening out Emma's light-brown hair, seeing the pale-blue, concrete-blue eyes that Emma had, of course, inherited from me. "I miss Mommy too."
"Now go get her, you big lug!" Mara exclaimed, without a warning, just pushed me out the door, blocking me from my daughter. This all happened so suddenly I barely remember it happening; as she was shutting the door, Mara had yelled, "Fabian Rutter, you're going to tell Nina that you're in love with her, do you hear me? I don't care when you do it or how you do it. I don't care if Nina and Dylan are having sex, you tell her you are in love with her, right now, or I tell her myself, do you understand me? That's enough! Now go, go and get her, before the asshole gets to her first!"
/o~~~o/
It wasn't comforting to know that over three years ago, Nina had unintentionally stolen a sweatshirt from my house. The day I brought her back to my house, the day we met, happened to be a day that the heat in my house wasn't working; that was also a reason why I left my house to go to the coffee shop in the first place, to feel warm in the hot summer air.
I had put my sweatshirt on her when we entered my house, since the heat still wasn't working and by the time I started kissing her, she had torn off the sweatshirt as our naked bodies touched for the first time (and when I say my first time, I mean in 2009, I was almost seventeen and never even kissed a girl before Nina came into my life.)
I still remembered the first time we kissed (and it was strange knowing that I had kissed Nina's lips before, and quite much and hard, too): she was trying to play my guitar, as she had developed quite a keen interest in it, when she was fumbling with her fingers. I plucked them from the strings; we made eye contact for quite a while, not saying a word, until Nina climbed back on the bed where I was sitting and at the same time, we both leaned in and kissed, our lips crashing together like two cars that missed the red light. We didn't care where we were going, but we were charging ahead, with nothing ahead of us but ocean.
After our first night together, I woke up to find the other half of the bed empty. Of course, I woke up late that morning, but Nina was gone with her bag and my sweatshirt; it seemed that she had taken it, but for whatever reason, I'd never know. I thought I'd never see her again, and I'm sure that was the same for Nina as well; that was, until she missed her monthly period and took eight pregnancy tests that all came out as positive.
Mara had told me that before I left her house that there were days when Nina would ask Mara to sleep over, since she couldn't find the courage in herself to email me and she wanted someone to talk to. Mara saw a very small, grey sweatshirt on the hook hanging on her closet, and Nina had explained that while it was small on her because she stole it three years ago, she wore it every now and then because she had grown so close to me and after one simple fight, but a very big one at that, had led to us being silent for over a month.
I hadn't done much better since I walked out on her life, either. It had been a mess of press appearances and concerts and long, exhausting nights in the studio recording songs. There were nights when I'd come home from working for hours and just wished with every fiber of my being to log onto my email and see a new message from Nina, but no message ever came.
I was walking around with one shoe during the (exactly) forty days we spent apart; part of my life, it felt, was missing. Nina had become a part of my life so quickly after I traveled to her house to reunite with her after she sent me the photograph. I'd never forget the day I met Emma and I really saw Nina; I had no prior memories of her, so I had no memories to base her off of when I met with her again.
That night in August had seemed like it was the only time I was ever going to have sex at first, but then Jessica, one of my girlfriends that I'd had from April 2010 to July 2011, had rented a hotel room one night, where he'd had our first time together; at first, when we were undressing, all I could think about was the mysterious Nina girl I'd had sex with over a year ago, but as soon as she kissed me, all of my thoughts over Nina disappeared and I was left with Jessica, instead.
However, now my relationship with Jessica was gone and Nina, an even older flame than Jessica was, was back in my life. I never once thought before August that the girl I'd met at the coffee shop when I was sixteen would come back into my life, but here I was now, driving to steal her from her date and tell her I was in love with her. The night we'd shared barely even mattered anymore; she was a completely different person, and as was I. I was lost without her when we were split up last month, but she guided me through the dark times; I still remember, back in the middle of August, during our heightened emailing times before my parents knew about Nina and Emma, she had to talk me through during an interview in front of a live studio audience; it was my first time doing that, and if Nina was the one to convince me to do it instead of Aaron, well, than that just shows how important she is in my life.
My thoughts were a tangle of messes before I arrived at the spot where Dylan was supposed to pick Nina up; I parked the car slowly, expecting to see nothing but snow on the ground, as it had lightly snowed earlier today, before I'd given the concert. The car's rudder and engine quickly shut off when I'd commanded it to do so.
Dylan was supposed to pick Nina up in front of her schools courtyard and take her to a fancy restaurant, where they were showing the British way of celebrating the new year, and they'd eat pizza at twelve in the morning and go home, feeling like they wouldn't sleep in hours from all the soda they'd drink.
However, when I was walking across the snowed lawn, the snow crunching under my boot, I saw a familiar figure sitting with her head resting in her arms, quiet as a mouse on Christmas Eve. "Nina?" I called out, making her lift her head up and quickly push herself off the log she was sitting on, showing me her beautiful, show-stopping purple sun dress in the darkness of the eleven o'clock evening. I didn't know what time it was, but 2013 was quickly approaching.
"Fabian!" she tried to speak up, but her voice came off as nothing more than a cracked sound and a whisper. I knew she had been crying before now, so I jogged up to her and enveloped her in a hug before I did anything else. And, for once in my life, she finally hugged me back.
"What's wrong?" I asked her, but Nina shook her head, as she had obviously stopped crying a while ago; her eyes were still red and the tears were stained on her cheeks, but I knew she hadn't shed a tear in at least ten minutes.
"Nothing," she breathed, flattening out her dress as she sat down on the clean log again. I sat down next to her, even before she'd invited me to do so by patting the seat. "I told...I told Dylan that I wanted to leave soon after the new year came, and he asked why, and, well...I told him I was a mother, and he got pissed. He told me that he couldn't believe he had been talking to a slut for the past month." She rolled her eyes accusingly, looking like she wanted to slit Dylan's throat as much as I did.
"I knew he was an asshole," I muttered to myself jokingly, purposely loud enough for Nina to hear. She laughed, turning away so I finally got to have a good look at her dress, since I had never seen it before today. And, jeez, was it show-stopping; I don't think I could describe it in detail, since I didn't know much about fabrics, but Nina sure looked beautiful in her purple sun dress.
Like I had done with KT, I knew I was repeating 2009. I knew it wasn't a good idea, since 2009 led me to where I was sitting right now, on a log with the seventeen-year-old mother of my child, but I didn't particularly care. I saw she was shivering in the -10 degree (Celsius) weather on the last day of the year, so I slipped off my sweatshirt and placed it around her shoulders. I was sure it didn't do much to warm her up, but she smiled, all the same.
"Look, Nina," I continued the conversation; she turned around to face me when I started speaking. "I know we've had a...rough..." I chose my word carefully, "...a rough past month, but I want you to know that you're much better than whatever that asshole told you you were, okay? You're beautiful, talented, kind, caring, loving, funny, adventurous, surprising, honest—"
"You can stop with the ultimate praise, Fabian," she breathed lightly, blushing as she looked away in embarrassment. She smiled; it was one of the only times I'd ever made her smile in our five months of knowing each other, so that wasn't something I'd left unnoticed.
The only sound around us was the wind and the echo of a party in the distance; I heard laughing and chatting, and I knew the people in there were getting ready for the clock to strike twelve. I didn't have a watch on me, and I'm sure Nina didn't have her phone, so I had absolutely no idea what time it was, or how close it was getting to the new year.
"Seriously, though," I interrupted her yet again, "Don't listen to what he has to say. He's an asshole. I mean...I'll always be here for you."
She thanked me for the compliments beforehand; after listening in between our silence, I quickly pushed myself off of the log and held my hand out for Nina to take. "You want to dance?" I asked her; she looked completely bewildered, to put it nicely, but she didn't seem all that disgusted or revolted, too. "I mean...we ever really got to finish our dance on Christmas, and we never finished our dance from 2009, either...so, what do you think?"
In response, she pushed herself off quicker than I ever could and took my hand. She wasn't sure what dance I was going to do, but she trusted me, and I feel like trust was a big point in our relationship as well. I slow-danced with her, of course — why would we be doing anything else? — but as soon as she leaned her head into my chest, I heard the faint screaming of the cabin in the distance: "NINE, EIGHT, SEVEN!"
She removed her head from my chest and looked up at me, her expression full of shock and exuberance, too. "SIX, FIVE, FOUR!" The cabin continued to shout, counting down the seconds until 2012 ended. And, if I was being perfectly clear, I wasn't sure I was ready for the year to end. "A new beginning," Nina muttered, never moving her gaze from my face.
"THREE, TWO, ONE! HAPPY NEW YEAR!" Shouts and screams and loud yells and whistles were heard throughout the air as the clock striked twelve, and 2013 began; the official date, as of now, was January 1st, 2013.
"Happy new year," Nina breathed, smiling the slightest bit as she retracted back into my chest now that the year had began.
"Happy 2013," I responded, bringing her closer to me. She didn't retract or pull away this time, which I was eternally thankful for, but instead we danced to the distant beat of the music from the cabin in the distance. Christmas songs hadn't yet worn out, so "We Wish You a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year" was heard being sung very out of key from the who-knows-how many people in there. For all I knew, Gabriella and Troy had just sung another rendition of The Start of Something New.
2012 was in the past now, and so was my feud between Nina. Somehow, we had achieved peace; not ultimate peace, and not a Pax Romana either, but peace all the same. The song was lost in the wind as Nina and I crunched over the freshly-fallen snow, silent, as we moved our feet together. I was paying her that dance I'd owed her for as long as I could remember; streamers were hung all over the cabin in the distance by now, but Nina and I didn't notice. My sweatshirt was still hanging over her shoulders, the lights from the celebration everywhere lighting up her purple dress in the pitch blankness of midnight.
We moved together in harmony, ready to take on the new year as it came at us.
/o~~~o/
In the morning, we'd drove through the snow to a local diner. It was open by nine, and luckily, it wasn't that busy, so Nina and I got a good seat near the window, where Jack Frost had apparently made his rounds. Nina ordered a plate of bacon while I wasn't all that hungry, plus the fact that I was famous and I didn't want what I ordered for breakfast on the internet, so I'd just asked for a coffee.
"So, how's the new year of 2013 going for you?" I asked Nina, jokingly, as I sipped the coffee and reached across the table for Nina's hand, which she grabbed thankfully and caressed my fingers. I didn't know why and I didn't know how, but I didn't ask; her ice-cold fingers felt good on my steaming hot ones, granted from holding the coffee cup.
"Are you still a fan of Fabian Rutter's music?" I asked her jokingly, as he plate of bacon finally arrived, along with a platter of three buttermilk pancakes. Nina laughed and nodded her head as she was chewing something at the moment.
I waited for her to swallow. "Of course I am," she answered my question, slicing another piece of bacon to eat. I didn't understand why she liked bacon so much; I couldn't stand the taste of it. "Why do you ask this?"
"Oh, no reason," I brushed away her question, then realized that was a mistake so I brought it back. "I mean...I'm asking this because I need your permission on something." She signaled me to continue with her fork as she chewed another piece; I took in a deep breath of the warm, welcoming diner air as the news played on the television to my left; I couldn't quite hear what they were saying, but the hustle and bustle of the diner didn't quite cover the sound. "I'm asking you this because of the thing I said on my last Twitcam, the thing I hoped has been conversed many time since I said it."
Nina had stopped chewing fully by now, even though there were two pieces of bacon left on her plate. "What do you mean?" she asked me, warily.
I took in yet another deep breath of air, collecting my thoughts so it didn't come out as a gibberish mess of useless words. "What I mean," I said, peaking her attention even more, "is that I've thought this through many times in the past two or three months since the photograph at the park was taken, and I think...I think I'm doing the right thing when I say that I want to go public about our relationship. And Emma."
I was expecting a reaction, which is something I didn't get. I presumed she was thinking my sentence through, carefully analyzing every word I spoke, but I thought the meaning was pretty clear: I wanted to come clean to the world about everything that had been happening in the past few months, from August 2009 to fast-forwarding to August 2012 and telling all about everything that had happened since then.
I was expecting her to say no, but after a longer silence than before — we were even silent when the waitress came up to us and asked us if everything was okay and if the food was any good — but I was patient, and I sat watching her as she finally took in her deep breath of air, longer and heavier than mine, and announced, "Okay."
"Okay?" I tested the words on my lips, which she nodded her agreement too, making me even more confused than before. Nina wasn't this easy-going of a person; she knew, after being pregnant so early in life, that everything came with a price. She didn't take life as it came at her, and instead prepared for everything bad that was going to happen instead of the good. While that was partially her problem, I knew that about her; why would she just automatically agree to something as big as admitting to the trust that I had a daughter?
"At first, I was thinking — just before, while, you know, we were silent —" she started to explain, even without me asking her to do so, "And I was very convinced I was going to say no. But I was also convinced I was going to abort Emma back in the day, and look at us now." she shrugged, wearing my sweatshirt properly right now. "And...I think it's time, too. I'm sick of living in denial. I can't pretend like I don't know who the father is anymore."
She looked almost proud of me; maybe for coming to such a big, confident, grown-up decision all by myself, deciding what was best for all of us. Nina smiled, a genuine smile in the midst of all she had faked recently, when she ripped a napkin out of the folder and hastily scribbled seven numbers on it, handed it to me and saying, "Call me. If...if you have problems when you're telling everyone."
"Is this...is this your phone number?" I asked her cautiously.
"Yes."
"Yes...this is your phone number...can I have it?"
"Yes."
"Yes...YES?!"
"Yes!"
"YES!"
A/N: Here we go: Fabian's going to admit to the world he got a girl pregnant when she was 15, and now he has a 2-year-old daughter. The next chapter, 25, is all about the emails that Fabian and Nina shared, and the chapter after that, 26, is the chapter where Fabian and Nina's relationship goes public, so keep an eye out for updates. After their relationship is revealed, there's 8 more chapters, and they're full of CANON Fabina and photographs and public appearances, so don't think this is the end.
I was rewatching season 1 of hoa and honestly if House of Cheats & House of Rumors isn't your favorite episode you're doing it wrong.
I think I may actually get ahead of schedule for this next chapter because it's just emails, so I think we may ACTUALLY have an update every week from now on! Review, maybe, tell me what you thinks gonna happen or what obstacles they're going to face now that Fabian's going public? (: