A/N: The way this chapter is styled may confuse you; imagine it like a tv show, and every line break is a new scene coming on. It's basically just Fabian flashing back to times as the interviewer asks him about them. I had a fun time writing this, since it's the first canon Fabina I've written in forever since I broke them up in Don't Be Afraid on April 12th, 2013, I wrote Gone For Good in June and that's just a mess of tears of blubbering, and the only other Fabina story I wrote was "Maybe that's why Nina left you" and that's set in s3 and we all know what happens in s3.

/o~~~o/

Fabian
Chapter 28: "The Confessions"

"So, Fabian, tell me about her."

A picture of us in public, taken days ago, flashed on screen. It was taken in the same exact park where the first photograph was taken, and as Emma was off somewhere, sliding and swinging, Nina and I stood on the edge of the playground, on top of the lookout tower, her arms around my waist and mine resting comfortably around her neck. We were both staring longingly at each other, smiling, finally happy for once in our life.

I remembered that; it was right after a fan had approached her and told her off for kissing me in public. Nina had told me the look in my eyes said 'Don't you dare lay a finger on my woman or else I'll beat you with a sledgehammer and feed your eyes to a cat', and that was why we were laughing as we held each other.

"She's great," I told the interviewer in the seat across from me, Helen. She had long brown hair and bright blue eyes; almost as blue as Jerome's. "She's wonderful. She's just as beautiful, and radiant, as she was the day I met her," I joked, but a loud round of applause was cued from the crowd. It was strange seeing them all warmed up to Nina, because the world certainly wasn't that way about the first photograph, or the first kiss, for that matter.

"Have you kissed her since then, huh?" Helen asked, almost as if she could read my mind, waggling her eyebrows. I mentally noted to tell Aaron to pick a different interviewer next time, because this one seemed to like to invade personal space. I wanted to say 'Let's change the subject, how about?' but the crowd roared again and I had no choice but to answer. I didn't want to avoid subjects.

"Yeah," I told Helen, and the crowd was a loud uproar of screams. It was strange, what a group of people could find interesting, especially about a nineteen-year-old's love life who, in his spare time, read Lord of the Rings over and over again and was pelted in the back of the head with snowballs by his overly-mature 23-year-old sister.

"We have," I continued to tell Helen, thinking of one particular time back at my house. Smiling, I joked around by saying, "There was this time that we kissed for quite a long time. It was pretty steamy."

v v v

"Ugh," Nina groaned, leaning closer to me as I brought up the video of our first (Second? I mean if you counted all the times we kissed before we had sex on the night we met) kiss on screen. "That's really what you look like on camera? I'm surprised I've never noticed it before. I can't believe you're famous!"

"Hey!" I teased, smiling, pushing her playfully with my free hand. We were both laughing, and I knew Nina was joking when she said that before because if she wasn't, she wouldn't be laughing with me right now. "Speak for yourself. You look like you rubbed a balloon over your hair before you went into that parking lot."

"It's not my fault my hair just naturally freezes up, no matter how hard I try to straighten it," she teased back, pushing me away harder. Without saying anything, she screamed "Ah!" as I pushed her off the leather chair in my house's living room and Nina tumbled to the floor.

It felt nice to be able to move freely around her; there was no caution when I moved in to kiss her, no fear about whether or not she'd want me to hold her hand or not. After months and months of being careful around her, I could tease her and make fun of her, and most of all, so could my sisters. (Isabelle had been holding in playful comments ever since she met Nina.)

"That is not nice," Nina continued to laugh, pushing herself up off the carpeted floor and sitting next to me on the arm of the chair again.

"Well, I guess I'm just a bully," I told herself, my eyebrows raised and a smile crossing my face. Nina wore an evil bigger smile than I did as she pushed me lightly again, moving forward as she pressed the play button on the video. People who were actually there in Nina's school courtyard, who were able to take the video, posted it online almost as soon as they shot it on January 7th, 2013. Now it was January 25th, 2013 (Emma's third birthday was in exactly three months), and I hadn't asked Nina to be my girlfriend yet, but I'm pretty sure everyone pretty much knew our relationship deal.

We were silent as Nina and I watched ourselves on screen, fighting because I had said I really didn't want to kiss Nina. However, she didn't let me finish, and she was about to storm away when I did the most unthinkable thing; I grabbed her face and smashed my lips onto hers. Nina recognized the movement almost instantly and instead of going against it, she moved with me, smiling and laughing as we kissed for the first time since we met. We weren't Fabian and Nina, teenage parents, but not a couple anymore.

"Are you glad I kissed you?" I asked Nina as I turned around, closing the laptop once the video finished and a huge uproar was heard in the crowd as we kissed in the distance.

"Am I glad you kissed me?" Nina repeated my question, and I nodded, and she blushed and smiled before laughing, looking down at the leather seat. "Well...yeah, I guess so. I think I am."

"You think so?" I questioned her, still smiling, but confused all the same. This woman never ceased to be a mystery, and that was what made me fall for her, in the end. I didn't want someone who was an open book. I wanted to discover their secrets myself, uncover clues and solve the mystery of their existence. And that was exactly what Nina did for me.

"Yeah," she shrugged, snuggling closer into my shoulder. Olivia, my youngest sister, was in the shower right now, and was using up all the hot water, so Nina must have been cold, as it was nearing February. "I mean, I think it's going to lead us into something good. I think I want to go on that date you mentioned the other day. And I think that I've been holding back my feelings for you much too long."

"I think I want to kiss you right now," I told her, Nina mirroring my smile right back at me. And after staring at each other for seconds upon seconds, my mind battling with me, telling me to wait for her to make the first move. Because if she didn't make the first move, how could I ever know if she really wanted to—

Just when I was going to turn away, she leaned in and crushed my lips to hers. It started innocent, my smooth lips smoothing out her chapped ones, but soon enough, tongue got involved.

Her tongue was in my mouth sooner rather than later, but I didn't protest it, only went with it. No tongue was used in our first kiss out in our school courtyard, but back in 2009, Nina seemed to know a lot about kissing for a fifteen-year-old girl who was about to have her first time in a few minutes. Now, she seemed to want to move forward while four months ago she was terrified to do exactly that.

Now our lips were moving together, in a pattern of moving forward. She laughed as we kissed, completely blown away by the fact that we were able to move like this, were able to kiss like this after the months and months were spent without kissing. And as I pulled her closer, it felt like we had been kissing the entire time, like the five months before us hadn't existed.

She wrapped her leg around my waist, and in response, I pushed myself off the seat, allowing her to wrap her other leg around, but she removed her leg and pressed in closer, her tongue in my mouth. The kiss was warm; comforting, almost. We moved forward, and I brought her into the main hallway, still kissing on the way there. I pushed her against the wall, not afraid to make the first move this time.

My hands were resting comfortably on her neck and we came up for air often, only to move straight back to touching lips again. We moved in unison, smiling and laughing as we kissed as Nina moved her hands around my waist, when a different voice exclaimed, "Oh my God!"

There was Olivia, my youngest sister, covering her eyes in a full-body towel and her hair in one of those swirly-towel things that I didn't know how they worked even though I lived with five girls.

Nina and I pulled apart, and she rested her forehead on my shoulder, chucking softly. Olivia continued, "There is a fifteen-year-old girl walking through here that does not want to see her older brother's face get eaten by his girlfriend. Keep the PDA to a minimum!"

As she walked away, I yelled out, "Nina was your age when I got her pregnant!"

"Gah!"

Nina and I chuckled again as she slammed the door to her bedroom shut, echoing throughout the house. We didn't say a word, only laughed, enjoying this moment. I smiled down at the girl in my arms, considering trying to kiss her again now that we were alone, when she bombarded me with a question. "I'm your girlfriend?"

"Yeah," I nodded, smiling a bit, my accent dripping in comparison to hers. "I mean, if you want to be."

"I do," she answered, leaning up, her lips hovering right near mine. "It's going to be hard, though, Fabian. People won't like it and they'll—"

"Who says we have to tell people?" I asked, smiling just as brightly as she was. "It can be our little secret. We can meet in the middle of the night..."

Nina giggled, like Amber would if she saw David Beckham shirtless. I continued, smiling, "And we can call each other at night, when no one is listening, when there's no reporters around or annoying schoolmates to claim the rumors are false. It'll just be you and me, babe," I joked around with the petname, because that was something I wouldn't even call my mother. "Because people throw rocks and things that shine and life makes love look—"

Instead of saying anything, Nina laughed into my shoulder again, and we stood in the hallway laughing our asses off, finally together. Nina started to lean up again, and I met her lips once more and we kissed, because after five months of intimacy and secrecy, we could finally be free, and free we reigned as I pushed her against the wall again, biting into her lip.

/o~~~o/

"Was it, now?" Helen asked, smiling, leaning against the car opposite mine. She smiled, looking like she was planning something bad. She almost reminded me of Jerome.

"Well, Fabian, I hate to intrude, but..." she began slowly, looking at the audience. My heart clenched, because this was the first interview I had given where I discussed Nina. Aaron wouldn't let me talk about her, so whenever I gave an interview on the radio station or something, he'd always tell the interviewer to avoid the subject of Nina and the child. However, this particular interviewer didn't seem to care.

"What about this photo, huh?" Another photograph came onto the screen, of me and Nina sitting in my car. This one didn't fade away after a few seconds; I felt a sense that I was never alone with her, that wherever I went, there'd always be paparazzi and people wanting to invade our privacy.

"Yeah," I nodded again, not knowing where Helen was going was this.

The photo on the screen showed us in the car, but it was one photograph I hadn't seen before; I was staring at the road, my hands on the steering wheel, but Nina in the passenger seat was gazing at me. As my eyes were on the road at the time the photograph was taken, I hadn't seen Nina staring at me.

I smiled as I stared at the photo; I know we had found peace together, but something in me, ever since I kissed her, had been telling me that she was lying whenever she told me she wanted to go on that date, or kiss me one more time.

Now, seeing that photo, seeing the love in her eyes as she gazed at me, filled me with a sense of confidence. Nina had learned to love me after building up so many walls, after telling herself she couldn't love me because I was a celebrity and we were in two different worlds, like first and third class. We were two different people with two different goals in mind, but she lowered her walls and let herself be emotional. Nina let herself tell herself that she had feelings for me that she couldn't deny any longer.

She loved me. I couldn't stop staring at the photo; it seemed that I was staring at it for such a long time that Helen had to yell my name five times for me to come back to reality.

"Well, we know this couple loves each other," Helen told the audience, and they cheered once again. I felt myself blush before looking down at the group, ashamed that I had gotten distracted in the middle of an interview on live television that would be broadcast later in the day. "Does she have a car of her own?"

"What?" I asked Helen, blinking when I heard the sudden question. She repeated it once again, and I nodded slowly before answering nonchalantly, "Oh, no. She doesn't even know how to drive, but I'm teaching her."

v v v

It was when Nina called me for the umpteenth time to pick her up from school that I decided she needed to learn how to drive.

One or two days after we kissed in front of the school, the photos leaked online. Neither of us cared, as we knew we were walking into it, but her school saw the photos and called her down to the office. Patricia and Joy were there to apologize for all the grief they had caused her, and even though Nina accepted the apology, the teacher suggested that Nina talk to a counselor about her position.

So, of course, the always curious Nina agreed to that idea. The counselor asked Nina a lot about me, asked if I was comfortable with me, if she thought our relationship was going somewhere. The sessions always occurred after school, so Nina took her chance and always called me to pick her up, and I always did.

I was always happy when she jogged out to my car, strapped her seat belt across her, and laughed with me as she told me how her school day went, what people said about her, and what she talked about to the counselor.

There was one day that she told me the counselor, Mrs. Griffiths, asked her to cut off all contact with me because Nina told her that someone had teased her on her relationship with me, and how she was a teenage mother. Nina, of course, couldn't care less about what people were saying about her, but Mrs. Griffiths was afraid that Nina might do something to herself, her family, friends, or her relationships with other people.

After Nina assured her that gossip didn't affect her at all after I kissed her, Mrs. Griffiths asked her to talk about some happy times, times that made her laugh.

As Nina spoke about the time that we were driving home after I denied her in public for the first time, when I kept giving her stupid and cheesy pick-up lines. She spoke about the concert after I met Eddie and Mara, when we were in my den and we bonded over Twitter. She talked about our sleepless nights when we'd talk over email. I realized that while we had our ups and downs, and because our bad moments usually trumped over the good ones, we did have them. There were days when we smiled or laughed, or just had an overall good time. They were rare, but they did exist.

Nina said "it's time to take me home now" when I stood staring at her, when I was brought back to reality. I started to drive again, but as soon as I got on the road, I said quietly, "I think you should learn how to drive."

"Oh, are you just sick of driving me home?" Nina's tone was joking, but she brushed her hair back behind her ear and I saw the seriousness of her expression. She was curious, just like she was curious in my existence back on the night we met.

"That," I said, glad once again that I could finally be light and joke around with her, "and the fact that you could drive yourself places on your own without my or your friends' help. Like, if you needed to go the store to get something for Emma, and Eddie and Mara were both out of town, you could drive to the store on your own. You know what I'm saying?"

"Yeah, I know what you're saying," Nina told me quickly, rushing the words out of her mouth. "It's just, that...I don't know if I'll have the time or money to take driving courses. Mara's busy with her studies, Eddie barely knows how to drive a car on his own without setting something up in flames, and my grandmother is too old and sick to teach me. If you're really that sick of picking me up by day—"

"No, I'm not—"

"—then maybe you could teach me how to drive."

I grinned happily, and the next day, we were in my driveway, Nina listening to my wise advice on how to drive a motor vehicle.

"Okay, now put your hand on the gear shift and put it into Reverse."

"You mean the PRNDL?"

"What?"

"Nothing," Nina laughed, brushing the statement aside with her hand. "Just an old joke. So I just put on my hand on the gear shift and drag it into Reverse?"

"Yup," I answered calmly, hoping I wasn't too bad of a teacher. I was already such a bad public speaker if the subject didn't involve music, and I'm pretty sure I wasn't the best driver, but since her grandmother was too old to teach her how to drive, I wasn't sure I trusted Eddie and Nina alone in a car together. They'd probably blow it up and the entire neighborhood would go into flames.

Nina moved her hand and placed it on top of the rubber gearshift, ready to drag it back. Her hand hovered above it for a moment, and I was about to ask her what was wrong, when she muttered quietly, "Idon'twanttobreakyourmailbox."

"What?" I asked again, laughing quietly to myself. I moved my body around so I was facing Nina in the passenger seat; Nina must have thought this was weird, since she was in the seat where the steering wheel would be if she still lived in America.

"I don't want to break your mailbox," Nina answered softly, after taking a deep breath and enunciating each word carefully. "I've never driven before. Are you sure you want to do this? Especially with me in the car?"

"Was I sure I wanted to reunite with you and Emma back in August?" I contributed playfully. "Was I sure I wanted to invite you to my house for the first time back in September? Was I sure I wanted to go to the park with you back in October? No. I'm not sure of a lot of things. But most of them seem to lead to something good."

"Oh, yeah, the photograph taken in the park sure led to something good," Nina stated, laughing to herself and glancing at the car floor. "It just led to you denying me in public for the first time, the entire school tormenting me, and me leaving town, only to come back to you hitting me, and us not talking for a month and ten days. The day in the park led to something great!"

I admired her ability to make fun of herself. It was something I couldn't do myself. I turned our focus back to the car, assuring her that she wouldn't break my mailbox before I continued to instruct: "Drag it into reverse. Go on, do it now."

Taking a deep breath, Nina gripped the gearshift and tugged it back into the slot that read Reverse.

She asked me what she should do next, and when I told her I needed her to step on the gas pedal, she looked like I had just asked her to shoot a puppy. I rubbed her back in reassurance, telling her that she had seen me drive so many times and been in the car with Eddie since he got his licence, and she also said she had 'tons of experience after battling Eddie and Mara in Mario Kart'. I didn't really count that as 'experience', but if it made Nina feel more safe, I let her go with it.

I didn't let her close her eyes, much to her dislike. I sat with my arm around Nina's shoulder as she sucked in a large breath of air, the car using useless energy by just sitting here, when Nina slowly pressed her left foot down on the pedal.

She whimpered a little bit when the car started to slowly move backwards. "Keep going, you're doing great," I told her, just to make her feel safe with me in the car. I wouldn't let anything happen to her. "Don't move your foot any further. This is a good speed for now."

There was a small jolt when we passed over the curb that led to my driveway, because my house was on a big hill. Nina whimpered again, but this time I removed my arm from around her shoulders and pointed to the gear shift. "Now drag it into Drive, press on the gas pedal again, and start driving."

"Driving?!" Nina almost screeched, her eyes growing to the size of tennis balls.

"Yeah, Nina," I told her, holding back a laugh. "That's how you get places."

"I know that," she snapped, but I could tell she was scared beyond her wits. I didn't necessarily blame her; I remember being scared when I first started driving. Now Nina was older, meanwhile she could have learned at a younger age if she wasn't pregnant with our daughter. "I'm just...I'm just afraid I'm going to ruin or wreck something."

"Baby steps," I assured Nina, rubbing her arm again. "Don't press hard on the pedal, because if you do, you'll be speeding straight into the main road, and I'm sure you don't want that." When Nina shook her head incredulously fast, I knew she must have been even more afraid. "Come on now, love. Keep your hands on the wheel, slowly step on the pedal, and off we go."

She nodded slowly, gripping the steering wheel tightly. She gripped her hand around the gearshift, sucked in a deep breath of air, and I realized I had maybe put a little bit too much trust in her when instead of going forward, we went backwards. The gearshift was still in Reverse.

I tried to tell her to stop moving, but her body was as stiff as a board until the car hit my neighbor's mailbox. I didn't know whether to be elated or astounded that Nina hadn't realized what she was doing (or was just too afraid to do anything else.) When the car stopped after it hit the mailbox, I threw open the car door and ran to it. Nina followed just as quickly.

"I think I may have dented it," she said quietly.

"Dented it?!" I yelled incredulously, not sure whether to be angry or to laugh about this. Nina was already laughing, however, and leaned against the broken mailbox, dug deep into the house's lawn. They were across the street from me, so I'm sure they'd figure out who destroyed their mailbox eventually, but for now, Nina was laughing like always.

"I'm never going to be able to drive," she confirmed, smiling, leaning against the trunk of the car.

"You will be if you actually drag it into Drive," I commanded her, rolling my eyes with a smile. "Come on. You need to drag it into Drive, press on the gas pedal. And once you actually have it in drive, the steering wheel turns the right way while if you have it in Reverse it turns the other..."

We closed the car door, sealing our fate.

/o~~~o/

"She seems wonderful," Helen laughed, and I nodded in approval.

"She is," I agreed, laughing along with her. "She can bossy, rude, and just plain out mean sometimes, but I know everyone has their good qualities. I mean, if they're rude and bossy all the time, that's a different story, but she can also be brave, and funny, and determined, loyal, tough...you just have to see through the bad in people sometimes, to see their good."

"Well said," Helen praised me, and I gave her a small smile. "What else do you know about her, though? Because I've read a thing or two that says you two know nothing about each other..."

"Well, I doubt after talking constantly over a computer screen and bonding over our daughter for four months straight would lead to us knowing nothing about each other," I said matter-of-factly, making eye contact with Helen. I remember, before Nina came along, I used to avoid eye contact. I barely even made eye contact with Nina when we met. It was how she inspired me to ask for a record deal, and then Aaron taught me how to make eye contact. I really, honestly, owed my entire career to Nina. Not to Aaron, not to my mother (who was always there for me and supported me), and not even to myself. I owed it to Nina.

"But I think I know a thing or two about her."

/o~~~o/

"Thinking I don't know anything about you," Nina scoffed, rolling her eyes as she, once again, sat down on the arm of my couch. "Pah. I know more about you than some obsessed Directioners know about their precious boy band."

Earlier this morning, Nina had noticed that the discussion about her on Twitter was more hateful and spiteful than normal this morning. After we kissed for the first time out in the school courtyard, Nina became more immune to hate on her from the fans. She could deal with the people saying she was a slut for sleeping with me when she was fifteen, and she brush comments saying that Fabian didn't deserve her to the side. However, this morning, she noticed a comment that said she knew nothing about me, and that was when she really got angry.

Figuring I was still a six-year-old boy at heart, I noticed the volleyball that was used by my sisters when they were playing outside earlier. Rosie and Chloe were the more 'sporty' type than Isabelle and Olivia were, so they were tossing the volleyball back and forth out in the yard earlier this morning. "Come on, then," I tried to persuade her, "let's see if you really know me, then."

Nina frowned at me at first, probably annoyed that I was making her stand up right after she had sat down. Soon enough, her frown turned into a sly grin and she joked with me playfully, "Well, you're still the enigma I met in the coffee shop, but alright. Let's see how well I know you."

I tossed her the ball, saying it was her turn to speak. "Your birthday is on August 21st, 1993."

After tossing the ball back to me, I looked at her as if to say 'really?', but she only smiled and nodded at me to continue. So I said, "Your birthday is on July 7th, 1994."

I lightly tossed the volleyball back over to her. She caught it easily, smiled again, and continued our chain. "Your favorite color is blue."

When she threw it back to me, I knew exactly what to say before I threw it her way again. "Your favorite color is purple."

"Your favorite movie is Ghost, but you tell everyone it's Fight Club," Nina said lightly, laughing and forming the slightest smile. I nodded when she threw the ball back to me, but I barely caught it; she threw too far now.

"Your favorite movie is The Breakfast Club," I stated, realizing both movies had the word Club in them. I tried to show Nina that I had just as much of an arm as she had by throwing the ball with all my might, but I think it barely grazed her arm as she caught it.

"You have four sisters," she began, smiling brightly, "Isabelle, Rosie, Chloe, and Olivia. Isabelle is 23, Rosie just turned 22, Chloe is 17, and Olivia is 15."

She tossed the ball back to me with ease. My smile was almost as bright as hers as I awarded her with, "Brava! You finally got my sisters names and ages right. Anyway, your brother, father, and mother died in a car crash when you were ten, but now you live with your grandmother and daughter. Our daughter."

Toss. Nina smiled, finally seeing me as a light, as a good person in her life. "Your best friends are Mick Campbell, Jerome Clarke, Amber Millington, and Alfie Lewis. Mick's a jock, Jerome's a backstabber, Amber's a prep, and Alfie's a prankster."

Toss back. "Your two best friends are Eddie Miller and Mara Jaffray. Eddie's a badboy who's not really that bad and Mara's a paranoid freak geek."

Toss. Nina laughed at my statement before saying her own: "You can play guitar and piano, even though it took you five years to learn how to play the piano fluently."

Toss back. "You say your only talent is the ability to hold a grudge, but you're smart, you're so personable you can make friends with a tree, and you can throw a punch like nobody's business."

Toss. Nina laughed at me again, probably because of the tree comment, and it was strange to see that in the aspect that Jerome had always ruled me as unfunny. I didn't know why she was laughing at a geek and a dork who spent all his free time at the library when he wasn't looking after his daughter/the mother of his daughter or recording or giving a concert or something. Nina was very personable; if she hadn't gotten pregnant, I wouldn't be surprised if she was friends with the entire school.

Toss back. Nina stated simply, "You're terrified of down escalators."

"I am not!" I defended myself when I caught the ball again not bothering to give another fact about Nina when I tossed it back to her.

"Yes you are!" She continued to persist, holding the ball under her arm.

"You can't prove anything."

"Yes I can!" Her smile was easy, light. Like she didn't have a care in the world. "Then how do I know what happened when you were six?"

I cringed at reminder of that. I held out my arms in beckoning, telling her to toss the ball again, and she did exactly that. "Yeah, well, I may be terrified of down escalators, but I can't take you on tour with me, because you're afraid of hotels.

She smirked, shrugging at her fear, before telling me, "Even though you won't admit it, you like fame."

I did. I liked fame very much. I liked the fact that strangers whom I didn't know personally were probably listening to my voice right now. I liked the fact that people admired me, and I liked the fact that even though I was a word nerd who spent his weekends at the library reading up on ancient Egypt and playing Sudoku games with his youngest sister, they still liked me for who I was and now what I did.

"Even though you didn't admit it before," I began, slyly smirking once I held the ball again, "you liked having me around before we kissed in the school courtyard, because I am an awesem father."

I tossed the ball back to her one final time. I watched as Nina's face contorted with confusion, giddiness, and refusal to accept that. I think I heard her muter something along the lines of "why, you little" before she chucked the white ball at my face with her freakishly-strong arm. The last thing I saw before it collided with my face was the ball hurdling towards me.

"OW!" I screeched, my hand instantly moving to my house and when I removed it, my palm was sticky with blood. I saw, from the corner of my vision, Nina doubled over with laughter. She was holding the arm of the couch to keep her upright because of how hard she was laughing. I wiped my nose clean, staining my hand with my nose blood, and charged towards Nina, knocking her down into the carpet. Now her cheek was stained with my nose blood, and we were both laughing like idiots.

/o~~~o/

"And I understand that you tried to go on a date with her a few weeks ago?" Helen asked me, another photograph popping up on the screen: it was us walking along the sidewalk, smiling, completely having given up with paparazzi and fans. We had tried eleven different restaurants at that point, and I was done with old men with cameras and girls dragging their boyfriends along just to get a photo with me, and to try to make Nina look worse than she already felt. I was done with trying to be the good guy.

"Yeah," I told her, reclining my chair. I told her all about how the old men with cameras were trying to follow us along, to take pictures of us trying to have a private date, and she nodded along with sympathy. I told her all about how every restaurant we went to was either flooded with people but someone started to take pictures, and we were out of there.

At the seventh restaurant, one of Nina's classmates was even there. She didn't tell me her name, but Nina told me to sprint out as the classmate screamed with either delight or disgust, and another photo (one that wasn't on screen) was taken of us laughing as Nina flipped off one of the paparazzi. It didn't go public because they wouldn't put that online, but the photographer sent it to us. It was rather funny.

"It's hard to go out to eat when you're famous, eh?" Helen wondered, reclining back, and I nodded.

"Yes, it's very hard to find a restaurant to eat at with the mother of your child," I joked again, shrugging my shoulders to no one in particular.

"Ah, right!" Helen spoke again, moving her posture around. "That reminds me...how is your child? It came as quite a shock to everyone when you posted that Twitcam online that revealed the truth about you being a father."

"Yeah..." I scratched the back of my neck, like I always did when I was nervous or embarrassed. "That took a lot of courage out of me. But, now it's out, and I don't have to hide around Nina or my child anymore. There's negative aspects, but there's good ones, too. And I mostly look to the good ones.

"But, speaking of my child..." I continued, glancing around at everyone surrounding me. There were camera crew, audience members, and Helen herself, sitting beside me. My heart began to pound out of my chest...how was I going to word this? How was I going to tell the whole word about my daughter, who was two years old, and would look at this online once she was older? How would Nina feel, if I just revealed all of her secrets to the entire world on live television?

"She's wonderful," I began, smiling slightly. I decided I wouldn't reveal too much. She was my child, and I had just as much responsibility to her privacy as Nina did. "She likes horses and bananas and messing up people's hair. I mean, she's only two, but...I don't know what my life would be like if Nina hadn't sent me that photograph back in August. Emma has...really improved my life, in a way. She made me realize that I've got to step up to my mistakes, I've got to realize that the stupid little things I did in the past, like meet Nina in that coffee shop and have my first time with her...I didn't think much of it at the time, but if I had known I was going to get her pregnant, well..."

Helen nodded in understanding. The audience didn't clap or yell out, because for once in my life, I was thinking about the night we met.

I didn't know why I didn't like to think of it; there was really nothing more to tell other than that we met in a coffee shop, I brought her back to my place, we talked for two or three more hours until I began to take off her bra strap. I asked her, "I'll do it if you want to do it", and she said, "I want to do it."

And, just as if she was reading my mind, Helen asked, "What happened, in that night you met all those years ago?"

"It'll be four years ago in August..." I muttered, since today was February 3rd, 2013. This August would be four years since 2009, since I met her at the coffee shop and began the story I was living right now. "But...I don't really..."

"You don't have to talk about if you don't want to," Helen warned me, but the audience was tuned in. It was being broadcast on live television. I couldn't just not talk about it, because if I didn't, people would think about it themselves, and I didn't want to fill their heads with wrong information.

So I thought back.

v v v

A/N: The next chapter is the chapter when you read the night they met and I have to say, after 10 months of only having to insert flashbacks, I can't wait for you guys to read the real thing :)

So, anyway, happy belated birthday to my most favorite show in the world. It wasn't the best tv show, not by a mile, but House of Anubis became a part of me so quickly after I tuned in to see what the show was like on January 28th, 2011, and after I spent the entire weekend watching the first three quarters of the show on Nick's website. I started watching this show when I was 11, and in less than 2 months, I'll be 15. The characters, plot, and everything else are so memorable, and even though Nickelodeon treated Anubis like shit, this stupid, silly little kids TV show will always have a place in my heart.

Also, I cut a chapter, because I REALLY didn't want to write it. So, now, the rest of the chapter names are 29) The Flashbacks, 30) The Beginning, 31) [CONFIDENTIAL NAME], 32) The Goodbye, and 33) The End. Hahahaha I can't WAIT until we get to the chapter with the confidential name (or rather, the end of chapter 30. Because it leaves off on a cliffhanger.)

I hope everyone's 2014 is going well so far. Maybe you can tell me your resolution, or anything you're planning for yourself in the year to come in a review? You could also tell me what you thought of the chapter, too, because if you don't, rumor has it that Rufus will come back and kidnap you because he somehow found a way to achieve immortal life without the Cup of Ankh again. AGAIN.
-Lia