A/N: I realize that I'm a week and a day late, but...I had some personal problems (Meaning: my grandmother died yesterday and I couldn't finish the chapter). I'm sorry, but it was a horrid day for me, and...well, I'm okay now, and the next chapter will hopefully be up on Friday.
I'm so sorry for the length...but if you could, could you please review? It would make me feel a lot better because of what happened with my grandmother, plus there's a cliffhanger on the end, and could you please make my day? Thanks a bunch. -Lia xoxo
/o~~~o/
Imagine an awkward silence. Pretty much everyone's been in one, whether it be with a person you're not comfortable with, or a subject you know nothing about.
There was a time, when I was still in public school instead of the performing arts school, I was off daydreaming about a song I wrote and payed no attention to the subject my History teacher was talking about, so when she called on me to answer a question, I stood in probably the most awkward silence in my entire life.
Now imagine that, but ten times worse.
What can be worse than being called out on your attention problems? Well, imagine a day out with your family to a resturatant. Pretty much everyone has an annoying or embarrassing family, according to them. You know how they can act around the waitresses or waiters, or how much they laugh when they're handed the check.
Now imagine that, but with your four sisters, four best friends, girlfriend, girlfriend's grandmother, girlfriend's two best friends, girlfriend's best friend's father, girlfriend's best friend's girlfriend, girlfriend's best friend's girlfriend's best friend, and your very own daughter, and you've pretty much set out a recipe for disaster.
There was sixteen people sitting around the table in the restaurant we were all at, some unknown name brand in Picton, where Nina lived. It was February 13th, 2013, the day before Valentines Day; I wanted to go out with my girlfriend on the actual day of love, but I was busy that day, since I had an important concert that was crucial if I wanted more success.
Even though I had an important concert tomorrow, I could still enjoy the early Valentines Day meal with my girlfriend of more than a month (February 7th marked one month since our first kiss), and everyone else who was sitting around the table.
It was a large, round table in the back of the restaurant, since Nina and I weren't taking any chances being seen in public. My tousled dark brown hair and Nina's wavy light brown hair might have been distinguishable if someone knew us, but luckily, no snaps had been heard, so hopefully no one had taken a picture of us (and trust me; I'd had enough of photographs to last a lifetime).
"I'm telling you!" Mara exclaimed, from where she was sitting in a chair around the table, a few seats down from me, next to Eddie. "Giraffes don't make sounds, how many times have we been over this?"
"Giraffes make sounds!" Eddie protested, somehow passionate on the subject. Nina, who was sitting next to me, was smiling so brightly it was almost as if she wanted to record it and post it online for all to see. "And so do flamingos!"
"Flamingos don't make sounds, either!"
"Jesus, Mara, did your parents never take you to a zoo or something?!"
"Your friends are so fun to be around," I whispered in Nina's ear after leaning over to her. I felt her smile even though my lips were near her ear, and her body shook with light laughter. "I don't know why you refused to tell me about them in the days when we were still emailing."
"They can be rather embarrassing," Nina admitted, as I took a muffin from the many plates sitting in front of all sixteen of us: Nina's grandmother, Evelyn; Eddie, Mara, Patricia (Eddie's girlfriend), Joy (Patricia's best friend), Eric (Eddie's father), Mick, Jerome, Alfie, Amber, Isabelle, Rosie, Chloe, Olivia, and my one and only daughter, Emma, was sitting in Isabelle's lap, since she was still pregnant with my niece and/or nephew and would give birth to them sometime in August/September. Isabelle was trying to get Emma to talk to the baby, but I don't think she realized that Emma was a two-year-old toddler who barely knew how to speak in complete sentences.
"They can be," I agreed slyly, smiling at my girlfriend whom I had come to know and love over the past six months. It was weird that it took us five months to simply kiss, when couples in modern films and television shows took very little time to get together. (Then again, Nina and I knew each other for four hours before I started to have sex with her.)
When Nina plucked up a small piece of my muffin, I frowned and caught her hand before she could eat it. "Hey. If you want your own muffin, feel free to lean over a meter and get your own." She pouted for a moment, but her lips, her beautiful lips, curled into a large smile.
It was odd, I had to say, after seeing Nina in pain for so many weeks during our bad period (I considered our bad period the time between the photograph taken at the park to December 23rd, 2012), and now see her smile with such happiness aimed at me. I made her happy. I was the reason for her smile. It was sort-of surreal.
I slowly wrapped my hand around the collar of Nina's green shirt, which brought out her eyes. I pulled her in for a kiss, not truly caring who saw, holding my hand on the back of her neck lightly and breathing her air, my lips tasting hers, until I realized what her hands were doing under me; she was trying to steal a part of my muffin.
"Alright, that's it," I reprimanded her, pulling away from the kiss, looking into her smile. She didn't seem angry or scared in the least. "Go get your own muffin."
"You know, if there's a whole plate of muffins over there, you shouldn't care that I'm trying to steal yours," she commented, wrapping her fingers in mine. I played with them for a little bit, removing my hand only to caress her fingers with mine.
"True," I admitted, shrugging. I moved my arm around my body so my muffin was sitting near my right thigh, since Nina was sitting on my left. "But I digress, this dinner is kind of...weird."
"How so?"
"Well, here we are, with sixteen people around us," I gestured to the entire table, because every different person had their own different conversation. Eddie and Mara were still arguing over animal noises, Patricia and Joy were staring at something on Patricia's phone, Nina's grandmother and Eddie's father were talking about something I couldn't hear, Amber and Alfie were trying to act couplely but Amber didn't want to express any sort of PDA, Mick and Jerome were chatting but occasionally spared glances at Nina and I, and Emma was sitting in Mara's lap, but she kept reaching into Eddie's hands, trying to steal his muffin.
Like mother, like daughter.
"Well, for one thing, you invited Eddie's girlfriend, with which whom you do not get along well with," I held up my index finger to count off all the reasons this dinner was odd. If we weren't sitting in the back of the restaurant, behind a curtain as to be hidden from the common eye, I had no doubt pictures would be taken of us and placed all over the internet. "And you invited her best friend, as well, for some reason I do not know."
Nina shrugged, smiling still. She looked light, happy, like she didn't have a care in the world as long as I was sitting next to her. "I guess I just wanted to make up with them, after all they had put me through."
I moved my gaze from the table to Nina, my eyes meeting hers for a large amount of time. You'd think by looking into them, you could see through them, thick and thin, see their flaws and insecurities until they couldn't hide anything else from you, but Nina was still just as much of a mystery as she was the day I met her.
I didn't know why she wanted to share a dinner with two people who had tormented her since 2009, but here she was, sharing a table with them in a restaurant. Nina was definitely strange; not in a "randomly shouting "Tacos" kind of strange, but a...good kind of strange. I didn't know anyone who would give their bullies a second chance. No one ever sees through a bully.
She wore a small smile, but in that smile was confusion, and happiness as well. She didn't know why I was staring at her like this, but I was staring at her with a level of admiration I could never have for anyone else.
"What's wrong?" she asked me, her small smile still on her face. She lightly placed her hand on my arm, and I guess I had been looking at her for a few consecutive seconds, because she was staring into my eyes with a look of concern.
"I love you," I blurted out.
Nina blinked. "What?" she wondered, clearing her throat and removing her gaze from my face. She started to, once again, play with her fingers, but I took her hand in my mine and made her look at me.
"I love you," I repeated, hoping Nina wouldn't look away from me. Here I was, making eye contact with her, something I hadn't been able to do only a few years prior. "I'm sure of it. I wasn't sure four months ago, but now...I know I do. I love you. You're smart, mature, brave, friendly, energetic..."
"Why are you only stating good traits?" she wondered, and as soon as she said it, I saw the problem with her statement. I didn't remove my hand from hers, but my gaze faced the tile floor for a moment, thinking it through. Jerome called me Stutter Rutter for a reason; even after I had met Nina, even after she had convinced me to take a risk and go for what I wanted, I still remember performing for Aaron for the first time. I had said my name was "Fibin Rittir" and stumbled so much with my guitar it fell out of my hands and onto the wood flooring.
I knew the Confidence Lessons had worked wonders; I could talk in front of millions of people, now, if I had to. Luckily, that opportunity hadn't occurred yet.
"Why would I state the bad traits?" I asked her, meeting her eyes again. They were a pale shade of green, so light they almost looked grey. "I mean, isn't that you're supposed to do...see the good in people?"
"Except I have no good in me," Nina stated, reaching over to grab a muffin from the table like I told her.
"That's not true," I protested her statement.
"Oh, yeah?" Nina said. "Well, prove it then. Say something good about me, because I don't see it myself."
"You're powerful," I began almost immediately, but Nina was still staring at me, the look in her eyes unchanged. "You're...inventive. Loving. Caring. Amusing. Affectionate. Broad-minded. Enthusiastic."
"How am I amusing?" Nina wondered, in an amusing tone of voice. I almost rolled my eyes for her constant belief that she was a bad person (And I guess I was part of that equation; I had called her a bad person on the day of our big fight).
"I don't know," I mumbled, shrugging. "You just are."
We stared at each other for a few seconds longer, my eyes unmoving from her eyes. We slowly moved in, my mouth millimeters from hers until my lips slowly touched hers, and we moved with our kiss in unison. It was slow at first, tentative, as we both knew we were in public. But then my hand moved to her hair, which was (of course) not in a ponytail, my hand resting on her neck.
Nina's arms moved to around my back, and her hand was laid on my shoulder. I pulled her closer, inviting her in, but I didn't dare use tongue or anything inappropriate. Our mouths moved apart for a few seconds until our lips were with each other again. From what I could sense, she smelled like honeysuckle, but I was too involved in the kiss to notice anything else.
Someone to my right cleared their throat rather loudly, so Nina and I pulled apart quickly, only to see the entire table staring at us. Nina was blushing rather loudly, while I just grimaced, grabbed another muffin from the table, and discreetly grabbed Nina's hand from under the table.
"Do you see us going anywhere?" Nina whispered in my ear, once the laughs had died down, and Joy had told me that she'd always dreamed of kissing me; she asked Nina what it was like, but she hadn't answered, only blushed louder than before. "I mean...going anywhere in our relationship. I don't want to be stuck in a relationship that goes nowhere, you know what I mean? Especially because you're famous..."
"It doesn't matter that I'm famous," I told her, one of my eyebrows arched. "You haven't been concerned with my fame since we've met. You've always treated me like a human...and I have to say, I'm a bit disappointed."
"Disappointed?"
"Yeah," I answered happily, a light smile that I hoped was expressed through my eyes as well, to let Nina know I was just joking with her. "After Mick, Jerome, and I found out where you lived and was driving there with Alfie, I continually thought about you. It was true that I hadn't seen you in three years and had no idea what you looked like, but I always thought that you'd be more...fan-ish."
"Oh, so you expected me to have a million posters of you in my room, and a life that was basically dedicated to worshiping you?" Nina didn't seem mad at all; in fact, I could have almost sworn she seemed as amused as I told her she was. "Sorry that I have a two-year-old daughter to look after and don't always have time to track your every move. And speaking of my daughter, Mara, could you bring Emma over here, please?"
Almost as if she were the babysitter, Mara quickly hopped out of her seat and jogged over to where Nina and I were sitting, Emma in her arms. With the entire table looking at us, Mara handed my daughter to her mother.
"Don't!" Nina exclaimed quickly, lowering Emma down to sight after she had begun to play with her mother's light-brown hair. "Emma, no, don't do that. Don't play with people's hair, okay, love?"
"I actually don't mind when she plays with my hair," I muttered, completely to myself, but as I could never whisper silently before, it came out louder than I wanted it to be.
"You'll give her the wrong idea," Nina explained calmly, playing with Emma's hands as she sat her down on her lap. "I don't want her playing with people's hair for the rest of her childhood, because if she continues to do that, then she'll be 13 and come home from school only to want to play with someone's hair again."
"Aw, come on, Nina," I played, lightly pushing Nina to the side. "Most childhood habits fade away by pre-school. Did you not have a childhood?"
"Oh, I had a childhood, thank you very much."
She spent the next few minutes talking about her life in Sebastian, Florida, back before her parents died in the car crash. She spoke of her friend Taylor and Taylor's mother's hair salon, and how they used to hang out there every day after school. Maybe I didn't learn a ton of new things about her, but it was nice seeing her open up to me instead of hiding away, like things should have been from the start.
Supper continued normally; or at least as normally as supper with sixteen people can get. After a weird awkward silence, Joy suggested we all play a game of Would You Rather; considering there were small ears at the table, it couldn't get too descriptive or use bad language, but after Eddie asked Patricia "Would you rather eat the toenails off of an old man's foot or smoke weed with Justin Bieber?" and she almost slapped the living daylights out of him that we ate the rest of dinner in silence.
Eddie's father, Eric, graciously told everyone he'd pay for the bill; that was, until he saw how much the final cost for sixteen people was, and everyone chipped in 20 pounds to help him pay for it. I might have given him a little more than 20, but..
We said goodbye soon after. Joy, who was sitting next to Patricia, apologized for the final time about how she treated Nina both 1) when she was pregnant and 2) after she was pregnant. Nina accepted her apology greatly, and it made me wonder: even though I had blurted out my feelings for her at dinner today, did she feel the same way about me? Was she in love with me, just as much as I was in with her?
I couldn't get the thought out of my head when we all ushered into Isabelle's car. We brought Emma with us, of course, so there were 7 people in Isabelle's van: me, Emma, Nina, Chloe, Olivia, Rosie, and Isabelle, who was driving. Without moving her head, she called, "So, Nina, have you gotten used to driving on the other side of the road yet?"
She was referring to the fact that Nina had gotten her driver's license; after failed and failed attempts and me trying to teach her, we recruited help from a professional driver. It took a few weeks, but Nina aced the test and was rewarded the licence that allowed her to drive her own car.
I told Nina I'd buy her her own car, since I had the money from being famous and all. It took a whopping four days to convince her, but she finally agreed to let me do her this one favor after everything she did for me in the past. I awarded her with a small car (She said if I got her anything big or expensive she'd crash it into a tree by accident because she'd be distracted by it's beauty, but I knew she just didn't want me to spend that much money on her), and she loved it all the same as if I was to buy her a Rolls Royce. She thanked me and kissed me as hard as she did the night we met.
Nina's car was in my driveway at my house right now, so she'd be able to drive home instead of me driving her home.
"Well, my parents died when I was 10, and I moved here when I was 13, so I never really got used to 'driving on the other side of the road, per se'," Nina told Isabelle, scratching at her chin. "I mean, when I first moved here in 2007, driving on the other side of the road was a big change for me, but now I'm used to it, and driving on it is no big deal, really."
Isabelle, once we had stopped at a traffic light, glanced over a shoulder and grinned at my girlfriend. Ever since Isabelle had met Nina, she had admired her. Now, especially, that Isabelle was pregnant with her fiancée's child (at least they were engaged by the time she became pregnant) she wanted to learn everything about Nina's experience with pregnancy, even though Nina was 15 and Isabelle is 23.
"You are literally the most amazing person I know," Isabelle commented, turning back to face the front. "I mean, when I was 15, I could barely punch Fabian out, and he was only 11. Chloe was 9 and she could've easily punched Fabian out and that time, and you gave birth to a baby!"
Chloe, who was sitting in the row in front of us, guffawed. She was 17 now, much older than her nine-year-old self (and I hated to admit it, but Isabelle was right; every one of my sisters could easily have beat me up then, and they could still beat me up now.
"What were they like?" Rosie was the one to ask the question this time; she was my second oldest sister and was sitting in the passenger set, beside Isabelle. "The days when you were pregnant with Emma, I mean."
I had always been too shy to ask about the time when Nina was pregnant with my child; I felt like she would shoulder me away and avoid everything having to do with me if I asked her.
Now, however, was evidently different. "Well...they were hard, for one thing. I remember the day I found out I was pregnant...September 2nd, 2009. I had missed my period a few days before that, and I was getting concerned, because my period was ALWAYS on time. When I got a pregnancy test, I didn't know what I was expecting, but...I cried myself to sleep after sobbing to Eddie and Mara that I was pregnant. I couldn't believe it. For so long as a child I couldn't wait to be a teenager and be out there and be rebellious, and then...a stupid night when a guy I'd never see again took that all away from me."
I'd never thought of it like that; I ruined her teenage years. I took that away from her and her years as a teenager is something she'd never get back.
She continued on, anyway. "And the months in between were hard as well, of course, but surprisingly I never experienced morning sickness like most books expect you to. I was fine with that. The hormones, however...god, I was a TRAINWRECK."
Olivia, my youngest sister and easily my favorite one, laughed as hard as Chloe did at Isabelle's comment to Nina's one. Olivia, she told me, had always felt a weird connection with Nina, ever since she met her. "How bad were you?" Olivia asked, her voice not as small as it would be with someone she wasn't comfortable with. Olivia was shy, like me, but opened up around people she was SURE she could trust. Me, however...
I was too naïve, and I knew that. It was something I'd always wanted to change about myself.
Nina laughed, a bit harder than Olivia, but she laughed sensitively, as if she knew people were watching her. "How bad was I?" She repeated the question, then grinned. "Oh, man..."
"There was this one time in March that I almost had a nervous breakdown. Eddie were Mara were over my house, and Eddie demanded that I make him a sandwich since he was too lazy to get up off his fat ass. Now, I was 7 months pregnant at that time, so I was more comfortable moving around than I was sitting down so I agreed and made him a Turkey sandwich. I don't know why or what it is, but that Turkey sandwich looked so good that I ate it myself. And let me just tell you, it was a good sandwich. Now I'm staring at an empty plate and I thought it would be funny if I brought it back to Eddie like that, and so I did. He didn't think it was that funny. He started to scold me that he should have just made another one for me to eat, I shouldn't have done that, et cetera et cetera, and he's not really yelling at me but his voice is high and his face is stern so I know he isn't kidding. Again, I don't know why, but I just cracked and broke down, crying my heart out and saying how sorry I was that I ate his sandwich and it was such a stupid thing and ugh...the next 2 months after that were absolute and pure HELL. I started crying over NOTHING, like if my cereal wasn't filled exactly to the top, if there wasn't 10 apples in the fruit basket at one time, not knowing how to multiply 6 times 8, the jacket of a hardcover book being bent, you get the point. Mara avoided every place to do with me this one week in April, it was so funny. We laugh about it now, though, so it's no big deal."
Silence; I was like half sure that my four sisters didn't know how to respond to that. From what I could see, Chloe was silently bouncing up and down in her seat with laughter.
Once the other three sisters finally burst into laughter, my daughter caught on with them. Emma laughed with everyone, probably just going along with the flow. Nina was smiling; she looked pleased, but a little uncomfortable as well. Emma was laughing the hardest out of all of us, so Nina leaned over and laughed with her daughter in her car seat.
"But did Eddie ever apologize for yelling at you because you ate his sandwich?" Chloe asked, once she had stopped silently laughing and let it out with sound.
At first, Chloe didn't want anything to do with Nina or Emma. It took a bit of coaxing to get her to warm up to both of them, to get her to realize that even though I made a mistake, it turned out to work for the best in the end. Chloe and Nina weren't as good of friends as Olivia and Nina were, but they were working on it.
We talked about Nina's pregnancy the entire ride home; when Nina finally spoke about the birth, it got too much for me and I had to plug both my ears shut and my daughter's ears. Even though she was only two and probably didn't understand the term "contractions", I wasn't taking any chances.
Eddie and Mara, the other two people who were coming home with me, followed Isabelle's van with Eddie's Toyota. Isabelle parked the van in the long driveway, and Eddie followed so.
"Fabian?" Nina called my attention, and I nodded to say I was listening. "Could you get Emma for me, please? I want to go get Eddie and Mara."
"Sure thing."
When Nina smiled at me and kissed my cheek, I grinned stupidly and turned around and unbuckle Emma. She was playing with the strap and chewing on the metal buckle that had once held Nina in, but I took it out of her mouth before she could chip her growing teeth.
I unbuckled Emma and hoisted her up into my arms. "Alright, come on, boo. Let's get inside."
Emma, of course, started playing with my hair once she could reach it; I know Nina said she wanted to break Emma out of that habit before she went to preschool this September, but I didn't have the heart to stop her.
When I looked around, Nina, Eddie, and Mara were chatting by his car, and my sisters were already all inside the house. I didn't feel like intruding upon Nina and her friends; I didn't know if she'd want me in the conversation or not, whatever she was talking about. So I turned around to look at Emma, who had stopped playing with my hair and was now looking at my house with an incredulous expression. "This isn't home," she muttered, her lips pursed.
"No," I agreed, softly bouncing Emma up and down. She laughed a little bit, but upon noticing the house again, the concerned expression returned. I continued, "This isn't home. This is Daddy's home!"
"Daddy's home?" She asked me, the February cold biting at her small fingers, making Emma hide them within her tiny pants pockets. "Daddy has home?"
"Daddy has a different home, yeah," I told her, sighing. I glanced back at Nina and the others; Mara was laughing hysterically at something Eddie had said (I only knew that because looked like she had just watched a five-hour video of paint drying and Mara looked like she she was about to pass out from cramps). Nina kept glancing my way, and she even caught my gaze for a few seconds; our eyes were locked on each other until Emma started screaming to get my attention, so I had to turn back to her.
After looking back to Nina once again, I came to a final decision and told her, "Emma, we're going to play a game."
"A GAME?!" Emma exclaimed, a look of complete excitement creeping onto her face. I shushed her by placing a finger on my lips, and she mirrored my action but quieting herself. "What game?"
"You'll see," I said quickly, lowering Emma down to my thigh. I moved my hand from her back to her head, and after taking a deep breath, I slowly lowered Emma by her head to the concrete.
I could tell she didn't know how to react at first; she was silent until her head was inches from the ground, and I was holding onto her small legs like it was a lifeline. (Which it was, honestly — if I ever dared to stop Emma, Nina would slap me into the middle of the next week.)
Then, as Emma was nearing the ground, she screamed until she realized that somehow, this was fun, and she started laughing hysterically. I didn't know how it felt to be on the other side, but on the side that was lowering the child, I was scared shitless.
I quickly bounced Emma back upright, but she continued laughing hysterically. I smiled at her ecstasy, and continued to lower her to the ground head-first, my hand on her head until I heard someone scream "FABIAN RUTTER!"
I bounced Emma back upright again, quicker than last time. Emma's short light brown hair was sprawled across her face, and her chest bounced up and down with laughter.
Surprisingly, Mara was sprinting toward me, quicker than if she was late for a Trigonometry test. "Fabian! Stop that right now! Don't you dare drop Emma on her head and scar her for life!"
She pushed me away, taking her best friend's daughter out of my arms and cradling her. "It's okay, Emma. You're safe now."
"She was safe all along," I assured Mara, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder. "I swear to God I wouldn't have let her fall."
Eddie and Nina walked up soon afterwards, not looking they were concerned at all. Nina caught my gaze once again, smiling brightly. "Besides," Nina began, "I trust him. And I really don't think he'd let his own daughter crack her head open on the concrete...I think that's one thing he'd never forgive himself for."
Once again, Nina found my eyes and smiled even brighter than before. I smiled back, reaching for Emma, but Mara took her away from me and gave her to Nina instead.
"Come on," I said, "let's go inside."
/o~~~o/
We went inside.
Nina handed Emma to Eddie almost as quickly as Mara had handed Emma to her. Eddie started teasing Emma around, playing peekaboo as if she were still an infant. Eddie lightly slapped Eddie a few times, and there was this time she hit him on the head so far his neck looked like it was about to snap back.
My sisters gave us some space, which meant they all just went to the basement to watch this Dutch show, Het Huis Anubis. None of my sisters spoke Dutch, obviously, but they found subtitled version of it online.
From what I knew of it, it was a show where eight teenagers attended this boarding school, the House of Anubis, and they solved mysteries. I knew Anubis was an Egyptian god, but it sounded like a pretty stupid show to me. Who would watch a mystery show, especially on Nickelodeon, who's main source of income is Spongebob?
Now, it was just me, Emma, Nina, Mara, and Eddie in the common room of my house. I would have invited Mick, Jerome, Alfie, and Amber, but Amber and Alfie were going to see a movie, Jerome to had to babysit Poppy, and Mick had to babysit Liz, but I kind of thought that they just didn't want to spend time with Nina's friends since I had invited them first originally. Since I was out on a sixteen-person date with my girlfriend, I told my parents to go out on a date of their own, so it was just us in the common room.
"I'm gonna go cut up a hot dog for Emma," Eddie told us, pushing himself off the couch. Emma was laying down, under the table, staring at the bottom. I didn't understand what was so amusing about it, but she was two, and I hated to argue with a two-year-old.
"Cut it up into tiny pieces!" Nina commended, but her expression soon turned into a concerned one when she realized her mistake. "No, no, cut them into small pieces! Not tiny! Small! Or else she'll choke and die and I'll tell the entire world that you killed my daughter. I'll tell all of Fabian's fans and then they'll come after you."
He brushed her away like a piece of lint on his coat.
"Not to rain on this parade, but..." Mara began, from where she was sitting on the floor, next to Emma's feet. "But don't Fabian's fans...kind of hate you?"
"Hate is a strong word—" I tried to assure her, but Nina only smiled.
"Oh, they hate me," she confirmed, smiling, like being hated was the best feeling in the world. "But they don't Fabian. And they certainly wouldn't be happy if his daughter was killed by his girlfriend — whom they hate — now would they?"
"I'M NOT GONNA KILL HER!" Eddie exclaimed. Nina, Mara, and I all laughed, but I heard Eddie mumble something like "Maybe I'll leave a hot dog uncut and shove it down Nina's throat, yeah...that'd kill her..." But it didn't truly scare me until I heard a loud scratch, as if Eddie was dragging a knife along something rough.
"Speaking of fans," I delicately brought the subject up; I knew Nina said she didn't care what anyone thought of her, but in a way, I also knew that wasn't true. You couldn't do something weird or unordinary without wondering if people were going to judge you; it was just how things worked. Nina couldn't have walked into school every day while she was pregnant and not wonder what people were going to say about her that day, because people were beyond cruel and they picked on other people for satisfaction. "Would you like to do a twitcam with me?"
"A twitcam?" Nina wondered aloud, looking skeptical. Mara looked just as skeptical, if not more. "I don't know, Fabian. Why give them more ammunition?"
"I thought you didn't care what people thought of you?"
"Well, I don't really..." I didn't even have to say anything. She realized her mistake herself, and soon came to the conclusion that it was better to drop the subject all together. "We're not gonna do the Twitcam now, okay? Not with Eddie, Mara, and Emma here, and not before I come prepared."
I nodded in understanding, but it made me wonder about the silliest things. I knew fans tended to get personal when I asked them to send in questions, and I also knew I had told Nina I loved her today, out of the blue.
Was she thinking about that right now? Did she love me too? She didn't say it back to me when I blurted it out at supper today. Was this whole relationship one-sided, and did have feelings for Eddie all this time but just disguised them with brotherly-love?
Eddie had always intimated me, a little bit. True, he was bigger, and stronger, than I was, but something about his and Nina's friendship had always thrown me off. Even Patricia, his girlfriend, had made me skeptical to begin with; was she just a beard to cover up Eddie and Nina's true destiny to be together, or something?
They were like a pair I had read about in an Egyptian mythology textbook: an Osirian and Chosen One. I knew they didn't exist and that they were just myths, but Eddie had always proved protective of Nina; maybe in an older-brother type of way, but the Osirian and Chosen One were supposed to be soulmates. They were supposed to be the people they went back to in the afterlife.
I was only nineteen; I barely knew anything about love. I didn't know if Nina was my soulmate or not; I didn't know if she'd die, or something, leaving me all alone with a daughter and a dead girlfriend, but what if I found somebody I liked more than Nina? They always said that if you love two people at the same time, choose the second, because if you fell in love with the second, you were never really in love with the first in the first place.
I had only known KT for about a week and a half by the time we exchanged goodbyes. I took her virginity, according to her, but it was a good thing. She wasn't pregnant (I had called her number every single day to check if KT was pregnant or not, and every single she answered my text and/or phone call with a calm, nonchalant answer of 'no').
"What are you thinking about?" Nina interrupted my train of thought, moving closer to me on the couch. Mara was playing with Emma on the floor, and Eddie was in the kitchen, probably planning Nina's demise. "Anything...important?"
"Sort of," I answered, and Nina smiled. "But we can't discuss it here. We'll wait until your friends are gone, alright?" Nina nodded in approval, her expression confused, but intrigued at the same time.
I don't know what took Eddie so long in the kitchen, but he came back into the common room with a plate full of tiny slices of hot dog. Mara literally dragged (but lightly so as not to give her rugburn) Emma out from under the table. Nina told Eddie it was okay to give Emma the hot dog after close inspection that the pieces weren't too big or too small.
Emma took the plate gratefully and stuffed a piece in her mouth, eager to try something new. She chewed for a few more seconds, until her curious expression became a disgusted one. "Ew!" She exclaimed, spitting the already-chewed pieces onto the hug.
"Emma! Do you not like hot dogs? You are not American!" Eddie yelled melodramatically, even though she wasn't technically American. She wasn't even born American.
I wanted to be angry, but I really couldn't be; Emma was two. She wasn't even in preschool yet. She didn't know any better, so I really couldn't be mad.
"Hey!" Nina said softly, pushing herself off the couch and kneeling next to her daughter. "Don't do that, okay? That's not good."
"No!" Emma exclaimed again, dropping the paper plate on the rug and smacking Nina's arm. "No! I don't like!"
I almost got out of my seat with shock and anger. I would never harm my daughter in any way, shape, or form, but...I actually didn't know what I was planning to do by getting up, but Eddie pushed me back down onto the couch (rather violently, may I add).
"It's the Terrible Two's," he told me, smirking, as if he had known all this for years (which he probably had). "Two-year-olds can't get their emotions out correctly, so they take out their emotions on other people sometimes. It's perfectly okay, and that smack wasn't even really that hard. Look, mother and daughter are hugging it out now, see?"
I turned around to see Nina and Emma in an embrace. They removed their arms from around each other, and Nina started tickling Emma's stomach; our baby started laughing uncontrollably again. It was an amusing sight, as I had never really made my daughter laugh before.
"So, have I told you about the time Mara had this huge crush on Eddie?" Nina asked me, sitting and bouncing Emma on my lap. I laughed a bit, while Mara exhaled a very audible groan.
"Nina, when will you ever drop that?" She wailed. "I was thirteen years old!"
/o~~~o/
The four of us talked until the sky was so dark I couldn't see outside.
We exchanged funny stories; I told them how Chloe didn't stop sucking her thumb until she was nine, Mara spoke (rather reluctantly) about her crush on Eddie the few weeks after their ghost-hunting project together; Eddie talked about the time, a week before Nina had originally sent me the photo of Emma, that the three of them went biking together and Nina fell into the bushes after swerving off the road and Eddie laughed so hard he fell down; and Nina told me about her dream last night, where me and her were driving a truck that ran over Mara.
My dad and mum came home around 11, and when they saw Eddie and Mara, they told them to go home, as it was a Wednesday night and they had school tomorrow.
Eddie offered to take Emma home with him, but I begged him and Nina to let Emma sleepover at my house again. Eddie was against it, but Nina was 100% for it. Therefore, when Eddie, Nina, and Mara exchanged goodbyes, Emma stayed at home with Nina and I.
My parents went to sleep pretty much as soon as they came home, and I wanted to spend some alone time with Nina after our sixteen-person dinner and talking with Eddie and Mara for the rest of the day, so I dropped Emma off with my sisters in the cellar and Nina and I walked to my room.
"Well, that was a long day," Nina breathed, sighing, lying halfway on my bed.
The calendar read February 13th, 2013; the day before Valentines Day. Nina and I weren't planning to do anything super special, mostly because she had school and I had a super-duper important concert that I was supposed to perform on the annual day of love.
"Yeah, very," I agreed, sitting next to Nina on my bed. She arched her back so she was sitting up next to me, and we stared at each other for about fifteen consecutive seconds before I told her, "Your friends are rather amusing. I don't know why you didn't tell me about them before."
"Like I said, they're embarrassing," Nina laughed, diverting her gaze to the walls around my room, which were painted a dark blue color. "If I had told Eddie I had reunited with you back in August, he probably would have murdered you."
"You think?"
"Oh, I know," she laughed, meeting my eyes again. I held them, just like every time since we reunited. "I remember this one day with clarity; it was a couple of weeks after Emma was born, and she was still very tiny...Eddie and his father took me and Emma to a doctor, one that treats babies, ya know? When the doctor asked who the father was, and I had to tell him that I didn't know, well..."
I could see where this was going. I cringed, because even though I knew it wasn't totally my fault for not giving her any means to contact me by after our one-night stand, it still pained me to think of all that happened with Nina and her friends without me.
"When his dad drove me, Emma, and Eddie home, Eddie told me that if he ever found the father, he'd beat the living shit out of him. I don't know why he didn't beat you to a pulp when he met you that first, time, but..." she shrugged, giggled only the slightest bit, and pushed a large clump of hair behind her ear. "What are you going to do?"
She had never said it before, but did she feel it? What was that look she was giving me right now, and what did it mean? Did she harbor no feelings for me at all, or was she more in love with me than I was with her?
She answered that question by quickly, without a warning, slammed my lips against hers. I recognized the movement immediately but it was unlike anything that we had ever done before.
August 15th, 2009.
That's what it felt like. That first time we met...the sparks were new. The feelings were new. I had never been so interested in another person than her before, never been so intrigued, so fascinated, and not wondering what it would feel like to...do it. To have sex. After all, at that time, I was only sixteen.
I didn't know if I was supposed to get married or not, but you're supposed to be married before you have a baby, and now look at Nina and I. "Post-marital sex" didn't really apply to us. This time, my hand moved to the back of her head, bringing her towards me.
My tongue was in her mouth, and I could feel us moving closer...she pressed harder, until my lips were crushed against hers and I couldn't move any closer to her. She laughed as we kissed, moving in unison, and she moved her hands around my hair, tangling her fingers within the hair that so desperately needed to be cut.
I rested my free hand on her knee, and she didn't cringe or move away. I laughed harder, and we collapsed against the bed sideways. My hand was on the back of her head, my mouth moving away but just moving right back. I didn't know where we planned to go with this, but another few seconds into the kiss, and Nina said, "Stop."
I pulled back immediately. She sat up before I did, and when I asked her what was wrong, she rolled her eyes and scoffed as if I should have already known the answer. "Fabian, the last we...did this...it produced Emma."
"You really think I'd let it go that far?" I laughed slightly, slowly pushing myself off of the bed and walking over to my nightstand table, pulling out a condom from the deepest drawer. "If there's one thing I learned from that night in 2009, it was—"
"It doesn't matter about the condom, Fabian," Nina muttered, brushing some hair back with her fingers. "What I mean is...I don't...I can't...I can't do it — I don't want to do it —"
"That's perfectly fine, I'm not gonna force you to do anything you don't want to do—"
"It's moving too fast—"
"Oh, cut the 'too fast' bullshit, Nina," I sighed, rolling my eyes and sitting down on the bed next to her again. "I thought that was in the past. We're boyfriend and girlfriend now, it doesn't matter what people think of you because I love you and that's all that matters."
She met my eyes, but I dropped the gaze before she could. I told her silently, "But I don't know if you love me, because you haven't told me so."
Now Nina was the one to groan, lying down on the bed again, staring at my ceiling. "Just stop it, Fabian, okay? I don't want to do it. It's moving too fast, so maybe we could go a little slower? I mean, your whole fan base hates me, my school still hates me, and I'm pretty sure you hate me too—"
"I don't hate you."
She began to speak about how I didn't make that very clear, because of all that happened over the past six months. She spoke of our fights, and the fight in the bathroom of the restaurant, the one that tore us apart from each other for a month and ten days.
We fought, pushing each others limits. I asked her why she didn't want to do this, and she told me we were moving too fast. I asked why, and she told me she didn't want everyone to hate her for having sex with Fabian Rutter again. I told her that no one would hate her because we wouldn't tell anyone, but she was convinced something was going to leak out.
Eventually, by the time I called her a chicken for something I don't even remember talking about, Nina was done with fighting. "You know what?" she almost yelled, evidently steamed. "I'm out. You can keep Emma for the night, but I'm leaving. I don't need this right now. Goodbye, Fabian."
"I'LL DROP OUR DAUGHTER OFF TOMORROW!" I screamed back to her, and I saw Nina give me a very unladylike gesture on the way out. "Oh my god. I don't need that in my life. Whatever."
I got changed quickly, leaving Emma with my sisters. I slipped under the blankets, closed my eyes, but couldn't sleep; I was too preoccupied with thinking about the fight between us. I didn't know where it had come from and why it had escalated so quickly, but I whipped out my cell phone and called Nina, even though she was driving home on the road.
She picked up after another few rings. "What do you want, Fabian?"
"What are we going to do?" I asked her, my head leaning on my arm. "Like, why did you storm out? Are we just going to ignore each other for the rest of our lives, or what? Where's Emma going to go? What are we going to do?"
"I don't know, Fabian. All I know is that you acted really dumb and as if I was the stupid one in our relationship. I wasn't going to fight with you, so I just stormed out. Is that okay? Because I know you know what happened the last time we had a fight, and I was really unhappy afterwards. I'm fine now, of course, but I wasn't put myself through that again. I'm just going to — you know what, I—"
It was as if she wanted to say something else, so I let her continue until she stopped talking, and the line went dead. I threw my cell phone across the bed, because she had obviously hung up on me; she was only 17, but it was no excuse for how she was acting. She was being very immature, and I was the famous one; I was known around the world. I had an excuse to break down if I did.
I decided to go to sleep. I don't remember what I dreamed about; science stated that you dream every single night, but you don't remember most of them. I fell asleep quickly, knowing tomorrow was Valentines Day, and I'd be doing nothing with my girlfriend. I also had an important concert with my career tomorrow, and I'd probably be giving it while she was at school.
I was asleep until my ringtone woke me up.
I fumbled around for my phone, reaching everywhere and trying to look for the light. I looked until the ringtone stopped, thinking maybe it was Nina trying to get in contact with me, but then realized that it could wait until the morning. I closed my eyes, but then the phone rang again.
This time, I found it, and the caller ID read: Eddie.
Why the hell was Eddie trying to call me at three in the morning?
I didn't even time to say hello before Eddie asked me, "Fabian, are you awake?"
"Yeah, I am now," I answered, my voice scratchy, like it was every morning. "Why are you calling me so early? Why can't it wait until the morning, when I'm fully awake?" I heard Eddie groan on the other side of the line, and something that sounded like footsteps; but frantic footsteps, as if he was pacing a room.
"Is this just Nina trying to get in contact with me again?" I asked him, sitting up. "Because if it is, tell her to wait until morning. We can work our fight out later."
At my comment, Eddie paused for a moment. I didn't know what was going through his head, but he took a shaky breath and announced, "Fabian, now might not be the best time to comment on Nina."
"Why not?" I asked, but I had a horrid feeling that something was wrong, and Eddie had just confirmed that feeling.
My world came crashing down when Eddie said, "Nina's been in an accident, and I don't know if she's okay or not."