Forbidden Baby

Chapter 3 – Where It Began

Thia’s POV

**FLASHBACK**

A little over 10 months ago

‘Ugh, why do they have to be here’ I rolled my eyes dramatically for effect and Loretta just laughed.

‘Girl, she was never going to let you come to this party without him being here, and he was never going to come without someone his age attending, so quit your moaning and be thankful this is happening at all’

She was right. Somehow, I had convinced my parents to let me go to a New year’s eve party at Loretta’s house. I was only allowed to go if Gabe and Zeke came with me. They of course would only come if their friends could come too.

Loretta’s parents had a party every year, with her having not long turned 16, they said they would let her throw one this year and they would go out. There were rules, and we had to stick to them, but we were more than okay with all of that!

 We had to lie to my parents and tell them that it wasn’t a ‘party’ but was a small gathering of a select group of friends, being chaperoned by adults. Although this wasn’t a complete lie, it wasn’t the truth either.

We had two doormen on the gate, and two at the front door. They only let in people on the list, so we weren’t concerned about who was turning up and none of the doormen would be leaving until every last person had left. Loretta’s parents had ensured this.

This was pretty much the only rule Loretta’s parents had set, other than stay safe, don’t break anything, keep it calm and have fun. The doormen had been given orders on when to step in if things seemed to get out of hand.

If I was honest, I was glad they were about, I had heard of some wild parties getting out of control before now, I didn’t want this to be one of them or Loretta and I could kiss goodbye our friendship.

I had arrived earlier on In the day to help set everything up. There wasn’t too much to do, as it was all still looking pretty spectacular from Christmas.

Outside, the garden was filled with fairy lights, that at night light up the entire back garden. Inside they had taken down the Christmas decs, and put away some of the valuables, but we had decorated it ourselves with some funky lighting and chic New years eve decs.

Once we were done, and we had put all the drinks and food on the sides in the kitchen, we went up to get ready. I had bought a new dress and I couldn’t wait to get ready. I had to tone it down knowing the Zeke was coming, I knew Gabe wouldn’t care, but Zeke was another story!

I slipped on the knee length skater dress and did my hair in light curls, pulling it up into a high ponytail and lightly adding some makeup to my milky white skin. I looked in the mirror.

‘What do you think?’ I asked feeling a little self-conscious.

‘Stunning’ Loretta replied, grinning wide as she did a twirl in her very short, maroon coloured bodycon dress that left little to the imagination.

‘Wow’ I stared ‘you pulled out all the stops huh!’

We slipped on our heels and went downstairs; people would start to arrive soon.

We were in the kitchen, it had just turned 7pm and people were starting to show, milling around, getting drinks and snacks, and taking a look around. Upstairs was out of bounds as was her Dad’s office, but everywhere else was fair game.

Zeke, Hannah, and his i***t friends had arrived with Gabe and a few of his. Zeke eyed me suspiciously as he clocked my attire but said nothing as he grabbed a drink and went off in another direction.

It wasn’t lost on me the looks I was getting. No-one other than Loretta had seen me dressed any differently than the abominations I wore at school and home. I liked the attention, but I also didn’t want people to make assumptions, which is why I kept my clothing choice safe.

By 9pm, people were all over the place, chatting, dancing, playing silly games, drinking, and generally having a really good time. Loretta was chatting to some guy from the year above and I was wondering around feeling a little lost.

I decided to pop up to her room to freshen up and as I reached her door, I felt someone behind me. As I turned, he grabbed my wrist, I could smell the alcohol on him, he was drunk, and his breath smelt.

It was Danny, he was in the year above Zeke and shouldn’t be here.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ I tried to keep my voice steady ‘you shouldn’t even be here!’

I panicked as he pinned me against the wall and leant into the crook of my neck as he slurred into my ear ‘Little Tabitha Mathews got all grown up’

‘f**k of Danny or I’ll scream’ my voice faltered, and I knew he could sense the fear.

He licked the side of my cheek, and I closed my eyes shut as he sneered ‘I’m not going anywhere until I’ve had your tight…’

Before he could finish his sentence, I heard an almighty thump and when I opened my eyes, Danny was in a heap on the floor.

‘Go into that room and wait for me, I’ll be back in a minute’ I only saw the back of his head as he ran back down the hall.

A few minutes later he returned with one of the doormen, who picked him up as if he was a feather and threw him out with minimal fuss.

‘Freddie?’

‘Hey Tabitha’ he said awkwardly ‘Are you okay?’

‘What are you doing up here? How did you know?’

‘I watched him come up here and I knew we shouldn’t be up here, so I was just checking on what he was up too. I thought you guys were, you know, but then I heard what he was saying, and I knew he was up to no good’

‘Oh, right, Thanks. Anyway, I should go’

‘Wait, please, you look a little shaken, are you okay?’

I just wanted him to go away, Zeke would have a field day if Freddie told him what happened.

‘I’m fine, honestly’

I waked into Loretta’s room, closed the door and sunk to the floor by the base of the door and started to sob.

There was a knock on the door, and I held back my tears enough to speak ‘What?’

‘Tabitha, please let me in, I won’t hurt you, I just want to make sure you are okay!’

Ugh. Why won’t he just give up and walk away?

‘Tabitha please?’

I opened the door, ‘It’s Thia. Please stop calling me Tabitha!’

‘Oh, right, yeah, sorry, force of habit’ he grinned awkwardly. He was kind of cute when he did that.

‘Come in’ I opened the door a little wider and he stepped in.

His light brown wavy hair was a little messy and went to put his hand through it, but before he did, he shook out his wrist, as he walked through the door.

‘Does it hurt?’

He looked at his hand with his bright icy blue eyes ‘What this?’ he put his hand behind him, ‘Nah, I’m good’

‘Let me get a cold cloth for it’ I don’t know why guys had to be macho, it wasn’t cool. I went to the bathroom and ran the cold water over a washcloth, squeezed it out and wrapped his hand in it.

‘Thanks’

It was a little uncomfortable between us as I sat on the window seat and he on the floor Infront of me, his back against the side of the bed, legs crossed.

‘Please don’t tell Zeke, he’ll freak out’

‘Wasn’t planning on it’ he bit his lower lip; ‘he’d probably think I was up to no good’

‘Were you?’

‘What? No, I told you’

‘Yeah, I know, but you are kind of a jerk Freddie, I was just checking’

‘Jeez thanks! I save your ass and you call me a jerk!’ he genuinely sounded offended.

I couldn’t help but laugh bitterly ‘f**k off with the innocent act Freddie, I hear what you say about girls, your disgusting’ I shot back, and his eyes widen as my persona dropped, as I swore at him.

‘Wow, Thia, you have quite the mouth on you!’

‘s**t’

He shook his head, ‘Maybe there is as much about you, I don’t know, as there is about me that you don’t!’

I eyed him suspiciously, what could there possibly be about him that I didn’t know? Egotistical, derogatory clown pretty much summed him up as far as I knew.

‘Maybe’ was all I could think to retort.

His brows raised and his eye widened a little ‘Wanna hang out here for a bit? Until you’re ready to go back down?’

He was being nice again and I felt my resolve soften a little, I didn’t want to go back down yet, and I didn’t want to be alone ‘Yeah okay. Just for a little bit I suppose’

‘So, tell me, Thia, who is the real you?’

‘I don’t know what you mean’ I stammered.

‘Yeah, you do’ he grinned, and I noticed the dimples on either side of his cheek grew deeper.

‘What you see is what you get’ even I knew how obvious that lie was. I face palmed myself, this was a bad idea, I needed him to go, I couldn’t tell him my secrets, Zeke was his mate, it would ruin me.

He laughed ‘Jeez Thia, I thought you would have been better at lying than that, I mean, you obviously have been doing this a while’

‘Doing what?’ I shot back, ‘You know nothing about me!’ I shouted in frustration ‘You need to leave’

‘No way! This is fun. I wanna get to know the real you. Tell you what, I’ll start. But only if you promise whatever I tell you in this room, stays in this room. You can’t even tell Loretta, okay? Promise?’

I really wanted him to leave. I didn’t trust him, but I also found myself intrigued by him. Was he being serious? There was only one way to find out….

‘Ok. We take turns to ask a question, we both answer it with the truth, you always answer first, and I’m in. But if any of this gets back to Zeke, I’ll know it was you and I will ruin you. Understand’

He almost looked a little taken aback for minute, but he recovered quickly, chuckled, and agreed.

We spent the next 2 and a half hours just talking, getting to know the real person behind our masks, I found him easy to talk to, to confide in and I discovered he was an entirely different person than who I thought he was.

People were getting leary downstairs, I knew we had been gone for hours but I also didn’t want to move.

I looked at my watch ‘It’s almost midnight, they will probably be looking for us’

‘Yeah, I guess. This has been fun. I like the real Thia’ he smiled shyly; it was endearing.

‘Yeah, it has been fun, I like the real Freddie too’ I stood up and walked to the door.

As I opened it, we heard cheering ‘It’s midnight, happy new year Freddie’

He took my hand, spun me around and kissed me. It took me by surprise, and I stiffed for a second, before I decided to just go with it, I kissed him back. I opened my mouth just a little and he pushed in his tongue, swirling it effortlessly, exploring me.

I followed his lead and copied his movement as we deepened the kiss, he let go of my hand put his arms around my waist pulling me in closer. I instinctively raised my hand to his mop of messy hair.

I was so lost in the moment it took me a minute to realise someone was coughing loudly behind me.

‘Eh Hem’

I pulled away quickly and I saw Freddies eyes widen in horror, I turned to see Loretta standing there looking smug.

‘Well at least I know where you have been all this time, and what you have been up too you little minx’ she winked, laughing.

‘s**t’ Freddie looked horrified.

‘Chill dude, I won’t say anything’ Loretta waved her arms about.

‘Freddie, it’s ok, we can pretend none of this happened. If you want’

‘I don’t want to forget it Thia, it was the best night of my life’

And with that, we joined the rest of the party goers and went our separate ways as if nothing had ever happened, but knowing it was only the start of our journey.

The following day, Loretta and I devised a plan so that I could see Freddie every Friday night outside of school. In the week, I told my parents I had agreed to help at the school tutoring twice a week, and so we secretly met up at his place then.

In the months to come, we became so close and content, I knew I would be ready to lose my virginity to him. He never once took our make out session too far, never pressurised me, or tried to push me to do anything I didn’t want too. He was the perfect gentleman.