stumbling into line (sidemen ff)

Chapter 18: 'I just want my baby back.'

"Freya?" A small, dark skinned boy asks.  He is staring at his feet and is breathing unevenly.  The girl in question spins around, looking down towards the boy.

"Yes, Tobi?" She answers, smiling sweetly at the boy she has known since she was four.  He was nice, even if she never talked to him.

"Would you like to, um, go out with me?" The nerves radiating from Tobi could probably be seen from outer space and Freya enjoys it.  She didn't talk to boys that much, they all thought she was a nerd because she was smart.  It was nice that someone was nervous around her instead of on the flip side.

"Like, be your girlfriend?" She asks, giggling and smiling.  She had never had a boyfriend before, she was only eleven.  She didn't even know if this could class as a proper relationship.

"Yeah."

"Sure." Tobi breathed a sigh of relief.

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Freya remembered that day like it was yesterday and it had started an amazing friendship that she would cherish forever.  She cherished it that much that she was currently stood in the rain with a big cardboard box wrapped in bright green paper with footballs neatly printed across it.  The wrapping paper was surely for kids under the age of ten but she knew that Tobi would like it and, other than that, it only cost 80p from the corner shop.  It was a bargain.  Otherwise could be said about the contents of the box though, she had spent well over a hundred pounds on the gifts but knew that Tobi deserved every one of them.  She just hoped that he liked them.

Stepping on to the bus, she showed the driver her weekly pass that she was forced to buy now that she didn't have Josh to take her to and fro from uni.  Taking a seat and running a hand through her soaking wet hair, she looked around and wondered why people were staring before she looked back at the giant green box on her knee. 

As she turns back to face forward, she sees a women getting on the bus with a pram.  She struggles to get it down the aisle and Freya wants so badly to get up and help her but she can't bring herself to do it, to pull the pram round and stare a cute little baby in the face.  A baby that has a whole life ahead of it. Her whole chest starts to seize up and she feels the need to go up to the woman, who she presumes is the child's mum, and thank her for having her life together and being able to care for a whole other person and to tell her that she is glad that not everyone is like her.  On the other hand, she wants to go up to her and ask her how she does it, how she knew she could do it.  And just like that, Freya's eyes get heavy, to match her breathing, and she feels like she could burst into tears any second because she threw that chance away.  She could have been that women struggling with a pram on a bus.  Maybe she would be on her way to see Josh, or to drop the little tike at it's grandparents whilst she went to work or school.  Maybe.  Instead, though, she was sat, soaking wet, headed to an undoubtedly lame birthday party that, by the size or wrapping of the present and behaviour of the birthday boy, could be mistaken for a child's, but, not surprisingly, was for a twenty two year old man.

Freya's little encounter, if it could even be called that, had wavered her confidence for this whole get together and had scattered her emotions in a way that she knew she wouldn't be able to tidy up unless she had a good, old cry with a Sam Smith song in the background.  Probably 'Life Support'.

So, in turn, she felt waves of anxiety and uncertainty rush through her as she knocked on Tobi's front door and her head screamed at her to run and to never come back, or to at least take a ten minute breather.

The door swung open to reveal Tobi and her anxieties, if only for a second, went away as she yelled, "Happy birthday!!", to her best friend of ten years.