stumbling into line (sidemen ff)

Chapter 30: 'He was never one to believe in love at first sight'

This is a chapter that, though important, is dangerous and risks tearing the whole essence of space and time apart, creating a paradox as we, not only travel back, but travel back to travel forward across a time already documented within this story, but we do not travel forward over the same path we went back.  Instead we make a circle, or more of a figure of eight, and end up at the same point, that point being seven PM on June Twentieth, in a Nandos local to the group of people this very story is about.

So, let's travel back on this road, back through the hugging and spinning, to the opening and exhaustion, to the counting and the excitement, to the buying of a simple plastic stick that changes people's lives, or more so let's people know that there lives are going to change, either way, it's important and one thing that wasn't mentioned in the chapter before was that whilst in the supermarket, Freya bumped into a wild - and confused - Adriana, who was still in the midst of forgiving Freya for her outburst at Tobi's long gone birthday party.  Never the less, she smiled and made polite conversation, not asking why she had two pregnancy tests in her hand because Freya seemed to be purposely ignoring the fact that Adriana was carrying a basket filled with nappies and baby milk formula.

The reason for that being that Ethan had called and asked if she wanted to meet Caleb for the first time.  To say she was excited was an understatement, she loved kids.  Ethan had also text her a list of things she would need to bring or be thrown out of 'the Sidemen kingdom', on which was nappies and milk, all of said things he had claimed he would give her the money for and Adriana momentarily wondered if Ethan had invited her over just because he was too lazy to get up and go to the shop himself before she realised that the probability of that being the reason was second to one and that Ethan was just plain lazy.

After her awkwardly polite conversation with Freya she had continued up the aisle to see little toys at the end, which marked the end of 'Women's Toiletries' and the start of 'Baby essentials'.  She grabbed a little stuffed Tiger, that was a silvery grey and black and had 'Rawr' embroidered across it's left paw, and left the shop, she paid, of course.

Two hours and absolutely no effort to do anything at all later and she was headed to the Sidemen house.  It took her forty minutes in her car, but she was just glad that she wasn't coming from uni because it would have taken her three hours and that wasn't a drive she was looking forward to doing again in September.  Her parents, and most of her family, lived in London, just like she did for eighteen years but she went to university last year in Leeds, which was far away but she loved it there and had made plenty of new friends, of course, none of them compared to Ethan, but she hated the driving and so had stayed in Leeds the whole school year, which had come to a close early for some unknown reason, and planned to do the same the next year.

She pulls up to the house and practically sprints to the door out of excitement and the door opens to reveal a very distressed looking Ethan and Simon.  Simon is balancing, who Adriana guesses is, Caleb and is bouncing him up and down as he screams and wails, his face red and blotchy but, even though his cheeks are wet and sticky looking, tears are no longer falling from his eyes.  A familiar baby smell is following them and it's not the nice one either, it's the smell of baby sick and baby food, which do not match at all, and Adriana sources them to the dirty bib that Caleb is wearing.

"Hey." She speaks, in a light tone, before turning to Caleb, "Hey buddy, what's got your knickers in a twist?"

"He's hardly slept.  He kept waking up every two hours and he won't eat his breakfast and he's been crying like this for two hours straight.  I don't know what to do, I think I'm gonna have to call Suzie." Simon rushes, a constant ringing in his ears as Caleb screams and screams.

"Nonsense," Adriana declares, "Give 'im 'ere." She then proceeds to take Caleb from Simon and the first thing she notices is the one tooth he has at the front of his mouth.