Him, Me and You

Chapter 1

I leant over the toilet bowl, again, and hurled the non-existent food from my stomach. I heard the door open and felt hands - much bigger than my own - pull my hair away from my face and out of the way as I retched again. I sat back and strong arms wrapped around me. 

"I wish I wasn't pregnant!" I shouted, pulling at my hair, I paused for a minute and sighed. "No, I don't." 

I rubbed my stretched out belly absent mindedly, to say I was 35 weeks pregnant I was tiny. Caleb's hands trapped mine where they were and he kissed my head. 

"I wish I could help you." He whispered into my hair.  

"You are" I replied.  

"Not enough." 

I turned to face him, my belly getting in the way, and kissed him. He really didn't have to be there for me. Any other guy would be running to get away from me and yet he had stayed. We hadn't even been together when I got pregnant. It wasn't even his baby.

I had been walking home, to Caleb's parents' house, when someone grabbed my arm and pulled me to one side. Just a shadow, I fought to pull my arm away but they were suddenly gone and rough lips were pressed against mine. I tried to forget what happened after that but it wasn't easy. The next thing I remember is opening my eyes in the dark street where he had left me and trying to put myself back together. I hadn't done a very good job and when I got back to the house Caleb and his parents had wanted to know what had happened. It was hard to tell them; I ended up telling Caleb and he told his parents and they phoned the police who wanted to know the story directly from me. They all secretly begged the unnamed god that I would be spared and everything could be forgotten. And it began, everyone wanted to know what happened and I wasn't supposed to leave out the gory details but I perfected the art of telling them the truth without telling them the whole truth, it was too painful. Caleb was the only person who knew the whole truth. Apart from me and him. Caleb was the person I cried to when I missed my first period. My second period. My third. Caleb was the one who hovered over me in the bathroom whilst I took the pregnancy test. Caleb was the one who read the test and told me what I already knew. Caleb was the one who had said he would raise my baby as his own and no one needed to know the truth. So I had clung onto Caleb for dear life and we had grown closer and closer. Starting with little things, I sat next to him when we ate. I sat next to him on the sofa. I curled up in his side when we watched films. I held his had whilst we were walking around. I snuck into his room in the night. I folded myself into him when I went to sleep. I told him I loved him. He told me he loved me.

"Come on, we've got to finish the nursery this weekend." Caleb said, pulling me into his arms and carrying me back up the stairs to our bedroom. We were living in our own house, it had been my parents house until they had died and then it had been passed along to me. My bank had been looking after it until I was eighteen but because of 'special circumstances' we had been allowed to take over it. It had been painful at first but I had moved around it. The house was mine now and we had to baby-proof it before the little kicker arrived. Caleb was quite right, the nursery did need finishing this weekend, due to the fact that my little kicker had just about developed a full immune system and could decide to visit us a little sooner than planned. 

"Maternity clothes." I sighed, pulling my stretchy jeans over my bump and sliding a floaty black top over the cami I was wearing. I still didn't look huge but the tight clothes with my floaty top did make me look a little bit more pregnant. People still gave me funny looks when I was walking around, especially when I told people I was nearly 36 weeks pregnant.  

"You look beautiful." Caleb said, pulling a t-shirt over his head and messing up his deep brown hair. He leant down and kissed the top of my stomach, making my little kicker, kick. He laughed and knelt down in front of me. 

"Mornin' baby. Are you gonna come and see us today?" 

"NO!" I screamed, making Caleb laugh even more. 

"It's not that Mama doesn't want you here, it's just that we're not quite ready for you yet, give us three more days." Caleb said. 

"Give us four more weeks." I muttered but rubbed my belly lovingly. I wasn't ready to be pushing a baby out of me yet. Mind you, it would probably be less painful the earlier my little kicker was. The midwife had said that from last week my baby would probably double in size before the kicker was born.  

Caleb locked the door behind us and we set of walking into town, we still needed a Moses basket and some more clothes and nappies.

When we got to town, we made our way straight to the baby shop, it sold everything you might ever need for an infant- and much more - Caleb once told me that we'd have to have our own baby shop one day, because he wanted so many babies! I'm smiling at that thought as we walk through the door and Caleb's arm tightens around my waist, holding me back so that an elderly woman can get past us and out of the door we've just come through. She smiles at us in thanks and returns to her shopping... before doing a double take. This time her eyes are focussed on my belly. 

"Doing some shopping for your mother, dear?" She asks, her eyes still trained on my stomach. I look up at Caleb and he smiled briefly - a smile that clearly says 'just go with it and tell her the truth' even though she can see who we're shopping for. 

"No, no, we're just buying the final things for this little kicker." I say with a smile, hoping that with my friendly tone and Caleb's loving hands on my belly, she would drop it and let us shop. She doesn't. 

She looks offended, as though I slapped her around the face and called her a slut, closing her mouth quickly. She turns away from us - obviously intending to storm out of the shop in protest - but turns back again, eyeing my stomach once more. 

"You know, a baby is pure and innocent, they live every day as it comes and forget the one before it. Babies deserve families who love them and want them and are ready for them. Not a pair of stupid teenagers who rushed into bed so quickly that they didn't have time to think of protection." She looks at us, waiting for one of us to speak but I can't, tears are welling in the corners of my eyes and are about to spill over when Caleb find his voice. 

"Who do you think you are? Do you insist on giving lecture to everyone you meet on the street? You don't know anything about us, or our baby! For all you know we've been trying for years to have a baby and have finally succeeded and then people like you come along and tell us we don't have the right to be parents! For your information, my girlfriend was raped-" 

"Then she should have gotten rid of it the minute she found out!" The woman hissed, if it was possible, Caleb grew another three inches and looked down on her - the anger apparent in his eyes. 

"That's not your choice to make! You said yourself, babies are pure and innocent, it's not my girlfriend's fault or my child's fault that she's pregnant." 

"But it's not your child is it?" 

"A father is the person who holds the baby when it's still covered in blood, who gets up in the night to change it and who teaches it everything it'll ever need to know in life. I. Am. That. Baby's. Father." Caleb said, now so close to the woman that she was looking a lot less confident than she had been. Caleb took a step back and a deep breath. 

"Now get out of my girlfriend's face, you're upsetting her." 

Without another word, Caleb put his arm back around my waist and pulled me further into the shop. We were looking through the selection of Moses baskets when Caleb turned to me and caught my face in one hand; my belly in the other. 

"You can't let people like that get to you, she had no right to say those things but she's going to. There are always going to be people who tut when you walk into a shop or make snide comments behind your back. Some will even do it to our face. You have nothing to be ashamed of." We spent the rest of the day spending money and trying to ignore people like that woman, only now there seemed to be more of them.