Having Your Jelly Baby

16: Panic

A/N: Hey guys! Sorry I've been MIA lately, but I've been caught up with life, real life (jelly) babies, and as always, boy drama :P This chapter's a little shorter than usual, but I hope you still like it! (P.S. sorry I haven't responded to all comments on the last two chapters - I read and smile at every single one and will get to replying to them all real soon! :)) Lots of love, River :D xoxo

16: Panic

Panic. Panic, panic, panic.

That was all I had done for the last hour, pacing the flat and waiting for Drew to come home so we could figure out what on earth to do. Why wasn't this in a bloody parenting handbook?

Maybe I should write it, I wondered. What to expect when you're expecting an A-lister's child and you're an absolute nobody, by Nova Hart.

Hey, it had potential to be a New York Times Bestseller, if you ask me.

Anyway, somehow the paps had found out about Jelly, and I was willing to bet my head on the fact that a certain douchebag and his wife were responsible for their sudden enlightenment on my pregnancy.

My heart felt like it had gotten lodged in my throat, choking me with the panic. My mum had had to chase them away with a frying pan, for goodness' sake, and she rarely got properly angry, let alone violent. She usually just did the silent glare-y thing that I had inherited, so things must have been crazy over there.

I could picture them camped outside of my house with their cameras, their dictaphones (did they still use those, I wondered in a crazier moment of panic?) and their flashing iPhones as they made calls, holding those weird fluffy things on sticks that captured audio. And yet I could still hardly fathom it at the same time.

This was mental. Why would strangers care so much about the fact that Drew Turner was engaged and having a child? What made it their business?

It had never hit me until now quite how far Drew's fame extended. He was huge in Hollywood, he was huge over here, and yet he was so absolutely down to earth that I simply forgot about the fact he was constantly surrounded by bright lights and cameras that wanted to know and capture every detail about his life, which I was suddenly a part of.

I had become an extension of Drew now that we were having a child. The thought of them invading his life and my life made me feel ill, but thinking about them invading Jelly's future life made me feel downright nauseated.

Because Drew was essentially their property. He belonged to the media, to the public, and they would try and make our baby belong to them too.

'No,' I groaned into my hands, flopping back onto the sofa and sinking into the leather, where I remained until Drew walked back in through the front door, trying to remember how to breathe properly without having a panic attack.

I had nodded off, albeit fitfully, by the time he came back two hours later, not knowing that he had tried to call while I was asleep, my phone still plugged into the socket as it charged.

'Nova...' His voice was gentle but it still startled me awake with a jolt, his hand on my shoulder.

I opened my eyes, squinting through them to see Drew's grinning face above me, a box of pizza in one of his hands.

'Good morning,' he said, pulling up his left wrist and glancing at the brown leather watch wrapped around it, which told him it was three o'clock. 'Or should I say afternoon, now?'

Scrunching up my nose, I slowly pushed myself up again as I yawned, stifling it with my hand. I was in that sleep dazed state where I had briefly forgotten everything I had been thinking about before I fell asleep, but it nagged at the back of my mind like a headache that had been coming on for days.