Psalms 42 || Tori Kelly

1st Period

8:52 PM

If she won't let me out of the house, I guess I'll have to find my own way out.

Abiah thought.

He likes when I dress like this. And I can't be an outcast for the next 4 years.

Quickly, she grabbed her backpack and dropped it out of her window. With one quick look back to make sure her dad wasn't coming to check on her, Abiah dropped from the ledge of her window into the grass, two feet below. The 14-year-old planted her feet firmly beneath her, tossed her backpack over her exposed shoulder, grabbed her jacket from off of her bed, that sat right under her window, then sprinted towards prison.

9:15 AM

Irie scrolled through her Instagram feed during her English lit class, bored as all get out. Her teacher reviewed the homework at the pace of a snail, and she knew all of her answers were right, so paying attention was not top billing. As she scrolled, Irie did her best not to gasp aloud when seeing a picture that her sister had posted from the night before. She was on the beach in a bikini kissing a bottle with her best friend. The label was peeled off, but whatever was in the bottle was clearly not water. This psycho! Is she crazy? Irie immediately took screenshots but decided not to send them to her parents just yet. She wanted to talk to her sister and get her headspace before declaring war on their sisterhood.

—

Fifteen miles away at the local high school, Abiah sat in her 1st-period class listening to Mr. Craig Jeeter. To say that Mr. Jeeter was the hottest teacher, probably secret GQ model, in the school was an understatement. And to say that he wasn't aware of how all the female students looked at him was false. Mr. Jeeter liked to play off the affection, but it quickly became an issue this year. He saw that the incoming class was more mature than the ones before and even looked the part, which made his harmless banter a bit more sketchy. But, be that as it may, no one could do anything about him. His test scores were higher than most, but not too suspiciously high. And all the students loved him.

Although, Abiah had taken no notice that. She found him cute and all, but she had her eye on the JV Football Captain, Malik Hunters. And today she was going to finally get his attention.

Today was supposed to be like any other day. A little harmless flirting, a flash of the collar bone, a wink. However, that was not the case today, Abiah wanted to see how far she could get and tested the waters a bit. She was striving for a new boyfriend by the end of the week. She just had to get through the school day.

The class fell silent as everyone did their independent work. Abiah shuffles through her papers not being able to find her homework, which they could use as a cheat for their current work. She saw Mr. Jeeter sitting at his desk grading papers and figured he wasn't too busy, so she got up. Her seat was in the back corner, so she stealthy moved passed her small friend group, straight to his desk. "Mr. Jeeter," Abiah sweetly smiled, unzipping her oversized jacket a bit, before having a heat stroke. The action unintentional caused her to show off her moms' tube top, which at this point had ridden up to a bandeau.

"Yes," he said, before looking up to catch a hitch in his breath. Abiah slightly leaned next to his desk and flicked her blueberry scented hair over her shoulder.

"Do you have a copy of last nights homework? I did it, but I can't seem to find it in my bag," she excused. The teacher nodded and bent down into his draw which got him a closer look at her exposed, goosebumps infested legs. He lingered for a moment, before snatching the page from the middle of a stack and handing it to her.

"Can we meet after school to talk about the homework? I want to make sure you know what you're doing for the test," He smoothly offered, tacking on a charming smile. Abiah thought about how long that was going to take since she wanted to be at the football practice to see her crush. She figured it couldn't take too long and nodded.

"Uhh, yeah," she distractedly agreed, before taking the paper and heading back to her desk.

Once seated, Abiah sent an email from her school computer to her dad, letting him know to pick her up a bit later, so she could talk to Malik for at least 10 minutes.

—

"Crap," André sighed. "Yo, babe!" He called from the kitchen table. Tori glanced up from her phone and slowly sat up, careful not to wake the toddler that slept on her chest.

"What's up?" Tori asked.

"Can you get Abiah from school? I don't have time now, because she's staying later to work on something with her teacher," André asked. Tori rolled her eyes with a slow nod.

"She's not going to like when I show up because I know she didn't change. And I'm gonna beat her ass when I see her, too. I'm tired of this defiance, Dré, I really am. We give her freedom and she runs all over it. She thinks we're strick now, just wait. Total lockdown. No phone, no computer, nothing," Tori griped. André chuckled and moved from his sermon for Sunday to his wife. Stealthy, he removed Sampson from Tori and placed him in the playpen under his blanket. "You laugh, but I'm this close to searching her room and taking everything out but the mattress," Tori giggled, allowing André to cuddle her.

"Well, let's not do that. But I think we should talk to her. She broke curfew, so let's start there. Let's figure out where she was and maybe start to get to the root of this," André suggested. Tori quickly flipped their position, so that André was lying on the couch and Tori was straddled on his lap.

"If you do this for me, I will owe you one," she smirked.

"So, me parenting our child, makes you want to make more?" André joked. "Isn't 4 enough?" He laughed. Tori held out her arm and pointed to the tiny scar inside her bicep.

"This bad boy still has 4 years left on it. I'm not thinking about having any more kids until all the kids are out of the house. And by that time I'm praying that Mother Nature and Jesus will have taken all of my eggs and cooked them," Tori laughed. Andrè couldn't help but burst in laughter.

"Where did that even— I—" he stuttered through his laughter. Sometimes he couldn't understand his wife's thought process, but he definitely had fun figuring out.

"Shut up and kiss me, before you wake the baby," Tori smiled, dropping down to meet her husband's lips. Because there was a baby in the room, the couple decided to keep everything PG-13, but the passion was definitely nothing less. Hopefully, the passion wouldn't die after having to buckle down and actually be the parents they needed to be. For their daughter's sake.

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To Be Continued...