Three weeks later the three of us were in England, where we were going to spend the rest of Ginger's tour. Of all the countries in Europe, Ginger was the most popular in England and she'd spent most of her career here. It was the most comfortable place we'd been in to date; we got a suite in an upscale hotel and there was no longer a language barrier. I loved England anyway and Kris had spent just as much time here as Ginger had, so we all had a small sense of home.
Ginger was nearly three months pregnant now. She had a doctor out here in London who was going to give her the first ultrasound. She probably wasn't going to be able to find out what sex the baby was this time around. That sort of thing usually happened in the second trimester, and Ginger was steadily approaching that. She was already starting to show, but at this point she could hide it with what she wore and when she didn't she just looked like she'd put on a bit of weight. She wasn't pleased at all that she was showing already because we're still out here for at least another two weeks and she was afraid people would begin to catch on. Her mood swings were flying (as usual) but despite all of her troubles, she seemed genuinely happy to be carrying this baby.
When Ginger wasn't having a mood swing, she and I generally got along. As long as neither of us brought up our history, or Zac, we were just fine together. I seemed to be thinking less and less of Zac as time went on and I was hoping that there'd be a day when I woke up and I didn't worry about him. Kris told me to keep thinking about him because after all he is my brother, but I think if it just doesn't happen then I'll be better off.
After Ginger returned from her ultrasound with Kris, the three of us settled at a table and started to play cards. Ginger said that we should play three-handed Pinochle but neither Kris nor I knew how to play, so we ended up playing Gin Rummy. "So what'd the doctor say?" I asked, pulling a leg up on the chair before I picked up my cards from the table.
"Everything's going just fine," Ginger said. "The baby's fine and I'm fine. We don't know what it is yet, but the doctor said that I should find out by my next ultrasound."
"When's that?"
"Towards the end of my second trimester," she said. "There's not really a need for another one until then as long as everything's all right�knock on wood." She knocked on the solid wood table.
"Have you thought of names yet?" I asked. Ginger nodded.
"I've been thinking of names since I was twelve," Ginger informed me. I glanced at Kris. She nodded. "Anyway, if it's a girl I was thinking of Jennifer Anna. If it's a boy then Christopher Joshua."
"Sounds good to me," I said. We didn't talk about the baby often. Today was an exception because Ginger went to the doctor, but usually when we talked about the baby Zac was mentioned in one way or another, and Zac was not a good topic. I shut my mouth and let someone else change the subject quickly before I said something I would regret later.
"So I have a signing later today," Ginger said, "but I have tomorrow off. We could do something."
"Something more productive than playing cards?" I asked. Ginger nodded.
"Yeah. We could go somewhere. I don't know where�nothing too public. With Taylor just having that press conference and me being insanely popular here, we're bound to get in a jam if we go out to a crowded area."
"Well if you want you could call ahead and close the place down." Ginger's eyes widened and I couldn't help but smile at her surprise.
"I can do that?"
"Ginger, you're huge over here. You can do whatever you like. You'll be surprised what some people will do for you."
"Are you serious?"
"Yeah! It happens all the time!"
"Score," Ginger said. "I could go maternity shopping�" She paused. I looked up.
"What?" I asked.
"How am I going to go maternity shopping?" she asked. "I don't want anybody to know I'm pregnant! They'll find out and they'll make a big deal about it and then Zac will find out! How the hell am I supposed to buy maternity clothes? How am I supposed to go baby shopping?" She dropped her cards. "Oh my God."
"Well," I said, "You could do the baby shopping online and if you're afraid the mailman will tell the Inquirer you could always have it sent to someone else's house." She gave me a look. "There are other ways of going about this, Ging. Don't freak out."
"Don't call me Ging."
"Fine. Rosemary."
"That's okay." Kris gave her a look. "What? I'd rather he call me Rosemary than Ging. That's what he called me."
"I think I'll just stick to Ginger," I said. "So, did we decide where we're going yet?" Ginger picked her cards back up and we started to play again.
"We have all day to decide," Kris said. "Gin." She put her cards down. Ginger and I both threw our cards onto the table as Kris began to laugh.
In the morning I walked out of the bedroom to find Ginger already awake with a glass of chocolate milk. She was having a lot of trouble with lack of caffeine. The doctor informed her at the beginning of her pregnancy that she shouldn't drink coffee and although she'd taken that to heart, she was having a terrible time dealing with it. We'd ultimately decided to shopping, and although I wasn't exactly keen on it, it was still time I would be spending with my girlfriend and her best friend. That I didn't mind.
"Hey Taylor," she said. "Where's Kris?"
"She got a phone call. She'll be out in a minute," I said. I sat down. "So are we seriously going shopping?"
"Why not?" she asked, giving me a smile. "I thought you loved to shop. You could use some new clothes."
"The clothes I have are fine, thank you," I said. "And I don't love to shop." She shook her head. "Fine. I like it. But if you haven't noticed I don't exactly have a job anymore. It's not like I have money to throw around right now." Ginger shrugged. I had only recently begun to think about money. I've been working non-stop for years now and it's very easy to get accustomed to it. Now that I've been unemployed for about a month it just hit me that I won't have a steady income of money any longer. My account is still big, big enough for the rest of my vacation and until I find myself another job (which hopefully will be soon) but I'm been very stingy when I can because I don't have another paycheck in front of me. That's a very scary thought.
"Fine," Ginger said. "You don't have to buy anything. But we're still going to."
"You can do whatever you want." The door opened behind us and Kris came running out, digging through her purse for something.
"Ginger, that was the publisher on the phone. It's chapter seven again. They want me to go in and deal with it right away before they change it without our consent."
"Why you?" Ginger asked.
"Well it's your day off! I don't want to take that away from you. No, you and Taylor can still go out. I'll deal with it. They're not going to change a single thing in that chapter," Kris said. She walked quickly to Ginger. "I'll try to make it for lunch." She gave Ginger a kiss. "Bye Ginger." She kissed Ginger's stomach. "Bye Jenny or Christopher." She walked over to me and kissed me. "Bye baby. I'll call you later about lunch!" She ran out of the apartment. I was just about to get up when she came back in. "Oh, and by the way, just because the two of you are alone it does not mean you can sleep together or anything like that! I'm going to be watching the two of you. No funny business." She ran out again.
"It's nice how much she trusts you," Ginger said.
"Me? She was looking at you," I said. She snorted.
"Yeah right. She was so looking at you. She doesn't trust you!"
"She trusts me," I snapped. "She doesn't trust you at all." She gave me a look. "What? She knows it's all your fault we slept together."
"All my fault?" she asked. "My fault? Okay, who kissed who first?"
"Who hit on whom?" I countered immediately. "I wouldn't have kissed you if you hadn't been hitting on me the entire night."
"You hit on me the moment I walked in the door!"
"I did not! This is all your fault, Ginger, don't even try to deny it."
"Oh don't even, Taylor�don't even! There were two people there. I didn't tie you down and force you to have sex with me. I didn't have a gun to your head."
"Whatever." I stood up. "Do you want to go?"
"You're not going to just walk away from this, Taylor," she said. "We need to talk about this." I sighed and sat back down.
"I don't want to talk about this, Ginger. That was not exactly one of my proudest moments," I told her. "I'm not happy that it happened."
"But it did happen, Taylor. You can't deny that." I sighed. She was right. I couldn't deny that. As much as I wanted to, I knew I couldn't. "What we did was a mistake and we're paying for it now. We've learned from it. I'll admit I was hitting on you and we can forget who started it, as long as you say you were there too. It wasn't just my fault."
"All right. When you walked in the first time I did hit on you. I did it unintentionally, but I did do it. And the whole sleeping together thing, it was partially my fault and partially your fault." She nodded. "Okay. That's settled. Let's get out of here."
"Okay."
She stood up and we left. Her manager called ahead to our shopping route and I wasn't the least bit surprised when all of them were shut down for the day immediately. We've been in town for about three days now and just by going around the city briefly it's obvious how incredibly huge Ginger is over here. I'd never seen a writer as popular as her before. A lot of it has to do with her age while the rest of it has to do with her subject matter and her talent. She was like a pop star over here, although her fan base is much older than a traditional pop star's. I'm sure, however, there were some teenybopper sixteen-year-olds reading her trashy romance novels that surprisingly have a lot of credibility. I finished her newest book and if all the graphic sex and phallic symbols were removed, it'd be a regular fiction novel. It had a substantial plot line and incredible imagery that I didn't think an eighteen-year-old could create. She told me she was newly seventeen when she wrote the book, and she wrote it in about a month. I thought it was amazing.
"I was actually planning on buying a lot of stuff for Kris," Ginger explained later when we were in a closed store. Ginger had insisted that everyone except for a cashier stayed out of our way, and at that the cashier had to stay at the register towards the back of the store. I thought it was a little ridiculous but Ginger wanted her privacy and that was completely understandable. "I mean there's not a whole lot I can buy without growing out of it in the next month or so."
"You could always buy something you're going to fit into afterwards," I said.
"I can't do that now," she said. "I'm already outgrowing all of my clothes. I'm going to be thinner than this afterwards." I shrugged.
"Whatever."
"Maybe I can get a hat or some jewelry or something." She grabbed a scarf off a rack and put it around her neck. "What do you think?"
"It's�pink."
"You're so helpful, Taylor." She put it back. "I like this blue one. I think I'll get the blue one."
"Ginger, when do you wear scarves?"
"All the time!" I gave her a look. "What? You've known me for less than six months! How do you know when fall comes I don't get myself an array of beautiful scarves?" I shook my head. "I put them in my hair sometimes."
"That I've seen. You've also stolen one of my ties to put in your hair."
"That was because it was a girly tie and I don't think you should ever wear it again."
"I can't. You cut half of it off!"
"It deserved it." I shrugged. It did deserve it. She pulled out a violet scarf and tied it around her head in her hair. "What do you think?"
"Your eyes are violet," I said, looking at her eyes.
"Yes, Taylor, they are," she said, pulling the scarf out of her hair.
"It makes them brighter."
"Then that's a keeper. Hold it for me, will you, dear?"
"I'm not your dear and I never will be, so don't call me that again." She rolled her eyes. "I'm serious! Don't talk to me like that."
"Taylor I use terms of endearment with everybody, not just you. I'll stop if it makes you uncomfortable." It did. Just being in the store with Ginger, virtually alone with her, made me uncomfortable on many levels. Not only was I afraid that she might hit on me (although I knew that it was never going to happen again), we were together in public when the last people heard was that she was dating Zac. If people see us together and talk, it'll hit the newspapers and the magazines and such and that'll definitely get back to Zac. I didn't want Zac to know I was here with Ginger, if he didn't know already.
"What's wrong?" Ginger asked. She had moved onto sunglasses and turned to me with a pair of goofy sunglasses that I couldn't believe this store was selling. I burst out laughing and a smile crossed her face. She removed her glasses.
"I was just thinking�what do you think would happen if someone saw the two of us here together?" I asked. "Like conniving British paparazzi or something. Don't you think that'll be a little odd considering everybody thinks you're still dating Zac?" Ginger paused. "Don't you think it'll get back to Zac?"
"Well�I'll just have to announce I'm no longer dating Zac. My publicist has demanded that all of my interviewers not ask me about him so the rumors must be piling up. In my interview tomorrow I'll mention it."
"You sure?"
"Yeah. And if anybody asks about you and me I'll just tell them you're dating Kris. We've got nothing to hide." That was true. "Do you like these?" She put on a pair of sunglasses.
"Sure."
"You suck at shopping. I wish Kris was here." So did I.