"I'm going out," Ginger announced to Kris and me. She had an almost three-month-old Jenny in her arms. "Jenny needs diapers and we're out of bread. You guys need anything?" I shook my head and Kris did the same. "All right. See you guys in a minute." She walked to the door.
"Whoa," I said, getting up. "You're taking Jenny?"
"Yeah," she said, looking at her daughter. Jenny was getting so big; she was able to hold things now and suck her thumb, and she was constantly smiling and giggling. She was a happy kid, with bright red hair, although she still had blue eyes. Her eyes were getting darker and Ginger said her eyes didn't get violet until she was about a year old, so we still had to wait and see what color they would end up. "I mean I'm just going to the store and coming right back. Nobody's going to see me."
"Okay." Ginger left. "Do you think anybody will see her?" I asked Kris, sitting back down next to her.
"No, I don't think so. She's just going out to the store. I think it's about time she left the house with Jenny. The kid can't stay inside forever." I agreed. "So, we've got the house to ourselves. What ever shall we do?" She sat on my lap.
"She's only going to be gone a minute, Kris."
"Well it only takes a minute, doesn't it?"
"Oh�like I'm going to do anything with you now." She gave me a smile. "No, get off my lap. Go away!"
"Honey, I love you�" She kissed me.
"I know you do," I said, giving her a smile. "Still, get off me." She didn't and I caved. "Fine�" She got off my lap. "Oh, so now you get up."
"I'm not going to do it on the couch, Taylor. You never know when Ginger's going to walk in that door." She pulled me up and we went upstairs.
In about ten minutes we were back downstairs again. I was relaxed, my feet up on the table as I clicked through the TV channels. Kris, however, was pacing parallel to the east wall by the family photos. "Why isn't she back yet?" Kris asked.
"Well, Kris, it takes five minutes to get there and five minutes to get back, plus shopping time, so it's okay. Don't be so paranoid. Nothing's happened to her," I said. Kris looked skeptical. I didn't understand why she was so worried. "That's what you get for letting her go alone."
"What if she got recognized and got mobbed by paparazzi and had to run out of the store without paying for Jenny's diapers and got arrested and is in jail by now?" Kris asked. I groaned.
"Then she would have used her phone call to ask us to bail her out of jail already," I said. "You're being ridiculous, Kris. If she's not back in a half hour then you can worry, all right? Now sit down, you're making me nervous." She huffed and sat down next to me.
We got absorbed into an episode of Friends and when it was over Kris looked at her watch. "Taylor, she's still not back," she said. "Seriously, something's happened."
"Why don't you call her?" I asked. Kris got up and grabbed the phone off the table on the other side of the room, then called Ginger's cell phone.
"She's not picking up."
"Maybe it's in the car."
"No, if it's anywhere it's in her purse." Kris called again and began to bite on her nail. "She's still not�"
"Wait," I said. "Do you hear that?" Kris looked around but shook her head. "You keep calling." I got up and walked into the kitchen. The sound was louder in here. I found Kris's purse and opened it up. Sitting next to Kris's phone was Ginger's phone. "Kris! Her phone is in your purse."
"Dammit!" Kris yelled. "She doesn't have her phone, she's been gone for forty-five minutes�Taylor I'm worried." When I walked back into the living room Kris had turned on the news.
"Kris, why are you watching the news?"
"If something happened to her, she'd be on the news, wouldn't she?" I sighed and sat down. Knowing Ginger, if she got away with going to the grocery store without getting recognized, she would want to go somewhere else. She hasn't been out of the house since we moved here because she was so afraid of getting seen and that getting back to Zac. Kris mentioned getting stalked by paparazzi but there are no paparazzi in Tampa. There's nobody important enough in this city for them to stake out. Ginger's popularity is just beginning to bud and I'm a washed out pop star, and we're the only important people in town. I wasn't at all worried. However, as time went on Kris got more and more nervous and at the three-hour mark I was definitely concerned.
"Wouldn't she have the courtesy to call if she was going somewhere?" Kris asked. "I mean, she left for bread and diapers and said she'd be back in a minute. It's been three hours! She doesn't have her cell phone�I'm telling you something happened!" The phone rang. "Oh, thank God, that must be her." I picked up the phone and looked at it, very baffled. "Who is it?"
"It's Zac," I said. She gave me a confused look. "It's his cell phone number. I have no idea why he's calling." I answered it anyway. "Um�hello?"
"Taylor! Hi, it's Ginger." My mouth dropped and Kris silently asked me what was going on.
"It's Ginger," I said. Her mouth dropped as well. "Ginger? What are you doing call me from Zac's phone?"
"Oh, shit," she said. "We were hoping you wouldn't recognize the number. Shit. Well, it's kind of a long story�"
"What the hell happened, Ginger? You said you'd be back in a minute and three hours later you're still gone, you don't have your phone, Kris and I are worried sick about you and you're with Zac? What's going on?!" I yelled.
"Calm down!"
"Where are you?"
"I'm in Zac's hotel room."
"Why?"
"Okay, okay, let me explain. I went to Publix and I bought everything, and when I walked out I was like 'Hey, nobody recognized me. I can go out and do something else.' So I decided to go to Target because there's this CD I've been wanting to get since, like, October but I wouldn't let myself leave because, you know, the whole me being pregnant and blah, blah, blah�"
"Ginger!"
"I'm getting there I'm getting there!" she yelled. "Okay, so I go to Target, and I'm flipping through the CDs, you know, whatever, and then I turn around and Zac is standing right there. I had no idea he was in town, but he is and he saw Jenny and we kind of got to talking."
"Oh my God. Does he know about Jenny?"
"Yeah, I told him," Ginger said. "But of course I wasn't going to tell him in the middle of the fricken Target so I said he could come back to our place, but then he didn't want to see you, so we ended up here. We've been talking for hours and I figured I should call because I knew you guys were probably freaking out."
"You're damn right we're freaking out! We thought you died or something!"
"Oh come on, what are the odds of that happening?" she asked. "Anyway, I just thought I should let you know."
"So, what are you doing? Are you going to stay there or are you coming back here? What's going on?"
"Um, I don't know. I'll get back to you on that one. Jenny's crying so I gotta go. Bye." She hung up the phone. I turned to Kris.
"Oh my God, she met up with Zac and they're in his hotel room talking. She told him about Jenny."
"Oh my God! I am so going to kill her when she comes home!" Kris yelled. "I am so happy she's okay but I am so going to kill her!" She looked at me. "Is Zac coming with her?"
"I don't know," I said, shrugging. "I don't even know when she's coming home." Kris sighed. As much as I wanted to see Zac again, I had a feeling that if Ginger brought him home he wouldn't be too happy to see me. As it was, they didn't come here right away because he didn't want to see me.
It was about twenty minutes later when the garage door opened and Ginger came in with Zac. I stiffened immediately and Kris took my hand. "It's okay, he wouldn't be here if he wasn't going to attempt to talk to you." Zac and Ginger walked in the room; Ginger had Jenny on her hip. Zac looked pretty much the same�the only difference I could see was that he was slimmer. I could see a little bit of his tattoo poking out from his sleeve.
"Zac! Hi!" Kris said.
"Hey Kris," he said, a smile on his face. He glanced at me, his smile fading, and he looked back at Kris. "So how have you been doing?" If that hadn't been me he completely blew off I would be laughing at the burn.
"I'm just great," she said. She got up. "It's so good to see you again." She gave him a hug and I cringed. I could see Zac wanted to rub it in my face that he was hugging my girlfriend, but his lack of speaking to me was in the way.
"It's quite a place you girls have got here," he said, looking around. It was another indirect shot at me. Zac walked to the Art Room and Kris went to follow but I held her back and walked into the room with Zac. When I'd walked into the room Zac had just trailed his fingers along the piano, looking at a painting on the wall. He stopped in front of it, staring directly at it.
"It's Kris's favorite in the house," I said. He ignored me. "Oh, come on, Zac, you're eighteen years old and you have a daughter, I think you're a little bit old for the silent treatment."
"You should have told me, Taylor," Zac said, his voice full of spite and pent up anger he's held inside all this time.
"Like you would have listened to me. Like you would have let me get past hello before you hung up on me, or slammed the door in my face, or hit me." Zac turned around, looking directly at me.
"I had every reason! You're so Goddamn selfish that you don't care who you step on and who you hurt, just as long as you get what you want! You don't care about me, or family, or anything of value because you let your dick lead you around life! I mean, of all the girls you've taken from me, I never thought you'd take someone I actually cared about! All the other ones, yeah that hurt like a bitch but I forgave you because you were coked up Taylor and you didn't know any better."
"Don't make it seem like there were a million of them, Zac."
"It was ten! Ten!"
"It was not�"
"Violet, Claire, Robyn, Shannon, Elise, Adrienne�"
"Okay, okay, there were ten! But come on, I was on drugs!"
"But you weren't with Ginger! You knew how much I loved her and you did it anyway! You didn't even care! You did it again and again and you never once felt any guilt or a smidgen of compunction because you're so fucking selfish!"
"I'm selfish? I'm selfish? You're the one who moved all the way the hell out to New York, quitting the band without thinking how that would affect anybody! That wasn't just my job, Zac. That was Ike's job and the job of all the people that worked with us. What the hell were you thinking? All of us were unemployed because you don't know how to handle confrontation!"
"Oh, and you do? That's why you trotted off to Italy with my girlfriend�"
"I went with Kris! I didn't care about Ginger, I wanted to be with my girlfriend, who I love�"
"You don't know the meaning of the word! You don't know what love is. You fucked the entire city of Tulsa and millions of other girls."
"It was not millions! It wasn't even hundreds! And don't you dare talk to me about being in love. You didn't even know Ginger before you ran off to Denver, got your hair cut, got that gay ass earring and that tattoo�oh, it looks like the ink lasted longer than the relationship. But then again, that was your fault, wasn't it? She went there to tell you she was pregnant and you didn't even let her get a word in so you left her pregnant and alone and in the worst position of her life! Thank God Kris convinced her not to have an abortion."
"If I would have known I would have never left! You could have told me, Taylor! You're my brother and you didn't even tell me I was going to have a daughter! You didn't even care enough!"
"I didn't care? Until this day Ginger and I fought about telling you. I wanted you to know right away. I yelled at her all the time�when she said she was pregnant, during the pregnancy, when Jenny was born and all the way up until now�to tell you. She was the one who decided not to because you threw her out on her ass without letting her say a word! You said you never wanted to speak with her again so she never did."
"Don't try to play the saint card here, Taylor. You never cared about me."
"I did�"
"No, you didn't! All you ever cared about your entire life is your music, your drugs, and your girls. I always hated you because you got away with it! You'd come home at three o'clock in the morning, coked up and falling over with another random whore on your arm and nobody cared! Everybody just looked the other way as you stumbled up the stairs, wasting your life and our hard-earned money away! Nobody would get on your case when you'd disappear for three days and come home with powder all over your face and a bloody nose! But God forbid I spend the night out when I'm seventeen fucking years old and get the third degree the moment I step in the door! You were always the favorite because you were the front man and you could do no wrong, you with your perfect voice and your blue eyes and all the other bullshit that you have that I don't."
"That is crap, Zac, and you know it!" I yelled. "I never did anything to be superior to you and you never once said I was out of line. And I do care�"
"No, you don't�"
"Shut the fuck up for a moment and listen to me! You're my brother! I never wanted to hurt you but I did and I'm sorry! I can only say it so many times before it loses all meaning but I'm sorry. I'm a terrible person and I know how much I hurt you. I felt guilty but don't ask me why I kept doing it because I don't know. I am selfish. I am a fucking bastard and I'll admit that. I'm not trying to take the higher road here, I'm not trying to be the better person because I'm not! I'm not better than you! But I'm sick of this, Zac. You're my brother and my best friend, I don't like not speaking to you anymore. I don't like not being around you anymore. I'm stuck in a house with three girls and I'm losing my mind!"
"Yeah, the girls can do that," Zac said. They were the first calm words he'd said to me since last June.
"I'm sorry," I told him, lowering my voice to a calm level as well. He nodded.
"I know you are," he said. "I really just wish you would have told me about Jenny."
"But you know now, so really that's all that matters." Zac nodded. "Are you my brother again?"
"I was always your brother, Taylor. I can say I'm your friend again." I smiled. For the first time I noticed how far apart we were standing. We were on opposite sides of the room.
"Hug him!!" Kris yelled. I looked to the doorway. Kris and Ginger were standing right there. Ginger had her eyes on the bassinet next to her where Jenny was sleeping (which surprised me, considering Zac and I had been screaming at the top of our lungs at each other). I hadn't even seen them standing there and the both of them were two feet away from me.
"How long have you been standing there?" I asked.
"It doesn't matter! Hug your brother!" Kris said. I looked at Zac, who shrugged. I walked over and gave him a brotherly hug. Kris clapped and jumped up and down. "Yay!!" Kris ran in the room. She kissed me and then gave Zac a hug. Zac raised an eyebrow but I could only shrug as Kris ran out of the room just as quickly as she ran in.