When Zac came home that evening from work Kris and Ginger were unpacking in the master bedroom. I had the task of cleaning up the kitchen and Zac entered looking furious but most of all puzzled. "What the fuck are you doing?" he asked. I turned around.
"Well I was sitting in the living room watching TV when Ginger caught me and told me I had to clean up the kitchen, so here I am, cleaning up the kitchen," I explained. Zac gave me a look. "It's a fucking mess here, Zac! It's insane."
"Whatever," Zac said. "Thank you."
"Your girlfriend called," I said as casual as I could, trying to get a coffee ring off the white counter. It wasn't working. I could only imagine how old it was.
"Ginger called?" Zac asked, confused. "Why would she call? She's right here." I shook my head.
"No, not Ginger," I said. "I think her name is, um, Eva?" Zac froze. "Yeah, mind telling me what that's about?"
"Come on, Taylor," he said lowering his voice, "I've been out here for nine months. Ginger and I were very broken up. Do you expect me to just sit here not have a girlfriend for the rest of my life?"
"Ginger didn't get a boyfriend."
"Ginger was pregnant," Zac said. "She was so paranoid that someone would find out that she wouldn't even leave the house. Or so she said." I nodded. It was true. "But come on, Taylor, I had no idea she was pregnant! All I knew is that we were broken up, and when you break up, you move on to someone else. I was here for maybe two months before I met Eva."
"Whatever."
"So why'd she call?" Zac asked, confused.
"I don't know. She didn't want to talk to me. I told her you'd call her."
"I'm not going to call that stupid bitch," Zac said, sneering. I made a face and turned away, putting the sponge back in the sink.
"So I'm guessing it didn't end happily," I said. I turned back around.
"Look around you, Tay," Zac said, gesturing at the mess that was significantly cleaner but still overwhelming. "The day before I left for Tampa we get into this big fight. I decide I'm not going to take her insane mental case shit anymore and she goes fricken fanatical on me! She started throwing things at me, broke a whole bunch of my stuff and trashed the place. I don't know what the hell she wants but I'll be perfectly fine not speaking to her again."
"You have a habit of doing that, don't you?" I asked.
"With Ginger I was just mad, don't get me wrong here," Zac said. "I was just pissed off at her. I was still in love with her when I came out here. With Eva�I seriously don't want to speak to her again. Frankly she scares me. She's a little whacko."
"Well, as long as it's over, I guess it really doesn't matter."
"Yeah, I guess. Just don't say anything to Ginger. I want to tell her."
"Why would you tell her?" Zac gave me a look. "What?"
"I'm going to tell her. She's not going to like it but she has a right to know, especially since she's living here. At one point or another she's going to pick up the phone, or answer the door, or something else and she'll run into Eva." He did have a point. "Where are they, anyway?"
"In your room unpacking."
"Oh. Okay." He walked towards the bedroom. "Ging! I'm home, come and talk to me!" I rolled my eyes. Zac went into the bedroom again and I opened up one of Zac's cabinets looking for cleaning supplies. I found the Comet and poured it on the counter, trying to tackle this coffee stain.
"Hey sweetie," Kris said, walking into the room.
"Hey," I said, giving her a smile.
"Zac and Ginger started making out. I�I don't need to see that." I laughed. "Did you find out why this place is such a mess?"
"Yeah," I said. "Zac had a girlfriend."
"No way!"
"Yes. Anyway the day before he came to Tampa he broke up with her and she went mental on him and trashed the place." Kris looked around.
"Oh man�that sucks." I agreed. "Oh, by the way, someone I know at work recommended a guy for flooring so he's going to stop by tomorrow."
"Okay." It was weird for her to refer to work. When I think of someone at her work I think of Ginger.
"Did you want anything specific that'll take up a lot of space?" Kris asked. "Like a piano or anything like that?" I shrugged. I was torn on whether I should get another piano or not. Zac had one here that he already said I could use whenever I wanted because he never used it.
"Actually I don't think I'm going to get a piano," I said. "Zac has one here." She nodded.
"Okay," she said. "I'll be right back." She disappeared for a second and then returned with the half-sized notebook I always saw her with when she and Ginger were decorating the Tampa home. She flipped through the pages and crossed something out.
"How much do you have so far?" I asked. She looked up.
"Most of it. I'm having some trouble with our room, though."
"Why?"
"I don't know. I've got everything I want in it, it just looks so bare," she said. "Well, in my head it looks bare. Maybe when we actually do it won't look so bad." I took her notebook and looked at it. For a bedroom it didn't seem as bare as she thought. "I'm trying to get it so it's the culmination of everything else in the apartment. If the theme of the place is supposed to be us, then our bedroom would have to be the best display of that."
"I think it's great, honey."
"You do?"
"Yes. If we finish it and it doesn't look the way you wanted it to, we can always change it."
"That is true."
Sudden shouting from the bedroom caused the both of us to look up. Ginger opened her door and had stormed out, Jenny in her arms. "I'm down there alone having a baby and you're up here fucking another girl?" she yelled. "That just goes to show how much you actually cared about me!"
"Looks like he told her about Eva," I said. Kris looked back at me.
"Who's Eva?"
"The girlfriend he had." She nodded and looked back as disruption folded in front of us. Ginger walked to the door in a fury, Zac right behind her.
"Oh come on, Ginger! I had no idea you were pregnant! We were broken up. Don't tell me that if you weren't pregnant and we broke up you wouldn't have dated someone else too?"
"It's not like I had anybody, Zac," Ginger yelled.
"Do you remember why we broke up?" Zac asked. "You were fucking Taylor! Of course you had someone else!"
"I don't know why I even came here with you. Nothing is the same way it used to be and I can't even trust you anymore."
"I'm not the one you should be talking to about trust." Ginger, fuming, turned around and left the apartment. Zac paused when the door slammed and looked over at Kris and I. "What just happened?" I could only shrug.
"I'll�" Kris started, but Zac put his hand up.
"No, I'll go." He ran out of the apartment after Ginger.
Kris and I went to bed before Zac came home. Ginger was still gone, as was Jenny, and it was hard to tell what was going to happen from this. I knew this was too good to be true. We'd gone through so much in the past year, it was hard to think that we'd be able to patch everything up in 72 hours and expect it to stay that way.
In the morning I woke up first, like I always do, and after getting ready for a solid day of decorating my new apartment with Kris, I went to the kitchen and made some coffee. Kris would be up soon. I didn't like to wake her up when I get up because I usually get up so inhumanely early, but she's a light sleeper and just me getting out of the bed wakes her up. She tends to lie there for a while, her eyes closed, debating whether or not she wanted to go back to sleep, but ultimately gets up.
When someone walked into the room I expected it to be Kris but I was very surprised to find it was Zac. I still had no idea what happened with Ginger but he looked in a good mood so either he was faking it or he found her and they patched things up. "Good morning," I said.
"Good morning indeed," he said, a smile on his face. He poured himself a cup of coffee. I looked at him expectantly. "What?"
"So what happened last night?" I asked. "Did you find Ginger?"
"Yes I did," he said. "And I talked to her. She apologized, I apologized, we had hot make up sex�" That would explain the smile on his face. I nodded. "She was pretty pissed off but it'll get better. I mean there's still a lot to talk about there, you know? I can't expect it to be all hearts and flowers right away."
"Do you work today?" I asked. He nodded.
"Yeah. I actually should leave in a minute. I don't want to be late." I looked at my watch. It was nearly six.
"How far away is you work?"
"It's about an hour away but that's just because it's New York. If this was any other city in the world it'd be ten minutes away, but there are just so many blasted people here. It's insane. It takes me an hour to get there and an hour to get home, no matter what route or method of transportation I take. Actually, I could walk and get there in forty-five minutes, but why the hell would I want to walk for that long when I can just take a cab?"
"True."
"So are you and Kris going to work on the apartment today?" he asked.
"Trying to get rid of me, are you?" He smiled. "Yeah, we are. We're doing the floors today. Kris wants every room redone. I think the only room that'll have carpet are the bedrooms."
"Really? Cool."
"Yeah. We're going to try to get as much done today as we can but we can't exactly do anything until all the floors are finished."
"Well, if you must, you can stay here another night�" Zac said, groaning. I smiled. "You know I don't mind. Having you here means you're actually here. I get to see you again. I get to talk to you again. I really missed that."
"So did I."
"I better get to work. I'll see you around six."
"All right. If we're not here, we'll be downstairs." He nodded and left. He was gone for a moment before Kris came out, yawning. "Hey beautiful."
"Hey," she said. "Was Zac out here?"
"Yeah. He and Ginger made up last night."
"Oh, good. They had me afraid we were going to move back to Tampa." Me too. Kris had barely sat down with a cup of coffee when Ginger came out of the bedroom with Jenny, smiling just like Zac had before.
"Good morning," she said brightly. Kris and I exchanged a knowing look.
After breakfast we went downstairs to Kris and my apartment. The flooring guy was coming first thing so they could get as much done as possible. When he arrived, Kris immediately told him what she wanted. "Okay," she said to him, gesturing to the carpet where they were standing. "I want all of this gone. I want hardwood floors wall to wall everywhere except for the bedrooms. Come with me." The man followed her to the master bedroom. "Okay, in here I want white carpeting, in the bathroom here I want white tile, I forgot what the name is but I'll get back to you on that. In the other bedroom here I want the same white carpeting."
Ginger looked at me, surprised. "How much of the place does she have done?" Ginger asked me as Kris continued to speak to the man. He looked very pleased to know he was getting so much business in just one day.
"Just about everything," I said. "It's going to take a while because everything's going to be totally different." Ginger nodded. Kris walked back into the room without the flooring guy. "Where's that guy?"
"He's measuring. He said he'd try to get as much done today as he can but it's almost guaranteed that they'll have to continue tomorrow."
"Well, of course, we're redoing the entire apartment."
"Can you do me a favor and go out and get some paint for me?" Kris asked. "We'll start painting once they finish the room."
"Okay�what colors do you want me to get?" She tore out a page from her notebook and wrote down the colors she wanted me to get and how much of it all she wanted me to get. When she handed it to me I made a face. "Jesus, Kris, do you want me to fall over and die on the way home?"
"You can make more than one trip," she said, rolling her eyes.
"I am not making more than one trip to go out and get paint!"
"I'd do it but I have to stay here with the flooring guy! You can take Ginger with you. I'll take care of Jenny." Ginger nodded.
"Yeah, I'll help. I'll just have to get my purse from upstairs."
"Fine. Let's go now." Ginger handed Jenny over to Kris and we went upstairs. Ginger grabbed her purse and we turned around to leave again when the phone rang.
"Just a sec, Taylor," she said. She picked up the phone. "Hello? Oh, hi baby! What's up? Really? Yeah, he's right here." She handed me the phone. "It's Zac." I put the phone to my ear.
"Hello?"
"Is Ginger off the phone?" he asked.
"Yeah."
"Good. Tiffany's called. The ring is ready."
"Oh, great. I'm going out now to get some paint, I'll drop by and check it out," I said, glancing at Ginger who was waiting patiently for me to finish. "Thanks, Zac."
"No problem." I said goodbye and hung up the phone.
"Uh, you know what, Ginger?" I said. "I think I'm gonna go by myself." She gave me a strange look.
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah, you help Kris out with the flooring guys downstairs. I'll be back as soon as I can." I left quickly before she could ask any more questions. A smile crossed my face as I went to pick up Kris's engagement ring.