The next few months were flying by. Kris and I were so busy with the wedding that we hardly had time for anything else. Two or three weeks after Kris and I made our reservation for the banquet hall on Saturday February 12th (of course, they complied much, much better when I mentioned my name and said I had an unlimited budget) we flew down there to check it out. Kris took about a million pictures so she could get her decorating ideas taken care of.
In December Zac and I made the decision to go home for Christmas, since neither of us had been home in over a year (for Zac it had been a year and a half), and now that Jenny was almost a year old she would be coming with us. In September Zac and Ginger took their honeymoon in Greece for about a week and a half, leaving Jenny with Kris and me. Zac and Ginger had an awesome time, and Kris and I had a wonderful time with Jenny. By the time Zac and Ginger came home Kris didn't want to give Jenny back, but eventually she did and that night she turned to me and said she wanted a kid. We're going to start trying as soon as we get married.
"Oh, honey, it's okay," Ginger said from across the aisle to Jenny, who was crying. "It's okay, we're on the ground now. We'll be off the big bad plane in just a couple of minutes." Ginger kissed her daughter. "Oh, honey�"
"Will you shut that kid up?" someone from behind us asked.
"Why don't you shut up?" Ginger snapped. "It's not her fault her ears keep popping! We're almost off the plane." She huffed. "He's had a stick up his ass the entire flight." The plane taxied to a gate and we got off as quickly as we could. Ginger gave her meanest look to the man as we got up, and upon seeing her, then seeing Zac and I, he immediately apologized. Ginger only huffed and walked off the plane. In the terminal Jenny stopped crying and now was smiling. Over the past two months her eyes had turned from bright blue to bright violet and now she looked even more like her mother.
When we got out of the terminal and passed through security, we found my mother waiting for us. She looked genuinely excited to see all of us, although her look faltered a bit upon seeing Ginger, but it completely changed when she saw Jenny in Ginger's arms. After Zac, Kris, and I gave her a hug, she turned to Ginger.
"Who is this?" my mother asked.
"This is Jenny," Ginger said. Zac suddenly gasped and put his hands over his mouth.
"Oh my God I never told Mom about Jenny!"
"Zac!" Ginger said. "Oh my God!" Zac suddenly looked very nervous. He composed himself quickly and took Jenny from Ginger.
"Um, Ma," Zac said, stepping over to our mother, "this is Jennifer Kristina, my daughter."
"Daughter?" my mother asked. "How old is she?"
"Almost a year," Zac said. "Her birthday's tomorrow."
"Oh my�how come you never told me, Zac?" my mother asked, taking her first grandchild from Zac.
"I just never did. I'm sorry."
"Well let's not talk about this in the middle of the airport, all right?" she asked. We agreed and after a brief stop at baggage claim, we were in the car and on the way home. Zac sat in the front so he could talk to our mother about Jenny. "So, a year old, huh?"
"Yeah," Zac said. "Ginger got pregnant before we broke up, but I didn't know until about March. We got married in May and�"
"Wait a minute, you got married?" my mother asked.
"Yeah, maybe I should have mentioned that as well�"
"Yeah, maybe!" she snapped.
"Listen, Ma, you can get mad about it or you can accept it. Things are good now, we're happy now. Everybody's happy now."
"I just wish you would have said something, honey," my mother said. "All of my children are just running off and getting married without telling me about it. I'm surprised I haven't died of a heart attack."
"Hey," I said. "I'm still getting married the old-fashioned way and I told you about it right after we got engaged."
"Yeah, Taylor, but you've always been the weird one of the bunch."
"No I'm not�"
"I'm sorry to say it, Tay, but you are," Zac said, looking back at me.
"Shut up, Mister I had a wife and child before I was nineteen." He gave me a look and turned back around.
"Well at least I didn't marry someone two years younger than me�"
"At least I'll be there when my first kid is born." The car fell into an eerie silence and I knew I'd gone too far. "I'm sorry."
"Whatever."
"Maybe we should just turn on the radio," Kris suggested. Zac flipped on the radio and grew noticeably angry when he heard his own voice singing one of the songs off the album I put out by myself. He quickly switched stations and both Kris and Ginger complained.
"Hey! I like that song!" Kris said.
"I'm not exactly in the mood to listen to myself right now," Zac said. When he settled on a country music station the girls began to protest again.
"Ugh, what the HELL is this?" Ginger asked.
"Do you have a problem with this?" Zac inquired and looked back at his wife.
"Is�is that a banjo? What the hell are we listening to?" Kris asked. "Oh my God is this country? Am I actually listening to country?"
"You mean to tell me you've never listened to country music before?" I asked her.
"I'm Cuban! I'm as Hispanic as Hispanic can get! I don't listen to this�this music." I'm sure she wanted to call it crap but didn't have the guts to do so. I turned to Ginger on the other side of me.
"What about you? You're as white as white gets, why are you protesting?"
"I'm Cuban at heart, ask Kris." I rolled my eyes.
"Maybe we better just turn off the radio and sit in silence until we get home," I suggested. Zac turned off the radio and that's what we did. When we got home I took Kris and my suitcases upstairs and into my old room. The kids were enjoying their freedom of not having their three older brothers around but now Jessica and Avery had to share a room again while Kris and I took Jess's room and Zac and Ginger took Zac's old room, which had been converted into a guest room.
"You know I had no idea you hated country music," I said.
"Well it's not so much that I hate it," Kris said. "It's that I absolutely abhor it." She sat down on the bed. I put our suitcases down and sat next to her. "I'm sorry."
"It's okay. I don't like it all that much either, it's just when you live in backwater state like Oklahoma then you kind of have to like it. I mean Garth Brooks is from Tulsa. He's a country god." Kris shrugged.
"It's just not my heritage. I'm sure you don't listen to a lot of Spanish music, now do you?" I shook my head. The only kind of Spanish music I'd ever listened to was the Latin invasion stuff, like Ricky Martin and Marc Anthony, and even then it was just when they came on the radio. "That reminds me, I have to teach you how to salsa dance."
"Why?"
"Because it's all you're going to be doing at the reception, baby. My entire family's going to be there and all they can do is eat and dance. And I don't want any of your white country shit playing either."
"Okay, honey." I looked at her. "You do realize you're marrying white country shit, don't you?"
"Yeah�unfortunately�"
"And your kids are going to be just like me."
"Let's just hope they can sing like you, babe."
"Yeah, but one of them is bound to come out tone deaf like you."
"Hey!"
"Well baby, I've heard you sing and it's a scary, scary sight." She pushed me. As I fell backwards onto the bed I grabbed her arm and pulled her down with me. She landed on top of me. "Hi, baby." I kissed her.
"Not on my bed!" Jess yelled from the doorway. Kris sat up and I looked over. She was standing in the doorway, her hands on her hips. "That's just massive disgustingness all over my bed." I sat up.
"Well, Jess, we are going to be here over a week�that's quite a long time if you know what I mean."
"Oh my God!" She put her hands over my eyes. "Mom!! I need a new bed!" She ran out of sight. Kris pushed me again.
"That was sick, Taylor! I'm not going to do it in your little sister's bed!"
"Oh, yeah, sure, 'cause you don't ask for it every other day at home. I'd like to see you last a week."
"I do not ask for it every other day at home! I think I can make it a week without any sex. I know you can't." I raised an eyebrow.
"You want to make it interesting?" I asked.
"How interesting?"
"A hundred dollars," I said, "saying you can't make it until we get home without sex."
"All right," she said. "You're on." She stood up. "You are so going to cave."
"No I'm not!"
"Yeah, right. You can't go two days without sex, much less an entire week," she said. I scoffed. "I'm serious! If you don't think so, then if you cave in the next three days, then we'll make it a thousand."
"Fine," I said. "Same goes for you."
"Fine." She walked out of the room. I got up and followed her downstairs where Zac was introducing Jenny to everyone else in the family, all just now hearing the news that he was a father, and after that shocker, that he was now married to Ginger.
"�I mean, at least Taylor had the decency to announce it!" Jess was yelling at Zac, who seemed to care less that his little sister was talking. "You're fricken nineteen years old! It's bad enough you just up and leave for a year and a half without as much as a goodbye. I haven't spoken to you since before you left."
"Jess, stop it," Zac said. "So I made a few mistakes."
"A few?"
"I'm sorry. That's all I can say. I can't just go back and prevent it from happening. What else do you want me to say?" Zac asked, moving Jenny to his other hip. Jess didn't say anything. "That's what I thought. Now where the hell did Ginger go?"
"I think I saw her in the living room explaining to Avery the pleasures of reading," Kris said, gesturing to the living room behind her.
"Reading what?" Zac asked. "I hope it's not her books�" He handed Jenny over to Kris and ran to the living room. Kris sat down at the counter with Jenny in her lap.
"You know she really doesn't look like Zac," Jess said.
"Yeah," Kris said. "It's mainly Ginger, but I can see him when I look at her. Maybe when she gets older. Before she got her violet eyes they were bright blue, which pissed the hell out of Zac, 'cause, you know, Taylor has blue eyes." Jess looked at me. I bit my lip and turned away, walking into the other room.
"Well I leave on the 27th to do a few dates," Ginger was explaining later that evening to everyone after dinner. "I'm not going to be gone too long because of the wedding, and I know Kris will want me around all the time. I don't necessarily want to go on a tour this close to the wedding, but the book's being released on the 28th, so I kind of have to. I'll do the full-blown tour here afterwards, and then I'll go back over to Europe and do my tour there as well."
"Are you popular overseas?" my mother asked. Everybody was surprised (especially Zac) at how warm she was being to Ginger now. From what I've heard, when Zac and Ginger were dating this first time around my mother hated her guts, but I didn't see any of that now. Maybe it was because we were all older, maybe it was because Zac and Ginger were married now, or maybe it was because Ginger was the mother of her first grandchild. Whatever it is, when Ginger noticed it I saw her give a big smile to Zac.
"Like you wouldn't believe," Ginger said. "It's like Cher in Japan�I guess Europeans like their trashy novels. I mean, I've been selling books over there since I was fifteen years old. It's only with the last one that people here have been responding to it. Hopefully it will stay that way."
"Well I'll buy it," my mother said. Ginger looked at her, a half smile on her face.
"Really?"
"Of course! I'm a big fan! I was actually reading your books before you met my son. Why do you think I wasn't such a loving and caring person when I met you the first time? I knew who you were and I'd read your books. Those books are so incredibly sexual and I had a definite problem with that being associated with my seventeen-year-old son."
"Well, I guess I understand now," Ginger said. "How come you're not like that anymore?"
"Well you're married now."
"Ah, I see."
"So, let me get this straight," my mother said. "Kris is your friend and your editor?" Ginger nodded.
"Yes, Kris and I have been friends since grade school. When I was just starting to write she did the initial editing and everything. It wasn't much, just a couple of paragraphs on notebook paper that I called a story, but when I got my first publishing deal I made her the editor in chief, so to speak. I have a whole bunch of editors but she's the top one. She also does a lot of other stuff."
"So do you go on her book tours?" my mother asked Kris. Kris nodded.
"Yeah, generally. I won't go with her this time because we're so bogged down with wedding preparations. I'll join her when she goes overseas. That's when she really needs me."
"Taylor, are you going with?" I shrugged.
"Probably. I have nothing better to do."
"You're still not working?"
"There's really not a point," I said. "Kris is working. I'm fine staying at home with the kids, you know, when we start having kids."
It wasn't long after that when we decided to clear off the table. Ginger and Kris helped my mother with the dishes while Zac and I had the task of putting Jenny down for the night. We went upstairs to the guest room where Zac and Ginger would be staying. "Jess came running downstairs earlier and demanded that she get a new bed after we leave," Zac said.
"Well she thinks Kris and I are going to have sex in it."
"Are you?"
"I don't think so," I said. "Because after Jess ran out of the room we kind of made a bet to see if we could make it until we got home without doing it." Zac nearly burst out laughing. "What, you think I can't do it?"
"I know you can't do it, Taylor."
"What makes everybody think I'm such a sex addict?" I asked, my voice raising a notch.
"Shut up, we're trying to get a kid to sleep here."
"Sorry," I whispered. "You know, after Kris and I met the first time we didn't see each other for an entire month. I didn't have any sex then."
"Yeah, but that was a year and a half ago. Kris wasn't around you and if the situation did arise, you could take care of it yourself if you know what I mean," he said.
"Zac, I always know what you mean."
"Well, anyway, now it's over a week of being around Kris all the time and you can't take care of it yourself. Trust me, she's going to make it hard on you." I gave him a confused look. "Oh, come on, you don't think she's going to try to turn you on in every way possible from now until the moment we get back to New York?"
"But the bet's with her too. She's got to hold out too; she can't be asking for any either."
"Taylor, there's a big difference between subtle teasing and asking for it. Ginger does it all the fricken time. She's going to be playing you good, Taylor, mark my word," he said. "By the way, how much are you betting?"
"A hundred dollars," I said. "A thousand if she cracks by Monday."
"What happens if you crack by Monday?"
"Oh, I'm not going to crack." Zac snorted.
"I beg to differ."
"Do you want in?" He nodded.
"Yeah, yeah I do." He turned back to Jenny. "You just don't want to go to sleep, do you?" Jenny was looking up at us, bright-eyed and very much awake.
"I think she wants in on the bet too."
"Ugh, Zac!" Zac smiled and picked up Jenny. He sat on the bed, his back against the headboard, and began to hum. I sat down on the edge of the bed, recognizing the tune, and began to hum along with him. He smiled.
"Blackbird singing in the dead of night�" he lightly sang.
"Take these broken wings and learn to fly�"
"All your life�"
"You were only waiting for this moment to arrive."