"You cut your hair," Ginger said later that evening, after the emotions had died down and Jenny had fallen asleep. Zac and Ginger were in the living room. When they had sat down it was still light outside, but now the entire apartment was dark and neither of them had said a word until Ginger's sudden statement.
"Yeah," Zac said. "I needed a change."
"I like it," she said. "It suits you." There was another long pause. "Um�I got another tattoo!"
"You did?" Zac asked. "Where?"
"Well, it's not really new," she said, "I just added to something that was already there." She pulled down her shirt a bit to show him the rose on her chest, which now had two little cherubs holding a banner that said "Jennifer Kristina" on it.
"Oh, that's nice."
"You don't like it," she said, smiling. "You never liked my tattoos."
"No, I didn't. But I'm being sincere with that. I think it's a good idea. If you have to put a name on your body, the least you could do it make sure it was your kid's." She sat back and pulled her shirt back up. "So, have you been happy?" Ginger thought about it, but then she nodded.
"Yeah," she said. "Yeah, I have."
"Well then I guess that's all that matters."
"Yeah, I guess." He looked at her and his eyes locked for the first time on the gold nameplate around her neck.
"�You still have that?" he asked, looking up at her eyes. He was lost immediately. He'd fallen in love with those eyes years ago and three years ago once he realized that he'd made a mistake, it was too late and he sincerely thought he'd never look at them again. Now he was and it hurt like he never knew it could.
Ginger, looking down at her neck, realized she still had the nameplate he'd given her and put her hand up against it. "Yes," she said, nodding. "I haven't taken it off." She looked directly at him. "I never stopped loving you, Zac. I may have been a little mad but I never, ever stopped."
"Neither did I." She nodded. "I want you and Jenny to come back to LA with me." She paused. This was sudden. Three years they'd been apart and he hadn't even been back three hours before he asked her to start it all over again. But instead of saying no like she'd always thought she'd do, she nodded.
"All right," she said, surprising him as well as herself. "When?"
"I leave tomorrow night."
"I'll start packing." She got up and walked into her bedroom where she took out a suitcase. "I'll get enough things for me Jenny for a few days."
"I want you to stay with me forever," he said, leaning against her doorframe. She looked back at him, pausing. "I can't leave the two of you here alone. If I would have known you would have never had to come here."
"I know," she said. "I know you wouldn't have let me go. But I think it was for the best that you and I had that time apart." She opened her suitcase. "I'll have Kris send the rest of our things."
"So you're really going to do this?" Zac asked. "Just like that? You're not going to spend a week, two weeks going through everything and packing? You're moving, Ginger."
"Yes, I know," she said. "I don't want to miss anything. Jenny should be with you. I should be with you."
"I expected you to say no."
"You knew I was going to say yes, Zac. You knew the moment you saw me," she said. "I'll quit my job tomorrow and I'll deal with everything I have to deal with as well. We'll leave tomorrow night."
"Is Jenny going to be okay with this?" he asked. "She's been here all her life."
"Jenny deserves more than this shitty place and you know she does. In a couple of years she won't even remember it here. I want that to happen. I don't want her to remember it here." She started throwing clothes into the suitcase, then went out of the room and next door to Jenny's room, where Jenny was still asleep. Ginger carefully opened Jenny's drawers and began taking clothes out, then quietly walked back into her room.
"What about Kris?" Zac asked. "Are you going to be okay without her? From what she said to me you two have been really close."
"We'll be just fine, Zac," Ginger said. She closed her suitcase. "She'll come out and visit and I'll come back here. She'll be out of school in a little bit, then she can come and see us whenever she likes." She walked over to him. "Can you get us plane tickets? It's really short notice"
"Hey, it's me," Zac said. "I can always get you tickets." She looked up at him (he was always so much taller than her) and looked straight in his eyes.
"I missed you," she said.
"I missed you more," he told her. "Trust me, I missed you a lot more." In a swift moment his lips were on hers and she responded heavily, throwing her arms around him and opening her lips, invading his mouth. He responded with equal force, with three years of fiery, burning passion behind him. His hands found the bottom of her shirt and in a moment it was off, his hands roaming the upper half of her body. He began pushing her backwards to the bed, where her legs hit it and she fell backwards, him on top of her, in the middle of the made bed.
"Wait," she asked, "do you have anything?"
"Um�no."
"Oh well," she said and kissed him again. So they didn't use anything. Zac, having been in a tight dry spell since he kicked her out of the house three years before, had given up hope on randomly getting laid, so he stopped carrying around condoms with him. Ginger, having been in a much shorter dry spell herself, didn't recall having anything lying around and didn't want to bother looking.
He stayed with her the night and she slept in his arms, feeling the happiest she'd been in years. Of course she'd told him that she had been happy these past three years, and she had, but that happiness didn't compare to what it was before. During the night Jenny had a nightmare and started crying. Ginger got up, put on her robe, and went quickly into Jenny's room. Jenny continued to cry so Ginger brought her into her bedroom with Zac. Zac was awake by now and looked over, slightly dazed, but smiled as soon as he saw his daughter. Ginger laid Jenny in the middle of the bed and she held onto her father's arm, where she fell asleep again and stayed asleep for the rest of the night.
In the morning Zac left before Ginger even got up, leaving her a note just in case he was still gone when she woke up, and went back to the hotel to change his clothes and take a shower. Ginger got Jenny up and was in the shower with her when Zac came home. When Ginger got out of the shower, and got Jenny dressed, Jenny ran back over to her father, where he picked her up.
The family had breakfast together, which made Ginger nearly cry again. For the first time in Jenny's life, she had a real family. It was what Ginger wanted since the very beginning of Jenny's short little life and now it was happening. Zac was beaming with pride as Jenny spoke to him (he'd been around enough kids to know how she was theoretically supposed to be like) and told Ginger that she spoke very well for a two-year-old.
Kris, as usual, opened the door without knocking about halfway through breakfast with exciting news. "Rosemary, guess who called me�oh," she stopped in the kitchen, looking at Zac. "Zac! Hi!"
"Hi Kris," he said, a smile on his face. "Who called you?"
"Um�" she said, giving him a look, "you did."
"That's news to me!" he said, laughing.
"Shut up," she said, taking a seat at the empty space. "Well, I see that you've found her. And Jenny. Does he know?"
"Yes, Kris, he knows," Ginger said. "It's a good thing he does otherwise I would have told him in a way I didn't want to."
"I'm sorry! I figured you would have told him, but I just wanted to make sure! And you did, so I was right anyway. Pass the eggs."
"Who said you could have breakfast here?" Ginger asked. "You're such a mooch. I know you're a college student and you have no money, but I don't have any either. I just bought a car."
"Yeah, what are we going to do about your car?" Zac asked. Kris looked confused.
"What about her car?" Kris asked.
"See, now you're doing it," Ginger said to Zac. "I don't want to tell her this way."
"I'm sorry!" Ginger gave him a look and then turned to Kris.
"Um, Kris, honey," Ginger said, putting her hand over her sister's. "Zac wants Jenny and me to come back to LA with him." Kris gasped.
"What?" she asked. "When are you going?" Ginger glanced back at Zac, then turned back to Kris.
"Tonight."
"Oh my God!" Kris said, jumping up. "Oh my God when were you planning on telling me this?"
"Kris we only decided last night, late last night as a matter of fact. I wasn't going to go run and call you and tell you right away." Kris huffed and walked away, sitting in the living room. "Kris�I have to go. This isn't one of those I want to go, so let me just go type of things. This isn't like when I went to Tulsa before. Jenny needs her father and I don't want to keep them apart any longer." Ginger got up and walked over to the living room, sitting next to Kris on the couch.
"Daddy, I'm done," Jenny announced to Zac. He looked at her plate.
"That's not done. Two more bites," he said. Ginger and Kris immediately paused their conversation and watched. Jenny reluctantly obliged, then pushed her plate away. Zac got up, taking Jenny with him. "Here I come to save the day!" he sang, soaring her through the air as they went into the bedroom. Ginger smiled, then turned back to Kris.
"They're getting along really well," she said. "Jenny loves him. Granted Jenny loves everyone she meets, she really loves him. She hasn't let go of him since she found out. Zac doesn't want to be away from her any longer and I don't want them to be away from each other any longer. He was telling me about it and he has some producer's job where he stays in LA for a good ten or eleven months out of the year, only traveling occasionally. He would be home all the time and we could have a real family. Jenny deserves to have a real family."
"I know," Kris said. "I know she does. I want her to go; I want you both to go. I just don't want to let you go. I've been around her all of her life and I've really gotten used to seeing you every day. And it's not like it's Tulsa where you're not that far away. This is all the way on the other side of the country."
"I know," Ginger said.
"What are you going to do about your job? And the apartment? You have a lot of stuff in here now."
"I was going to ask you a favor and help pack it all up and ship what I need to LA. Zac says he has a really nice house out there and he has the whole place furnished and everything�we'll have to ship most of Jenny's room because, obviously, he doesn't have a little girl's room set up over there. Basically all I'm taking is the rest of my clothes, Jenny's clothes, and all of Jenny's things. Everything else Zac already has."
"So what are you going to do with it?" Ginger shook her head.
"I don't know. Can you think of anyone who's willing to pay what I pay for rent and wants a furnished apartment?" Kris thought about it.
"Well�" she said. "I do."
"How are you going to pay for it?" Ginger asked. "You don't have a job."
"I'll get a job. This is a really nice place. As much as you badmouth it, it really is a nice place. You've done an awesome job with it." Ginger sighed.
"I don't know if I want you living here. This is a bad part of town and�"
"Rose," Kris said. "If you could have lived here for three years and not had any problem, I can live here for a little while, at least until your contract expires. I practically live here anyway. I know you like looking out for me, but I don't need it. You just worry about your life in LA."
"You're so good to me," she said, smiling. "I don't know what me and Jenny are going to do without you. You need to come spend the summer with us every summer. Then you need to move out there next door to us and be everything you have been. I want Jenny to grow up with her second mommy nearby."
"I will," Kris said. "We just can't think of that right now. Anyway, how are we supposed to be the Sex and the City chicks if we're in different cities?"
"Exactly."
"Hey Ginger!" Zac yelled from the bedroom. "Your daughter threw up!" Ginger shook her head.
"I knew that was going to happen," she said. "He was flying her around like she isn't two years old and gets sick from it." Ginger turned to the bedroom. "Zac, she's your daughter too! You clean it up!"
"Ew!"
"You were the idiot who was flying her around the apartment! You clean it up!"
"Fine! Don't help! I'll just do it myself!" he yelled.
"Exactly," she said, shaking her head. He stuck his head out of the bedroom. "I'm not helping you, Zac. It's about time you took some responsibilities as a father."
"Shut up. Where's your mop?" Ginger gestured to the closet in the kitchen. He walked towards it, grumbling the whole way. "At least you don't have carpeting in your bedroom."
"If I had carpeting in the bedroom, your ass would be grass," Ginger said. Zac gave her a look and went back into the bedroom. Jenny came running out without a shirt on and ran over to her mother, who picked her up and gave her a hug. "It's okay Jenny. That was your first time throwing up! Aren't you happy?" Jenny just rested her head against her mom. "Jenny, baby, we're going to be going away tonight. You won't be around Angie any longer, and you won't see Auntie Kris for a very long time." Jenny didn't understand but Ginger felt the need to tell her anyway. "You're going to be very mad at me for a while, but before you know it you'll be happy." Kris was tearing up next to them. "Kris? You okay?"
"I'm fine," she said, wiping her eyes. "I'm just going to miss the two of you." Ginger nodded. Jenny reached out her arms for Kris, who took her and hugged her. "I'm going to miss you the most of all, Jenny. The next time I see you you're going to be so big!" Jenny seemed to sense Kris's emotions and hugged her back. Kris bit her lip and managed a smile for Ginger.