A Curve Ball Called Love

Chapter 10

It had been a few weeks since Tiffany found out that she was pregnant. It was actually going to two months and she still hadn’t told anyone—let alone Douglas. She kept on thinking that she should tell him sooner rather than later. After all, her first trimester was almost over and she was going to begin to show pretty soon.

Hell, who am I kidding? she wondered as she looked at one of her favorite dresses at the back of her closet. It no longer fit because she was already gaining some baby weight. I’m already showing.

She’d gone shopping for some more clothes that would pull the attention away from her mid-section. It wasn’t easy getting clothes to obscure her growing tummy. After all, she took pride in being a plus sized woman with a flat tummy. Her new dresses had detailing around the waist area and sometimes she wore loose-fitting tops over pants. The Mo’Nique look suited her and helped her keep her secret a little longer but she was still having a hard time. It wasn’t just trying to physically keep her situation a secret. It was also the fact that morning sickness for her was an all-day situation. Nothing seemed to work. She’d tried every remedy she had ever heard of and so far the only thing that seemed to work was crackers and lemon flavored vitamin water. Ian had once asked why she was suddenly having so many crackers and she’d lied to him, telling him that she was on a diet. It was a bold faced blatant lie but it worked. Apart from the nausea, she was also dealing with yet a new scandal within the company. At that point of her life, she didn’t have the energy for the fast-paced nature of her career but she wasn’t about to let down the entire female empire that had been set by many before her who worked hard until they literally delivered their own babies.

Tiffany settled on a pair of black pants, a red checkered button down top and a pair of black ankle boots. She pulled her hair into a bun and looked at her reflection. A smile played on her face as she looked and stroked her belly. With her choice of outfit, one could hardly tell that she was expecting. Plus, she was able to walk around the photography set with the freedom of her belly safely concealed in her top. Her week had been especially difficult. The new scandal at work concerned their new cover girl, Anna Howell, the hottest new name on the music scene. Some even called her the new Taylor Swift, something that Anna wasn’t particularly keen on.

“I’m my own person and I have my own music. While I love Taylor’s music and respect her as an artist, I don’t want people holding me to some country princess’ standards,” Anna had said in one of her interviews.

However, even after she distanced herself from the Taylor Swift narrative, the tabloids were still keen on comparing her and the country princess, and that broke her. Tiffany had tried to avoid the imminent break for a long time but for every press release she did trying to spin the narrative, there was a tabloid out there with a new comparison story to discredit it. It was a cat and mouse game with Entity and the tabloids and soon the very thing she was afraid of happened. Anna broke. She was suddenly acting out, partying up a storm and engaged in substance abuse. At some point, Tiffany was convinced that it would have been much easier to deal with Miley Cyrus and Lindsay Lohan. There were many times she thought of just giving up on Anna altogether but she’d worked too hard to ensure that she got to represent Anna. Giving her up without a fight wasn’t necessarily on her to do list. Besides, she’d somehow managed to make a man who hunted endangered species look good to the public. She could handle an up and coming music protégé. The whole week had been dedicated to making Anna look good to the public and ensuring that her music continued ranking high in the charts. Funny enough, the negative publicity only seemed to drive up her popularity which worked to Entity’s and Tiffany’s advantage. The only thing she had to do was make the world see her as the love ballad musician she was and not some drug snorting party animal that she’d lately come to be known as.

Tiffany was thinking about the photo shoot as she rode in the cab to her office building. Her plan was to show America the Anna Howell who had captivated their hearts. She’d just heard Anna’s new single ‘Lovesick’ and she was completely taken over by the lyrics. Somehow, she felt as if Anna had been singing about her and Douglas. The song was about longing and yearning for a forbidden love. It was practically every love story in the world. Tiffany had also gone through the synopsis for the video and she knew exactly what the shoot was going to be.

“It’s going to be a classy thing. We are talking Anna in a floor length gown, preferably silver or simply white…smoke machines will obscure her feet and we will work a jungle theme in there,” she had said to the set manager the day before.

“Floor length gown and a jungle theme?” the set manager asked, surprised. “I don’t know how that’s going to work.”

“It’s going to work. Let it look like she’s stepping into a forest… make it all grey. She’ll be the only colorful thing there.”

“Okay, I get it but a white gown?” the set manager asked and Tiffany sighed. Perhaps he was right to doubt her. She’d been a little off her game for a while.

“Check with wardrobe. Make sure they get you something that pops out, and I mean really pops.”

She walked back to her office to get some weight off her feet. She still had some time before the photoshoot started. Luckily for her, the shoot was the only task she needed to complete that day. She thought of having the discussion with Douglas and a chill went down her spine. It happened every time she thought about it. The last thing she wanted was to be seen as some kind of gold digger because she was genuinely in love with Douglas. However, she couldn’t keep the gossips and nay-sayers silent for long. She knew that people were going to have some very unkind words to say about her and Douglas’ involvement. After all, it had barely been six months since they met and now she was carrying his baby. If that had happened to another person, she would have been one of the first people to say that the pregnancy wasn’t genuine. That perhaps there was an ulterior motive: getting a sure pay day for the next eighteen years. All those thoughts were driving Tiffany insane. Every time she thought of telling Douglas, those thoughts came flooding back and she hesitated. There was no telling what would happen after she told him. Would their relationship dynamic change? Would he look at her differently?