Love the one youre with

I give her a puzzled look until I realize she's talking about baby names. Again. Lately, it seems to be all we discuss. Generally, I enjoy the name game, and certainly understand the importance of naming a child-sometimes it seems as if the name shapes the person-but I'm growing a bit weary of the topic. If Margot had at least found out the sex of her baby, it would cut our task in half.

'Josephine,' I say aloud. 'I like it… It's charming… offbeat… very cute.'

'Hazel?' she says.

'Hmm,' I say. 'A bit poserville. Besides… isn't it Julia Roberts's daughter's name? You don't want to be perceived as copying the stars, do you?'

'I guess not,' she says. 'How about Tiffany?'

I don't especially like the name, and it seems like a bit of an outlier on Margot's otherwise classic list, but I still tread carefully. Saying you dislike a friend's potential baby name is a dangerous proposition (like announcing you don't like her boyfriend-a sure guarantee that they'll marry).

'I'm not sure,' I say. 'It's pretty but seems a bit frou-frou… I thought you were going for a traditional, family name?'

'I am. Tiffany is Webb's cousin's name-the one who died of breast cancer… But Mom thinks it's sort of eighties, tacky… especially now that the brand has become so mass-marketed…'

'Well, I do know a few Tiffanys from Pittsburgh,' I say pointedly. 'So maybe she's right about it being down-market…'

Margot misses my subtle jab and merrily continues. 'It makes me think of Breakfast at Tiffany's, Audrey Hepburn… Hey! What about Audrey?'

'I like Audrey more than Tiffany… although it does rhyme with tawdry,' I say.

Margot laughs-she's a big fan of my playground-teasing litmus test. 'What little kid knows the word tawdry?'

'You never know,' I say. 'And if you stick with the family middle name Sims, her monogram will be ABS… and then she sure better have a flat stomach. Otherwise you set your daughter up for a lifetime of eating disorders…'

Margot laughs again, shaking her head. 'You're nuts.'

'What happened to Louisa?' I say.

For weeks, Louisa-another family name-was the front-runner for the girl's name. Margot even bought a swimsuit at a children's clothing trunk show and had it monogrammed with an L-just in case she has a girl. Which, by the way, is so clearly what Margot wants that I've begun to worry about the boy result. Just the night before, I told Andy that Margot was going to be like an actress nominated for an Oscar, waiting for the card to be read. Total suspense followed by elation if she wins-and having to pretend that she's just as thrilled if she doesn't.

Margot says, 'I love Louisa. I'm just not quite sold on it.'

'Well, you better hurry and get sold on something,' I say. 'You only have four weeks.'

'I know,' she says. 'Which reminds me-we need to get cracking on that pregnant photo shoot… I'm getting my hair highlighted on Monday, and Webb says he can make it home early any night next week. So whenever you're free…'

'Right,' I say, remembering a conversation we had months ago in which she asked-and I agreed-to take, in her words, 'those artsy, black-and-white belly shots.' It seemed like a fine idea at the time but given my recent frame of mind, I'm just not that juiced to do it, particularly now that I know Webb is going to be in on the action. I picture him gazing at her lovingly, caressing her bare belly, and maybe even planting a kiss on her protruding navel. Ugh. How far I've fallen. If I'm not careful, I'll have gone from shooting for Platform magazine to wiping baby drool or jangling rattles in front of a cranky toddler.

So, with all this in mind, I say, 'Don't you think that's a bit… I don't know… fromage?'

Somehow calling her cheesy in French seems to dampen the mean-spiritedness of the question.

For an instant Margot looks hurt, but quickly regroups and says, quite emphatically, 'No. I like them… I mean, not to display in the foyer-but for our bedroom or to put in an album… Ginny and Craig had some taken like that, and they're really amazing.'

I refrain from telling her that I'd hardly aspire to be like Ginny and Craig, who top my list of Atlanta irritants.

Ginny is Margot's oldest, and until I dethroned her, best friend. I've heard the story of how they met at least a dozen times, most often from Ginny herself. In short, their mothers bonded in a neighborhood playgroup when their daughters were babies, but then dropped out of the group two weeks later, deciding none of the other mothers shared their sensibilities. (Specifically, one of the other moms served dried Cheerios for a morning snack, which might have been overlooked but for the fact that she also offered up some of the toasted treats to the fellow adults. In a plastic bowl, no less. At which point, Ginny inserts that always annoying and very insincere Southern expression, 'Bless her heart.' Translation: 'The poor slob.')

So naturally, their mothers seceded from the group to form their own, and the rest is history. From the looks of Margot's photo albums, the girls were virtually inseparable during their teenage years, whether cheerleading (Ginny, incidentally, always holding Margot's left heel in their pyramid, which I see as symbolic of their friendship), or lounging about their country club in matching yellow bikinis, or attending teas and cotillions and debutante balls. Always smiling broadly, always with sun-kissed tans, always surrounded by a posse of admiring, lesser beauties. A far cry from the few snapshots I have of me and Kimmy, my best friend from home, hanging out at the Ches-A-Rena roller rink, sporting feathered hair, fluorescent tank tops, and rows of nappy, frayed yarn bracelets.

In any event, just as Kimmy and I went our separate ways after graduation (she went to beauty school and is now snipping the same overlayered do in her salon in Pittsburgh), so did Ginny and Margot. Granted their experiences were more similar, as Ginny attended the University of Georgia and also joined a sorority, but they were still different experiences with different people during an intense time of life-which will take the B out of BFF almost every time. To this point, Ginny stayed immersed with the same crowd from Atlanta (at least half of their high school went to UGA), and Margot branched out, doing her own thing at Wake Forest. And part of doing her own thing was bonding with me, a Yankee who didn't fit into (if not downright defied) the social order of Atlanta. In fact, looking back, I sometimes think that Margot's befriending me was a way of redefining herself, sort of like following a new, offbeat band. Not that I was alternative or anything, but a Catholic, brown-eyed brunette with a Pittsburgh dialect was definitely a change of pace given Margot's Southern, society upbringing. Frankly, I also think Margot liked that I was as smart, if not smarter than she, in contrast to Ginny who had passable book smarts, but no intellectual curiosity whatsoever. In fact, from overhearing snippets of their college-era phone conversations, it seemed clear to me that Ginny had no interest in anything other than partying, clothing, and boys, and although Margot shared those interests, she had much more substance under the surface.

So it was pretty predictable that Ginny would become jealous and competitive with me, particularly during those first few years of the gradual power shift. It was never anything overt, just a frostiness coupled with her pointed way of rehashing inside stories and private jokes in my presence. I might have been paranoid, but she seemed to go out of her way to discuss things that I couldn't relate to-such as their respective silver patterns (both girls' grandmothers selected their patterns at Buckhead's Beverly Bremer Silver Shop, upon their birth) or the latest gossip at the Piedmont Driving Club, or the ideal carat size for diamond-stud earrings (apparently anything less than one carat is too 'sweet sixteen' and anything more than two-and-a-half is 'so new money').

Over time, as their friendship became more rooted in the past and mine and Margot's became all about the present, first in college and then in New York, Ginny saw the writing on the wall. Then, when Andy and I got serious, and she realized that no matter how long she and Margot had known each other, I was going to be family, it became an absolute given that I would usurp her title and be named Margot's maid of honor-the unambiguous, grown-up equivalent of wearing best friend necklaces. And although Ginny played the gracious runner-up at all of Margot's engagement parties and bridesmaid luncheons, I had the distinct feeling that she thought Margot, and Andy for that matter, could have done better.

Yet all of this underlying girly drama wasn't anything I gave much thought to until after Margot moved back to Atlanta. At first, even she seemed reluctant to entrench herself in the old scene. She was always loyal enough to