Chapter Eleven Lacey

Chapter Eleven

Lacey

O H, FUCK HIM.

"Fuck him!" Lacey exclaims out loud, looking reflexively around her empty bedroom for—for what, exactly? She doesn't know. An audience, maybe. Someone to perform her anger to. She wants to go live on Instagram and tell all 254 million of her followers what a dick he is. She wants to send her fans to his house with pitchforks and meanly witty signs.

Ugh, she's so annoyed. She should have known this whole thing was too good to be true, whatever secret fantasy she's been indulging in the past few weeks as a balm for her own restless loneliness. The reality is that Jimmy Hodges is some grouchy, washed-up old athlete who probably doesn't even change his socks during the playoffs. He was never serious about this being a real thing.

She hates him. She hates him!

That's when Lacey starts to cry.

She lets herself indulge in it for a minute, sitting there alone on her enormous ship of a bed, feeling silly and snotty and sad. He is going to lift so neatly out of her life, she can already tell, because nobody but her knows he even was in it to begin with. He wasn't in it, really; he was just a disembodied voice she talked to sometimes, a blank screen on which to project all her hopes and fantasies and secret desires. He might as well have been her imaginary friend.

She wants to go for a long run alone and have nobody look at her. She wants to lie in her bed and sulk for a week. She wants to go have a casual fling and post about it on social media where Jimmy will be sure to see it and spend the rest of his life awash in shame and regret for letting her slip through his fingers. But none of those options are available to her, so instead she stuffs her resentment and heartache and all the other ugly, spoiled emotions she knows she isn't really entitled to feel back down where they belong, and she goes back to work.

She meets with Maddie first thing on Monday morning. "I guess I'm just a little concerned about the optics of it," Maddie says carefully, the two of them sitting on the couch in Lacey's den while Claire taps busily on her laptop in an armchair across the room. To say Maddie had questions about Lacey's decision to sing "Laugh Lines" the other night is... an understatement. "I mean, if you and Toby really are back together, then that's one thing, but—"

"We're not," Lacey interrupts.

"Right," Maddie agrees, "so then I'm just not sure about the benefit of letting people think he's abandoning the mother of his child in order to—"

"People can think whatever they want," Lacey points out sweetly. "I mean, it's not like we actually confirmed anything. I'm just a girl singing a song."

"Well." Maddie's lips twitch. "I think we both know that's not true."

Lacey frowns. It would have been easier just to tell them about Jimmy, obviously. It would have been smarter just to come clean. But now there is no Jimmy, and unfortunately the coverage of the Toby thing hasn't been terribly generous toward her, and Lacey can't quite quell the uncomfortable suspicion that she may have miscalculated this particular bit of guerrilla warfare. That she didn't think it all the way through. Still, she doesn't want Maddie to know that, so she takes a sip of water and smiles her calmest, most capable smile.

"Look," she says. "I don't know what Toby's game is, but I do know Toby, and he was one hundred percent going to keep pulling this petty shit unless he saw I was willing to pull it right back. Just watch. He's going to slink back into whatever dark, pee-smelling comedy club he crawled out of, and we're not going to hear from him again."

"Okay," Maddie says, though Lacey can't help but notice she doesn't look terribly sold on the idea. "You're the boss."

Lacey is expecting Claire to leave too once they've wrapped up with Maddie—technically today is her day off—but instead she hangs back for a moment, hesitating near the doorway to Lacey's mudroom. "Can I ask you something?" Claire asks. She's wearing a pair of black denim overalls and a rainbow-striped T-shirt, the tips of her short hair bleached bright white. "Is everything okay? Like, with you and me?"

"You and me ?" Lacey asks, genuinely surprised. "Yeah, of course. Why do you ask?"

"No, no reason," Claire hedges. "I mean, it's entirely possible that I'm imagining—" She breaks off. "I guess I've just been getting the vibe that maybe there's something on your mind the last few weeks. And I'm not saying it's about Toby—"

"It's not," Lacey says, then winces at the heat in her voice and quickly amends: "I mean, there's nothing going on." Still, now that she's stopping to think it through, it's not like she doesn't understand why Claire is asking. Before New York they spent almost all their free time together, watching rom-coms on Netflix after Lacey's shows and ducking into boutiques on their off days. Paid assistant or not, she was the person Lacey was telling everything to, before she started telling everything to Jimmy instead.

Claire is still looking at her, her expression even, and for a moment Lacey almost just says it: I'm worried my plan might have backfired a little bit. I'm terrified of letting everyone down. I let myself fall half in love with Jimmy Hodges over the telephone, and now it's over before it ever really began.

"Everything's fine," she promises instead, and for a moment she's not entirely sure which one of them she's trying to convince here. "Go enjoy your time off."

***

S HE'S BACK IN M ONTREAL FOR THE SECOND WEEKEND OF SHOWS on Thursday, the crowd soaked and screaming in their branded ponchos and the stage so slick with rain she needs to be careful not to slip and break her neck. "You could cut it a little short and nobody would blame you," her tour manager urges, but instead Lacey leans in, playing extra songs for all three encores, spending the whole weekend eating, breathing, and sleeping this tour in a way she hasn't since New York City. Her fans report that these shows are the most energetic of the entire Canadian run, wondering if being back with Toby is giving her a sudden burst of inspiration. There's a picture of her on the cover of the Montreal Gazette with her arms raised as the storm comes down all around her, guitar slung over her shoulder: L ACEY L OGAN C ONTROLS THE W EATHER , the headline reads. She couldn't have asked for better coverage, truly. She couldn't have asked for better fans.

She's not having fun anymore, is the problem.

It's not that she misses him, Lacey tells herself, settling in beside Claire for a viewing of 10 Things I Hate About You after her show on Friday night. It was just exciting, that's all—having a crush, the way it gave her days a kind of forward momentum. A reward at the end of the night. Not that the shows aren't a reward in themselves, obviously; not that the tour isn't enough to keep her busy and fulfilled. The performances are 180 minutes long, her set list covering forty songs from nine different albums. She's got sixteen costume changes, four different sets, pyrotechnics so impressive they scared her the first time she saw the demos. She trained by running on a treadmill singing the whole set list start to finish every day for five solid months. She should be giving it her full and undivided attention. Her fans deserve that much at least.

She'll recommit herself to her artistic calling, Lacey decides as the stage lights dim on Saturday evening, the screams of the crowd so loud and adoring she can feel them in her molars. She'll throw herself into her creative work. Forget the Catwoman house; she'll move to a yurt in the desert. Swear off men altogether and make ceremonial vows to herself.

Lacey Logan's North American tour ends the last Saturday in September with three sold-out shows in Calgary. She flies back to LA the following morning, then proceeds to spend four full days in bed, drinking smoothies and eating Chik'n Nuggets and watching the entirety of the run of Riverdale in one long, weird binge. As soon as it's over, she remembers absolutely nothing about it. It occurs to her to wonder if she might be depressed.

On the morning of Day 5, she's drinking her latte on the patio— Look at me getting fresh air! she texted Claire, who sent back the confetti emoji—when her phone dings with a news alert from ESPN, which Lacey signed up for when she was briefly considering becoming a sports person. Orioles Catcher Jimmy Hodges Announces Retirement , it proclaims.

Lacey gasps before she can quell the impulse. She clicks through and scans the article, then goes back and reads it more carefully:

Hodges informed the team late last week of his intention to hang up his cleats at the end of this season following a thirteen-year run with the Orioles , it reads, alongside a picture of Jimmy looking obnoxiously handsome in a clay-streaked jersey, his giant forearms tanned golden-brown. In a statement, he expressed gratitude to his teammates and confidence that this season's O's have a chance to win the World Series—an honor that has to date eluded Hodges despite a storied career laden with awards and accolades.

The article goes fawningly on, but Lacey isn't really registering anything it says. She's filled with the same weird, jangly longing she had that very first night at the bar—the panicky, sliding-doors certainty that the tether connecting her to Jimmy, the string connecting him back to her, is about to be snapped once and for all unless she does something to stop it.

She puts her phone down, then picks it up again.

Scrolls to his name.

There's no way he's going to text her back, Lacey warns herself even as she's typing. He's probably already sleeping with some twentysomething influencer with a show about flipping Airstreams on the Home Network's streaming platform. She knows this. Still, Lacey is the bigger person, isn't she? Lacey is fucking huge.

Saw your announcement , she tells him. Congrats on a great career.

That's sufficiently businesslike, right? There's plausible deniability there. Plausible deniability up the wazoo.

Her phone rings five seconds later, Jimmy Hodges appearing on the screen. Lacey is so startled she fumbles the thing altogether; it goes skittering under the patio table and she has to drop to her knees to fish it out again, wincing at the fresh new crack blooming across the front. She barely hits the button to answer in time.

"Hey," she says, a little out of breath, unable to keep the surprise—and, fine, the pleasure—out of her voice. "Everything okay?"

"Uh." Jimmy clears his throat, the sound of it a little thick. "Yeah, totally."

Right away Lacey frowns, sitting down on one of the lounge chairs beside the pool and tucking her legs up underneath her. "You sure?"

"No, actually. Sorry. I'm kind of, uh. I don't know. I'm fine. I hope it's okay I called, I know we—" He breaks off. "I guess I'm just kind of, like. Freaking out a little."

"About retiring?" she asks, and then it clicks. "Or about announcing retiring? Because now it's real?"

"Uh. The second thing, yeah." He sounds grateful not to have to explain it.

Lacey nods even though he can't see her. "I mean, of course you are."

"Of course I am?" That surprises him, she can tell.

"I mean, yeah," Lacey says, leaning back and making herself comfortable, settling in. "Did you actually think you'd be able to announce your retirement from the only thing you've done in your entire adult life and not feel any kind of way about it?"

"Uh." Jimmy clears his throat one more time. "That was the hope, basically."

"Wow," Lacey says calmly. "That's the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard."

That makes him laugh, only then it turns into something else halfway out, a weird coughing sound. "My heart is racing right now," he admits quietly, sounding sincerely embarrassed about it. "It's been racing all morning. Ever since the statement went out, I just—I feel like I can't even breathe."

"Oh, buddy." Just like that, Lacey isn't really mad anymore. She knows she should be, probably—should make him apologize and grovel and prostrate himself before her. But she doesn't actually want to do that, she realizes. Mostly she's just glad he called. "Have you ever had a panic attack before?"

"No," Jimmy says immediately, then: "I don't know. Maybe. Is that what this is?"

"Sounds like it."

"Lucky me."

"Lucky you," Lacey agrees, "because I'm going to talk you through it."

"You are?"

"I am."

"This happen to you a lot?"

"Not nearly as much as it used to," she says truthfully. "Now listen."

She does the trick of making him name the things he can see and hear and smell all around him. She does the trick of making him do math problems in his head. She does the trick of telling him the entire plot of all three Fifty Shades movies, which to his credit Toby once did for her when she was in a bad way following a stupid online feud with a big-name YouTuber and sure her career was well and truly finished. She makes him go outside and breathe in the fresh September air. "How you feeling?" she finally asks.

Jimmy seems to consider that. "Better," he concedes. "Less like I need somebody to scrape me off the ceiling, at least."

"Well," Lacey says, "that's progress."

"Yeah." They're quiet for a moment—not quite the comfortable silences of their earlier conversations, maybe, but not heavy and awkward and terrible, either. "You're talking," he notes. "You picked up, I mean. You're in between runs now?"

"Finished altogether, actually," she tells him. "At least until Europe."

Jimmy lets out a low whistle. "Well, damn," he says. "Congratulations, superstar. That's some impressive work."

Lacey grins dopily, grateful he can't see her blushing at the compliment. "Thank you," she says primly. "What about you?"

"Oh, I've got, like, fourteen concerts lined up in Japan," he says immediately. "They can't get enough of me in Yokohama."

"Funny."

"I try. Monday off," he tells her, "then a home game Tuesday night."

"Huh," Lacey says, considering that for a moment.

"Huh," Jimmy agrees, and she can tell he's doing the same.

Lacey takes a breath, her chest aching with both the pure narcotic relief of talking to him again and the sharp, hungry awareness that it's nowhere near enough. She missed him globally, yes, but also specifically, all the secrets he murmured in her ear. "What would you do to me?" she asks quietly. "If I was there?"

Jimmy doesn't answer for a long moment, then: "Lacey," he says, and his voice is so quiet. It sounds like he's trying to warn her.

Right away, Lacey's entire body flushes a humiliated, shameful red. " What? " she screeches, nearly falling off the lounge chair like a cat shoved off a sill. "Are you seriously going to—since when are you shy ?"

"I'm not," he says, sounded a little offended. "I'm not. I just—I don't want to talk about this anymore, all right? I don't want to just talk about it, I mean. I don't want it to be theoretical with you anymore, Lacey, and I don't know if that's a good idea."

"Why would it not be a good idea?"

"For a lot of reasons."

"Because I'm a distraction?"

"Yes," he says, no hesitation at all. "Because you're a distraction. Because I don't feel casual about you. I don't know if I've got my head on right about this, and I don't—I just want to be sure that you're—look," he tries finally, breaking off and starting again. "I'm at the end of my career. I'm a lot older than you—"

"By, like, five years!" she interrupts, laughing at the absurdity of it. "And also, not to be gauche, but I am already very fucking famous. This isn't, like, A Star Is Born , where you're going to hold me back from reaching my potential so you need to hang yourself in the garage—"

"I think he shoots himself."

"All right, well." Lacey laughs. "Don't do that, either."

"I'll try my best."

"Okay," she says. "Well. What are you worried about, then? That I'm going to ruin your shot at the World Series? Because you called me just now, Jimmy. You're the one who's saying you don't want this to be theoretical. And you're the one who asked what the point of all this was, back when you were so rude to me on the phone, so—"

"About that," he interrupts. "I owe you an apology. I was in a bad mood about other shit, and I was drunk, and I was jealous, and I acted like a schmuck."

Oh, that intrigues her. "What were you jealous of?" she asks.

"Fuck off," he says mildly. "You know what."

Lacey guesses she does, though it truly hadn't occurred to her in the moment. She'd felt stupid about the Toby rumors, stupider still when Jimmy made that crack about not reading the gossip rags. She'd been so busy trying to keep him from figuring out how much their conversations meant to her that it had never actually occurred to her to wonder whether possibly they meant that much to him, too.

Still, "I've had jealous boyfriends before," she tells him now, curling her legs up underneath her. "It's not my style."

"Am I your boyfriend?" It sounds like a challenge.

"I don't know," she says honestly, "and for the record, I don't feel casual about you, either. But we should probably see each other in person before we make any rash decisions, don't you think?"

"Yeah," Jimmy agrees. "We probably should."

Neither one of them says anything for a long moment, both of them waiting, but in the end Lacey's never been good at playing chicken. "Dude," she says finally, "I asked you out once already."

That makes him laugh, the sound of it low and rumbling; Lacey feels it in her ribs and her legs and her spine. "I guess you did," he admits. "Come see me."

"When?"

"As soon as you possibly fucking can."

Lacey breathes in, her stomach flipping with anticipation and hope and desire. She's going to have to tell Maddie, she thinks immediately. She's going to have to tell Claire. She's going to have to admit she's been keeping a secret, going to have to figure out all the hundred thousand ways this is all about to get so much more complicated than it's been so far. But for a second she doesn't care about any of that. For a second all she feels is glad.

"I gotta tell you, pal," Lacey says, as casually as she can possibly manage, "I thought you'd never ask."