Chapter Seventeen Lacey

Chapter Seventeen

Lacey

"I CAN'T BELIEVE I HAD TO HEAR ABOUT THIS ON TELEVISION," her mother huffs on the phone a few days later, her consonants the slightest bit mushy but her indignation still razor-sharp. "I mean, talk about humiliating. I'm surprised at you, Lacey; I raised you better than that. It's not like you to sneak around."

"I wasn't sneaking ," Lacey says, raking a hand through her hair as she curls up on the couch in the living room of her place in Cincinnati. It's the smallest of her properties, four bedrooms in a gated community in Grove Park that she keeps in equal parts because she's sentimental about Ohio and because she finds it's best not to stay at her mom's house if she can help it. "It's just... new."

"Seems like sneaking to me," her mom counters. "When is he coming in? Are you at least going to bring him by the house to say hello?"

Lacey grimaces at the thought of it. "He's only going to be in town for, like, twelve hours," she hedges. "It's just a quick in-and-out, a publicity thing. On top of which, it's not that serious, Mom. There's no reason for you to meet him yet."

"Well. That's not what they're saying on Access Hollywood ." Her mother sniffs. "You never wanted me to be around Toby, either."

"That's not true," Lacey protests, though in fact it is extremely fucking true. Toby and her mom met exactly twice in all the time he and Lacey were together, once at one of Lacey's LA shows and once at a Mother's Day brunch at Nobu during which Toby looked on in horror as her mom calmly drank two entire bottles of pinot grigio and suggested they order another—which, now that Lacey is reflecting on it, was a lot of overwrought moral outrage from a person who turned out to be a literal cocaine addict. Still: not an experience she's eager to repeat. "Next time for sure, okay?"

"Am I even going to see you while you're here?" her mom presses, the sound of what might or might not be a wineglass clinking against the countertop faintly audible in the background. "Or are you in and out too fast for that, too?"

Lacey squeezes her eyes shut so hard that colors briefly explode behind her eyelids. "Of course you'll see me," she promises. "When have I ever come into town without you seeing me? Let me just chat with Claire about the schedule and we'll set something up."

"God forbid we make a plan without involving your assistant," her mom shoots back, which Lacey knows from experience means she's about to really get cooking in terms of her various maternal grievances. "Tell Claire she can come without you if you're too busy, how about. I'll make her all your favorite foods."

They hang up a few minutes later, though not before her mom asks Lacey for the contact information of the designer who did her Nashville house; not one to make the same mistake twice, Lacey has just texted her Jenny's office number when they're interrupted by a call from Maddie.

"Hey there," Maddie chirps, once Lacey has said her goodbyes and switched the line over. "I just wanted to go over logistics for tomorrow."

"Sure," Lacey says, grateful for a concrete plan to follow. The idea is to play it as an old-fashioned all-American romance: dinner and drinks in Lacey's hometown, apple pie and homecoming court. "Cute," Jimmy said, when she explained it to him over the phone a couple of nights ago. "Can I ask you something, though? Did you even actually go to real high school?"

"In fact I did," Lacey retorted, then grudgingly amended: "For, like, two years."

That made him laugh, the sound of it reassuring and familiar; for the first time since his disastrous press conference, Lacey felt herself relax. She knows he isn't crazy about this idea, the staged, theatrical quality of it, and she also knows he feels like he can't complain about it since he's more or less the entire reason they're in this situation to begin with. "Are you sure this was an accident?" Maddie asked when Lacey called her to strategize. "You don't think there's any part of him that saw an opportunity—"

"I don't," Lacey said honestly, although of course since the moment Maddie mentioned it she hasn't been able to get the possibility out of her head.

"Because I'm just saying, he has more to gain than you do," Maddie continued bluntly. "It's the end of his sports career, he's looking for a way to stay relevant—"

"Wow," Lacey said. "Thanks a lot."

"Well, it's my job to game out all the possibilities," Maddie reminded her, not unkindly. Lacey knows this. They had a plan for if Toby overdosed in the first few months after they broke up. They have a plan, though they have never explicitly talked about it, for if Lacey's mom shows up drunk somewhere in public and goes entirely off the rails. Lacey can recognize, intellectually, that they need a plan for the scenario in which Jimmy is using her to stay in the spotlight after he retires. Still, the idea of it doesn't exactly make her feel great.

Jimmy flies in late the following afternoon, the Orioles' first game of the Division Series leaving them only a narrow window of time to make this happen. They could have just done it in Baltimore, but Maddie wanted their first public outing to be on Lacey's turf. "Is that a huge pain in the balls for you?" Lacey asked him, when they were all on the conference call hashing out the details. "What with the timing and all?"

"I mean," Jimmy said mildly, and Lacey could hear the shrug in his voice clear across the country. "Does it matter?"

Now she swings her front door open, her stomach swooping at the sight of him standing there on the other side of it. This happened when she got out of the car at the farm, too: the way she was momentarily caught off guard by the size of him, the disarming hugeness of his shoulders and chest. "Hi," she says, feeling herself blush.

"Hi," Jimmy says, then drops his duffel bag on the hardwood floor and ducks his head to kiss her.

Lacey makes a quiet sound as he kicks the door shut behind him, her whole body humming underneath the warm authority of his touch. How is it possible this is only the third time they've been together in person? How is it possible they haven't been doing this their entire adult lives? She lets herself sink into it for a moment—his hands spanning her rib cage, his mouth moving slowly down her neck—then taps her fingers gently against his biceps. "Before this goes any further," she murmurs against his jaw, already wincing a little, "I should tell you I've got a house full of various assistants right now."

Jimmy hums into her skin, his palms skating down over the curve of her ass. "I mean," he says slowly, "group sex has never really been my thing, but if you think it'd be rude not to invite them to join—"

"Cute."

"Thank you." Jimmy straightens up, tucking his hands obediently back into his pockets. "Well, in that case. Nice to see you. Looking forward to our business dinner."

"Likewise." They stare at each other for a minute, grinning goofily. Lacey feels something in her stomach uncoil. She wishes they could send the team away and stay in tonight, just the two of them, and she imagines it before she can stop herself: sprawling sacked-out on the couch playing Scrabble or watching something on cable, a candle flickering on the coffee table and dinner simmering away on the stove. Normal-people shit.

Jimmy's thinking it, too: "You want to, like, go for a walk or something?" he asks, sounding almost bashful. "Before we have to do... all this? Is that allowed, for you and me to just—I mean. Are we allowed to do that?"

Lacey's heart sinks, just a bit. "We're allowed to do that," she says, "and I'd love to. But I don't actually think we've got time."

"Really?" Jimmy frowns, looking down at his watch. "I thought dinner wasn't until eight."

"It's not," she says, "but I've got to sit for hair and makeup. They wanted me already, actually, but I wanted to see you when you got here."

"Ah." Jimmy nods. "Got it."

"It won't take that long," she promises quickly, which is of course a lie. She thinks again of his ex-wife, with her low-key po nytails and Madewell denim, and feels self-conscious about being so ostentatiously high-maintenance. But what exactly is Lacey supposed to do, on a night as important as this one? She's not about to slap on some Maybelline and call it good. "And then the stylists have some stuff they pulled for you, too."

Jimmy laughs at that, then abruptly stops laughing. "Wait," he says, "really?"

"Yeah," Lacey admits with a wince. "Somebody was supposed to talk to you about that." She guesses she should have talked to him about that, actually, but she knew he was going to get this exact look on his face and start grumbling about wearing a costume for his mainstage community theater debut, and she wanted to put that off as long as possible. "They've got some stuff for you to pick from."

"Chicken suit?" he deadpans immediately. " Beavis and Butt-Head T-shirt? Lady Gaga's meat dress?"

"You don't have to wear anything you don't want to, obviously." Lacey wraps her arms around his neck one more time. "Maddie just thought that maybe—"

"Without professional guidance I might show up to dinner in gym shorts and a pair of cleats?"

"I think they were more envisioning a backward baseball cap and sunglasses with Croakies."

"Croakies are very practical," Jimmy fires back, then shrugs. "Whatever," he concedes. "I'm a man of the twenty-first century. I can appreciate a bespoke designer ensemble."

Lacey exhales. "Okay," she says. "Thank you."

In the end they put him in a pale blue suit with a subtle check pattern and a pair of spanking white high-tops, his hair brushed back off his forehead and a Breitling gleaming quietly on one wrist. "Um, wow," Lacey says, finding him in the living room once the hair and makeup team finally takes off, the house suddenly quiet. "You look hot."

That makes him smile. "Really?" he asks. "Because I think I look like Ross and Chandler in the episodes of Friends where they're in college and Courteney Cox is wearing the fat suit." He tilts his head to the side, wrapping a hand around her waist and pulling her closer. " You , on the other hand, look hot."

Lacey grins back, a dark thrill zipping through her. She meant what she told him back at the farm—it's not like she was wandering alone in some barren orgasm desert waiting for him to come along and rescue her—but the truth is she's never felt as deeply, naturally sexy as she does with Jimmy. She's never liked her own body quite so much. She uses her chest to nudge him backward until the backs of his knees hit the sofa and he sits down, then hikes her dress up and settles herself in his lap with one knee on either side of his thighs.

Jimmy tips his handsome face toward her, then hesitates at the last second. "Am I going to fuck this whole"—he gestures at her general person—"situation up if I kiss you?"

"Depends how hard you commit, I guess." Lacey raises an eyebrow.

Jimmy smirks. "I'm pretty fucking committed," he murmurs, then presses his mouth against hers.

It escalates more or less immediately, his big hands wandering down her body, reaching up underneath her dress. Fuck dinner, Lacey thinks with surprising clarity, pressing herself against the warm, broad expanse of him, grinding herself against the bulge in his pants. Fuck the entire elaborate production. Instead they can just go upstairs and get directly into bed, and then tomorrow—

"Uh." Claire clears her throat from the doorway; Lacey springs to her feet before the sound is even all the way out, smoothing her dress down and wiping the edge of her lip. "Sorry," Claire says, not quite looking at either one of them. "I didn't know you were—I wouldn't have—the car's here, whenever you're ready."

"Oh, no worries," Lacey says, composing herself as quickly as possible. It's not like Claire hasn't seen worse, obviously; still, all at once she's blushing clear up to the roots of her hair. "You guys have talked on the phone, yeah? Jimmy, this is my assistant Claire." Her smile is ferocious, she can feel it. "Claire, Jimmy."

Jimmy puts a hand out—but does not, Lacey can't help but notice, make any move to stand upright quite yet. "Nice to meet you," he says as they shake. "Sorry for the, ah, inconvenience. Of... myself."

He's joking, Lacey can tell, but Claire doesn't laugh. "Not at all," she says, her tone friendly but businesslike. "Glad to have you on Lacey's team."

"Glad to... be on it," Jimmy says, a little uncertainly. He does stand up then, his knees cracking audibly, and reaches for Lacey's hand. "Let's do this thing, huh?"

Lacey nods, still smiling. "Yup," she says. "Let's do it."

***

C LAIRE BOOKED THEM A TABLE AT S COTTI'S, A HUNDRED-YEAR-OLD red-sauce Italian place with candles stuck into wine bottles on top of the checkered tablecloths. Lacey watches as Jimmy looks around, taking in the vehement unfanciness of the dining room, clocking the fact that Lacey purposely didn't ask for any kind of privacy. "I see what you all did here," he says quietly, taking a sip of his Peroni as a middle-aged woman two tables over snaps the world's least subtle iPhone photo. "This was very clever."

"Apple pie and homecoming," Lacey murmurs back, motioning over a wide-eyed tween so that they can take a selfie together. "Once you really get to know me, I think you'll find I'm a very normal Midwestern girl."

The waiter comes by three different times to ask if they're ready to order while Jimmy scrutinizes the menu like he thinks there's going to be a test of his reading comprehension after dessert. "Do you not like Italian food?" Lacey finally asks. "Sorry, I probably should have asked you that before now."

Jimmy shakes his head. "I like Italian food fine," he says. "I just feel like the internet is going to conduct a symposium on the semiotics of whatever I order right now, so I want to be sure I'm, you know. Doing my part to contribute to your team."

Ugh, Lacey knew that comment had rubbed him the wrong way as soon as it came out of Claire's mouth earlier. "I can think of some ways for you to contribute," she shoots back—trying to make a joke of it, nudging her ankle against his underneath the table. "If you're looking for ideas."

Jimmy smiles at that, though Lacey isn't sure if she's imagining that it doesn't quite reach his eyes. He hasn't smiled much since they got here, actually; their conversation feels stilted and fake, like they're two actors in a high school play who haven't entirely memorized their lines. "You excited for the series?" she asks once he's finally decided on the lasagna, aware that she sounds a little desperate. Act like you're having fun, she wants to tell him, but she's afraid someone will be able to read her lips.

"You could say that," Jimmy allows—and now he's smiling for real, just a little, presumably amused by her increasingly sweaty attempts to move them along. Help me, then , she thinks, trying to send the message telepathically across the table. The whole point is to make it look like you're having fun.

Well, no, Lacey amends to herself, glancing at Jimmy a little guiltily. The point is to actually have fun, obviously. It just so happens to be fun they're having in front of an audience, for public relations purposes.

It feels like they sit there forever, dutifully eating the kind of heavy, cheesy, salty dinner Lacey already knows is going to make her workout tomorrow morning feel impossible, wondering why she ever thought this was a good idea. It was a mistake, she sees now, to push him to do this; it was the latest in a long string of strategic errors she can't quite seem to stop making ever since he came along. Already Lacey is dreading their walk out to the car, when the photographers who have gathered outside the restaurant will inevitably take a million pictures to be promptly analyzed by a legion of amateur body language experts who'll declare their relationship a disingenuous, farcical PR stunt before they ever even make it back to her house. Maybe she should have just had him deny it altogether, she thinks wildly. Maybe they weren't ready for this after all.

Jimmy surprises her, though, slinging his arm around her once he's signed his name to the credit card receipt and helped her into her jacket. Just like that he's Handsome Everyman Jimmy Hodges again, feigning good-natured surprise as they step out onto the sidewalk and flashbulbs explode in every direction. "Hey, guys," he says, nodding with a lopsided grin at the scrum of photographers outside the entrance to the restaurant. "Who are you waiting for?" He cranes his neck. "Listen, you're never going to believe this, but I think I saw Lacey Logan in there with some dopey-looking asshole from the Orioles."

Oh, they like that, the laughter sincere and good-natured. Lacey couldn't have coached him better herself. "How was dinner?" one of them calls, still snapping busily away.

"It was incredible," Jimmy says easily, angling his body in a way that suggests they have his full attention even as he's guiding Lacey into their waiting SUV. "You guys should get in there, order some tiramisu. Tell them to send me the bill."

Lacey turns to look at him with some amazement once the door is closed behind them. "Nicely done," she admits.

Jimmy clears his throat. "Learned from the best," is all he says. It doesn't necessarily sound like a compliment.

They're quiet on the car ride back to her place, neither of them saying anything as he follows her up the front walk, as she keys the code into the pad beside the door and turns to wave good night to Javi. He'll stay on until midnight, parked in the SUV in the driveway until someone else from the team arrives to replace him. She's got twenty-four-hour coverage, even at home.

Once they're inside Lacey walks from room to room flicking the lights on—putting Henrietta Lang on the sound system, getting them each a glass of water—before finally running out of small, plausibly necessary tasks and sitting down hard on the edge of the sofa. She was stalling, that's all. She was buying time.

"Do you want to talk about it?" she asks quietly.

Jimmy plays dumb. "Talk about what?" he asks, shaking out his hands before tucking them back into his pockets.

"You know what." Lacey rolls her eyes, irritated all of a sudden. Stop being such a fucking baby , she wants to tell him. This wasn't the playoffs. This was barely a Wednesday.

"No, I mean—I don't know." Jimmy shrugs. "It was just a weird night, that's all. Performing it, like that. I knew you brought me here to put on a show, obviously. I guess I just didn't realize it was going to be so—so—"

"So what, exactly?" Lacey asks. "Since when are you uncomfortable in the spotlight?"

"I'm not uncomfortable in the spotlight," he counters, sounding a little offended. "I am extremely fucking comfortable in the spotlight."

"Okay," Lacey says, "then what? Is it that thing that Claire said, is that the problem? Is it because I'm more famous than you?"

Jimmy guffaws. "Are you serious right now?"

"I'm just asking!" she protests, though there's a part of her that knows she's being snotty on purpose, that's leaning into her own ego a little bit. "It's a valid feeling."

"It's not my valid feeling," he insists. "I don't care about that."

Lacey throws her hands up. "Well then, what?"

"Lacey—"

"Because not to keep beating this drum or whatever, but you're the one who made this whole thing public to begin with, so—"

"I know that, thanks." Jimmy's eyes flash. "Believe me, you and your team of lady avengers have made abundantly sure that I know that. But apparently that also means I'm not entitled to feel any kind of way about this whole thing—"

"Any kind of way about the two of us being public?" Lacey interrupts him. "Or any kind of way about me?"

Jimmy doesn't answer for a moment—perching uncomfortably on a media console at the other end of the living room, visibly too big for this space. Lacey closes her eyes, leaning her head back against the sofa. "Look," she says finally. "If you don't feel like the lift is worth it here, or you're thinking maybe you made a mistake, then by all means—"

"That's not what this is," Jimmy says immediately. When she opens her eyes he's himself again, his expression hot. "Are you kidding me? I—Lacey. Yeah. That's not what this is."

"Then what?" she asks—or starts to, anyway, but is cut off by the sound of her phone ringing, the screen lighting up with Javi's name.

"Sorry to bother," he says, when Lacey answers. "But the guard at the booth just called me. There's somebody asking for you at the gate."

***

"M OM ," L ACEY SAYS FOUR ENDLESS MINUTES LATER, WATCHING from the doorway as her mother wobbles up the front walk. "Hi."

"Hi, sweet pea," her mother says, then turns to Jimmy—looking him up and down, openly appraising. "Well, I will say this much about you, cutie: they certainly weren't kidding about you being tall."

"Jimmy," Lacey says before he can answer, trying to keep her voice from shaking. Her mom has never done this before, just waltzed right in with no warning; it's true she doesn't generally require an explicit invitation, but normally she at least calls before she arrives. "This is my mom."

"Janine," her mom says, holding a manicured hand out before turning to Lacey. "I had dinner with some gal pals," she reports, which Lacey immediately knows is a lie. Much like her only daughter, Janine Hall Logan has very few friends. "So I was in the neighborhood, and I thought—"

"Did you drive here?" Lacey interrupts, horrified by the thought of it.

"Of course I drove here," her mother says, like Lacey is the one who's being unreasonable. "Not all of us have twenty-four-hour chauffeurs."

"You know I would get you a driver if you wanted," Lacey protests. In fact, she would love it if her mom would accept her offer of a driver, if only so that Lacey could stop worrying about her drunkenly crashing her fucking car into a family of four out for a celebratory dinner at Culver's. "We can set that up whenever you want."

Her mom ignores her, turning back to Jimmy. She smells like white wine and perfume, her hair in a perfect updo and her lipstick just the tiniest bit smudged. "My daughter has been trying to keep us hidden away from each other," she confides with a conspiratorial grin. "Which one of us do you think she was more embarrassed of, you or me?"

"Me, definitely," Jimmy says without missing a trick. "My table manners are abysmal. And I almost wore Croakies on our date."

"Oh, come on now," Lacey's mom says, giggling girlishly. "I doubt that very much."

"I'm going to get you some water," Lacey announces.

"You don't have a bottle of wine open, do you?" her mom asks, sitting down on the sofa and making herself comfortable. "I would love a glass of sauvignon blanc."

"Nope," Lacey calls tightly over her shoulder. "I sure don't."

Jimmy hesitates for a moment before following Lacey into the kitchen, watching in silence as she yanks a cabinet door open and reaches for a glass. "Just don't, okay?" she snaps, slamming it against the water dispenser so hard she's lucky it doesn't shatter to pieces. "I mean—I don't want to—just. Don't."

Jimmy takes a step back. "I'm not," he promises quietly. "I'm not."

She digs some cheese from the fridge and a box of crackers from the cupboard, peels a clementine and puts it all on a plate. By the time they get back into the living room, though, her mom is curled up fast asleep on the couch, open-mouthed and snoring softly. Lacey swears under her breath. "Mom," she says, setting the plate and the glass on the coffee table and laying a hand on her mom's warm, bony shoulder. "Mom, come on, wake up." Her voice is trembling; she can hear it. Jimmy is watching silently from across the room. "Mom, please." Then, when her mom still doesn't stir: " Mom ."

"I think she's out, Lacey." His voice is so, so gentle.

"I know that," Lacey retorts, then feels her whole body sag, the weight of the last few hours—the weight of the last few months—hitting her all at once. "I don't want to just leave her here," she confesses, sitting down hard on the arm of the sofa. "Passed out drunk on my couch? That's so bleak."

Jimmy nods. "Okay," he says, coming closer, looking to her for permission; Lacey motions for him to go ahead and he bends to scoop her mom off the cushions, lifting her into his arms like a child. "Where to?"

Lacey sighs. "Guesthouse," she says.

Jimmy nods. "Lead the way."

He trails her out the back door and across the patio, along the edge of the pool. Her mom doesn't stir once the whole time. He lays her down on the mattress in one of the bedrooms, standing in the doorway as Lacey tucks her in and turns off the light.

"Well," she says once she's led him back out to the yard, sitting down on one of the enormous double loungers that ring the bean-shaped pool. Someone has already taken care of draining and closing it for the season, though the truth is she isn't sure who. "Now you know."

Jimmy stops walking. "Okay," he says, sitting down beside her. She can hear his knees crack in the quiet night. "Is that supposed to put me off?"

"I don't know." Lacey shrugs. "Maybe. It's objectively off-putting."

"You realize I have a little bit of experience with this kind of thing."

It's the first time he's even alluded to the circumstances of his brother's death, and her first instinct is to act like she has no idea what he's talking about. Her second instinct, shamefully, is to say My mom is nothing like your drug addict brother but that's horrible, that's awful, and anyway it's not even true. Her mom is exactly like his drug addict brother.

"Yeah," she agrees finally. "I know you do." She digs the heels of her hands into her eyes for a moment, waiting to see if she's going to cry or not, then finally decides not and drops them back into her lap. "What was he like?" she asks. "Matthew, right? Matt?"

Jimmy nods. "Matty," he corrects softly. "We called him Matty. And he was, like. The best person in the world."

"Oh yeah?" Lacey smiles. "Say more."

Jimmy reaches up and rubs at his shoulder, not quite looking at her. "He could do anything, you know? He wasn't afraid of anything." He tilts his head to the side. "He was a great fucking ballplayer, I'll tell you that much. That's how I got into it to begin with, actually—because I wanted to be like my brother."

Lacey holds her breath, but to her surprise he keeps going, telling her all sorts of things: How Matty got a full scholarship to college. How Matty played baseball for Notre Dame. How Matty blew out his knee his first semester of college and some stupid, irresponsible fucking doctor gave him a prescription for oxycodone, and that was the end of Jimmy having a brother, pretty much. It's the most earnest, the most unguarded she's heard him sound about anything since the very first night they met, like how a little kid would talk about a superhero. The sum total of it breaks Lacey's heart.

"Anyway," Jimmy finishes with a shrug, "he died of a heroin overdose a few weeks before I got called up, so." He clears his throat. "While I'm sure this situation with your mom creates a lot of logistical and emotional issues for a person in your particular position, if you're looking for me to be squeamish about it, you're going to have to find another guy."

Lacey is quiet for a moment, gazing at him in the darkness. "Thank you," she says eventually.

"For what?"

"For telling me that," she says. "For trusting me with it. And for the rest of it, too—for helping me with my mom, for coming out here and doing all this to begin with. For the whole dog and pony show."

"Yeah, well." Jimmy's lips twist. "The whole dog and pony show isn't so bad." He leans back against the lounger, crossing his ankles. "Come here," he says, opening his arms to her. Lacey scooches back and stretches her legs out, leans her head against his chest. She can hear his heart beating like this, the steady tap of it settling. It feels like something she can imagine doing for a long time, over many years. Over a lifetime, Lacey's never thought that much about having kids—it's always felt like something she might do someday, like starting her own label or going into space—but all of a sudden she's thinking about it in bright, vivid Technicolor, Jimmy Hodges as a dad. You could carry a daughter on those shoulders. You could hold a baby son in those arms. All at once she's wishing for a pen, for something to write with. She wants to capture this feeling before it disappears.

"What?" Jimmy asks, peering down at her.

"What what?"

"You have a face of, like. Consternation."

"Oh. No." I was imagining you putting a hundred babies in me, or at the very least I'm thinking of writing a song about it does not feel like something she ought to say to him on this particular evening, so she slides one hand up under his shirt to distract him: rubbing a hand over his stomach, raking her nails gently over the hair on his chest. Jimmy grumbles his quiet approval, so she keeps doing it, scratching lightly, feeling the muscles of his stomach jump under her touch. Her hand wanders down over the fly of his jeans, over the zipper where he's already hard through the denim. Jimmy groans and reaches for her, hauling her up on top of him. Lacey gasps. "I wanted to do this all night long," he murmurs, reaching up to tuck her hair behind her ears.

Lacey raises an eyebrow. "You mean when you weren't thinking about how fast you could possibly get the fuck away from this entire situation?"

She's joking—at least, she's sort of joking—but Jimmy doesn't laugh. "That wasn't what I was thinking," he says immediately, hands stilling on her body. "Hey. Lacey. Look at me. That wasn't what I was thinking."

Lacey can't help but notice that he doesn't tell her what he was thinking, either. "Touch me," she says, instead of pressing him for details. Jimmy does it, pulling the zipper on the back of her dress down and working the clasp on her bra open. Catching her nipple between his teeth.

Lacey sits up long enough to work his fly open, lets him push her skirt up over her hips. "I don't have a condom," he warns her when she wraps her hand around him, stroking gently.

"At all?"

"I mean, no, in the house I do." He thrusts up into her hand, looking faintly helpless. "Want to go in?"

Lacey considers that. His skin is so, so warm. "Do you still have chlamydia?" she asks.

Jimmy smirks. "No, darling," he says. "I think I'd be dead by now if I still had chlamydia."

"Does chlamydia kill you?"

"Didn't feel like something I wanted to find out."

Lacey nods, considering. "Do you have anything else? Like, illness-wise?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Okay."

Jimmy's eyes widen. "Okay?" he asks, gaze searching hers with urgency, like he's afraid he isn't understanding correctly. "Okay, like—?"

"Okay, like I have an IUD," she says, which is true. She's thinking about what his kids might look like, sure, but she's not insane. "You're good, go."

So. Jimmy goes, groaning so loudly she's glad she's got so much land around here, glad Javi is parked safely on the other side of the house and her mom will be passed out until at least lunch time tomorrow. Lacey laughs, she can't help it, muffling the sound of it into his skin. "Good?" she asks, shifting around until she gets comfortable.

"Yeah," he says, rubbing at her hips, her back, up and down her spine. "That's good."

It's good for her, too, the way he's touching her, the night air cool on her bare skin and the sound of the crickets calling to each other in the trees. Lacey closes her eyes, giving herself over to the moment. Holding on tight to the here and now.