Chapter Seven Lacey

Chapter Seven

Lacey

W HEN L ACEY WAKES UP ON S UNDAY MORNING, THERE'S A BLIND item about Jimmy and her on the landing page of the Sinclair.

HALL OF FAME , reads the headline on the hot pink gossip site. Which uberfamous pop princess was spotted enjoying America's Favorite Pastime at a downtown NYC club earlier this week? Sources say the chart-topping songstress and not- quite -World-Series-winning MLB catcher were seen looking awfully cozy before leaving together through a side exit—presumably to, shall we say, round the ol' bases?

Lacey grits her teeth, one single firework of panic exploding deep inside her chest before she manages to douse it. It's not a big deal, she reminds herself firmly. She knew this would probably happen, and she planned accordingly. She's in control of her narrative; she teaches her fans how to read her. She is, and always has been, her own Rosetta Stone.

She texts Maddie to give her the heads-up, then hesitates for a moment before scrolling to Matilda's name in her contacts. Hey , she types. You didn't happen to say anything to anybody about me and Jimmy Hodges, did you?

Matilda texts back right away: Of course not! she says, complete with the zipped lips emoji. I would never.

Then, a moment later: Why, was there something to say?

Lacey gets back to LA just after ten a.m. Pacific, putting Henrietta Lang on the stereo and walking around the house for a while, getting reacclimated. Her place—her compound, technically, though that word makes her sound like the leader of a fundamentalist sex cult and she doesn't like to use it—is in Malibu: four outbuildings, a recording studio, and a full gym, plus a cantilevered living room in the main house with a huge wall of windows that juts out over the ocean. The glass is tinted so nobody can see in—they were worried about people coming by in boats, which is in fact a thing that happens sometimes—but still Lacey finds herself avoiding that room altogether if she can help it. Something about being in there makes her feel like she's always onstage.

She's standing at the kitchen island dumping some flaxseed into a cup of yogurt when her phone dings with a text. Lacey looks at it hopefully, but it's just Claire wanting to know if the house was ready and whether she got settled okay. Yes! Lacey reassures her. Claire has the next few days off, but she coordinated with the West Coast team so Lacey's fridge was stocked and the blinds were open, the thermostat set to 69.5 degrees just how she likes. The housekeeper will be by in the morning. The chef left three days' worth of meals. Now go enjoy your break!

Will do , Claire replies. Talk to you Wednesday!

Lacey nods, satisfied. She has a reputation as a generous employer, openhanded with time off and bonuses, and she likes to think that she deserves it; still, she can't help but feel a little bit bereft at the thought of Claire turning off her work phone and going back to her actual life. She told Jimmy she was going to spend time with friends while she's here, which was technically true—she's having lunch with a hip female movie director tomorrow, and she always sees Maddie when she's in town—but the truth is that for an undeniably famous and arguably beloved public figure, Lacey has never been exactly what one might call... popular. With actual people. In her actual life.

Well , she amends reflexively, even though there's nobody here to spin the PR for, that's not entirely true. In her twenties she did the whole girl-gang thing, a high-profile best friendship with a model named Cora that ended in a spectacular inferno when Cora's boyfriend came on to Lacey at a party, Lacey admittedly did not rebuff him quite as quickly as she might have, and Cora leaked a bunch of Lacey's texts to the Sinclair in retaliation. Lacey sold 2.5 million albums about it, then swore off public-facing friendships altogether, which was actually less lonely than it sounds, since she was dating Toby by then and he didn't particularly like to share her. Still, once that relationship imploded it occurred to Lacey that maybe she should have tried a little harder to find a pal who wanted to get a casual cup of coffee from time to time, since when it comes to people who aren't her mother and who don't work for her who she talks to with any regularity, there's, like... Matilda. There are a couple of girls from her performing arts high school back in Cincinnati, one who does Hallmark movies in Vancouver ten months out of the year and one who lives in Akron and has four daughters in competitive dance. And—well.

There's Jimmy Hodges, now.

Maybe.

Lacey pulls up the Orioles' regular-season schedule on her phone, even though she already did that earlier this morning, and yesterday also. They're playing an afternoon game today, then leaving from Target Field to head home to Baltimore. She googles Jimmy Hodges + People magazine , scrolling a "50 Most Beautiful" photo shoot from a couple of years ago that she has also already perused on more than one occasion. She googles the flight time from Minnesota to BWI.

"Enough," she mumbles finally, setting her phone down on the counter. She pulls out her notebook instead to distract herself, flopping down on the sofa in the den with the same kind of Five Star wide-ruled spiral situation she's been using since she was thirteen. She's been writing like crazy the last few days, the lyrics falling out of her brain almost faster than she can get her hand to move. She knows what people say, obviously— Lacey Logan can't bump into a guy in line at a Starbucks without making a double album about it, or whatever—but she hadn't written anything since she and Toby split and it feels nice to tap into that part of herself again, to put pen to paper, to hum the melodies under her breath. She feels most like herself when she's writing, though she doesn't think anyone would necessarily believe it. She knows she's always been a spectacle first.

She's plucking experimentally at the strings on her guitar when her mom calls. "Who's Jenny Haines?" she asks, when Lacey answers.

"The designer," Lacey reminds her, getting up off the sofa and padding back into the kitchen for some water. Her fingers are a little crampy from gripping the pen. She remembers Jimmy periodically shaking his hands out back in New York City, wonders how much pain he's actually in at any given moment. Wonders if he'd trust her enough to tell her, if she asked. "You told me to send you her info, remember? For the house?"

"What?" Her mom sounds annoyed. "I didn't do that."

"You did," Lacey says patiently. This happens sometimes: whole conversations her mom has no recollection of having, lost to a haze of alcohol and her own distraction. Lacey tries not to tell her anything particularly salient after two thirty p.m.

"I didn't," her mother insists now. "She's the one who did your Nashville place, isn't she? That isn't actually my favorite of yours, to be honest. I don't think I'd want to use her myself."

"Okay," Lacey agrees now, which is generally the easiest way to handle it if she doesn't want to have an argument. "Maybe I was wrong."

"Well, you've got a lot on your mind," her mom says magnanimously. "How was the weekend?"

Lacey fills her in on the first three Toronto shows, on the mistake she made last night during "Fameland." "You know," her mom says thoughtfully, "now that you mention it, I've always thought there was an extra step in that choreography."

"There is?" Lacey blinks. Her mom was a college cheerleading coach when Lacey was small, taking her team to Nationals seven years running before she quit to start bringing Lacey to auditions full time. She wasn't a stage mom—Lacey is always careful to clarify this point in interviews—but she was exacting. She expected a lot. "Where?"

"Right where you're talking about," her mom says impatiently. "Trying to execute three full turns in that break before the bridge is asking for trouble. You're showboating, that's all. Lose one and it'll give you an extra beat to hit your mark."

"Huh." Lacey thinks about that for a moment, though as soon as the words are out she knows her mom is right. Frankly she's annoyed at herself for not seeing it first. "I didn't even know you were still paying attention to my choreography."

"Of course I'm still paying attention to your choreography." Her mother sounds unperturbed. "Are you kidding me? I could probably do your choreography. Any of your dancers goes out on disability, you could slot me right in."

Lacey laughs before she can stop herself, only the laugh turns into something else on the way out and Lacey has to swallow it again like a too-big shard of tortilla chip, scraping her throat on the way down. It's disorienting, sometimes, when her mom acts like the person Lacey remembers from when she was younger: the two of them eating Tuna Helper for dinner in the apartment they moved into after Lacey's dad left, watching music videos on VH1. In some ways, it almost feels worse than when she's too drunk to stand. "Okay. Well. Thank you."

By the time they hang up Lacey feels itchy and restless and sad for no reason, pacing the empty house looking for something she can't quite name. She's going to get a new place after the tour, she decides suddenly: some weird bungalow in the Hollywood Hills, maybe, something full of crystals where she can invite Stevie Nicks over for jam sessions. Beaded curtains in the doorway. Lots of pink. Michelle Pfeiffer's apartment in Batman Returns , basically, only expensive. Something Toby would absolutely hate.

She heats up some grilled chicken and vegetables in the microwave. She scrolls through her social media tags. Finally she picks up her phone. It's a little past ten on the East Coast, and as soon as Lacey flicks to Jimmy's name in her contacts she realizes she's been waiting to do this all day—that, even if she didn't explicitly admit it to herself, she's been planning it since the moment they hung up last night. Hell, there's a part of her that's been planning it since she saw him across the room in New York. You've never in your life come into a human interaction without an endgame , Toby told her once, and while she knows he probably didn't mean it as a compliment, in Lacey's opinion that kind of strategy is just good sense and self-preservation. There's nothing she hates more than being surprised.

"Hey," Jimmy says when he answers. "I was hoping you'd call."

"Really?" Lacey winces at the sound of it, a full click too eager. God, sometimes she is so acutely aware that there's a universe in which she never got famous at all and is instead a children's librarian wearing whimsical dresses printed with cats riding bicycles, trying unsuccessfully to connect with guys on Bumble. "I mean. You were?"

"Yeah," he says easily, sounding completely unselfconscious about it. She likes his phone voice, how it's low and a little bit grumbly, how he always sort of sounds like he just woke up. "You back in LA?"

"I am," she admits, hoping it doesn't occur to him to wonder why she isn't out doing something fabulous. "What about you—home to tend to your goats?"

"I'm in the city tonight, actually," he says with a laugh. "I've got a condo in Fells Point."

"That's cool," Lacey says, as if this is new information to her, which it is not. She searched a couple of days ago to see if he'd done a house tour anywhere, but didn't come up with anything useful. She wanted to be able to imagine him in context, to picture his giant body filling the space. "How was the flight?"

They talk for a long time, Lacey heading upstairs and putting him on speaker while she does her going-to-bed routine. Jimmy tells her about his teammates and a poker game they've had going on and off since 2016, about his plans for his day off tomorrow, which include a visit to the acupuncturist and breakfast at his usual spot. "What about you?" he asks. "Glad to have a break?"

"Oh, yeah!" she says brightly, then can't quite maintain it. "I mean, kind of."

"Only kind of?"

"I don't know," Lacey admits, leaning close to the mirror and inspecting her skin for various spots and imperfections. "I guess sometimes I look forward to the time off, but then when I have it I don't always know how to fill it."

"Could always take up knitting again."

"Careful," she warns him. "You'll wind up with an ugly scarf."

"Come to think of it, my neck has been a little cold."

Lacey laughs, but then he doesn't say anything else, and even though she knows the trick of staying quiet so the other person will talk more and likes to think it doesn't work on her, all of a sudden she's telling him about Cora and her text leak and how empty her cavernous house feels, how lonely it is in LA. "I'm not one of those girls that doesn't like other girls," she says, flipping her head down and brushing her hair out. It feels important that he understands this. "I love girls! In fact, I love girls so much that there's a significant faction of the internet that thinks I secretly date them. But I haven't had a real best friend—like, an active-duty best friend—in years."

"Active-duty friend," Jimmy repeats. "I like that. What about whatshername, though? The one you were with in New York?"

"Matilda?" Lacey says, righting herself again and heading into the bedroom to change into her pajamas. "I mean, Matilda is great. Matilda is wonderful, in a King George III sort of way." Matilda is, Lacey is nearly 100 percent certain, the source of this morning's blind item on the Sinclair, but she doesn't want to say that out loud and scare Jimmy off. After all, the gossip could have come from anywhere. It could have been about anyone , and even if Lacey knows, of course, that it is emphatically not, well, there's no point in drawing unnecessary attention at this time to the reality of what it's like to be linked to her in any remotely romantic context. "You just kind of have to assume that anything you say to her is public property, you know what I mean?"

"Sure," Jimmy says. "I can see that."

"I'm not complaining," she says quickly. It feels important that he understand this, too. "It's just kind of like—what am I supposed to do, you know? Go join a pickleball league for single women in their thirties?"

"You could," Jimmy tells her. "Pickleball is the fastest-growing sport in America."

"My schedule kind of precludes activities," she reminds him. "I'm also not very good at sports. So then I'm just that weird girl on the pickleball team with sporadic attendance and a paparazzi presence who nobody likes."

"I don't think that's what would happen."

"You don't?"

"Nah," he says. "You're likable."

Oh, that makes her smile. "I am?"

"I like you."

"I like you, too," Lacey admits, then clears her throat. She wants to ask him if he keeps thinking about it the same way she does, the other night in the bathroom of the bar in New York City. She wants to ask if he shivers every time he remembers what they did. "Anyway," she says, curling up on the velvet chaise in the corner of her bedroom and pulling a faux-fur throw blanket into her lap, "this makes me sound like a sad sack. Let's talk about you instead. Do you have family in Baltimore?"

"Not really," Jimmy tells her. "My folks are in Utica, where I grew up. And my brother passed away a while back, so."

"Yeah." This isn't new information, either, though Lacey couldn't find anything online where he talked about it publicly. She knows he gives a portion of his salary to a sober-housing nonprofit every year. "I'm sorry," she says quietly. "That really sucks."

"It does," Jimmy agrees. "But anyway, it's just me here."

"In your bach pad?" she teases. "Where everything is made of marble and stainless steel?"

"And concrete, yeah."

"Even the bed?"

"Nah," he says, and it's not so much that he misses a beat as it is that his voice changes ever so slightly, getting kind of low and private and wry. "Bed's regular."

"That where you are now?"

"Not yet," he says. "Getting there." He does pause then, just for a second, like he's deciding something. "You?"

"Not yet." She gets up off the chaise and pads across the room, flipping the covers back and sitting down on the edge of the mattress. "There," she tells him, aiming for flirtatious and not quite hitting it. " Now I'm in bed."

"You are, huh."

"I am."

"All right," he says. There's some rustling, what might or might not be the whoosh of fabric. "Me too."

"How about that," she says as she wriggles down underneath the covers. She feels the same way she felt as she walked across the bar the other night, half thrilled and half telling herself she isn't actually doing anything. "Is this the part where you ask me what I'm wearing?"

Jimmy isn't laughing. "Do you want me to ask what you're wearing?"

"I mean." Lacey puts a palm on her sternum, stroking a thumb along her collarbone. It isn't lost on her, how cautious he's being. The way he's letting her be the one to come to him. It's not what she might have expected from a person who touched her with such confidence, though to be fair she did insult him and run out of the bar immediately after he did it, so she guesses she can't exactly blame him for not being sure how she's going to react. Yes , she thinks as hard as she can, hoping he'll hear it in the ether. I want you to. "You can try."

Jimmy swallows; Lacey can hear his throat click. "What are you wearing?" he asks.

"Pajamas," she tells him honestly. She slides her hand down the center of her rib cage to her stomach, rucking her shirt up and dipping a thumb into her navel. She can feel her heart slamming away inside her ribs. "Joggers and a tank top."

"What color?"

"Black." Lacey slips her fingertips under the waistband of the sweatpants, tracing along the jut of her hip bone. She's never had phone sex before; it feels like a relic from the distant past, like key parties or porn theaters. Not that they're about to have phone sex, necessarily. Or, more accurately, not that Lacey wants to be the only one who is hoping that's what might be about to occur. "Um. What are you wearing?"

"Boxers," he says. "They're black, too."

"Is that it?"

"That is it."

Lacey frowns. "Wait, like, actual boxer shorts, or—"

"They're boxer briefs, Lacey, Jesus."

"Well, I'm just asking!" she all but shrieks, struggling upright. "Fuck me for trying to get the full picture, I guess."

Jimmy laughs, but not meanly. "Is that what you're trying to do?"

"Yeah," she confesses. This is happening, then, the two of them on this phone call; all at once it feels silly to try to act like it's not. "I am."

"Yeah." Jimmy blows out a breath. "I've been thinking about you," he tells her quietly. "Ever since the other night. I can't stop thinking about you."

"Same," Lacey gasps. Oh, it's such an enormous relief to hear him say it. "Like. Constantly. All the time."

"What do you think about?"

"Your hands," she says immediately. "Your arms." She swallows. "How I wanted to take you back to my hotel room."

"And then what?"

"You know what."

"I do," he agrees, "but I want to hear you say it."

"Say what, exactly?" Lacey fires back before she can stop herself, feeling brave and wild alone here in the dark. "That I wanted you to fuck me?"

"I—" Jimmy makes a low sound, not quite a cough. "Yeah, sweetheart," he admits. "That's about it."

"Well," she says, pleased with herself. Her whole body feels like it's on fire. "That's what I wanted."

"That's what I wanted, too."

"Do you still want to?"

"Of course I do."

"How bad?"

"Bad."

"Good." Lacey forces herself to breathe normally. She never talked to Toby like this. Or maybe, like, once in all the time they were together, on his birthday or something. But he's got an unshakable quality to him, Jimmy Hodges, a fundamental unshockability that makes her want to take him by surprise. It's the same reason she suggested the two of them leave the club the other night: because she knew he wasn't expecting her to do it in a million years, and she wanted to see the look on his face when she asked him.

"Are you—I mean," Lacey says, then tries again. "Like, right now, are you—"

"Yeah," Jimmy confesses. It sounds like he's forcing himself to breathe normally, too. "I am."

Right away she pictures it: his bare chest and the trail of dark hair underneath his navel, his hand wrapped tight around himself. Lacey has never in her entire life been able to fathom why a person would ever want to receive a picture of a guy's junk via text message, but she sort of understands it right this second. Not enough to ask for one, to be clear. But, like. Just for a second, she can imagine the appeal. "Okay," she says, sliding her hand down inside her underwear, her own skin smooth and warm beneath her palm. "Me too."

Jimmy groans. "How?"

Lacey squeezes her eyes shut. "However you tell me to."

"Oh, fuck." He laughs again, disbelieving. He sounds so sincere. "Really?"

"Yeah."

There's a pause, then: "Okay, sweetheart," he says softly. "Here's what you're going to do."

He's specific, Jimmy Hodges. He takes his time. It's a trip, the thrill of following his directions as scrupulously as she can: slipping out of her clothes until she's naked under the covers, cupping her breasts with both hands. "How's that?" he asks as she reaches between her legs and rubs with two fingers, his voice all grit and gravel three thousand miles away. "That working for you over there?"

"It's working," Lacey gasps—bucking up into her own touch, chasing the build of it. "It's good."

"Good," Jimmy echoes. "I think the real thing would be better, but we'll make do."

"Tell me," Lacey manages, "what the real thing would be like."

That surprises him; she can hear it. "You are something else, you know that?" he asks quietly, but then he tells her that, too: how he'd lay her out on his mattress and lick her all over, all the ways he'd fuck her until she came. She's worried he's going to expect her to return the favor—she feels shy suddenly, same as she felt the other night in the bathroom, how she can't quite believe the things he makes her want to do—but all at once Jimmy sucks in a breath on the other end of the phone. "Lacey, honey," he says, and his voice is so urgent. "Are you close?"

Lacey slides her fingers inside herself, curling them the same way he did the other night in the bathroom. "Yeah," she manages, her hips coming clean up off the bed. "I'm close."

"That's a girl," he says. "You gonna let me hear you?"

And—yes, actually. She is. Lacey keens as the feeling of it bursts inside her, waves and waves of warm, syrupy pleasure radiating out all over her body. Jimmy growls into her ear, low and vulnerable; fuck , but Lacey wants to see his face.

"Was that—" she asks when she can talk again. "I mean, did you just—"

"Yeah," he says with a sheepish-sounding laugh. " Yeah . You?"

"Yeah." Lacey collapses back against the pillows. She's exhausted all of a sudden, satisfied and wrung-out and sleepy. She wishes she could curl up next to him, that she could tuck herself close against his chest. That was another thing she kept thinking about after the night they met: the size and the sturdiness of him, like here was a person she wouldn't need to make herself smaller in order to be with. Like here was a person who could handle the bigness of who she is. "Stay on the phone?" she asks, tucking it between her face and the pillow even though she knows that's a one-way ticket to Breakoutville and she's going to regret it in the morning. "Just for a couple of minutes, I mean."

She's embarrassed as soon as she asks it—it feels needy somehow, too forward, even though they literally just got each other off—but Jimmy only hums his assent. "Sure," he tells her, like maybe he's here in her bed beside her and not clear on the other side of the country. "I'll stay for as long as you want."