Page 21 of Heavy Hitter

JIMMY SPENDS THAT NIGHT PACING THE CONDO, RESTLESS IN A way he can’t quite name—a feeling like he’s missing something, a feeling like there’s something important he was supposed to do that he forgot. It’s the retirement thing, he guesses: he’s known he was running out of road for years, but now that he’s about to reach the cliff he can feel himself slamming the brakes, wanting to stretch it out for a little while longer, wanting just a little more time. He always figured he’d know what he wanted to do next by the time he was finished playing baseball. He always figured at some point he’d manage to win a ring.

Still could, he reminds himself, then immediately feels like a boner for letting himself think it. Embarrassed, even though there’s nobody here to know. Wanting that kind of shit, telling yourself you have a shot at it, is exactly how a person gets his heart broken. Better to just keep your head down and call one pitch at a time.

They’ve got a home game against Kansas City the following night. In the locker room at Camden he gets changed into his kit and stretches for a while, doing his best to warm his quads and his screaming hamstrings and trying to shrug off the weird uneasiness that’s been dogging him for a full twenty-four hours now, an edginess he can’t manage to shake. After all, Jimmy reasons, it’s not like he’s retiring right this second. After all, it’s not like the season is already done. And after all, it’s not like he thinks they’ve been winning all these baseball games all of a sudden because he’s been playing you hang up first with Lacey Logan before he crouches behind the plate every night.

At least, he doesn’t really think that.

In any case, she’s got her first run of shows in Montreal this weekend, so he shoots her a good luck text as the crowds fill the stadium up above him; his phone dings with her reply a few minutes later, just before he needs to head out onto the field. At least, Jimmy thinks it’s going to be a reply from Lacey, but when he digs his phone out of his gym bag he sees it’s actually a message from his mom, which is unusual. Hi, sweetheart, she’s written. Just thinking of you today. Went to the cemetery this morning to lay some flowers. The weather was beautiful.

“Oh, fuck,” Jimmy mutters before he can stop himself. It’s Matty’s birthday, he realizes suddenly, the horror swooping deep and sickening inside him. He completely fucking forgot. He’s been so distracted with—what, exactly? Dicking around on the telephone? The end of his middling career? He didn’t even text his mother on what would have been the forty-second birthday of her dead fucking son.

“What?” Jonesy asks, looking at Jimmy askance from the other side of the locker room. “You all right?”

“I—yeah,” Jimmy lies, clearing his throat a little, dropping his phone back into his gym bag. He can feel the panic sweat breaking out on the back of his neck. “Yeah, I’m good.”

“You forget to take your arthritis medication or something?”

“Fuck you.” His voice is almost normal. He rakes a hand through his tangle of hair, jamming his cap down over his eyes and turning back to his locker. Trying to remember what he came over here to do. Trying not to think about his brother, who died of a heroin overdose alone in the bathroom of his shitty apartment three weeks before Jimmy got called up to the majors and is buried in the cemetery at Saint Monica’s in Utica, the same church where both of them were baptized as babies. Jimmy hasn’t been to see him in years.

“Yo,” Tuck calls now, making him jump; when Jimmy turns around to look at him, he realizes the locker room is mostly empty. “You planning to play any baseball this fine evening, or do you have a prior engagement you forgot to tell us about?”

Jimmy hesitates. For one insane second he imagines saying it: It’s Matty’s birthday, and I forgot like a piece of shit, before immediately dismissing the idea. He loves Tuck like family, but he doesn’t want to talk to Tuck about this. He doesn’t want to talk to his mom, either, to be confronted with the enormous hole in her heart and her life he knows he’s not big enough to fill, no matter how many baseballs he sends flying into the stands.

If he’s being honest with himself, the person he actually wants to talk to is—

“I’m coming,” Jimmy announces, zipping the bag shut and tossing the whole thing into his locker. He shouldn’t have been looking at his fucking phone in the first place. He needs to get his head in the game. What does he even think he’s going to say to her, anyway? I know you’re busy single-handedly improving the value of the toonie, but I’m feeling sad and vulnerable about my dead brother? That’s not what they’re doing, him and Lacey Logan. That’s not even remotely what this is. “Let’s go.”

They squeak it out against the Royals, 3–2 in extra innings. It doesn’t feel like much of a victory at all.

Chapter Nine

Lacey

SHE WAKES UP IN MONTREAL WITH A SNIFFLE, AND RIGHT AWAY she knows she’s getting sick.

“Shit,” Lacey whispers, rolling over in her hotel bed and taking careful inventory of her symptoms. She’s achy. Her throat hurts. Her head feels like it’s been stuffed with gauze. She texts Claire, who sets her up with a vitamin infusion, a gallon of electrolyte water, and a venti black tea with honey and lemon, which she drinks before pulling the shades down and going back to sleep for three hours.

“You good?” Claire asks when she wakes up again.

“I’m good!” Lacey promises, which is a lie, but there’s nothing to be done about it. It’s opening weekend for fifty thousand Quebecers, hundreds more already camped outside the venue hoping to scalp a last-minute ticket. She’s not about to let them down because she has a sniffle.

She picks up her phone and texts Jimmy as she shuffles off into the shower: Sorry I missed your text last night, she tells him; she meant to message him back as soon as her encore was over, but she wound up passing out in the car back to the hotel instead, waking up in the parking garage with a slick of drool all down her chin. I think I’m coming down with something.

No worries, he replies a moment later. Kind of a weird night anyway.

Weird how? she types—or starts to, at least. Before she can hit the button to send, another message comes through: We’re chill, right? We’re low-key?

Lacey frowns. What the fuck does that mean? Is that weird? It sounds weird, but sometimes it’s hard to tell over text. Toby always used to say she was imagining that he was mad at her, reading stuff into his tone that wasn’t there: You take the stereotype of oversensitive girl musician to the extreme, he told her once, and while mostly Lacey thinks that Toby can go fuck himself, she wonders sometimes. She knows she can be too emotional, too navel-gazey, too everything at once all the time, and as much as what she liked about Jimmy to begin with was how unfazed he seemed by the very colossus of her, she doesn’t want to scare him off. After all, they haven’t even put a name to whatever it is they’re doing. They haven’t even talked about seeing each other again.

Yeah, dork, she texts him back, hoping she sounds careless and breezy. We’re low-key.

***

SHE DOESN’T FEEL PARTICULARLY CHILL, THOUGH, IF SHE’S BEING honest. She’s tired and worn out and a little bit grouchy; her whole face feels puffy and clogged. Her fans deserve better, Lacey thinks, dragging herself to sound check later that afternoon. She doesn’t want to let anyone down.

Claire’s waiting for her when she steps off the stage, handing her a water bottle and two Tylenol gelcaps. “So, hey,” she says carefully, once Lacey has swallowed the pills and scooped her fever-sweaty hair off her neck, pressing the chilly plastic against her skin, “I’ve got something you should take a look at.”

Claire holds her phone out so that Lacey can see the screen, which is open to Audriana LaSalle’s Instagram profile. Lacey doesn’t follow Audriana LaSalle on social media, obviously—Lacey didn’t follow Audriana LaSalle on social media even before she found out Audriana LaSalle was secretly pregnant by Lacey’s live-in boyfriend—and it actually takes Lacey half a second to recognize her. She looks terrible, frankly: exhausted and gaunt, her face scrubbed clean of makeup and dark rings blooming under her eyes. The baby, less goblin-like now but still very much pale and bald, sucks a pacifier on her hip. I was never expecting to be a single mother at twenty-six, the caption begins.

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