Page 9 of Heavy Hitter

“Uh-huh.”

Lacey laughs a little hysterically. “I never do this,” she mutters, dropping her head and burying her face in his chest for a moment. “I never do this.”

“Mm-hmm.” He smooths a hand over her hair, squeezing the back of her neck a little. Her skin is burning hot against his palm. “Me either.”

“Fuck you.”

“You know, I gotta say, you’ve got a real trash mouth for such a pristine individual,” he scolds, thinking they’re still playing, but when she pulls back to look at him, her eyes are huge and panicky.

“I mean it,” she says, stepping backward so quickly she bumps into the sink. “I’m serious, this can’t—”

Right away, Jimmy puts his hands up. “Okay,” he says, “yeah. Sorry, I didn’t—”

“No, it’s just, I’ve never—” She breaks off. Her hair is frizzing up a bit, just around her hairline. Her cheeks are flushed bright red. “I don’t—”

“What?” Jimmy scans her face, searching. He has no idea what just happened here. “Are you a virgin?”

Lacey huffs. “Fuck you,” she says again, snatching her titanium underwear up off the edge of the sink and stepping nimbly back into them. “I’m thirty-two years old.”

Jimmy blinks. “Really?”

“Yeah,” she says, pausing to look up at him. “Why, is that a problem?”

“No,” he says, shaking his head quickly. “No, that’s great, actually, I was—”

“I’m not a virgin,” she interrupts. “But I’m also not like you.”

Jimmy scowls, surprised by how stung he feels by that particular assessment. “What am I like, exactly?” he asks, though it’s not like he doesn’t know what she’s getting at. And sure, there was a time before he was married—and, okay, also after he got divorced—that he had a little bit of a reputation for sleeping around, but—

“You can’t tell anyone about this,” Lacey says instead of answering. “I mean it. And I meant it when I said I don’t do this kind of thing. You can’t—what I’m trying to say is—”

“Who do you imagine I’m going to be falling all over myself to tell?” he snaps, then immediately feels like a dick about it. On the one hand he’s insulted, to be so brutally appraised by a pop singer who undoubtedly owns a small and annoying dog and captions her Instagram photos with phrases like all the feels. But on the other, she looks so worked up about it. She looks... afraid. “Lacey,” he says gently. “I get it. I’m not going to tell anyone. All right?”

Lacey nods. “Okay.” She looks like she believes him, then like she doesn’t, then like she does again. “Thank you.” She produces a slim tube of bright red lipstick from a tiny bag he didn’t notice until right this moment, slicking it onto her mouth so fast and so expertly he’s not even sure he sees her do it at all. “Do you want to go out first, or should I?”

Jimmy thinks about that for a moment. He guesses it doesn’t really matter, at this point. He guesses it would be dumb to think it did. “Go ahead,” he tells her, nudging her toward the exit, then stands there with his hands in his pockets as the door snicks shut behind her.

Chapter Five

Lacey

SHE WAKES UP WITH A GASP AT SIX THIRTY, HER HEART POUNDING.

Lacey gropes for her phone on the nightstand, fumbling it with clumsy hands and dropping it with a thud on the hotel carpet. Holy shit, what was she thinking? Anyone could have taken pictures. Anyone could have seen. Lacey hasn’t been that careless in years. She’s never been that careless, if she’s being honest with herself; on her grave, it will probably say, Here Lies Lacey Logan! She cared A LOT. Is this what drunk people feel like the morning after a bender? Does her mom feel like this all the time?

Lacey fishes the phone off the floor and forces herself to search Lacey Logan + Jimmy Hodges, her whole body going soft with relief when the only thing that comes up is a photo of her singing the national anthem at an Orioles game seven years ago. Lacey flops back onto the mattress, waiting for her breathing to slow before reaching up for her water bottle. She didn’t drink the whole thing before bed and she can feel it now, the stale, recycled dryness of the hotel in her skin and her sinuses. The insides of her thighs feel raw underneath her pajama shorts, and it takes her a second to realize it’s from the scrape of Jimmy’s beard.

Lacey opens a new search window. Jimmy Hodges + girlfriends, she types, then clicks on a slideshow from Entertainment Tonight. It’s old stuff, mostly, from before he was married: three moderately famous actresses, one singer who died a few years later in a car accident. Two Victoria’s Secret models. One Olympic gymnast. They probably had very athletic sex, Lacey thinks with a bizarre, inappropriate stab of jealousy, then sucks down the rest of her water even though it makes her feel a little sloshy.

His ex-wife wasn’t famous, she notes. His ex-wife was a schoolteacher from Aberdeen. Lacey doesn’t know why that’s interesting to her, but it is.

Her phone dings just as she’s about to try and find something more recent, and Lacey startles, dropping it onto the mattress one more time. Morning! Claire’s texted from her room next door, just like she does every day at precisely seven a.m. Let me know when you’re ready for coffee.

I’m up! Lacey texts back, then chews her bottom lip for a moment. Also, would you mind setting up a call with Maddie for sometime this morning?

The typing bubble appears, then disappears, then appears again. Lacey knows Claire wants to ask what the call is for, and also knows that she isn’t going to. ofc! Claire assures her. Will do.

Lacey showers and pulls on a tank and leggings, slips a lightweight hoodie on overtop. When she looks in the mirror she can see that her mouth is still a little bit swollen from last night, smudged around the edges; she touches her lips with her fingertips, just gently, shivering at the memory of Jimmy’s warm tongue rasping against hers. She’s embarrassed by the way she ran out of the bar—she was flustered enough when she came back from the bathroom that Javi asked, just once and very quietly, if everything was okay—and a little guilty about the things she said to Jimmy as she was leaving, even if the Entertainment Tonight slideshow does seem to confirm her general impression of him as a person who probably messes around with women in public places every day of the week. She was rattled by her own desire, the sudden, starving intensity of it. She was rattled by how badly she didn’t want to stop.

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