Page 17 of Heavy Hitter

“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?”

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