Page 41 of Heavy Hitter

“Is still just total conjecture.”

“Not for them,” she says. “And not in reality, clearly.” She sighs. “Maddie says we need to debut as soon as we possibly can.”

“We need to what now?”

“Debut,” Lacey repeats—a little impatiently, like she thinks he’s being stupid on purpose. “Take control of the story. Go out together. Give them a narrative.”

“Give who a narrative?”

“Everyone! The media. My fans. Every baseball jabroni who’s already on Reddit complaining about me besmirching the sacred and pristine arena of professional sports with my rhinestones and vagina. Either we give them something to talk about, and fast, or they come up with something on their own. And please believe me when I say the first thing is always better.”

Jimmy rests his elbows on his knees for a moment, leaning forward and scrubbing his free hand over the back of his head. “Can I ask you something?” he says finally. “Did you ever think that all this weird fucking lore exists around you because you’re the one who’s actively creating it? That people are like this about you because you expect them to be?”

“Wow, no,” Lacey says, her voice perfectly even. “The notion had never occurred to me.”

Jimmy winces. “Okay,” he amends, “I didn’t mean—”

“No, really. Thank you for teaching me this important and heretofore unknown truth about myself.”

“Lacey—”

“I have built this career with my brain and my voice and my two fucking hands, James. If I tell you my fans are going to need something from me, it’s not because I’m divining it from the phases of the moon or some random Twitter user. It’s because, contrary to what people like to tell themselves, doing what I do at the level that I do it takes a lot of strategy and intelligence. I need you to trust me about that.”

Jimmy thinks about that for a moment—or tries to think about it, anyway, but he’s distracted by the uninterrupted buzzing of his phone at his ear. The thing hasn’t stopped vibrating since the press conference: messages and notifications stacking up on top of each other like the cards at the end of the old Microsoft version of solitaire, filling the entire screen. He’s going to need to put it on Do Not Disturb. Fuck, he’s going to need to throw it into the Potomac. It feels insane now, the idea that he was the one who gave her shit about not wanting to casually go out to breakfast the other morning. I’ve been dealing with the press for thirteen years. He might as well have told her he could do open-heart surgery because he used to watch reruns of Grey’s Anatomy on cable at the gym in the mornings. He wants to beg for her fucking forgiveness. He wants to stand outside Camden in a sandwich board that says I’m a dumb schmuck.

He also—just a little bit—wants to call this whole thing off before it gets any more out of control and go back to concentrating on baseball.

“Okay,” he says instead, holding a hand up even though she can’t see him. He’s in this now, he tells himself. He’s committed. And he’ll be damned if he isn’t going to take it all the way. “I’m sorry. Tell me what we need to do.”

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.”

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