Page 45 of Heavy Hitter

“Nope,” Lacey calls tightly over her shoulder. “I sure don’t.”

Jimmy hesitates for a moment before following Lacey into the kitchen, watching in silence as she yanks a cabinet door open and reaches for a glass. “Just don’t, okay?” she snaps, slamming it against the water dispenser so hard she’s lucky it doesn’t shatter to pieces. “I mean—I don’t want to—just. Don’t.”

Jimmy takes a step back. “I’m not,” he promises quietly. “I’m not.”

She digs some cheese from the fridge and a box of crackers from the cupboard, peels a clementine and puts it all on a plate. By the time they get back into the living room, though, her mom is curled up fast asleep on the couch, open-mouthed and snoring softly. Lacey swears under her breath. “Mom,” she says, setting the plate and the glass on the coffee table and laying a hand on her mom’s warm, bony shoulder. “Mom, come on, wake up.” Her voice is trembling; she can hear it. Jimmy is watching silently from across the room. “Mom, please.” Then, when her mom still doesn’t stir: “Mom.”

“I think she’s out, Lacey.” His voice is so, so gentle.

“I know that,” Lacey retorts, then feels her whole body sag, the weight of the last few hours—the weight of the last few months—hitting her all at once. “I don’t want to just leave her here,” she confesses, sitting down hard on the arm of the sofa. “Passed out drunk on my couch? That’s so bleak.”

Jimmy nods. “Okay,” he says, coming closer, looking to her for permission; Lacey motions for him to go ahead and he bends to scoop her mom off the cushions, lifting her into his arms like a child. “Where to?”

Lacey sighs. “Guesthouse,” she says.

Jimmy nods. “Lead the way.”

He trails her out the back door and across the patio, along the edge of the pool. Her mom doesn’t stir once the whole time. He lays her down on the mattress in one of the bedrooms, standing in the doorway as Lacey tucks her in and turns off the light.

“Well,” she says once she’s led him back out to the yard, sitting down on one of the enormous double loungers that ring the bean-shaped pool. Someone has already taken care of draining and closing it for the season, though the truth is she isn’t sure who. “Now you know.”

Jimmy stops walking. “Okay,” he says, sitting down beside her. She can hear his knees crack in the quiet night. “Is that supposed to put me off?”

“I don’t know.” Lacey shrugs. “Maybe. It’s objectively off-putting.”

“You realize I have a little bit of experience with this kind of thing.”

It’s the first time he’s even alluded to the circumstances of his brother’s death, and her first instinct is to act like she has no idea what he’s talking about. Her second instinct, shamefully, is to say My mom is nothing like your drug addict brother but that’s horrible, that’s awful, and anyway it’s not even true. Her mom is exactly like his drug addict brother.

“Yeah,” she agrees finally. “I know you do.” She digs the heels of her hands into her eyes for a moment, waiting to see if she’s going to cry or not, then finally decides not and drops them back into her lap. “What was he like?” she asks. “Matthew, right? Matt?”

Jimmy nods. “Matty,” he corrects softly. “We called him Matty. And he was, like. The best person in the world.”

“Oh yeah?” Lacey smiles. “Say more.”

Jimmy reaches up and rubs at his shoulder, not quite looking at her. “He could do anything, you know? He wasn’t afraid of anything.” He tilts his head to the side. “He was a great fucking ballplayer, I’ll tell you that much. That’s how I got into it to begin with, actually—because I wanted to be like my brother.”

Lacey holds her breath, but to her surprise he keeps going, telling her all sorts of things: How Matty got a full scholarship to college. How Matty played baseball for Notre Dame. How Matty blew out his knee his first semester of college and some stupid, irresponsible fucking doctor gave him a prescription for oxycodone, and that was the end of Jimmy having a brother, pretty much. It’s the most earnest, the most unguarded she’s heard him sound about anything since the very first night they met, like how a little kid would talk about a superhero. The sum total of it breaks Lacey’s heart.

“Anyway,” Jimmy finishes with a shrug, “he died of a heroin overdose a few weeks before I got called up, so.” He clears his throat. “While I’m sure this situation with your mom creates a lot of logistical and emotional issues for a person in your particular position, if you’re looking for me to be squeamish about it, you’re going to have to find another guy.”

Lacey is quiet for a moment, gazing at him in the darkness. “Thank you,” she says eventually.

“For what?”

“For telling me that,” she says. “For trusting me with it. And for the rest of it, too—for helping me with my mom, for coming out here and doing all this to begin with. For the whole dog and pony show.”

“Yeah, well.” Jimmy’s lips twist. “The whole dog and pony show isn’t so bad.” He leans back against the lounger, crossing his ankles. “Come here,” he says, opening his arms to her. Lacey scooches back and stretches her legs out, leans her head against his chest. She can hear his heart beating like this, the steady tap of it settling. It feels like something she can imagine doing for a long time, over many years. Over a lifetime, Lacey’s never thought that much about having kids—it’s always felt like something she might do someday, like starting her own label or going into space—but all of a sudden she’s thinking about it in bright, vivid Technicolor, Jimmy Hodges as a dad. You could carry a daughter on those shoulders. You could hold a baby son in those arms. All at once she’s wishing for a pen, for something to write with. She wants to capture this feeling before it disappears.

“What?” Jimmy asks, peering down at her.

“What what?”

“You have a face of, like. Consternation.”

“Oh. No.” I was imagining you putting a hundred babies in me, or at the very least I’m thinking of writing a song about it does not feel like something she ought to say to him on this particular evening, so she slides one hand up under his shirt to distract him: rubbing a hand over his stomach, raking her nails gently over the hair on his chest. Jimmy grumbles his quiet approval, so she keeps doing it, scratching lightly, feeling the muscles of his stomach jump under her touch. Her hand wanders down over the fly of his jeans, over the zipper where he’s already hard through the denim. Jimmy groans and reaches for her, hauling her up on top of him. Lacey gasps. “I wanted to do this all night long,” he murmurs, reaching up to tuck her hair behind her ears.

Lacey raises an eyebrow. “You mean when you weren’t thinking about how fast you could possibly get the fuck away from this entire situation?”

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