Chapter Nineteen
"You're doing that weird grin again and it's starting to creep me out."
Jo made that flat observation after watching Lacey, who was hopelessly distracted, filter rather aimlessly through the pile of Regina Crane's personal items that they had spread all across her bed. For the last ten minutes or so she had been vacantly staring off into space with a reflective smile, occasionally giggling to herself as if amused by some secret joke. Jo might have been able to tolerate the behavior if it weren't for the fact that there was quite a bit of personal correspondence that they still had to sort through. Yet none of that work seemed like a priority for Lacey at all. Her thoughts had clearly been someplace else all afternoon. And, the more Jo thought about it, the more she realized that Lacey's attention had been drifting like that for the last two days.
She didn't seem particularly worried about anything as far as Jo could tell. Truthfully, her mood could be described as...unflaggingly cheerful. Still, from Jo's viewpoint, it seemed inexplicable. Not that Lacey didn't generally possess a bubbly and optimistic personality but this was something else entirely. She was almost too happy. In just the last 90 minutes alone, Jo had either caught her daydreaming wistfully or smiling like a loon no less than a dozen times. Sometimes, as she was doing presently, it was a combination of the two.
Exasperated by her wandering attention, Jo tore a sheet of paper from her spiral notebook and crumpled it into a ball. She pitched it at Lacey, striking her harmlessly in the center of her forehead. Lacey snapped from her latest reverie with an aggravated look directed at Jo.
"What? What did you do that for?"
"Maybe because I've been trying to talk to you for the last ten minutes and you keep zoning out on me," Jo argued.
"I do not." She stabbed a warning finger towards Jo. "And quit throwing things at me. I'm working here." She resumed picking through the remnants of Regina's things but, inevitably, the far-off look eventually returned to her eyes and her mouth started to stretch in a slow smile once again.
To test her theory that Lacey was indeed on mental vacation at the moment, Jo declared rather dryly, "Hey, Lacey? I've been thinking about running away to the circus. I'm going to marry a clown named Piccolo and have a carload of clown babies." She waved her hand back and forth before Lacey's blank stare. "What do you think of that?"
"You should do whatever makes you happy, Jo."
With a disgusted snort, Jo abruptly shoved aside Regina's pile and surveyed Lacey with an expectant look. "Okay, that's it! What gives?" she demanded, "You've been smiling like an idiot for two days and I want to know why!"
Lacey blinked at her, her lashes fluttering with exaggerated innocence. "What? I can't smile?"
"Your constant giddiness is bordering on disgusting, Lacey. What...gives?"
"You know, you have really miserable outlook on life, Jo Marie," Lacey sighed expansively, "There's so much joy and beauty in the world and it saddens me deeply that you can't see it."
Jo responded to that by gagging theatrically. "Oh, don't try to turn this around on me," she retorted, "I'm not the one walking around here in a constant fog. I'm surprised you're even able to hold a coherent conversation with me right now."
Lacey's eyelashes fluttered anew. "I have no idea what you're talking about."
Jo's reasonable curiosity gave way to outright suspicion with Lacey's deliberate evasion. "Oh, now I definitely know something is up," she declared astutely, "Spill your guts, Porter."
"There's nothing to spill," Lacey replied, only to ruin the denial by grinning.
"Ah-ha!" Jo crowed triumphantly, "You see! You're doing it again! First, you've been sporting that same goofy grin all weekend and today at school and then you proceeded to make googly eyes at Danny all lunch period and you're usually much more discreet than that," Jo recounted, ticking off each item with her fingers, "And now you're completely distracted from this Regina project when you're the one who's been gung ho about it from the beginning. So, I repeat...spill your guts, Porter. Tell me what's going on or I will be forced to take drastic measures."
Despite that dire threat, Lacey had difficulty controlling her dimpled smile, mostly because she knew it wasn't going to require much effort of Jo's part to get her to talk. Truthfully, she'd been fairly bursting at the seams to tell Jo about her and Danny since the day it happened. However, there was also the private part of her that wanted to keep the new sexual dynamic between her and Danny a secret a little while longer. She wasn't embarrassed or ashamed, rather she simply liked the idea of having something that was exclusively for her and Danny alone.
It was as if they were living on their own uncharted island in the middle of nowhere, where only the two of them existed. Lacey held some degree of reluctance to let in any outsiders. Then again, the teenage girl in her still wanted to share the news with her best friend. After all, it was a monumental rite of passage. She had lost her virginity to Danny Desai.
Each time the memory resurged, Lacey felt her insides quiver. She had been running on pure endorphins since that day. Even with the limited opportunities that she and Danny had been afforded to spend together, Lacey had been virtually floating from one day to the next on a constant high. Her all encompassing desire to be with him had inspired her with creative new ways to arrange being in his company every chance she got.
The day after they made love for the first time, Danny had been required to attend the Green Grove Ligers' away game. Though, technically as a brand new player, he wasn't going to do anything more than ride the bench, Lacey had wanted to be there to support him nonetheless. Obtaining permission from her mother to attend the out of town game hadn't been too difficult either since Judy had wrongly concluded Lacey was going for Archie. Lacey hadn't done anything to correct that assumption either.
When she recalled the delighted smile that brightened Danny's face when he spotted her in the bleachers that day, it had definitely made the awkward fight with Archie that followed worthwhile. Archie had, of course, erroneously assumed that she was there on his behalf and, when he realized that wasn't the case and that Lacey had actually attended for Danny, he had been livid. He and Danny had nearly come to blows over it. Coach Kenner had managed to get them both cooled down without further incident but, by then, everyone on the soccer team was pretty well aware that Danny Desai was dating their team captain's ex-girlfriend. By Monday, Lacey knew it would be all over the school.
Danny had been so adorably concerned that she would be upset, particularly because he knew how much she had wanted to avoid hurting Archie and drawing undue attention to herself. Strangely, however, while Lacey had been mortified by the scene Archie caused on the field and the near fistfight that had followed, she hadn't been particularly unhappy that her relationship with Danny had been exposed. Of course, there were still people who needed to remain in the dark about it, namely her mother but, she liked the idea of no longer having to pretend at school. It felt as if a weight had been lifted off of her shoulders.
That evening, after returning to Green Grove, she and Danny had shared their first official date which began with dinner and bowling and later ended in frantic sex in the back seat of her car. Afterwards, she had dropped him off at home and the two shared a reluctant goodbye. The following day they weren't able to spend much time together at all. Danny had made plans to spend the day with his mother while Lacey had been roped into a mother-daughter golf game and luncheon with Judy at the Green Grove Country Club.
Practically the entire day passed without Lacey even speaking to Danny so, by the time evening fell, she had been more than a little irritable. When she and Danny finally were able to talk late that night, Lacey was left dissatisfied and despondent once their phone call was over. It seemed as if, in a relatively short period of time, she had forgotten how to function apart from Danny. The realization was confusing and disconcerting. Thankfully, he seemed to struggle with the same difficulty.
She had been tossing and turning restlessly in her bed, trying to force herself to sleep when, a little after 12:30 a.m., Danny crept through her open bedroom window. After she managed to recover from the near heart attack he'd given her and irritation with him for scaring her in the first place, Danny spent the next few hours thoroughly exploring every inch of her body with his mouth and hands as proper atonement for his error. Unlike times before, their lovemaking had lacked its usual unbridled fervor and frenetic pace as they were both painfully aware of her mother sleeping soundly in her own bed just down the hallway. Shortly before dawn, Lacey had awakened alone with a note adorned with Danny's inelegant scrawl propped on the pillow next to her head. "You're the best part of every day," he'd written.
Those seven words had kept her smiling practically the entire day. The rumor mill was churning wildly by the time school reconvened on Monday but even the realization that she was the topic of nearly every whispered conversation at school could not shake Lacey's good cheer. Her old social circle shunned her. The gossip about what she and Danny were doing together was stinging and merciless. But, it was easier to ignore all the negative chatter surrounding her when she kept focused on the good things she had. She could concentrate on little else beyond reliving the last time she and Danny had been together and eagerly anticipating the next time they would be.
Lacey didn't even realize that her mind had drifted off in that direction yet again until Jo smacked her in the face with yet another crumpled, paper ball. "Will you stop it?" she hissed.
She and Jo traded exasperated scowls with one another. "Stop glaring at me! You're the one who's throwing stuff!" Lacey cried in affront.
Unmoved, Jo crossed her arms stubbornly. "I wouldn't have to go to such extremes if you would just talk."
"Okay, okay, I'll tell you," Lacey relented, "But you have to promise me to be cool about it."
"When am I not cool?" Jo huffed in mild affront, "I'm always cool."
Lacey decided to test that claim by blurting out without preamble, "Danny and I had sex on Friday."
Jo was speechless for, at least, a full minute. She would open her mouth and then abruptly close it, only to try again and end with the same failure to form a complete sentence. Finally, she simply said the first thing that came readily to her mind, "What do you mean you had sex? You can't be having sex! You guys have only been dating for like two minutes!"
"So what? I've known him since before kindergarten," Lacey pointed out, "It's not like we're complete strangers! Besides, it felt right, Jo. It's never felt right with anyone before but, it did with him."
"Wow. I'm just...I'm shocked, I guess." Jo peered at her with an expression suspended between awe and incredulity. "You guys really did it?"
"We really did."
"That's huge. I guess you must be pretty serious about each other then, huh?"
"We...uh...haven't exactly talked about what it all means yet," Lacey hedged, "We're just...you know...going with it."
"So, wait a second. You're telling me that you two have already had sex with each other but you haven't even taken the time to discuss what that means?"
"It's implied!" Lacey's conviction lasted only a split second before she was surveying Jo with an uncertain glance. She nibbled her lower lip. "Do you think Danny and I are moving too fast?"
"What I think doesn't matter. I'm not the one who gave him my goodies. You are. What do you think, Lacey? Do you feel like you're moving too fast?" Jo countered.
Lacey pondered the question for a moment before resolutely shaking her head. "No. I don't. Like I said before, it feels right when we're together," she whispered, "I'm happy right now. It feels good."
"Does it?" Jo whispered in wonderment. At Lacey's knowing grin, she tried to cover her inexperience with an eye roll. "I'm just curious. It has nothing to do with me being interested in having sex or anything like that. Please! I'm absolutely not ready to go there. Give me a break." She made an unconvincing attempt at scoffing. "Pfft. I have no interest. No interest at all."
"What do you want to know, Jo?" Lacey asked her softly.
Jo abandoned her endeavor at bravado without reserve. She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper when she asked, "Did it hurt?"
"A little bit. But not like I thought it would."
"How did it feel?"
A slow smile spread across Lacey's face. "Really good. Amazing. I've never felt so connected to him, like we were one person. The first time he was a little quick but after that-,"
"-The first time?" Jo burst out incredulously, "You mean you've done it more than once already?"
"Well, yeah, we've done it a few times since then," Lacey admitted with an impish grin, "Including last night...on this very bed."
With that boastful revelation, Jo hopped up from the bed with lightening speed, her pretty features scrunched in a grimace of distaste. She affected a dramatic shudder. "Please tell me you washed these sheets in really hot water," she gagged.
"It's okay, Jo!" Lacey chuckled, "We were under the covers the entire time. You can relax. You didn't inadvertently sit in a puddle of our love juice."
Jo gagged anew. "You are so gross."
Lacey sprawled across her bed in a fit of giggles. "Oh my god, you should have seen your face just now! I thought you were going to pass out!"
"I can see Danny's sense of humor is rubbing off on you," Jo intoned flatly, "That's not a good thing."
"Oh please, I'm not that bad," Lacey snorted.
Jo carefully resumed her perch on the bed but maintained her general look of uneasiness. "You're right. You're not nearly as funny as he is." She deftly ducked Lacey's sailing pillow. "But seriously..." she began genuinely a moment later, "...how do you feel about everything? Do you feel any different?"
"I guess I feel like, for the first time in my life, I know where I want to be and where I belong."
"And you feel like you belong with Danny?"
"Yeah, I do..."
"You're falling in love with him, aren't you?" Jo determined quietly.
Lacey acknowledged that astute observation with a mixture of apprehension, abjuration and awe. "I think I am."
Exactly on the heels of that admission, Danny chose that moment to climb through Lacey's open window. Both girls startled guiltily at his unexpected entrance. He hopped down from the chest beneath the window and instantly became aware of the resounding silence that ensued with his arrival. He bounced knowing glancing between Lacey and Jo. Danny had endured enough behind the back gossip in his life to discern when people were talking about him and both his best friend and his girlfriend had lousy poker faces. The more nonchalant they tried to appear, the more obvious they looked.
"What's up, you two?" he greeted casually, "Why do I feel like my ears should be burning?"
Jo shrugged, easily covering for Lacey's discomfiture. "Hmm...maybe because Lacey was just telling me how she made a man out of you, Desai. Congrats on the sex, by the way."
Lacey squealed in acute mortification before flopping face first into her bed. "Jo Marie! What are you doing? I can't believe you just said that!"
Danny, however, was a great deal more composed in the face of Jo's irreverent ribbing. "Go ahead," he invited gamely, "Get all of the jokes out of your system, Masterson. I can take it."
"Who says I want to make jokes? I think it's so precious that you and Lacey cashed in your v cards together. Aww, look at you, standing there with your chest all puffed out. You're so adorable. They should totally make a Hallmark card for this kind of thing. I'm going to start a petition."
After expelling a mournful sigh, Danny directed an accusing look over at Lacey. "Really? You just had to tell her, didn't you?"
"It's not my fault!" Lacey cried defensively, "She kept pelting me with paper! She was relentless! I had no choice! She made me talk."
"Like I wouldn't have figured it out on my own eventually," Jo snorted, "You two were practically having eye sex at lunch today. You're both ridiculously obvious."
Danny groaned in consternation. "Okay, so it's out in the open. Lacey and I have officially taken our relationship to the next level. Can we possibly change the subject now? Please?"
"I agree. Let's do that," Lacey chirped, hopping from the bed to greet him with a kiss. "Hi."
He smiled against her lips. "Hi." They staunchly ignored Jo's theatrical sighing in the background.
"I wasn't expecting you to come over until later," Lacey whispered, "How was practice?"
"Awful. Your ex has it out for me."
Jo thumbed through Regina's journal with distracted interest, deciding to throw in her unsolicited two cents. "Did you really think he was going to welcome you with open arms, Danny?" she asked, "I could have told you that was a disaster waiting to happen."
"I thought I might appeal to his sense of sportsmanship," Danny replied, "I figured that, although Archie might hate me, he wanted to win more and secure championships for the Ligers more than he wanted to make my life hell. After all, if I look good then the team looks good and, consequently, as team captain he looks good."
"In other words, you thought you could manipulate the situation to your advantage."
"That's a very harsh way of putting things. I like to think of it as charming people over to my point of view. I'm a very likeable fellow, Jo. People love me."
"Hmm...and how's that working for ya, my friend?"
"Eh...he apparently has no sense of sportsmanship and he's immune to my charm. It's clear that he hates me way more than he wants to win."
Lacey blew out a deep sigh. "I feel like this is all my fault. Have you talked to the coach about it? Maybe he can get Archie to lay off of you. Or I can talk to Archie myself, try to reason with him."
Danny didn't even take a moment to entertain either suggestion. "Don't sweat it. First of all, I don't want you talking to him on my behalf. And, second of all, I'm definitely not going to Coach Kenner about it either. I don't run and tattle. That's not my style. I can fight my own battles, Lacey. Besides, eventually Archie is going to have to deal with the reality of me as his teammate and as your boyfriend. And, if he can't get over it, that's his problem. Not mine."
"I just don't want you guys getting into yet another fight. Someone won't always be there to break you two up."
"Who knows? Maybe that's what needs to happen," Danny replied darkly, "Sometimes getting your ass kicked can provide some much needed perspective. Trust me." Before Lacey could question him about exactly what he meant by that statement, Danny hitched his chin towards the cluttered mess spread out across her bed. "Any luck with all of that?" he asked.
Jo shook her head and tossed aside Regina's journal. "We haven't found anything new," she said, "Besides Regina's diary reading like a trashy romance novel, there's really nothing to see here."
"Still no progress with the combination?" Danny asked in disappointment.
Lacey took hold of his hands and gave them a reassuring squeeze. "Not yet. But we'll find it." She reached up to smooth the furrow between his brows. "Don't worry so much." Lacey stepped closer to him, her voice dropping an octave when she whispered, "Will I see you later tonight?"
"Actually, that's the reason I stopped by," he told her, "Turns out my mom knew I snuck out last night after all. She's not very happy with me right now. I promised her I'd come straight home after practice."
"She's not going to let you out even for a few hours? My mom's working late tonight."
"Nope. Her plan is to keep eyes on me at all times. She's going to give me a driving lesson later this evening but beyond that? I'm on house arrest." He deliberately refrained from mentioning to her the reason he wanted to avoid aggravating his mother more than usual. Karen Desai was risking her own freedom to keep him safe. The least he could do was obey her edict to remain in the house after sundown. "She thinks I'm going to make things worse for myself by sneaking over here to see you in the middle of the night," he said, "She has a point. If your mom catches me, we're both dead."
"Okay, I get that but... How are we supposed to have a relationship if I can't be with you and you can't be with me?" Lacey pouted, "I hate this, Danny."
He leaned in closer, his forehead resting against hers. "I hate it too. I feel like I'm going to go crazy if I can't see you, Lace."
"Me too," she whispered.
From her perch on Lacey's bed, Jo began to shift uncomfortably as the two of them began exchanging small, searching kisses. "Do either of you care that I'm sitting right here?" Their intimate whispers, kisses and caresses gradually intensified with no acknowledgement of her whatsoever. She reddened and squirmed even more. "Nope. I guess you're just going to continue groping each other right in front of me. And...oh wow...he's just going to grab a handful of your ass like I don't have a panoramic view of that. Yep...this isn't awkward at all!"
Finally, after what seemed like eons in Jo's opinion, Lacey and Danny extricated themselves from each other's arms. After indulging in one, last lingering kiss goodbye, Danny directed a curt nod towards Jo that he completely ruined with an affectionate smirk. "Masterson," he said in goodbye, "It's been a pleasure to see you as always."
She extended him the same courtesy. "You as well, Desai. I'll text you later. You can give me your version of the magical night you and Lacey had together." The two traded laughing eye rolls before Danny pecked a quick kiss to Lacey's lips and then nimbly navigated his way across the roof and down the tree just outside her bedroom window. Lacey watched him until he disappeared from her sight. When she pivoted to face Jo a moment later with the most besotted expression Jo had ever seen, the blonde girl couldn't repress her laughing snort.
"You are so hopeless. You act like he was just sent off on a tour of duty. You're going to see him tomorrow at school!"
"Stop teasing me, Jo," Lacey whined, moving to sprawl across her bed with a melodramatic sigh, "I miss him already."
"This is why I'm never falling in love. It makes you look like a complete idiot."
"I'm not being an idiot," Lacey protested in mild affront, "I'm lovesick. It's romantic."
Jo expelled a loud, exasperated groan. "It's dumb."
Lacey rolled a narrowed glare in her direction. "What's your problem, Jo Marie? Weren't you the one pushing for us to be together in the first place?"
"That was when I thought you two would be all cute and innocent, sneaking around to hold each other's hand and trading shy glances and smiles...stuff like that," Jo argued, "Kinda like how you were when we were eleven. That was so sweet. I had no idea you guys would be practically humping each other right in front of me! Speaking of which, there's not enough eye bleach in the world to make what I just witnessed okay. Never again."
Lacey grabbed the closest missile she could find, Regina's stuffed bear, and sent it flying. Jo caught it as effortlessly as a football pass. "You're going to have to do better than that, Porter." She started to toss it back at Lacey when a glimpse of black ink on the stuffed toy's tag suddenly caught her attention. Jo frowned and inspected the tag more closely.
Noting the gradual shift in her expression, Lacey pushed herself upright. "What is it?"
"There are numbers written on this tag," she said, "I think it might be the combination to the lockbox."
"Quick! Get it," Lacey replied, nodding to where the box sat untouched on her desk.
After Jo had retrieved it, the girls scrambled into the center of Lacey's bed together with the box between them. They expelled a mutual sigh of anticipation. "What are the chances that Regina really wrote the combination to this thing on the tag of her teddy bear?" Jo considered skeptically, "It seems a little obvious."
"I think the chances are pretty good," Lacey said, "Regina was never very good about thinking in the long-term."
"Okay. I'll read off the numbers," Jo volunteered, "and you turn the lock." After taking a deep, fortifying breath, she slowly read the numbers off to Lacey. "4. 24. 18."
Lacey pulled experimentally at the lock but it remained lodged in place. She shook her head in disappointment. "That's not it."
Not quite ready to give up, Jo said, "Wait. Try it again. This time go right three times for the first number, do a full revolution for the second number and then just turn the lock for the last one. That's the formula for every lock ever created."
With a suspended breath, Lacey tried the combination a second time. She jumped a little when she pulled and the locking mechanism released. The resulting click reverberated through the silence permeating her bedroom. Lacey darted a disbelieving glance at Jo. "It worked."
"Well, open it," Jo urged her impatiently, "I'm going to be so aggravated if this thing is filled with more pictures from her pageant days."
Lacey slowly flipped back the lid, her breath freezing in her lungs in a stunned gasp. There were indeed pictures within the lockbox, at least half a dozen candid stills of Robert Crane and Vikram Desai. In some photos it was obvious there was antagonism between the two men. In others, they were shaking hands, almost as if they were colleagues. Either way, there could be no further doubt that the two men had once known one another and had been more than just casually acquainted. But what was most disturbing, beyond the pictures, was the massive amount of cash tucked within.
Jo emitted a low whistle, plucking up one of the neat bundles of hundreds and flipping through it. "There must be at least $100,000 here, Lacey! Maybe way more. What the hell was Regina into?"
Overtaken with a sudden trembling, Lacey tentatively fanned her fingers over the rows of bills. "I have no idea! She never said anything about this before. I don't know where she could have gotten her hands on this kind of money!"
Also nestled inside the lockbox along with the pictures and the money was a single, letter sized envelope. Jo tugged it free and inspected its contents. Inside, she found more cash along with a short, type written note. She quickly scanned the letter, paling dramatically as she read before finally passing the note to an anxious Lacey. "I think I have a pretty good idea how Regina got all of this money," she said as Lacey read the words out loud:
"This is the last payment. Do not contact me again or there will be consequences."
She and Jo locked eyes in a fearful stare. "Blackmail," Jo concluded grimly.