You Dropped a Blonde on Me (16 page)
Unfortunately, she just wasn’t a quick enough thinker to find an escape route faster than Lacey could skid across the room on her ridiculously high heels to come to a halt in front of her and Mr. Hodge.
Mr. Hodge jammed his fingers under his suspenders and puckered his lips. His gaze caught Maxine’s when he whispered, “The boy’s girlfriend?”
Maxine fought a snicker. There wasn’t much separating Lacey from Connor but a few measly years and a little thing called a law against dating underage minors. “No. She’s my husband’s girlfriend, um, fiancée.”
Mr. Hodge grunted his disapproval. “Can I use my cane on her?”
Placing a hand at her temple, Maxine rubbed gingerly so as not to touch the area near the bridge of her nose, which had ballooned. “Go have a hot dog, Mr. Hodge. Please. I’ll see you tomorrow morning for Jake’s walk. Okay?” She gave his arm a warm rub to encourage him to let it be.
Her eyes must have said it all. Joe left, but not before he glared at Lacey, edging past her with a defensive stride then turning his back on her with an indignant huff.
Maxine would smile at how endearing it was to be so silently, vehemently defended if not for the fact that it was, simply put, pathetic that she wasn’t doing it for herself.
Not helping matters was the idea that she really should have listened to her mother when she’d expressed her displeasure about Maxine’s chosen attire. She looked just like the frumpy, hot mess everyone expected a soon to be ex-trophy wife would look.
On the other hand, Lacey was ethereal.
Fabulous.
Lacey gave her a tentative smile, the amber glow of her youthful skin, fresh from Tiny’s Tanning Hut, soft and smooth even in the harsh lighting of the rec center. Maxine found herself trying to ignore the tight mid-thigh length white skirt and figure-hugging green silk shirt Lacey wore with the collar turned up to frame her face. Her black heels clattered with purpose. “Hi, Maxine.” The long sway of her buttery blonde hair caught the light. Someone had been seeing her old hairdresser, Enrique. Those were
her
old highlights.
her
old highlights.
Maxine’s chest tightened. “Lacey.”
Lacey gasped when Maxine met her eyes. “What happened to your nose?”
“I beat up Fin’s other girlfriend. If you think I look bad, you should see her,” she quipped, sadly enjoying the look of horror that crossed Lacey’s face.
But then she let out a nervous giggle. “Oh. I get it. That was a joke. You were always funny, Maxine.”
Yeah. Funny. Maxine didn’t respond. Instead, she stared Lacey down with blank eyes, the impulsive urge to run far and wide gripping her.
“Can we go outside?” Lacey waved a hand, motioning toward the door, the flash of her ungodly enormous diamond engagement ring momentarily blocking out everyone and everything.
“Why? So we can duke it out by the swings on the playground?” Maxine managed to ask, pleased her tone was cool and dry as a bone when her legs felt quite the opposite.
Lacey’s beautiful face flashed confusion. “Huh? There’s no playground here, Maxine. Don’t be ridiculous. It’s a senior citizens’ village.”
“Which you’re now more than eligible to live in with your new fiancé.”
Lacey’s eyes glittered angry and cold, finally catching Maxine’s sarcasm. “Could we please be adults here?”
Nope. As petty and low blow as it was, she needed a pound of flesh. It might as well be Lacey’s perky soft tissue. “You’re only what, a year or three past the legal age of adulthood? I’m not sure you have as much adult under your belt as I do. Means we’re not exactly on equal footing.”
Lacey’s aggravated sigh lifted her slender shoulders. “I’d really like to talk to you.”
About what? Finger painting and glitter glue? “I’m busy here. Working.”
She flashed a coquettish smile, one Maxine was sure had led many a man to whip out his wallet and shower her with hundred-dollar bills. “I promise I won’t take up much of your time.”
Maxine’s fingers traced the outline of the ball cage, the whirring of it somehow soothing beneath her fingertips. Standing here in front of the woman-child she’d once attended school plays and dance recitals for never failed to leave her reeling. “We have nothing to talk about, Lacey. Go home to my house where you live with my husband and sleep in my California King.”
“Maxine, please!”
The high-pitched tone of her request and the all but stomp of her expensively shod foot made Maxine blanch and, to her mortification, once more had everyone gawking at her.
Midge Carter was going to give her the ax for sure. She let her head drop to her chest, finding it only made her nose hurt more. Turning on her heel, Maxine made an acquiescent beeline for the door with Lacey in tow.
Once outside with the door securely shut, she spun around to glare at Lacey, who looked angelic under the soft glow of the lantern lights. “What could we possibly have to talk about, Lacey?”
Crickets chirped in the unseasonably humid evening, the thrum of Maxine’s anger intensified by the heat and the fact that Lacey looked so coolly unfazed by it. “I’d like to talk to you about Connor.”
Her mouth fell open, her head cocking to the left as though she hadn’t heard Lacey right. “Connor . . .”
Lacey’s eyes went gooey and soft. “I just think it’s awful that Fin and Connor aren’t speaking, and I thought between the two of us we could find a way to rectify that.”
“Rectify?” someone crooned from the crack in the door. The heavy metal burst open and out poured her mother, her mother’s friend Mary, and Len. It slammed shut with a heavy groan. Mona attacked with a gnarled, arthritic finger aimed at Lacey’s petite nose. “Did you just learn that big-girl word in English class today? You go on and get the heck out of here and mind your business, you—you—”
“Mother!” Maxine hissed a warning, taking her mother by the arm, holding her back from Lacey’s space. It was enough she herself had given Lacey a once-over and behaved like the teenager she’d earlier accused Lacey of being. Mona didn’t need to be in the mix, too.
But Mona brushed her off with a furious snort. “Oh, no, Maxie! She has no right to interfere. None. She’s done enough of that just by spreading her—”
“Mom! Stop.
Now.
” Her eyes sought Len’s, pleading with her to help, but Len’s eyes, hard and cold, flashed indifference.
Now.
” Her eyes sought Len’s, pleading with her to help, but Len’s eyes, hard and cold, flashed indifference.
Mary, typically gentle and soft-spoken as opposed to her mother’s and Gail’s loud and proud attitudes, placed a hand on Mona’s shoulder. “Mona. Don’t go working yourself up over this piece of trash. She’s not worth your heart medication, honey.”
Hookay. That wasn’t so soft-spoken or genteel. “Mary Delouise!” Maxine rasped, shocked by the venom in her outburst.
Mary shook her auburn-dyed head, her gray eyes shooting flames from behind her prescription glasses. She crossed her arms over her thin chest, tugging at the white pearls clasping the front of her shoulder-draped sweater together. “Sorry, Maxine. I’m with your mother on this. This girl’s a home wrecker!” She shot a look of disdain at Lacey, and followed it with a fleetingly apologetic one to Len.
Mona moved around her with a speed that surprised Maxine, backing Lacey up against the rickety fence lining the pathway to the door. “You stay away from my grandson! There isn’t anything he can learn from you but how to cheat and lie!”
She couldn’t have prevented it if she’d wanted to, Maxine told herself. She just wasn’t quick enough. Or at least that was what she soothed her guilty conscience with when she reacted too late to keep her mother from leaning in too far, sending Lacey backward with a startled yelp over the old fence and headfirst into the thorny bushes, heeled feet pointing skyward.
Maxine tugged on her mother’s arm, moving her out of the way. “Mom! You can’t go doing things like that,” she chastised with a yelp. “It just makes everything worse. The two of you are behaving like preschoolers.”
Mona gave her an unapologetic snort. “I never touched her, and if all she suffers is a couple of thorns in her backside, she’ll be far better off than you and that son of yours she so wants to
help
.” Her mother, red-faced, eyes spitting fire, reached for Mary’s hand. “Let’s go back in, Mary, before I take her over my knee and give her the spanking she deserves but never got because she’s a spoiled little girl.”
help
.” Her mother, red-faced, eyes spitting fire, reached for Mary’s hand. “Let’s go back in, Mary, before I take her over my knee and give her the spanking she deserves but never got because she’s a spoiled little girl.”
Mary leaned over and gave Lacey the old disapproving evil eye before yanking open the door and pushing her way back inside with Mona hot on her heels.
Len reached a hand down to Lacey amidst the mean-spirited cackles from Mona and Mary. She hauled her upward none too gently, giving her sister a scathing look before setting her away from her with a jerk of her hands to Lacey’s shoulders. “Don’t ever come back here, Lacey,” she said between tight lips. “You’re never going to be the cooling balm that soothes this mess you’ve made. Can’t you see that? Go back to Finley. Just go away.”
Lacey’s round eyes welled with tears as she brushed haphazardly at the branches clinging to her perfectly coiffed hair. “How can you say that to me? I’m your sister! I just want everything to be okay for Fin and Connor,” she whispered.
And oddly enough, much to her surprise, Maxine believed her. In Lacey’s immature mind, she probably did regret that her affair with Fin had torn a father and son apart.
At that very moment, what Maxine wished more was that Fin regretted it as much as Lacey appeared to.
What Lacey couldn’t possibly realize, because she wasn’t much older than Connor, was that Fin and his son had never had much of a relationship unless Maxine was forcing them to interact. Fin was still too selfish to give himself unconditionally to anyone—even his own son—and Lacey didn’t know the first thing about the dynamics of a father and his child. She didn’t know herself well enough to grasp her own dynamics, let alone the sort belonging to a sixteen-year-old kid.
Len’s hard swallow was visible, her response deadly quiet. “This wasn’t the way to make everything okay, Lacey. If you were old enough, mature enough, you’d know you’re just throwing what you’ve done in everyone’s face by coming here. The only thing I’m sure you’re old enough to understand is that what you did to Maxine was wrong, and that still didn’t stop you, did it? Now go get in that uber sports car your fiancé gifted you with and don’t come back here. And I mean that. I don’t want to see you anywhere in my vicinity—
ever again
.”
ever again
.”
Maxine knew how hard this had been on her friend—making the choice to stand by her instead of backing Lacey, her own flesh and blood. She hated that it had come to this. What she hated even more was the idea that she felt even a little sorry for Lacey. Yet here she was, taking in her husband’s lover with sympathetic eyes. “Len,” she said, soft with concern. “Please, don’t. It’s not necessary. I’m fine.”
Len’s smile was wry when she patted Maxine on the cheek, her bangle bracelets tinkling against her wrist. “No, honey. That’s not true. Nothing’s fine with you. None of this is fine, and some days, I just want to crawl under a rock because it was your good heart and my selfish, gold-digging sister who put you in this predicament. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to stop saying how sorry I am. But at least one of us,” she shot a pointed look at Lacey, “really
is
genuinely sorry.”
is
genuinely sorry.”
Lacey caved to her sister’s intentional humiliation with a sob, taking flight in an impressive high-heeled sprint to the parking lot. The roar of her car engine and the screech of her tires resounded in the thick night.
Maxine’s stomach heaved, her legs heavy and weak. Closing her eyes, she took a ragged breath of stifling air. Len threw an arm around her, giving her shaking shoulders a squeeze of comfort. “I don’t want it to be like this, Len. You know that,” she said, weary from the night’s events.
Len pressed a kiss to the top of her friend’s head and sighed with a ragged breath. “I don’t want it to be like this either. But it is what it is. I just can’t abide a liar and a cheat, especially when it’s my own sister. No one was ever going to set Lacey straight about the damage she’s caused if I didn’t. You know what my folks have been like about this. You already know the score. What I said to her tonight’s nothing new.”
Maxine nodded, squeezing her eyes shut to ward off tears. “I know. I guess hearing it secondhand up to this point just didn’t have the kind of impact as seeing you spit fire in person does. You were really hard on her, Len.”
“Someone has to be, Maxine. This time she didn’t just rack up a huge credit card bill or scratch the car my parents borrowed from Dad’s 401K to pay for. She ruined a
family
.”
family
.”
Maxine shook her head, sad with a realization prompted by her friend’s words. “You know, about that family thing. She couldn’t ruin something that never was. We were only a family in my mind, Len.
Mine
only. How often was Fin really around unless I’d pressured him to be there?”
Mine
only. How often was Fin really around unless I’d pressured him to be there?”
“Doesn’t change the mess you’re in now. Lacey helped with that. We’ve been best friends for fifteen years. You stuck by me after Gerald’s death and never batted a false eyelash when our group of quote-unquote friends snubbed me. Now I’m just returning the favor. Oh, and as an FYI: Not a chance in hell I’m sitting across the dinner table at Christmas from that smarmy pig stuffing turkey between his lying lips.”
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