Blue Stars Read Online Free Page B

who tried to cut in.
    She was buoyant, hardly feeling the effects of yesterday’s double shift at the gym. (All those New Year’s resolutions meant a swarm of new clients and full classes.) So many plans, so many ideas. That extra cash could go to that mil-kids spring break camp Otis had wanted to go to last year, the one in New Jersey. They should start writing letters for Eddie now, considering how much Otis dragged his feet on that. Tonight he could help her get out that whiteboard from his closet—she would set it up in the kitchen for lists, notes, group phone numbers. And how about a family social one night closer to deployment? Probably Nathan’s on North Avenue would give them a good deal, let them take over the back room. The kids could play in the arcade.
    When that Destiny’s Child “Soldier” song came on, Lacey turned off scan and spun up the volume. She pretended she was street, singing along. She pretended that she was twenty years younger, and a whole lot dumber. Like those girls, the ones they had snarked about in the studio.
    Thugs and gangs and street life. “Soldiers.” Lacey made a slow right onto Fifth Street. Her face grew hot and she snapped off the radio. What was she doing? Eddie wasn’t in the car, but it suddenly felt like he was, and what would he think if he saw her bopping along to this stupid song that was the antithesis of everything his disciplined career stood for.
    It wasn’t just the army. Ever since Eddie got the promotion at his civilian job—he was now regional safety manager at Hess—it was like he’d climbed up to a level where he had a better view, where he could find more problems with Lacey. He didn’t even have to say anything, she could just tell—feel his eyes on her when she went for that weeknight third beer, turn the music down when he came in a room, frown at the take-out containers. She knew what Martine would say: They always end up wanting their mom, no matter what they tell you in the beginning .
    She should have seen it from the start, their fundamental incompatibility. After all, she picked him off a list because he was in the army. So who’s the dummy here?
    Before she’d started getting her own clients, before she’d moved heaven and earth to get the coveted part-time schedule she had now, Lacey had been full-time at Rudy’s Gym in Pelham. Four days a week she got there at 4:30 a.m. to unlock the doors, turn on the lights and heater, start up the computer system for the front-desk girls who never rolled in before they opened at 5:00 a.m. When she couldn’t get a sitter, Otis would sleep on a sit-up mat back in the office. Then she’d partner with Gwen to work out the onslaught of commuters who had exactly fifty-five minutes each for cardio, machines, stretching, body-weight exercises, and a shower. Slowdown after that, a couple of walk-ins maybe, people cashing in those endless damn coupons for a free session, then it would pick up again at lunch, a group class for the stroller mommies and some lunch-hour locals. Early afternoons were for one or two regulars and the inevitable freak—you could tell right off the bat, the ones who stood too close and requested a lot of “adjustments”—before clocking out and racing to get Otis after school.
    Aside from that? She went out, alone, to bars. Met men who could barely hold up their end of a conversation when sober, and slept with too many of them. Lacey was trying, in her way. She wanted Otis to have a dad someday, a good one, and there was a long way to go in that department. She and Otis would have to overcompensate for his genetic legacy, thanks to the Asshole. But the pickings were slim in all seasons at Mazzy’s, at the Bayou, no matter how many Jack and Cokes she let men buy her.
    Then she said yes, once or twice, to clients who asked her out. On paper, they were better—these men were usually divorced locals with thinning hair and tight shoulder muscles. Decent jobs. But they either bored