Page 28 of Wedge

I think about the range at Ben’s, the hitch, the target two hundred yards out that felt impossible until it wasn’t. “Yeah. I think so.”

“Then let’s go to work.”

The front nine plays fast and open, wind in my face or at my back, never still. Keystone sits high, and the thin air lets the ball run. I keep my swing quiet, picking targets and letting them go the moment I move, same as we practiced, and it mostly works. Between holes he walks close, shoulder almost brushing mine on the narrow cart path, and every time it happens it’s a small electric jolt I have to pretend isn’t there.

The back nine is tighter, tree-lined, the air cool and resinous in the shade, water cutting across two holes in ways that made me tense up two weeks ago. On the par three over the lake, I feel the hitch trying to creep in, that same hip-catch from the video, right as I stand over the ball.

I stop. Step back. Take another practice swing; no pressure. Step forward. Breathe. Pick the flag. Forget it exists.

The ball flies clean, lands soft, eleven feet from the cup.

“There he is,” Stephen says, low, close behind me, and his hand lands on my lower back, just for a moment, warm through my shirt, gone before I can lean into it the way every cell in my body wants to.

I finish at three under. First round of the summer that actually felt earned instead of lucky.

“That was all you,” he says, grinning at the scorecard. “Seventeen, I didn’t say a word.”

“You were standing right there.”

“Standing’s the easy part. The swing was yours.” He steps in to take my club from me, and for a moment we’re both holding the shaft, hands overlapping, close enough that I can see a small scar above his eyebrow I’ve never noticed before. Neither of us moves away first. “Eventually you won’t need me standing there at all.”

My chest goes tight, a tightness that is not about golf. “Don’t say that like it’s a good thing.”

He goes still, reading me. “Hey.” His voice drops, quieter, and he crouches down to meet my eyes. “I’m not going anywhere. I meant the swing. That’s all.”

“Oh.” I finally let go of the club, my hand brushing his on the way, goosebumps racing up my arm. “Right.”

He doesn’t move for a bit, watching me with something unreadable before he slings the bag over his shoulder and starts toward the old ranch house.

I follow him, my whole body still humming from a hand on my back and a club we both held onto a beat too long. Ahead of us, the ranch house waits at the end of the path, its windows glowing in the late light.

13

STEPHEN

Adrian’s quiet on the drive back to the motel, staring out the window at the sky above the pines fading from peach to slate, and I let him have the silence. The last time we drove this kind of quiet, a whiteboard was in the rearview mirror. This time he’s earned a little peace after a good round like that.

The room smells like pine cleaner and stale coffee, a faded elk print bolted to the wall over the beds. Two queen beds again. Through the thin wall, somebody’s TV is laughing at itself. He drops onto his bed and pulls out his phone, the screen throwing a blue glow across his face, scrolling through something with a small furrow between his eyebrows that I’ve learned means he’s doing math he doesn’t like.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” He doesn’t look up. “Just looking at the schedule for next month.”

I sit down across from him, steady, and wait, because pushing doesn’t work with this man, and patience does, eventually.

“There’s four more events before Q-school,” he says finally. “Entry fees, gas, motels. Even doing it cheap, that’s got to be, what. Couple thousand dollars? More? And then Q-school itself, that’s thousands for each phase just in entry fees. And three phases, if I make it.”

“Ben’s covering it. For all three of the scholarship folks, he’s covering it.”

“I know Ben’s covering it.” He finally looks up, and there’s something raw in his face that he doesn’t let me see very often. “That’s what I keep thinking about. It’s not my money. None of this is my money. The gas, the room, hell, the shoes on my feet came out of a bag Ben handed me at the Pride Tournament like it was nothing.”

“It is nothing. To him.”

“It’s not nothing to me.” His voice cracks slightly on the last word, and my entire chest aches watching him try to hold himself together over a phone screen full of numbers. “I keep doing this math where I try to figure out how I am ever going to pay any of this back, and it just doesn’t work. Not with moving boxes for fifteen bucks an hour. Ever.”

I know that math. I ran it in every foster home I ever lived in, other people’s food, other people’s beds, and it never once came out even.

I want to reach over and put my hand on his knee, something simple, grounding, the kind of thing I’d do with anyone else without thinking twice. My hand actually moves, gets halfway there before I catch myself and pull it back into my lap instead, curling my fingers into my palm like that’ll help.