Page 56 of Wedge

“Not a chance. I like my big, burly dude.” He picks the controller back up, guiding Shepard toward the galaxy map, already invested in a fictional love story with a blue alien scientist he hasn’t even met yet.

That he really is into something I showed him does something funny to my head.

“Okay,” he says. “Brief me. How do we get to the rescuing?”

I tuck closer, point at the screen, and start talking. It’s the most I’ve said about anything I love in years, and he listens the way he listens to a yardage book, every word.

23

STEPHEN

Desert Sky doesn’t waste any time telling you what kind of golf course it is. Wide fairways of impossibly green turf laid across pale desert like felt on a card table, minimal rough, saguaros standing guard along the edges with their arms raised like they’re signaling a bad shot. Water only where the course designer wants to punish greed instead of accuracy. The course designer built the whole layout for players who can go get it. Exactly the kind of setup Ben spent three weeks lobbying for.

Adrian’s quiet on the way to the range that first morning, the particular quiet he gets when his brain’s already three holes ahead of his body. We talked about this course on the long drive down, so I don’t try to coax him out of it. Just hand him a water bottle and let him sit with it.

“You okay?”

“Nervous. Not Steamboat nervous.” He rolls his neck, loosening something. “I think.”

Then he goes out and shows me what that means. Long bombing drives hang against the wide blue sky and land ten yards past everyone else’s, and his wedges spin back toward the flags like the course is inviting him to attack it, which it is. He signs for sixty-seven the first day. On the second, he’s even better, thirty-one on the front, and I stop doing math because it’s making me more nervous than it’s making him.

“Whatever this is, don’t look at it too hard,” I tell him at the turn, and he doesn’t.

Sixty-five. Twelve under through thirty-six holes, and when Coach Reyes texts to ask how it’s going, I send him a screenshot of the scoreboard and let him figure out the rest.

The scoring tent after day two is a crush of players, caddies, and volunteers with clipboards, and Adrian gets stopped before he’s halfway to the table by a kid in a crisp white cap and a polo that looks like the tags came off this morning. Good-looking, groomed to within an inch of his life, a haircut that a junior academy stamps out by the dozen.

“Carter, right? Sixty-five.” He says it like he’s checking a stat. “Jeremy Battoli. Second time through this stage, and I’ve never seen anybody play it like that.”

“Adrian.” They shake. I watch Adrian take in the polo, the haircut, the smooth voice, and file him under preppy. Behind Jeremy, a gray-eyed caddie I’ve seen around all week hangs back with a staff bag, glancing at me and then away.

“Sorry, is that…” Jeremy’s eyes drift up to the mohawk and stay there half a beat too long, and his hand drifts up toward his own hair before he catches it. “That’s a bold look for a scoring tent.”

“It’s just hair.” Adrian shifts and slides his golf cap back on, covering the sweaty mohawk.

“Yeah. Right.” He laughs a little too quickly. “Seriously though. Sixty-five is the round I’ve been trying to shoot for two years. Nice work.”

It’s a generous thing to say to the guy who just passed you, and I can tell Adrian hears it that way, even if he’s not ready to say so. He nods once. “Thanks. Good luck tomorrow.”

“You too.” Then, over his shoulder as the crowd carries him off, he calls out, “Not too much luck.”

Adrian watches him go. “Frat boy.”

“Maybe,” I say. “Seemed nice enough.”

The golf gods always demand something after a round like that. On day three, the greens go crisp and fast in the afternoon sun, and putt after putt lips out, flipping around the hole and spurting out the other side, or slides by on the low side. He grinds out an even-par seventy-two, frustrated but not spiraling, the kind of round Coach Reyes has been drilling him for.

“That’s the spanking round,” I tell him that night in the hotel bed, his head on my chest. “A grinder. Nothing goes in, and you don’t blow it up, anyway.”

“Felt like blowing it up the whole damned time.”

“Didn’t look like it. Twelve under is still twelve under.”

He’s asleep in about a minute. I’m not. I lie there in the dark with my phone turned down to its dimmest and the leaderboard open, and I do the math I promised myself I wouldn’t. The line has been sitting around nine under all week. He’s at twelve. Three shots. Three shots is nothing. Three shots is one bad nine. I turn the phone facedown on the nightstand and stare at the ceiling until the window goes gray.

Day four dawns bright and windy, flags snapping on every green before the sun has fully cleared the mountains. I carry the bag with a very steady face. Adrian’s quiet again, but it’s not the quiet of day one. This one is tight. He knows the number now, knows roughly where the cut sits, and knowing things like that has never made golf easier for anybody.

He bogeys the second hole, a three-putt that has nothing to do with his swing and everything to do with his hands shaking slightly over a four-footer. He misses it low, and I watch the ball roll two inches past the cup and stop, like it’s mocking us both. A bead of sweat runs down his temple, and it isn’t even sixty degrees yet.