Page 65 of Wedge

I read it twice, waiting for more, then set the phone face-down on the nightstand. It buzzes again and when I lift it, I have to smile.

CALEB

u got this, A! Fuck ur man then shoot those bombs tmrw :*

We eat dinner in our room, ordering in from room service. Stephen forces me to eat more than I feel like, feeding me bites while I curl onto his chest. The wind is still pushing at the window. The TV is on. The Broncos are playing a Thursday night game in Seattle. Neither of us is really watching.

When I finally push his hand away, he shoves the tray out of the door and tells me to clean up for bed. I’m too tired to argue, so I do as he demands, climbing into bed next to him and letting him curl around me, little spoon.

“Sleep, baby,” he soothes in my ear. His arm is heavy around me, hand gripping my forearm, and his chest is hard and protective behind me. I breathe him in.

My eyes won’t close. I need… not sex, I’m too tired for much. But I need… I try not to wiggle against him, but he knows. The man just… knows.

He kisses the side of my head and slips a hand into my briefs, wrapping around my flaccid cock. Holding me.

“I got you. Sleep baby,” he murmurs.

And I sleep.

27

STEPHEN

Ponte Marsh plays wide open under a clear sky, the kind of morning that makes low scores feel inevitable before anyone’s hit a shot. Yesterday’s fog has burned off the marsh, the grass gone gold and hissing in a light breeze, and a white egret picks its way along the edge of the first pond like it’s inspecting the field. I can tell by the way Adrian’s rolling putts on the practice green that today’s a different story than yesterday.

“You look loose,” I say, handing him his driver at the first tee.

“I feel loose.” He rolls his shoulders, grinning in a way that’s been rare enough this week that I notice it immediately. “Yesterday’s out of my legs.”

And it shows. Birdie on one, a bombing drive that splits the fairway and a wedge that spins back to four feet. Birdie on two, longer putt, same easy roll off the putter face. By the fourth hole, I catch myself doing math again. It’s a bad habit I keep promising to break and never quite manage.

“Heard anything on the leaderboard?” he asks at the turn, four under already, cruising.

“Jeremy Battoli’s making noise. Mike’s guy. Six under through eight, apparently.”

“The preppy one from the scoring tent?”

“That’s the one.”

Adrian’s quiet for a moment, processing it the way he processes everything now, filed away instead of spiraling over. “Good for him.”

“Good for him,” I agree, and mean it, though some competitive animal part of my brain is already recalculating where that leaves us if both of them keep it up.

I close out the front nine at four under, clean, controlled, the kind of round Reyes has been building toward all summer, and I let myself relax into it for exactly as long as it takes to reach the twelfth tee, a long par three over water that’s given nothing but trouble to half the field today. The whole hole is a wide silver sheet of water, glittering in the sun, with a green that looks about the size of a postage stamp on the far side.

Adrian goes quiet in the specific way that used to precede disaster.

“Talk to me,” I say, echoing his own line from yesterday back at him.

“It’s a lot of water.” He is breathing too fast.

“I know. I see it too.”

“It’s Steamboat. Water, wind, all of it.” His hands aren’t shaking yet, but they’re close. That tightness creeping back into his shoulders, the hitch waking up right when it matters most. “Long iron, water short, wind pushing right into it.”

I step in close, lower my voice. The way I’ve learned works better than any pep talk for him. Almost a growl. I’ll go even lower if I have to. “Look at me. Not the water. Eyes on me.”

That last bit does it. He snaps his eyes up.