Page 24 of Wedge

He nods, looks back down at the carpet, and I let the silence sit, the two of us just breathing in a cheap motel room, the air conditioner rattling and the ice machine clanking somewhere down the hall.

His phone buzzes. He lifts it in front of his face, huffs a laugh, then tosses it back down.

“Caleb,” he says, answering my unspoken question.

“Good friend to have,” I reply. “Keep him close.”

We sit for a while in the quiet.

“Pizza?” I ask, eventually. “Bad day deserves bad pizza.”

That gets a ghost of a smile out of him, the first one since that damned whiteboard.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, okay.”

I pull out my phone, and before I start scrolling for the nearest delivery, I let myself just look at him, still rumpled, still disappointed, still so much more than he lets himself believe he is. The pink light from the sign catches the side of his face, the shaved sides of his head, the little plug in his ear. I want to yank him onto my lap and let him sink into me.

Not yet, I remind myself again. He needs to do this. Let him have tonight. Let him have this.

“Pepperoni?” I ask instead.

“Ham and pineapple. Extra cheese,” he says. “I earned it.”

“You did,” I say.

The pizza arrives thirty minutes later, the box already spotted with grease, and we eat it sitting on our separate beds with the lid open between us like a campfire. He talks a little, about the sixth hole, the guy with the expensive driver, a fluke bounce in round one. I mostly listen. By the last slice, his words are coming slower.

He eventually falls asleep, full of greasy pizza and regret, still in his golf polo, one shoe on the floor and one still on his foot. I ease it off, set it down without a sound, and pull the thin motel blanket over him.

I turn off the lamp. The neon stripe on the ceiling turns his hair pink and then blue, pink and then blue.

I wish I could pull him into my arms. I’ve wished that several times today. Slow is smooth, Stephen. Smooth is fast. Earn it.

12

ADRIAN

Stephen leads me into a small room in Ben’s club a few days after Steamboat, once the sting’s faded enough that I can look at a golf club without wanting to throw my entire bag in a lake. It’s tucked down a hallway past the pro shop, lined with framed photos of champions I don’t recognize. Dim, cool, a big screen on one wall, two leather chairs angled toward it. The air smells like leather and carpet, and the door shuts behind us like we’re being sealed in.

“Video room,” Stephen says, dropping into a chair. “Every good club’s got one. Ben’s has nicer chairs.”

He plugs his phone into the screen, and there I am, eight feet tall, mid-swing on the sixth hole. Steamboat. Round two. Right around where it all fell apart. The picture throws a cold, blue-white glow across both of us.

I must groan. He points to the screen.

“You asked what went wrong. We don’t guess. We look.”

I flop into the chair next to him. The leather creaks beneath me. I do not look at his tanned forearm next to mine.

The takeaway looks fine. But at the top, my hips seize. This brief hesitation, like my body is arguing with itself before committing.

“There.” He freezes the frame. “That right there is where you lost your speed. Started around hole four, got worse from there.”

“I don’t even remember that happening.”

“Nobody does. That’s why we record. Memory lies. Video doesn’t.”

He plays it again, half speed. I watch myself flinch, over and over, uncomfortable in a way I can’t quite name. The room is quiet except for the low hum of the equipment and my own breathing.