Under Parr

by Blair Babylon

  “Newcastle Golf Club never was a charity, but it was an important part of the community. A lot of golfers got their start here.”

  “Well, yeah,” he said, bobbing his head from side to side. “Just so you know, I’m not going to throw the high school golf team off the course. They’ll still have range time and tee times on the course, but I think it needs to be scaled back. No other high school golf team has that kind of course privileges. Most of them have less than half that time.”

  “That’s because Newcastle Free Academy is special. Do you know how many kids NFA sent to college on golf scholarships last year?”

  “Twelve,” Jericho said.

  “Wait—I—how’d you know that?”

  He smiled. “You told me that the first day we met, when you thought I was a bag boy.”

  Oh, fine. He’d listened to her. She’d have to watch this guy. “Then you should understand why NGC is so important to this community. Ten of those scholarship kids were Black, and all of them needed those scholarships. Those kids are twelve more kids who are going to college than who would’ve otherwise. About half of them were recruited by historically black colleges and universities like Tennessee State, and the rest of them went to regular universities, but every single one of them was the first kid in their family to go to college. The NFA golf team didn’t just change twelve lives this year. It changed twelve families. All the other kids and cousins in those families just saw one of their own go to college.”

  Jericho sat motionless, watching her. His hands were resting on his stomach, and his legs were stretched out and so still that it looked like he was trying not to scare her like she was a skittish cat. He asked, very gently, “Were you the first person in your family to go to college?”

  She flipped her fingers in the air because she didn’t need anyone’s pity. “My dad got a degree through the military, but I was the first person in my family to go away to a college right after high school. But because I did, because they saw me do it and saw how I applied for loans and grants and got them, three more of my cousins and my little brother are at universities now, and two more cousins are attending River Rapids Community College. I made it look possible.”

  Jericho nodded, but he didn’t say anything.

  “And I learned to golf at this club.” She stabbed the wide chair arm with her finger three times to make her point. “And every one of those twelve kids last year learned to golf at this club”—more finger stabbing—“during the free summer clinics that we hold. And then either they joined the club on a junior membership or else their family joined on a family membership.”

  “How much do junior memberships cost?” he asked.

  “Two hundred dollars a year.”

  His eyebrows went up. “That’s all?”

  “And we have scholarships if kids can’t afford it or their families won’t pay.”

  Lightning flashed somewhere in the distance and lit up the inside of the shack through one of the small windows. Thunder crashed and shook the wooden walls half a minute later.

  Tiffany jumped in her seat, and Jericho was watching the windows.

  The storm didn’t seem to be letting up.

  They waited for a minute.

  Tiffany told him, “The storm shelter has a lightning rod a little ways away. We’re supposed to be safe in here.”

  Finally, Jericho nodded to her. “Go on.”

  She sucked a deep breath in, shaking out the nerves. “Okay, well, NGC is important to Newcastle. It’s changed the community here. Newcastle is fifty percent Black, more than half Black Americans but a lot of Haitian immigrants, too. And then another twenty percent is Brazilian and Vietnamese immigrants and their kids. This golf club could have been one of the places that divided people, that was a barrier, but it wasn’t. We had young Black men working here as caddies in the nineteen-sixties, which was pretty common for back then. But those guys learned to golf here. And when they grew up and had their own families and wanted to teach their own kids to golf, NGC admitted them. It admits anyone and has for decades. That’s pretty unusual, and it was our source of pride.”

  Jericho blinked. “Golf isn’t known for being a particularly inclusive sport.”

  “That’s what makes NGC so special, and it’s why I don’t want you to mess it up. We’re producing not just the next generation of Black college graduates with those scholarships, we are producing the next generation of Black golfers, and no one else is. You know that golf is important for business relationships. How many of your business deals are made on the golf course?”

  Jericho nodded. “All of them, it seems like.”

  “Yep, but what if you’d grown up with basketball and football all your life, and you’d never had a chance to learn to golf?”

  Jericho nodded slowly. “I would have missed those deals and relationships. It’s classist, of course, but I’ve met a lot of people at charity tournaments that were important for networking.”

  “Right. Did you know that in the nineteen-seventies, ten Black professional golfers were playing on the PGA Tour?”

  “The only Black golfer I know of is Tiger Woods.”

  “That’s because since the nineties, he’s been the only Black golfer on the Tour with any real success because he’s Tiger Woods.”

  “Right.”

  She tugged her deck chair closer to Jericho’s because the constant drumming of the rain was making it a little hard to hear him. “Right, but there used to be more of us out there. In the 1970s, Lee Elder and Calvin Peete played, and there were usually ten of us out there at any given time.”

  Jericho’s gaze strayed to the roof of the storm shelter, and he nodded thoughtfully. It looked like he was remembering.

  She said, “But then in the 2000s, there was only Tiger Woods and one or two more depending on the year, and that was because of the demise of the caddie system.”

  Jericho looked back at her, and he turned his chair and scooted a little closer to her, too. “I would have thought the caddie system was discriminatory.”

  “The caddie system was our in. The caddie system was how Black people got into golf and learned it, how we got equipment and range time. Then, somebody went and invented those stupid gas-guzzling golf carts that belch unfiltered exhaust all over the golf course, and it automated away the caddie jobs. But a golf cart will never tell you that the seventh green is an optical illusion, and all the putts roll the opposite direction of what you think they’re going to.”

  Jericho leaned forward in his chair with his hands clasped between his knees. “Wait. What did you say?”

  Tiffany modeled the double-slanted green with her hands. “The seventh green is built on a hill. It looks like it slants to the west, but the whole thing is an optical illusion. Everything rolls toward the two pine trees on the east side of the green. Once you know that, the green is simple to read.”

  Jericho rolled his eyes and flopped back in his chair. “I five-putted that green two days ago. I thought I had the yips.”

  “See? A good caddie would’ve told you that. Probably would’ve saved you four strokes. But the caddie system was where the first Black golfers learned to play because there were Black golfers all the way back to when golf became a professional sport. The first African-American ever to play in a PGA event was John Shippen in 1896.”

  “Eighteen ninety-six?” Jericho asked, one eyebrow raised.

  “He played in the second U.S. Open ever at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club when he was seventeen years old, where he worked as a caddie. He came in sixth, and then he went on and played in five more U.S. Opens, all because of the caddie system.”

  “I’m surprised they let him because—you know,” Jericho said.

  “Yeah, I know,” she scoffed. “But as much as golf and The Masters, especially, are tainted with systemic racism, other people stood up to it. When John Shippen was going to play in his first U.S. Open, some people didn’t want him to. But the president of the USGA, Theodore Havemeyer, put his fo
ot down and made sure that Shippen and a Shinnecock tribal member and golfer, Oscar Bunn, played that year.” Tiffany dug a pink golf tee out of the sodden fabric of her pants pocket and held it up. “Heck, this was invented by a Black guy, George Grant, in 1899. He was a dentist in Boston. Before that, you had to scrape together a little hill of sand to put your ball on.”

  Jericho smiled, and damn, he was gorgeous when he smiled. “That’s pretty cool.”

  Tiffany shifted her chair even closer to him, and the wooden arm of her deck chair bonked his. “Oops, sorry.”

  He twisted toward her, bringing their knees closer together, and then his leg grazed hers. “Don’t be sorry.”

  Warmth seeped through the wet fabric of their clothes.

  She was not going to—she should not—

  She was so chilled from the April air and having cold water dumped over her, and that was why she leaned her leg firmly against Jericho’s strong, warm calf and knee.

  For the warmth.

  She said, “Um, okay, but the, um, caddie system…” Dang it, she did not get flummoxed like this.

  Jericho tilted his head, not smiling but leaning toward her. “And the caddie system fell apart because of golf carts.”

  Back on track. “Nasty things, those golf carts, and the club probably spends as much to buy and maintain them as we would to pay caddies. Seriously, those things do not have catalytic converters on them. They belch black, unfiltered exhaust like a cheap lawnmower. Mrs. Sullivan is asthmatic and can’t be around them. She keeps petitioning the club to switch to electric, but that would be another huge expense, buying all new golf carts.”

  Jericho was nodding along. “I hadn’t realized that.”

  His leg was so warm, and hard, and rounded with muscle.

  She leaned in, and his knee slipped past hers to press against her inner thigh.

  He inhaled through his nose like he was smelling something good, and she saw the dark of his pupils expand in the blue irises in his eyes.

  Tiffany shrugged. “It’s just another example of things getting harder.”

  Jericho cleared his throat, and Tiffany did not dare look at his lap. She hadn’t meant it as an innuendo, but there they were.

  The cold air inside the wooden shack clung to her wet clothes, chilling her skin.

  Things happened when girls got cold, she told herself, which must be why her nipples were gathered into tight peaks. She pressed her arms over her chest to warm them up and hide them.

  Yeah, it must be the cold.

  Jericho’s sandy brown eyebrows had lowered. “Unintended consequences.”

  Was he talking about—oh, he must mean the golf carts and the caddie system. She said, “Funny how Black people tend to bear a lot of those unintended consequences.”

  Jericho glanced down at his hand that was inches from hers where they rested on the arms of their chairs. It seemed like he agreed when he said, “Yeah. Funny, that.”

  “So, what do you want to do—to Newcastle Golf Club?” Her voice was throatier than she’d meant, and she’d almost faltered before she’d named the club at the end of her sentence.

  She couldn’t ask him what he wanted to do.

  He moved his thumb on the arm of the chair like he was exploring the peeling paint and weathered wood with the pad of his thumb. “I hadn’t made any decisions, but now I have more to think about.”

  It would have to suffice for that day. Tiffany was talked out, having made her case and vented all she could deal with, and she found herself tracing the edge of her chair’s arm, her finger just missing his thumb as they went round and round.

  “I’d like more consultations as we go along,” Jericho said, looking up, and his blue eyes stared into hers.

  They were sitting so close, and the dark sky drummed rain on the roof, isolating them, enclosing them in that tiny storm shelter away from the rest of the world, and it seemed almost—intimate.

  Tiffany found herself drifting forward. Jericho was a good-looking man, and she hadn’t had a boyfriend since her college boyfriend had declined to move from Georgia to Connecticut, so they’d gone their separate ways.

  His knee reached the middle of her inner thigh.

  The storm shelter felt like a bubble in time and space, separate from everything else. They were both leaning forward, the magnetism impossible to deny.

  If he were leaning back, this would be different, right?

  But all his body language was focused on her. He was almost crouching on the edge of his chair, leaning with his hand right beside hers, his leg between hers like she could stand and straddle him, and he practically crouched to spring at her.

  There had been that—spark—or whatever, when she’d thought he was a bag boy a few days before, and her rationale at that point was because she didn’t want to get in trouble with the club management because she was his boss.

  But now, Jericho was the boss. She wasn’t going to get in trouble for—anything.

  He didn’t look away when he said, “I can’t promise I’ll do everything you want, and indeed, I can promise that I can’t. That’s the nature of venture capital acquisitions. A lot is going on behind the scenes. But I’d like consults on what I’m doing so we won’t be surprised by unintended consequences.”

  His deep voice echoed off the fog around her brain, and he was so close that she could feel tiny rivulets of heat wafting from his warm body.

  She almost leaned forward.

  Jericho looked at her lips, and then up to her eyes again.

  Oh, this would be complicated in so many ways, but it didn’t have to be forever. She’d learned that when she and Tyrone had broken up. “That’s all I can ask for.”

  His voice had lowered to just above a whisper. “I know one unintended consequence I’d like to talk about.”

  Oh, Lord. Tiffany could feel the puffs of his breath on her lips and sliding over her cheeks. His lips would taste faintly of mint if she leaned just three more inches in.

  “What’s that?” she asked, her whisper catching in her throat.

  “When I bought this golf course, I became your boss. I liked it better when you were my boss.” His blue eyes flicked up and met hers with their lips just inches apart. “Because then I could’ve made the first move.”

  But a guy should make the first move because she wasn’t sure that he wanted to and all the weird stuff she knew was patriarchy and yet if he wanted to kiss her he should—

  White light blasted, and the air crashed around her.

  Lightning struck outside the shack.

  Jumping away from the direction of the deafening crash was instinctive.

  Throwing her arms around his neck as their lips met was instinctive, too.

  His lips opened under hers, and one of his strong arms wrapped around her waist and caught her as she leaped. The other ran up her back and grabbed the back of her neck, steadying her as she almost toppled them over the back of his chair when she landed on him.

  The chair that she was somehow kneeling on rocked back, teetering on two legs. Jericho stood and dragged her up and to her feet. His tongue stroked hers, tender and yet insistent.

  The heat from his body soaked through their wet clothes, showing her what it would feel like when they were skin to skin.

  He was bending down, and she pressed up on her toes, her wet socks squishing on the wooden floor.

  His hands explored her waist and hips, smoothing her wet clothes over her curves, and one of his hands rubbed up her ribcage, cupped her breast in his hand, and he ran his thumb over her cold-beaded nipple.

  Tiffany sucked in a breath of surprise.

  When he rubbed his thumb over that nip back and forth, she let her breath out in a moan, and her head tipped back.

  He bent and raked his teeth over her throat, and his other hand dropped lower and palmed her ass. His arm moved up to around her waist, pressing her against him. Against her stomach and through their wet clothes, she could feel that he was hard for her alrea
dy.

  She might have made the first move, but Jericho was making all the moves.

  Under her palms and fingers, Jericho’s abdominals and back tensed, and he kissed her slower, backing off. “That’s enough for now.”

  Tiffany didn’t want to stop. She was drunk on him, with the scent of his cologne mixed with rainwater, from the warmth of his body in the cold air. It had been nearly two years since the last time she’d gotten laid, and Jericho was a big hunk of man that she wanted to taste.

  She inserted her fingers into his waistband and began unbuckling his belt.

  “I said, enough.” But his voice growled low in his throat, and his hand clenched around her ass cheek and shoved her hips harder against his pelvis and erection. “I don’t have a condom with me.”

  Tiffany dragged one leg behind herself and dropped to one knee, mouthing down his wet shirt as she wrestled with his belt buckle.

  Jericho groaned and his hands clenched around her shoulders, and then he growled, “Like I said on the tee box, ladies first.”

  He ducked and shoved her backward, grabbing her around her waist and laying her back on the wooden floor. He braced himself on his arms and knees over her, and he stared right into her eyes. “Say yes.”

  “Yes!” she cried out, grabbing at his shirt to drag him down to her.

  His strong arms bent as he kissed her again, harder this time, his mouth open and their tongues tangling. The fine sand of early five o’clock shadow on his jaw was rough against her cheek.

  He pushed her shirt up with one hand and popped the front hook-closure on her sports bra. With a groan, he dipped his head to lave his warm tongue over her breast and then took it into his mouth.

  The suction drew the energy in Tiffany up, and her back arched off the floor. She turned her head, finding a spot to rest her head between the beads in her braids that were digging into her skull, but she couldn’t resist arching when he stroked her nipple with his warm tongue. It felt like he was sucking her whole body into his mouth.

  And he was moving between her legs, even though they were still clothed. He was gigantic, an enormous man, and worry crept in that he was going to rip her apart by sheer force.