Kiss My Putt

by Tara Sivec

  He never asked me what I wanted. He never cared about the voids in my life or what made me happy. He just ordered, and decided, and I kept my mouth shut and my head down, and I played the fucking game.

  “I can’t lose my endorsements. I know that,” I finally speak quietly. “I don’t know how to do anything else. I’m not qualified for anything else. Golf is all I know. Unless I want to go broke while I figure shit out, I have to fix that at least.”

  “Then we’ll fix that.” Bodhi nods like it’s the easiest thing in the world.

  “I fired my dad as my manager. And I fired my agent and my publicist, because he hired them and they do whatever he demands without even consulting me. What the hell do I even do now? Where do I go?”

  It’s all fun and games when you finally have all the time and freedom in the world, until you suddenly realize you have absolutely nowhere to go and you just embarrassed and fired the only family member you have in front of the entire world. Sure, I have a few rental properties in different locations where I spend the most time, but I’ve never been in one place long enough to make them into homes. There’s only one place that comes to mind every time I think of the word home.

  “You know damn well where you need to go to lick your wounds,” Bodhi states, reading my mind. “Everyone on that island loves you, is protective of you, and will be happy to have the prodigal son return while you figure things out.”

  Now it’s my turn to snort as I turn the key to start up the golf cart, figuring the clubhouse has probably cleared out by now, and I can sneak out of here without anyone seeing me or pushing a camera in my face, asking me how I feel about what happened today.

  “Not everyone on that island loves me,” I remind him, making a U-turn and heading toward the cart path.

  “I thought we weren’t allowed to talk about the person who has to do with the blip. You’ve been barking at me and growling at me for two years if I even dare think about the person who has to do with the blip. Now we’re just gonna bring her up all willy-nilly?” Bodhi shouts out a curse, and his hands fly up to grab onto the roll bars when he almost flies out of the side of the golf cart when I accidentally take a turn on the path a little too sharp and fast.

  “Well, considering we just now decided where I should go, and the blip lives on that island, it looks like we’re gonna have to talk about her at some point.”

  A vision of long blonde hair, bright blue eyes, full pink lips, and a killer body with a killer attitude to go with it flashes through my mind.

  My best friend before Bodhi.

  I haven’t seen her in person in almost three years.

  I haven’t spoken to her in two, and I’m pretty sure she hates my guts.

  “You’re not just getting sprinkles for winners tonight; you’re getting a whole fucking sundae, bro!” Bodhi cheers as I zoom past the empty 8th hole. “I thought finally watching you tell off your dad was the highlight of my life, but I was wrong. Just the anticipation of what Birdie Bennett will do to you when you step foot off the ferry onto Summersweet Island brings me enough joy to last me into eternity.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Birdie

  “I like big putts and I cannot lie.”

  “…and then you type in their name, confirm their scheduled tee time with them again, and click on Okay to lock it in.”

  Handing the iPad back to Chris, a junior at the local high school who just started working at Summersweet Island Golf Course today—or SIG as the locals call it—he fiddles around in the scheduling app we use for a few seconds before looking at me.

  “Thanks a lot for your help training me, Ms. Bennett, I know you’re really busy. And thanks again for putting in a good word to get me this job. I’ve still got a ton of money I need to save for college, and tutoring doesn’t pay enough.”

  Nodding and waving to a golfer as the bell chimes above the door when he exits the pro shop, I quickly finish loading the cash drawer with a stack of one-dollar bills before slamming it closed.

  “I’ve told you a million times, call me Birdie. Ms. Bennett makes me feel old,” I remind the blond, lanky teenager who’s almost a foot taller than me. They seem to be growing teenagers at an alarming rate these days. “I started working here when I was in high school too, and I’m glad I could help. My sister told me you’ve done a great job tutoring Owen in math the last few months, so I owed you one anyway on her behalf.”

  I return Chris’s smile, even though that particular facial expression hurts my face these days.

  “I just know you’re really busy, what with this being your first day back to work from your two-week vacation and all. I bet it was awesome. I’ve always wanted to go to Hawaii.”

  You and me both, kid.

  I smother a groan of misery with a cough when I am literally saved by the bell. The chime above the door dings again, and one of our regulars walks in, grabbing a ten-pack of tees from the box on the counter and holding them up in the air.

  “Hey, Birdie, you’re back! Just need a bag of these and two waters. How was vacation? You’re not very tan,” Mark, the owner of Summersweet Grocery, chuckles while I hide my grimace by turning away from him to walk over to the cooler and grab his waters.

  It’s the middle of summer on an island, and I’m the clubhouse manager at a golf course. Even though I spend a lot of time inside, I sometimes spend more of it outside. Of course, I’m wearing a white, short-sleeved fitted tee with a black and white SIG logo on it, and a short black golf skirt with a signature white checkmark on the hip. I should have worn a snowsuit. I basically took out a billboard that proclaims I did not spend the last fourteen days lying on a sandy beach, drinking out of coconuts, and getting a golden tan. I look like I spent the last two weeks under the stairs with Harry Potter.

  Summersweet Island, just off the coast of Virginia, is not large by any means. If you don’t know them personally or haven’t at least heard of everyone on this island, you haven’t been here long enough. And by long enough, I’m saying five days. Seven, tops, before everyone is in your business and knows everything about you. I love it for that, and I hate it for that equally, but I could never imagine living anywhere else.

  By some miracle, Mark’s cell phone rings before I can come up with something to say about my… vacation. Maybe it’s not a miracle. Maybe it’s the karma gods smiling down on me after the complete and utter bullshit I’ve been through recently. Whatever it is, Mark continues with his phone call as I set the waters down on the counter in front of him. Chris cashes him out like a pro after my training session with him, and Mark grabs everything and leaves with a smile and a nod, his phone tucked between his cheek and shoulder, and not another word about my lack of a tan. Thank God.

  I got here at five in the morning before the course opened, hoping I could get caught up on work before my coworkers and the golfers started arriving. I wanted time to get my head in order, since clearly I did nothing but turn my brain into mush the last two weeks of hiding out, instead of planning what I was going to tell everyone when I got back to work. On the verge of getting a huge promotion I’ve been working toward for months, I don’t have time for a mushy brain.

  The revolving door of a golf course pro shop at nine in the morning on a Saturday makes me want to stab something sharp and rusty into the chime when, as soon as Mark is gone, the door opens right back up and someone else walks in.

  Oh no.

  “Well, well, well, if it isn’t Birdie Bennett, home from her two-week long vacation from… where was it you went again?”

  The white mustache on the seventy-year-old, partially balding man standing on the other side of the counter twitches in amusement, even though I don’t think he’s ever fully smiled a day in his life.

  “Hawaii,” I mutter, answering his ridiculous question through clenched teeth, since he knows damn well where my vacation was supposed to be and also that I did not go.

  He is the only person on this island who knows this information, and he was sworn to
secrecy. There was a handshake and money exchanged. I also had to agree to cook him five dinners and seven breakfasts for his silence, the traitor.

  “Looking a little pale for fourteen days in a place like that, aren’t ya?”

  That damn bushy white mustache twitches again, and when I see Chris open his mouth out the corner of my eye, probably to ask about my pasty skin as well, I put an end to the old man’s fun so I can introduce Chris. His family just moved to Summersweet a few months ago so he hasn’t had the pleasure of Murphy’s company until now.

  “Chris, this is Murphy Swallow. Everyone calls him Murphy or Murph. He’s been working here since the dinosaurs roamed the earth, so he knows everything. It makes him very, very old, and he frightens easily, but he’s quite smart, especially about SIG,” I tell Chris as I casually rest my arms on the counter and smile at Murphy.

  It doesn’t cause me physical pain, since I got that phone call two weeks ago, so that’s a step in the right direction. Teasing Murphy is always a balm to the soul.

  “Feel free to ask him anything at all. Anything you need, Murph is your man. I’ll even give you his cell phone number for emergencies.”

  The growl from Murphy under his breath as he glares at me almost makes me, dare I say, happy. Murphy doesn’t like teenagers. Or kids. Or babies. Or really any human beings who talk, breathe, blink, or otherwise annoy him. A widower who moved to Summersweet Island and into the house next door to us when I was in elementary school, Murphy was the neighborhood curmudgeon who wouldn’t toss your balls back over the fence when you accidentally hit them into his yard. He would hoard them like a troll amassing gold coins under a bridge, cackling at us over the fence while holding up his laundry basket filled with our baseballs, kick balls, footballs, and golf balls, as we tossed around a rock because he had all our damn toys.

  Even though he literally yelled at everyone to get off his lawn, he was also the type of man who would roll his eyes and then hand you a cookie when he made you cry, as long as you sucked it up and stopped crying. Murphy was like a grandfather to me, if that grandfather was annoyed by everything all the time and liked to give you shit every chance he could.

  Murphy Swallow is the reason I have a deep obsession for Pepperidge Farm’s Strawberry Thumbprint cookies and why I never cry when I get hurt. I suck it up. I learned that if you suck it up, you eventually get cookies. It’s a life motto I’ve since shared with my sister and my best friend, and it’s really been working out well for us.

  “Did you say his last name is Swallow?” Chris suddenly pipes up, followed by a teenage boy giggle. “That’s what she—”

  “Think long and hard about finishing that sentence,” Murphy cuts him off, his eyes narrowing as he stares Chris down from the other side of the counter.

  I feel a little bad as I watch Chris experience his first Murphy threat in person, and now he knows the rumors around the island are true, but not bad enough to intervene. I’ve got enough going on with my own life. Chris now has to work with Murphy and needs to learn how not to almost pee your pants every time he looks at you.

  “Why are you still standing here? Go find something to do,” Murphy orders Chris, who quickly shuffles out from behind the counter and then runs out the door.

  When we’re alone in the pro shop, Murphy takes Chris’s place behind the counter with me, sitting down in the computer chair a few feet away and swiveling it to face me as he rocks back and forth.

  “You’ve got to stop scaring everyone here,” I tell him, something I tell him at least three times a week.

  Murphy started working at SIG right when he moved to the island, and he’s the one who got me my first job here as a caddie when I was in high school. When it came time for retirement, he tried it for exactly four days and hated every minute of it. He does a little bit of everything from mowing the greens and using the picker on the range to grab up all the balls at the end of the day, to helping serve drinks at the bar when we’re slammed and finding me wherever I’m working on the course just to annoy me.

  “I haven’t stopped scaring everyone at my home, in my golf cart, or in town, so why would I stop when I’m at SIG?” Murphy shrugs. “I see you still haven’t started telling people you didn’t go out of town the last two weeks and you were right under their noses this entire time. I had to lie to your mother this morning, Roberta Marie Bennett. Do you see this face? This is a face that is not amused. Memorize it.”

  I roll my eyes and turn away from him so he doesn’t see the guilt in them. It’s bad enough I didn’t get to spend two weeks in paradise and instead spent it holed up in my cottage, five houses down from my mom and two streets over from my sister and teenage nephew. But the entire island will know soon enough. I kept it from my mom. And my sister. And my best friend.

  Oh my God, they are going to murder me!

  “I’m going to tell everyone tonight, I swear. Just keep your yap shut for the rest of the day please.”

  “Keep your yap shut about what? And holy hell did I miss your fucking face!”

  A blur of black and red flies into the doorway of the pro shop that leads out into the bar area, racing across the room and behind the counter to tackle me in a hug before I can even take my next breath.

  I wrap my arms around my best friend, Tess Powell, who works as a bartender here, and breathe in her familiar bubble gum scent. With her signature bright-red bob of hair and blunt bangs covering her forehead, a nose ring, and a closet filled with nothing but black clothing, she can and will kick anyone’s ass who pisses her off, but her tight hugs can always make everything better. I laugh and squeal and jump up and down as we continue to hug each other. I get caught up in the moment of two best friends being reunited after fourteen long days apart where they were separated by miles of land and sea and a boy.

  And then I remember I was hiding in my back bedroom the entire time so no one from the street would see any light or movement, wearing the same pajamas, not showering, shoveling junk food in my face the entire time, around two miles away from Tess.

  Uuuggghhh, I’m a shitty friend.

  “I want to hear every single word about your magical two weeks in paradise with Bradley and how much dirty sex you had.”

  “Jesus,” Murphy grumbles from his chair behind us.

  I knew I shouldn’t have come back to work after what happened. I should have fled the island, left the country, changed my name, and started over. It would have been much easier than telling Tess I didn’t get to go on my dream vacation and the last time I had dirty sex was… never.

  “Sorry, Murph.” Tess pulls out of my arms and gives him a salute before reaching around me to grab the remote control from the counter, aiming it at the small flat-screen television hanging on the wall across the room. “Before we get into all those delicious, X-rated details, I have something even better for you.”

  Tess changes the channel away from the station that was playing The National Tour from ten years ago until she finds the channel she wants.

  “They’ve been replaying it on ESPN on the hour every hour for the last week,” she says with a laugh, turning the volume up on the TV as the announcer talks about what’s coming up next.

  “Oh, I don’t think she’s recovered from her… vacation enough to watch this yet, Tess,” Murphy warns her, slowly pushing up from his chair to stand next to me.

  “Watch what? What’s happening here?”

  “I know the main rule of Bradley’s and your vacation was no cell phones or social media, so you’re probably the only person in the world who hasn’t seen this or pulled up the video online and watched it at least fifty times.”

  It’s true. That was a rule I put my foot down on when we started talking about this vacation a year ago. Bradley and I both had problems letting the rest of the world go and relaxing, especially considering the job promotion I was going for here was social media and marketing director for the course, and that job required I be on my phone a lot. Since I suddenly hated the world and ev
erything inside it, I decided to keep my cell phone and my laptop locked away in a drawer until today. And I’ve been too busy with paperwork and training Chris this morning to check on the outside world.

  Tess is still chuckling, and she starts clapping her hands and bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet when the sports announcer says, “Since this continues to be the most highly requested replay over the last week, here it is again!”

  Tess suddenly grabs both my arms, turning me to face her.

  “I know we aren’t allowed to talk about him, and any time he comes on the TV in the bar I have to change the channel, but buckle up, buttercup. Christmas just came early.”

  Before I can process what my friend is saying to me and the look of absolute joy on her face, the back of my neck starts to tingle and butterflies start flapping around in my stomach when I hear the next voice that comes out of the television mounted to the wall. And since Tess turned it up as loud as it can go, that voice is amplified by a thousand. She drops her hands from my arms, and my head slowly turns toward the television.

  “That’s it! You’re fucking fired, and you know what else? You can eat my shit! That’s right, my shit. Eat. My. Shit!”

  Tess is howling with laughter, bent over at the waist, and clutching her sides, and I’m just standing here with my mouth open, wondering what in the hell I’m watching and if this is some kind of hidden camera, prank show or something. Or maybe there was a crazy outbreak of golfers at the tournament secretly being given meth, and now they’ve all gone mad. That’s the only explanation for the very public meltdown I’m currently watching, although the secret meth seems to only be affecting one golfer in particular. Suddenly, I’ve forgotten all about my dumpster fire of a vacation and the little white lies I’ve told, and now my head and my heart are filled with one thing and one thing only, and that is sooo not good for me.