Kiss My Putt

by Tara Sivec

  “You didn’t let me in. I have a key,” Tess reminds me. “What I don’t know is how you managed to run away from Putz again without giving him a chance to talk to you about anything important. You’ve got skills I wasn’t even aware of. It brings a tear to my eye.”

  I don’t bump my fist against hers when she holds it out to me, making her sigh and drop it back down into her lap.

  “When he wouldn’t stop following me on the cart path asking ridiculous questions and annoying the piss out of me, I told him to go play eighteen holes, familiarize himself with the course again, and then come find me and we’d talk. Then I packed up my work and my laptop, came home, and finished out my day here, where you found me. Wasn’t that hard.”

  I’m not proud of myself that I ran away from him again like a big baby instead of a mature, thirty-year-old woman who could have an adult conversation. Every minute I spend with that man makes me weak, especially with this newfound sarcasm that seems to have been unleashed from him. That’s all I ever wanted for Palmer, for him to be able to breathe and not be so uptight and rigid all the time and to let his personality shine. It would sneak out every once in a while over the years, usually only after a few alcoholic beverages or too many hours in my presence. Seeing it fly out of his mouth so easily brought the tingling back in full force, and that absolutely could not happen. Not just because it really did look like I would be his boss for the foreseeable future, but because I’ve been down that road before. It doesn’t end well for me.

  “Well, I’m sorry I didn’t light Putz on fire for you. I got distracted by the homeless surfer.” Tess shrugs. “Fun fact—he really is homeless, so we don’t have to say that ironically anymore. Palmer always offers to get him a place wherever they stay, but Bodhi always refuses. Crashes on couches, sleeps on beaches, and he actually lived in a van down by the river in Costa Rica for a while. Says he can’t even remember the last time he cashed one of his paychecks from Palmer. He has absolutely no redeeming qualities. God, I want to screw his brains out.”

  Leave it to Tess to add a little humor to the situation I’ve found myself in. I already knew all of this about Bodhi, since he spewed his life story to me the first hour after we met. He’s a laid-back guy who just wants to live his life, and he’s easy as hell to talk to. He’s like a cool big brother who your parents always wanted to strangle because he’d never move out of the basement. Tess had been visiting relatives in Jersey when Bodhi tagged along with Palmer on one of his trips to Summersweet, and I always hated they never got a chance to meet. I had no idea she’d be so obsessed with him, but I should have figured. Bodhi is an easy guy to become obsessed with.

  “Stop being sad,” Tess suddenly orders.

  “I’m not sad,” I reply… sadly.

  “This is the fun part of the story. When the guy comes back with his tail between his legs and the heroine makes him grovel so he can get back into her good graces.”

  “Stop reading so much and do more activities that rot your brain. Life is not a romance novel,” I remind her.

  “No, but it could be a very well-executed psychological thriller if we play our cards right, you get some balls, and make Palmer grovel until he cries. Or I slit his throat with the sharp end of a golf tee.”

  “God, I’m so glad I’m your friend and not your enemy,” I mutter before letting my head thump back against the chair to stare out at the lights from a luxury cruise ship slowly passing by a few miles out.

  “You need to stop being sad that you haven’t gotten to Birdie-launch yourself at him, sniff his cologne, and see if his muscles feel as good as they look wrapped around you, and get mad at him again,” she says.

  “I am mad,” I tell her unconvincingly as my shoulders droop, thinking about our hugs.

  Tess suddenly sits up and turns sideways to face me, smacking one of her hands on the arm of my chair.

  “May 24, 2018.”

  Shit. That does it.

  “Like, seriously, Tess? He’s just going to show up out of the blue after two years and get a fucking job here?” I ask, my voice going up a few octaves as I pull my feet up onto my chair and angrily yank my oversized sweatshirt over my knees when I get a chill. “He was my friend. He was my—”

  “Don’t say it. You’ll just start crying instead of raging. Suck it up and keep going,” Tess says with a nod, knowing I was going to say he was my everything.

  “I was his biggest supporter, his biggest shoulder to cry on about his dad, and I stood by his side through everything, being okay with only getting the crumbs of his attention sprinkled around me sporadically when his hectic schedule would allow,” I continue, my anger growing with each word I say, words Tess has heard a million times but, like a good friend, lets me complain about it again. “I finally got up the nerve to put myself out there, and he shut me down, blocked me from his life. And I’m supposed to just stand around and give him any part of my time, when he’s occupied so much of it for so long without giving a shit? No, ma’am!”

  “No fucking ma’am!” Tess shouts, and I finally bump my fist against hers when she holds it out to me again. “Let’s burn his shit!”

  “Will you stop trying to make fire happen? I’m trying to rage against the machine here.”

  Tess folds her hands in her lap obediently.

  “You know, the machine being Putz.”

  “Jesus Christ, shut up and rage!”

  I take a deep breath, trying to remember where I left off, but it doesn’t matter. I’m fired up, and I don’t see that changing any time soon.

  “If he tries to be all cute and sarcastic and make me forget he hurt me, all I have to do is remember May 24, 2018.” I nod, wrapping my arms around my legs and glaring at the ocean like it personally offended me.

  “That’s right. The date he ruined your life. Crushed your soul. Made you lose all trust in the human race, never to love again, and become a crazy cat lady.”

  “That’s a little dramatic,” I mutter. “And the course cats I feed don’t make me crazy. They make me a decent person who loves animals.”

  “Whatever. Make his life a living hell.”

  “And while I do that, I’m gonna need you to cuddle up to Bodhi and get some information out of him about Putz. Like what the hell kind of excuse he’s going to give me for why he dropped me two years ago, so I can prepare myself for that load of bullshit.”

  Tess laughs and shakes her head at me.

  “Oh, I’m totally going to suck Bodhi’s dick, but only because I want to,” she says, reaching over and patting the top of my sweatshirt-covered knees. “You can find the information you seek by sucking your own dick.”

  I glare at her, shoving her hand off my knee.

  “You know, your own dick being Putz’s dick.”

  “I thought you were my friend,” I complain as Tess leans back into her chair. I do the same, and we both go back to staring out at the dark ocean, while someone sets off a few fireworks a little way down the beach.

  “I’m not sitting here telling you you’re being completely childish and ridiculous and the more you protest about not wanting to talk to Palmer and the more you avoid him, the more it’s going to prove to him how much he still affects you, am I?” she asks, always the smart one in our friendship.

  “No, I’m not,” she continues without giving me a chance to answer. “You do whatever it is you need to do to make it through the day with him being back on the island. If you want to act childish, you do you. If you want to see what he has to say and decide if you have it in you to forgive him, go with that. It’s your life. He did this to you, not me. And as mad as I am on your behalf, I can’t tell you whether or not to forgive him. I can only stand waiting in the wings, sharpening the blade of my knife to cut off his balls if he hurts you again.”

  I think about all the times Palmer and I worked side by side at the Dip and Twist on nights when my mom would get slammed and he’d always volunteer us both to give her a hand. I think about bonfires on the beac
h, sharing a large pizza with everything from Island Slice. Quiet talks out on the 8th hole, where we’d always sneak out after the course closed with a blanket. Hours-worth of dreams and wishes for our futures were spilled there, because that hole was the farthest from the clubhouse and offered us the most privacy. I think about Palmer never losing his patience with me when he taught me how to golf. Me dragging him to caddie parties and teaching him how to shotgun a beer. The special treats he’d bring me from the mainland every time he came to the island, because he had easy access to them, knew I’d murder my mother and sister for them, and because he was just thoughtful like that. And countless other memories flash through my mind faster than a supped-up golf cart, all starring him.

  I’ve always missed his friendship, but I wouldn’t let myself dwell on it or I’d never be able to function. Having him here on the island where I can share a pizza with him, talk for hours with him, or hold his hair back when he pukes from shotgunning too many beers, or play a round of golf with him whenever my heart desires makes it harder and harder to stay away from him and not give him a chance to explain or try and forgive him. I’m not about to spend another fifteen years of my life pining for a man who doesn’t look at me that way, so it’s a good thing I’m not in love with him anymore. We’ll see if I have it in me to forgive him and maybe form a friendship again. You know, while making his life hell along the way.

  “I still have a few of Bradley’s things in my closet. Want to torch them?”

  “Awww, I knew I was your favorite.” Tess beams at me as she scrambles up off her chair, shouting over her shoulder as she pulls open my sliding glass door and runs into the house. “I’ll grab the lighter fluid and Bradley’s box of shit. You grab the hose and tell the neighbors to keep their damn mouths shut!”

  CHAPTER 8

  Palmer

  “Home on the Range.”

  “Pitching wedge.”

  Looking up the small hill and calculating the distance between here and the hole, I know I can get my ball out of the rough and sink it in one shot, since I’ve done it a hundred times on this course. When my arm starts to get tired from holding my 9-iron out behind me, I look back over my shoulder to find Bodhi kicked back behind the wheel of the golf cart with his feet up on the dashboard and his nose buried in a book, paying absolutely no attention to me.

  Shaking my head, I drop my arm and walk over to the back of the cart, where my bag is strapped, shoving the 9-iron in and pulling out my wedge.

  “I’m on the 7th hole. You want to maybe try caddying before we get to 8?” I ask as I walk by him and back over to my ball ten feet away on the private members’ course of SIG.

  “You’re not paying me to be your caddie now. I’m just tagging along for funsies,” Bodhi replies without looking up from his book, with a loud crunch of an apple right when I’m in the middle of a practice swing.

  “You don’t cash the checks I do pay you,” I remind him, taking a few more practice swings right next to the ball.

  I stopped giving him paychecks years ago when I walked into one of the many vans he’s lived in when we’ve had more than a few weeks off and found two of the paychecks on the floor under a pizza box. After that, I started depositing everything into an account I set up for him to make it easier on Bodhi and so I wouldn’t have a panic attack thinking about all that money just sitting around covered in coffee grounds and God only knows what else. As far as I know, he’s never touched that account. Bodhi gets odd jobs to make cash under the table wherever we are in between my golf schedule, like giving surf lessons, selling fruit at a roadside stand, and he even sang at a wedding reception once in Mexico. He’s a simple guy who only needs money to eat, drink, and for the occasional golf hatred shirt. Today’s shirt is bright yellow with a picture of a bag of clubs next to the puking emoji.

  Lining my club up to the ball, I relax into position, looking back up where the hole is and taking a second to gauge the direction and speed of the light breeze coming off the ocean. Eyes back down on my ball, I relax my shoulders and let the mechanics that have been drilled into my brain and my muscle memory take over, my club connecting with the ball right as Bodhi takes another loud crunching bite out of his apple and speaks again.

  “Oh, right. Well, I just don’t wanna caddie. I’m at a good part in my book. It’s getting spicy.”

  I take a second to watch my ball pitch quickly up into the air and land on the green, slowly rolling over once before dropping into the cup. After close to two weeks of no golf, I discovered during my first game a few days ago that I haven’t gotten rusty. With a satisfied smile, I walk up the hill and across the green to grab my ball before heading back to the cart and Bodhi, who is almost finished with the loudest and crunchiest apple in the world, and right in the middle of a book with a shirtless man on the cover.

  My dad thought I lost my mind when halfway through a match in Costa Rica I fired my caddie and hired the young man who looked like he hadn’t showered in a week, hadn’t had a decent haircut in years, and absolutely snuck his way onto the course without buying a ticket because he heard you could get free hot dogs. I was coming back to my bag, and my caddie was handing me a club—I don’t even remember which one at this point—and this homeless-looking surfer double-fisting hot dogs standing behind the spectator rope yells to me through a mouthful of food with mustard on his cheek why it was the wrong club and how my caddie had been trying to screw me over all morning by giving me bad advice. I don’t know what it was about the guy, but I trusted him immediately. I made him throw an extra polo I had in my bag over his faded, ratty T-shirt, and I came back from seventeenth place to finish the match in second.

  That decision proved to be the best decision of my life so far. As much as Bodhi hates golf, he knows a shit-ton about it. He’s a math genius and a weather aficionado. In less than a minute, he can do a calculation in his head with the current direction and speed of the wind and adjust for humidity and barometric pressure or some shit and tell me exactly what I need to do and how hard I need to swing to get my ball as close to the cup as possible. Bodhi was the only thing I ever put my foot down about with my dad. I wouldn’t golf if he couldn’t be my caddie. And since my golf game greatly improved after bringing Bodhi on board, he couldn’t argue. Much. He still made it known almost every day how unprofessional Bodhi was and how bad he was for my image.

  I didn’t need any help from Bodhi screwing up my image, so joke’s on you, Dad.

  “I’m assuming after you chased Birdie out of the pro shop a few days ago that you sat her down and had a nice, long discussion with her, right, Pal?” Bodhi asks as I slide into the cart. He puts his romance novel away and drives us toward the 8th hole.

  “If you would have come back to the cottage that night or any night since then, you would already know this information.”

  “Awww, I’m sorry I didn’t come home, honey. It was just one time and she meant nothing to me,” Bodhi says, taking his eyes off the cart path to bat them at me and I flip him off. “I gotta say, you are so much more fun now that you’ve gotten a whiff of the salty ocean air and a salty young woman. And I already know you didn’t do jack shit with her, again. I made some friends, and we partied on the beach that night. Let off a few fireworks, had some beers, and I got the 4-1-1 on the day’s happenings on Summersweet Island, which included you dicking around playing golf all day and not talking to Birdie.”

  He frowns at me when he stops the cart right off the 8th hole tee box.

  “I honestly don’t even remember where I was the next two nights after that.” He finally laughs.

  It’s definitely been nice and relaxing getting familiar with this course again the last few days since Birdie ran away from me and continues to avoid me, especially when the private side has been mostly empty and I’ve gotten to golf in peace. Actually, I haven’t been able to golf without a crowd of people watching my every move and holding their cell phones up for pictures and video as soon as I step out onto a course since the
last time I was here. It was the perfect way to get back into the game and remember why I love it. For a little while, it even felt like Birdie did that on purpose when she shooed me away three days ago and has left a note for me every morning since then telling me to keep getting familiar with the course. Because she knew I needed it and not just to get rid of me. All that peace and relaxation has slowly disappeared when at the end of every four-hour round of eighteen holes, no matter what time of day I start them, I go back to the clubhouse and am told Birdie has left early. Which tells me she has absolutely been sending me out to golf the last three days so she wouldn’t have to deal with me, and I’ve only gotten a few glimpses of her here and there when she’s driving around the course.

  “She ran away from me again that day and continues to avoid me. This is getting ridiculous,” I complain as I get out of the cart and stare at my bag.

  “The wind is coming in it at five miles per hour with 52% humidity, so use the 3-wood, and what’s ridiculous is that you keep letting her run away and avoid you.” Bodhi scoffs as I snatch the 3-wood out of my bag and stomp toward the tee. “She’s like, five-foot-four and a buck twenty. What in the hell have you been working out for, for the last few years? Just pick her up and put her where you want her.”

  Bodhi laughs, knowing damn well if I or anyone else tried to pick Birdie up and put her where we want her, we would no longer be breathing.

  “Also, give her a break. She’s been through some shit recently on top of your shit by surprising her out of the blue after two years of no contact,” he adds right when I’m pulling back my club.