Kiss My Putt

by Tara Sivec

  I’ve been letting Bodhi drive me around or borrowing his cart when he’s not using it, because I kept forgetting to go down to the storage building next to the cart rental by the ferry dock and sign it out. Something I never remembered or had time to do when I got to Summersweet Island, and something Birdie always took care of for me, because she knew I’d forget.

  She’s been answering all of my emails, and she’s been sending out apology letters to all my endorsements on my behalf, and I know I could say she’s just doing it because it’s her job, but everyone knows that’s not true, even Birdie. Greg knows damn well she has already earned that promotion, and there’s not one other person with her qualifications or her kind of dedication to SIG who could do it better. He just doesn’t want to try to find someone to replace Birdie, because he also knows he’ll never find anyone better than her to run the clubhouse. She’s helping me, because she wants to. Because she can never say no, even to me, because that’s the kind of person she is.

  All three women finally make it out to our table on the deck, everyone greeting each other all at once while Bodhi pulls up a few more chairs from an empty table. I continue standing here forgetting how to use words, just nodding hello like an idiot, my eyes still glued to Birdie, who won’t even look at me, because she’s probably afraid I’ll back her up against the deck railing and try to sniff her again. Good God, we need more beer.

  “You smell wonderful. Is that new perfume?” Bodhi asks Tess, leaning over the top of her bright-red head of hair as he pulls her chair out for her.

  “That’s the smell of victory.” She smiles up at him.

  “That’s the smell of bribery and smoke,” Wren mutters under her breath from right next to me, pulling out a chair and sitting down as I finally take my eyes off a nervous and fidgeting Birdie to glare at Bodhi.

  “That lucky golf hat went up in flames super fast. Very anticlimactic, but still worth every piece of ash that got stuck to my shirt and in my hair,” Tess states, leaning forward in her chair to grab one of the two remaining bottles of beer out of the bucket and pop off the lid.

  “What?” Bodhi chuckles at me, taking a seat on the other side of Tess until Birdie and I are the only ones left standing around the table. “Did you honestly think something like money would work with her? I had to think outside the box. Or, inside that duffle bag you still haven’t unpacked in the hall closet of your cottage.”

  Birdie laughs softly from the other side of the table, finally meeting my eyes. She’s standing right against the railing and right in front of the tiny sliver of sun just disappearing below the ocean’s surface far out in the distance behind her. She’s surrounded by a soft glow of orange, and with her halo of blonde hair and the short, white, flowy romper-thing, she looks like an angel.

  An angel I want to defile a thousand different ways. Wow, I am going right to hell.

  The corner of her soft pink lips is tipped up in a barely there smile as she continues to hold my eyes from where she’s standing. I see her wipe her hands down the side of her outfit and bite her bottom lip, and I hate that I’m still making her nervous. I don’t want her to be afraid of me. I want her to know I’m still the same person. I’m still the same best friend she can trust, and rely on, and talk to, and have fun with, and relax with, who’s just kind of always been in love with her. It’s totally fine! We can be chill. It doesn’t have to be awkward.

  “I ate three pounds of mussels tonight. I’m gonna be shitting myself for a week.”

  Everyone at the table looks up at me, and Birdie’s eyebrows rise just a little.

  Awkward, party of one, your table is now available.

  “Well, I was starving, but hey, thanks for bringing up your bowels.” Birdie breaks the silence a few seconds later by giving me a sarcastic smile and a thumbs up before pulling her chair out and finally sitting down. I can’t help but laugh right along with everyone else as I do the same, thankful at least that she doesn’t look like she wants to jump out of her skin being right across the table from me and we can joke around like we used to.

  “Since I’ve ruined your appetite, can I interest you in some alcohol to also ruin your liver?” I ask, pulling the last bottle of beer out of the bucket of water and letting it drip out on the table as I hand it toward Birdie, our waitress magically coming back with a brand-new bucket filled with ice and six bottles.

  Bodhi leans forward and takes it from my hand when Birdie winces and shakes her head back and forth.

  “Alcohol and I are on a break right now.”

  “Laura made us clean up the multicolored slush vomit we left in the parking lot at the last Sip and Bitch. I don’t know how I’m even drinking again right now,” Tess complains, scrunching up her nose as she looks at her beer then shrugging and taking a big sip.

  Birdie’s eyes meet mine over the bucket in the middle of the table while Wren asks the waitress for a Coke, and I wonder if she even remembers what happened behind the Dip and Twist. I watch her tongue dart out to lick her lips, and when I swear her eyes flicker down to my mouth when I do the same after taking a drink of my beer and my dick starts to get hard, I realize maybe I’ve had too much to drink, since I’m now imagining things. I put the bottle down on the table.

  Grabbing the waitress’s attention before she walks away, I quickly order Birdie’s favorite non-alcoholic drink, none other than an Arnold Palmer, of course, part iced tea and part lemonade, both of which Dockside Eddy’s makes homemade. The soft, sweet smile on Birdie’s face as she looks at me when I do something as simple as remember her favorite drink would have made my knees give out if my ass wasn’t already planted in a chair. I want her to keep looking at me like that, I want her to keep being comfortable with me, and I want her to remember all the thousands of other nights we’ve sat right out here in this very spot, enjoying the view, talking, and just being us. I need her to remember that no matter how much I might scare her with what I’m feeling for her, we’re still us.

  Bodhi suddenly claps his hands, breaking the hold Birdie’s eyes have on me as we all look at him.

  “All right, who wants to hear about the time Uncle Bodhi worked as a gravedigger in El Paso and got a coworker so high on mushrooms that we accidentally buried him alive a little?”

  CHAPTER 13

  Palmer

  “Talk birdie to me.”

  “My God, man, you suck at this game.” Birdie laughs, the musical sound easing the pain of her heckling as my bean bag flies right past the wooden cornhole board and lands on the other side in the sand with a plop.

  “I can get a 1.6-inch in diameter ball into a 4.25-inch in diameter hole from over 150 yards away in one shot by hitting it with a tiny piece of titanium. You and your stupid cornhole can eat shit,” I mutter, trying not to laugh right along with Birdie as the two of us walk side by side through the sand to retrieve our bags.

  My yellow ones are strewn all over the place in the sand, and all four of Birdie’s red ones are inside the damn hole in the middle of the rectangular wooden board with a 10-degree slope with Dockside Eddy’s yellow-and-red logo painted on it, sitting in the sand.

  “You’ve only gotten a hole-in-one once in like ten years. I do believe I’ve gotten many things in my hole just in the last ten minutes.”

  Birdie’s feet come to a stop in the sand as soon as the words are out of her mouth, and I bark out a laugh. Even though the sun went down hours ago, Eddy’s has a few lights strapped to the deck railings along with the old-fashioned, big bulb Edison lights hung all under the deck ceiling that let me see plenty down here in the sand not too far from the crashing waves, including an adorable blush covering Birdie’s cheeks.

  “Don’t you dare,” she warns me, holding her finger up between us to point it at me.

  I wrap my hand around her finger and tug it down until I’m swinging our hands between us, holding onto just that finger. If I touch any other part of her right now, I’m afraid I might throw her down on the sand and crawl between her smooth t
highs that I’ve been tortured with all night as we’ve walked back and forth between one cornhole board and the other, spaced about twenty-seven feet apart in the sand.

  “I wouldn’t dare think of making a joke about how big your hole is with all those things stuffed in it.” I smirk, Birdie groaning and yanking her finger out of my hold.

  And then it’s my turn to groan as I adjust my painfully hard cock in my shorts for the hundredth time in the last few hours when Birdie stomps away in her bare feet through the sand and bends over to retrieve her bean bags from inside the cornhole board. The already too-short romper rides up even higher until I can see a tiny sliver and curve of bare ass cheek.

  Fuuuck. Stop staring at her like a piece of juicy steak you want to take a bite out of and remember what you’re supposed to be doing here tonight—hanging out and getting her to be comfortable with you again, you horny dipshit.

  While Birdie and the girls ate dinner, Bodhi regaled everyone with ridiculous story after ridiculous story of his adventures, all of us laughing and interjecting every so often with stories of our own and just having a fun, laid-back time. Wren excused herself right after dinner to pick up Owen from baseball practice, and Tess and Bodhi challenged Birdie and me to a cornhole game. After we lost the first two games epically because I couldn’t get my bag in the hole to save my life and kept knocking Tess and Bodhi’s bags in to give them more points, Birdie refused to be my partner anymore, throwing her bags down in the sand and crossing her arms in a huff, because she is the worst sore loser in the world.

  Tess and Bodhi disappeared somewhere to continue their date after that, and shockingly, Birdie stayed behind, alone with me. I’m not a hundred percent sure if she did it because she wanted to spend more time with me, or because she just wanted a chance to kick my ass over and over again in the last ten games we’ve played. At least she’s not avoiding me or jumping every time I talk, so I’ll let her humiliate me all night long if that’s what it takes.

  “Here’s your loser bags.” Birdie snorts.

  My fingers graze against hers when I take my four yellow bags out of her hands, paying close attention to that “lady shiver” Bodhi stupidly mentioned earlier in the evening. Turns out it wasn’t so stupid after all. Every time we’ve handed bags back and forth, every time I’ve nudged her hip out of the way so I can toss my bag, every time our shoulders have brushed together as we’ve walked between the boards, I’ve watched her body shudder just the tiniest bit. It’s been fascinating and confusing all at the same time, and it’s just annoyed me even more that I’ve been here this long and I still haven’t earned a Birdie-launch hug, gotten to wrap my arms completely around her body, and feel her against me.

  “You’ve proven your point. You’re still the master of this dumb game, and I still hate it,” I tell Birdie as she gets into position next to the board, facing the one we just vacated.

  “Now you know how every single person feels when they play golf with you,” Birdie says, swinging her arm behind her and then bringing it right back forward, the red bean bag in her hand sailing out and up in a perfect arc before smacking down in the middle of the board, teetering right on the edge of the hole.

  “Oh, come on!” I complain, throwing my hands up in the air with my bean bags clutched tightly in them. “You know I’m just going to knock your stupid bag in before mine sails off the end of the board and into the sand. Just take the three points.”

  She just laughs at my misery, shaking her head at me and pointing down the beach to the fucking wooden torture device taunting me in the distance.

  “I should have bet you money and made this really worth my while. Oh wait, you’re poor because no one will let you play fancy, big boy golf anymore.” Birdie giggles, making me roll my eyes through my laughter as I move up to stand right next to her, take a deep breath, and really focus on my shot.

  “You only have one lesson scheduled tomorrow, and don’t worry, Miss Abigail is going to the mainland to shop, so your sensitive little tushy will get a break. And I’ll need your help with the Closest to the Pin competition in the afternoon. Do you think we should get balloons? I think we should get balloons. Balloons are so festive and fun. And maybe I’ll even pull out a box of those confetti poppers we use on New Year’s. What do you think?”

  I chuckle as Birdie rambles on and on right by my ear, trying to break my concentration.

  “Are you forgetting who my caddie is?” I ask her, my eyes zeroing in on the hole in the other board and how this should be a piece of cake. “You can talk all you want, and it doesn’t bother me. Bodhi never shuts up when I’m training, and it’s actually helped me block out all the annoying little noises, like fans whispering, camera shutters clicking, and people talking about balloons.”

  When I chuck the bag into the air, feel good about it, and think it might just land on the board and stay there, it slides right up the wood, smacking into Birdie’s and knocking hers in the hole before sliding off the end, just like I knew it would.

  “Gotcha. So you just really suck at this.”

  I can’t even be annoyed by Birdie’s exuberance, because watching her cheer and dance all around me in the sand while she taunts me is just so damn funny and so perfectly Birdie.

  Playing this game with her out on the beach under the clear dark sky with hundreds of stars above and the waves crashing to shore, joking and talking just like old times, has made this one of the best nights of my life in a long time, even if my dick has been trying to Hulk his way out of my shorts all night. It’s also something I didn’t even realize I desperately needed. I’ve been high-strung about what I did to my career, I’ve been on edge about what happened with my dad, and I’ve been going insane trying to figure out how to fix things between me and Birdie, when we just needed this. Just the two of us alone, without any outside influences, or blame about the past, or friends with opinions. And I needed this. A night without having to worry about anything but enjoying the company of the woman standing next to me that I’ve missed so goddamn much.

  “It’s getting late. I should probably head home and stop embarrassing you,” Birdie says, tossing her bean bag without really paying attention to where it’s going, since she’s calling the game and turning toward me, and the damn thing still sinks right down into the hole.

  Shaking my head at her, I shove my hands into the pockets of my black athletic shorts, since there’s suddenly an awkward silence between us and I want to fill it by sliding my hands around her waist and hauling her against me.

  “What time do you have to be at SIG tomorrow?” I ask, just to stall for time, because I know damn well when she has to be there.

  “The usual, 6:00 a.m.,” she says as I pull my left hand out of my pocket long enough to glance down at my watch and realize it’s almost midnight.

  “Shit,” I mutter. “I shouldn’t have kept you this long. I’ll meet you there tomorrow and help out.”

  She’s quiet for a minute, and right when I think she’s going to laugh at me and say thanks but no thanks, she smiles and nods. “That would be nice. And you didn’t keep me. It was quite pleasant kicking your ass for hours and hours, game after game, where you just sucked so badly it was almost painful to watch, and now the entire island knows you can’t find the hole,” she quips, paying me back for that hole comment I made a little bit ago.

  “Okay, that’s pushing it,” I grumble.

  “I said what I said.” She shrugs in complete seriousness, making it impossible for me to hold back a smile of amusement as she scoops up her flip-flops from where she tossed them in the sand a while ago and starts walking backward away from me.

  My long-term rental is a few cottages down back behind me, and Birdie has about a fifteen-minute walk through the sand in the opposite direction to her place. I’d ask to walk her home to make sure she gets there safely, but I’ve been punched in the arm enough times over the years when I’ve asked that question that I don’t even bother. I’ll just sneak up into the cottage yards
when she’s far enough away and follow at a safe distance off the beach so she doesn’t see me, like I’ve done for fifteen years.

  “You better bring donuts tomorrow morning,” Birdie warns me, raising her voice as I start walking backward in the sand, giving her the illusion I’m going home as well.

  “Wouldn’t dream of showing up empty-handed!” I shout, continuing to back away and waiting to turn around until she does with a final wave goodbye to me.

  My heart sinks right down into my feet as they trudge through the sand to walk a little way before I can feel like it’s safe enough to turn around and sneak up into a yard to follow her, and my arms feeling empty as hell that another day has gone by without feeling Birdie in them. The last two years of going without her suddenly feel like two million years.