by Tara Sivec
Oh God, if he doesn’t come back to me, I’ll let Tess burn this entire island to the ground.
“For shit’s sake suck it up already.”
Tess and I both turn our heads to the doorway as Murphy leans into the small room and thrusts a bag of Pepperidge Farm’s Strawberry Thumbprint cookies at me. I have just enough time to grab the bag with Tess’s arms still around me before he’s huffing and walking away.
“What do you want to do?” Tess asks after a few quiet minutes of me sniffling in her arms and shoveling cookies into my mouth.
“I don’t know.” I shrug, swiping at the tears and pulling away after she gives me one last tight squeeze to turn around and face her in the small storage closet. “I just know I don’t want to pour my heart out to him right now or put any more added pressure on him and mess with his head. He needs to get through the next few days without worrying about me freaking out back here because I’m stupid and scared.”
Tess doesn’t disagree with me about being stupid and scared, and I don’t blame her. This is why I keep her as my friend, because she will never lie to me or bullshit me. Holding the bag of cookies out to her, she takes one and starts munching on it.
“I just want to enjoy my last night with him and not worry about tomorrow,” I admit as Tess bends down and grabs a few boxes of balls, helping me finish stocking the shelves while we share the bag of cookies. “I want to be a happy, smiling, supportive girlfriend, who doesn’t unload all of her bullshit onto his lap right before he gets his one shot to show the world he’s still an amazing golfer who deserves to be back on the pro tour immediately.”
Who has made plenty of money in his career to not need to go to this tournament or any other fucking tournament probably for a long-ass time if he didn’t want to, but this is his job, and who am I to tell him how to live his life? No matter how badly I want to, I can’t ask him to stay and pick me over what he was born to do and what he so clearly wants to continue doing.
He won’t ask me to go, and I can’t ask him to stay.
“Sip and Bitch tomorrow after he leaves?” Tess asks, making tears start pooling in my eyes all over again when she says it out loud, figuring I might as well get it over with as well.
“Yeah, sure. Sip and Bitch tomorrow after he leaves.”
Fuck my life.
CHAPTER 23
Birdie
“Quit puttering around.”
Palmer pulls his mouth away from mine when the sound of the ferry horn signifying there’s ten minutes left before it leaves interrupts our goodbye kiss on the dock.
Not goodbye. Just see you in a couple days… hopefully.
His hands are still holding my face in them, my arms are still wrapped around his waist with my wrists locked together behind his back, and we just stand here staring at each other, neither one of us wanting to pull away first.
God, just ask me to come with you.
“You’re not going to cry like a baby again like you did last night, are you?” I ask him, trying to take a little heaviness off this moment and off my heart.
“You gave me a blowjob while I was watching Caddyshack.” He scoffs. “What man in their right mind would be able to hold it together after something like that?”
I shake my head at him as he chuckles, rubbing his thumbs against my cheeks as he dips his head, pressing his lips gently to mine for a few beats and then pulling back before I’m ready.
“It’s only for a few days, and then I’ll be back,” he reassures me. “You do want me to come back, right?”
He laughs softly again, but there’s a flash of something in his eyes that almost looks like my own stupid insecurities. It’s gone before I can even process it, and he’s giving me a big, dimpled smile as he drops his hands from my cheeks, and I let go of my hold on him so he can bend down, grab his duffle bag, and sling it over his shoulder. Bodhi already loaded both of their suitcases and Palmer’s clubs when we got to the dock a little bit ago, saying his goodbye to Tess back at her place so she could get to work.
“Don’t worry about me or what’s going on back here,” I tell him, wrapping my arms around myself, because it’s suddenly cold as hell without being pressed up against him, putting the fakest smile on my face I can manage. “Just go win that thing and get back on the tour. I’ll be cheering you on watching on the TV in the bar tomorrow at work.”
Or, you could ask me to come with you, and I could cheer you on behind the spectator rope fifty feet from you. We could have sex when we get to the hotel tonight, and I can give you some good luck sex before you go off to work tomorrow morning like a good girlfriend does.
Goddammit, why won’t you just ask me to go with you?
“Right… back on the tour.” He nods, smiling right along with me, making it harder and harder for me to breathe when I’m just standing here like an idiot, not saying what I should be saying.
“I’ll keep my bed warm for you,” I tell him, trying my best to give him a sultry smile, but it probably comes out more like a tilted grimace and not at all sexy.
Palmer steps back up to me, holding the strap of his bag on one shoulder, reaching up between us to brush a piece of hair out of my eyes that came loose from my messy bun, and tucking it behind my ear. Just the brush of his fingertips across my forehead makes me miss him and wish he was back already and he hasn’t even left yet, when the ferry horn signals the five-minute warning.
“I’m suddenly not in the mood to golf anymore,” Palmer mutters, his smile dropping for a second.
“Stop!” I admonish, lightly smacking my hand against his chest. “You’re at the top of your game right now. Just keep your head down and focus, and don’t worry about rushing back here or anything. This is a big deal, and you’re going to do amazing and win, and then it’s going to lead to even more amazing things. Just… go to work and enjoy it.”
He stares at me for a few seconds, and he opens his mouth to say something then stops and smiles at me before leaning in and pressing his lips to mine. He holds them there until the ferry horn blows again and then quickly pulls away, the smile back on his face as he starts walking backward away from me.
“I’ll call you when I get settled into my hotel,” he tells me, and I just nod, the lump in my throat and all the tears I’m trying not to shed almost choking me when he finally turns around and continues walking toward the awaiting ferry.
He’s not going to ask me to go with him.
Jesus, Birdie, so open your mouth and beg him to stay! Stop being a goddamn wuss!
He’s twenty feet away and turning to step onto the small dock that leads up to the entrance of the ferry when I finally find my voice.
“Palmer!”
He immediately stops and turns around, taking a couple steps back toward me before the ferry makes another warning shot and he stops, quickly looks at the boat behind him, and then back at me with a little bit of panic in his eyes.
My heart is thundering in my chest, and my hands are shaking so badly I have to wring them together in front of me and holy shit, what am I doing? But the words are bubbling up inside me, and I can’t stop them from coming out now.
“Listen, I know you have a job to do, and I love watching you do that job,” I tell him with a raised voice so he can hear me, taking a second to swallow back my nerves before I continue. “I know I’m an idiot for not saying something sooner when you’re like, two seconds away from getting on a boat and then getting on a plane, and my timing sucks, but if I don’t say something now, I’m going to hate myself for the rest of my life and—”
Palmer took off like a shot halfway through my word vomit, racing back down the dock until he’s standing right in front of me again, clutching to the strap of his duffle bag and wrapping his free hand around the back of my neck to grip it tightly, making me forget what I was saying for a second when he’s so close to me and I can breathe him in again.
“And what?” he asks, his eyes darting back and forth between mine, urging me to continue.
Come on, Birdie. It’s now or never. Suck it the fuck up so you can get cookies.
“And you don’t have to go to this tournament if you really don’t want to play. You hate playing on television with all eyes on you anyway. Just… stay. Don’t go. It’s not like you really have to or anything. I mean, you can go to the next one if you really have to, right? I hate that I’ve turned into the type of woman who’s asking you to choose, but… stay. Please… stay here with me and don’t go.”
I’m choking on my words, but not a single tear falls as I stare up at him hopefully, my palms sweaty as I press them against his chest. Palmer’s fingers clutch tighter to the back of my neck, and he lets out a sound that’s part groan, part painful moan like someone just stabbed a knife into his chest, his face wincing with the same amount of pain, and not at all what I’d want to see on the man I just begged to stay here with me.
When he doesn’t immediately say anything, I tug my neck out of his grasp and take a step back.
“Birdie, please…” Palmer begs, much like he did when he first got back here and wanted me to give him time so he could explain.
I’ve given him fifteen years of my time and my heart, and he has no right to beg me for anything more.
“You have no idea how long I’ve waited to hear you ask me that, but I can’t right now. Fuck my fucking father!” he suddenly shouts, confusing the hell out of me as he takes a step toward me and I take one back, making him curse under his breath. “Baby, please. You have no idea how much I want to toss this bag down and do anything you ask of me, but I can’t.”
His voice is filled with emotion I don’t even understand, and not even hearing him call me baby can take away the tightness in my chest when ferry workers start unhooking the ropes from the dock.
“It’s fine.” I nod, refusing to cry. “I get it. You can’t stay. I know you have to work, and it was silly of me to ask.”
“Dammit, Birdie, don’t do that. Don’t shut down and act like it wasn’t a big fucking deal that you asked me to stay. I know it was, and I wish to God I had time to explain everything to you, but I have to make that flight. We’ll talk as soon as I land, okay?”
The ferry lets off its final warning blast of sound, and Palmer lets out a whole string of curses before quickly leaning in and pressing his lips against my cheek, right by my ear.
“I love you so goddamn much. I have to play this one. Just this one, I promise, and then I’ll be back,” he whispers, breaking my heart right in two when he kisses my cheek, and then he’s racing away from me again down the dock.
Sure… just this one. Until the next one. And the next one, and the next one, and until nine months go by before I see you again.
Because I just asked you to stay, and even though you told me you loved me, you’re still not fucking asking me to go.
“Good Lord, woman, you look like asshole. Why are you even here? I thought you called off for the next few days?”
Lifting my head from Greg’s desk, where I’d been “resting” it for the last… I don’t even know how long, I pull a sticky note off my cheek that got stuck there and smack it down on top of a pile of resumes he asked me to look over for the person who’s going to replace me as clubhouse manager. I could have looked them over in my own office, but I’m never going into my office or using my desk again, so Greg’s much larger and much nicer office right off the bar and closer to Tess is where I will work forever. Or until Greg comes back to work and I make a new office somewhere else, like the parking lot.
Looking down at myself and realizing I’m still wearing the same ratty jean shorts and Summersweet Middle School Baseball T-shirt with my nephew’s name on the back that I had on last night at Sip and Bitch with the girls, I bring the front of the shirt up to my nose and take a whiff.
I look like shit, but at least I don’t smell like it. I smell a little bit like the vomit that dribbled down my chin after doing more sipping than bitching last night. Wonderful.
“My house smells like his cologne, and he left a pair of his clothes on my bathroom floor,” I tell her, my messy bun flopping down onto my forehead, and I don’t even bother moving it out of the way. “I’d much rather be sad and miserable here at SIG ten feet away from you, where I can’t smell him.”
It took me exactly five minutes after the ferry pulled away from the dock for me to realize that I was an idiot and I never should have let Palmer walk away like that. It’s killing me that I’m not there with him, and I shouldn’t have been such a big baby, and I should have just asked him if I could go with him.
“Gee, thanks. I’m honored,” Tess deadpans, moving into Greg’s office to come around the desk and hop up on top of it while I rock back-and-forth in my computer chair. “How long have you been here?”
I glance at the clock on Greg’s computer, shocked that it’s a little after five and I’ve been sitting here all day doing absolutely nothing but feeling like crap. I knew Tess was working the evening shift, and her appearance here should have told me what time it was and how long I’d been here, but my brain can no longer hold simple information. It’s filled with nothing but Palmer and what he’s doing, and how he’s doing, and what he wanted to talk to me about last night that I never got to hear, because we kept missing each other’s calls all night long. And now today, I know he’s too busy, and I’m not going to bother him. But I did text Bodhi to see about warm-ups, and Bodhi told me he was doing great and he was looking really good. Which meant I could stop feeling bad that my immature behavior on that dock didn’t mess with his head.
“Does it really matter, Tess? Does anything really matter?”
“Stop being so dramatic.” She laughs. “He told you he loves you.”
“Then why didn’t he ask me to go with him?”
She just looks at me pointedly, and I sigh, smacking my elbows on the desk and putting my head in my hands.
“I don’t know, Birdie. Maybe you should have asked him why when you stood on that dock and asked him to stay and then never told him you loved him back,” I mimic Tess’s voice, repeating the words she said to me at Sip and Bitch last night.
“God, whoever told you that must be amazing and brilliant,” she muses.
I remove one of my hands from my face long enough to reach over and flick her thigh.
“There’s still time for you to call him and ask him if he wants you there,” Tess adds.
I scoff, pulling my head up from my hands.
“That sounds like it would be a great conversation. ‘Hey there, sorry to bother you. I love you oodles and oodles, and I know you didn’t ask me to come, and you clearly don’t want me there, but I really want to be there, because go team!’”
Bringing my arms down from their high-vee cheerleader pose, I glare at Tess.
All of a sudden, she whistles really loudly. A few seconds later, my mom and Wren come around the corner of Greg’s office, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with their arms crossed as they look at me and my sorry, sorry state. My face hurts a little after never washing last night’s makeup off, and I can actually see the dried and crusty mascara flaking off my lashes every time I blink.
“Roberta Marie Bennett,” my mom begins, making me shiver a little when she uses my full name, and I realize Tess called my family in as reinforcements. “Did I fail you in some way as a mother?”
“Um, what?” I laugh in confusion. “No, of course not.”
I look at my sister to see if she knows what our mom is talking about, but she just gives me the same pointed glare as her.
“Then why in the absolute hell are you sitting here fretting, and worrying, and being sad instead of standing up for what you want and demanding what you need? I did not raise you or your sister to be weak and not know your worth,” she tells me sternly.
“Why would you ever think for one minute that you aren’t enough for him?” Wren asks, shaking her head at me in shock and I shoot Tess a quick glare that she gave away all my secrets. “You are so am
azing, and you put all of us before yourself, and you have more than enough to offer him. Don’t act like you don’t know that. You just forgot for a little bit, and that’s okay. But you’ve been sitting here all this time waiting for him to ask you to come with him. You’re Birdie fucking Bennett! Get off your ass and just go be with him if that’s where you want to be! Or at least get mad about it instead of sad.”
Jesus, she’s right. This isn’t me. I’m not this weak, simpering woman. I threatened Palmer with a golf club the first time I saw him again I was so angry at him. Why am I sitting here feeling sad when I should be pissed? That absolute piece of dog shit told me he loved me and then didn’t ask me to go with him. I begged him to stay, and he didn’t even ask me to go.
I gave him a goddamn blowjob while he watched Caddyshack, and he didn’t ask me to go!
“I am going to kick his ass when I see him.”
“Hell yes!” Tess cheers as my mom and Wren smile.
“Shit!” I curse, reaching for my phone on the desk, but not even knowing who the hell to call. “I can’t get a flight out to California tonight this late, and I can’t just show up there at the end of the day tomorrow and expect someone to let me on the course or anywhere near the resort to see him. I don’t have a ticket or any kind of credentials.”
My shoulders deflate and a little wind leaves my sails when I realize the ass kicking will have to wait. All of a sudden, my phone dings in my hand with an incoming text, and I notice Tess smile and slide her own phone she’d just been typing on into her back pocket.
“What did you do?” I ask nervously as I look down at my phone and see it’s a text from Bodhi.
Bodhi: Hey there, hot stuff! Okay, so, there is a lot to tell you and little time to do it, so you’re just going to have to trust me here, and Bodhi will reveal all soon. I lied earlier when I told you Palmer was doing splendid in warm-ups. He is golfing like absolute shit. OMG it’s almost too hard to watch. But I am, because it’s also kind of funny LOL! Don’t worry. Nothing has been chucked into a water hazard. Yet. There is a very big reason he is playing in this tournament right now that I already told him is a dumbass reason and he should have told you about that reason, but he didn’t listen to me. This prideful dipshit needs to place in the top three of this thing, or he is not going to be fun to live with, and with the way he’s golfing today, he’s not even going to make it onto the leaderboard. There is a red-eye flight to San Fran tonight booked in your name. Someone will pick you up at the airport when you land tomorrow and bring you right to the resort, where there will be a VIP badge with your name on it. A security guard will escort you out to the course as soon as you get here and bring you to whatever hole we’re on. Please get on that flight, get out here, and kick his stupid ass. Kiss-kiss! Give Tess an ass grab for me.
