by J. M. Snyder
Taking another sip of his coffee, Greg grimaces at the taste. “Trey, I’m sorry. I really am. I never meant—”
Trey laughs, a bitter sound that chokes Greg’s apology in the back of his throat. “Sorry. You left me hanging, dude, and all you can say is you’re sorry? Fuck off.”
“No, wait…”
But Trey laughs again. “Why? You didn’t wait up last night. Just walked out and left. I’ve never had anyone push me away like that, Greg, I’ll have you know. And I sure as hell didn’t expect it from you.”
The conversation isn’t going well. Greg dares to reach across the table and cover Trey’s tapping hand with his own, silencing it. “Trey, please,” he says, his voice low and contrite. “This is all so…so sudden for me, you have to understand. In my mind I still see you as the kid trailing after me, dragging along a bag of toy clubs so you can play golf with your dad and me—do you remember?”
A faint smile breaks through Trey’s defenses, but he smothers it quickly.
Greg knows that hit a nerve. They share too many memories together to let one misfired evening throw them off course. “Last night I got spooked,” Greg admits. “You might have liked me forever but I’ve always thought of you as a…I don’t know, a little brother, or something. So it’s hard for me to see you in any other way.”
Trey starts to pull his hand out from under Greg’s. “You’re saying you’re not interested, then.”
Greg clasps Trey’s wrist in both hands, holding onto it tightly. “No, not at all. I’m definitely interested.”
A shadow of doubt crosses Trey’s face, creasing it into a frown. “Then what—”
“Give me another chance.” Greg rubs a forefinger along the tender skin at Trey’s wrist, stroking it gently. “We’re still on for today, right? Let me caddy for you, get to know you now that you’re older, the real you, and tonight I’ll make it up to you. What do you think?”
Indecision wars across Trey’s smooth features. “I still need a caddy,” he murmurs, watching the pattern Greg’s finger makes as it strums over his wrist. “And I definitely want you on my bag.”
Greg grins. “On and off the course, I hope.”
Trey looks up, meeting Greg’s eyes with a stern gaze. “But if you’re just fucking around with me here—”
“I’m not,” Greg assures him. “Let me prove it…”
He trails off as Trey stands, extracting his hand from Greg’s. “We’re on the third course,” he says, suddenly all business again. Digging his wallet from his back pocket, he deposits a couple dollars on the table as a tip. “Tee time’s at nine o’clock. Every time you used to caddy for my old man, I always wanted you following me around, not him.”
“I’ll be there for you,” Greg says, rising to his feet.
“That’s what I thought last night,” Trey points out. “Don’t bail on me again.”
Greg shakes his head. “I won’t. Course three, at nine. Then maybe later, after the game…”
With a nonchalant shrug, Trey turns away. “I already let you in my bed once, Greg. You walked out on that.”
A sinking feeling fills the pit of Greg’s stomach. Didn’t they just talk this out? He reaches for the young golfer, grasping his shoulder before he can get far. “Trey—”
But Trey shrugs him off as he walks away. “We’ll see how things play out.”
* * * *
Greg’s stomach is a knot of anxiety as he hurries down to course three. Over one shoulder is slung the bag of golf clubs Mr. Johns gave him all those years ago. He doesn’t know if Trey brought his own clubs or not, but he thinks these old beauts should bring a smile to Junior’s face. And get him back in the guy’s good graces, at least.
When he reaches the course, he almost turns around and returns to the lodge. Trey stands with a pack of buff young men who look cut from the pages of an Abercrombie and Fitch catalog. Firm muscles, tanned flesh, quick smiles and gorgeous eyes…they’re carbon copies, each prettier than the last. What Trey wants with a pale, out of shape, older jerk like Greg is the real question. Why bother wining and dining Greg the night before when Trey had arrived with half the cast of a gay porno in his back pocket? Even the other golfer’s caddies are studs, a trio of sexy frat boys with bored expressions on their faces who grimace as Greg approaches.
Coming up behind Trey, he sighs, “Hey.”
Trey glances over his shoulder, acknowledging him with a nod. That’s all he gets before Trey turns back to his friends and Greg is left standing midway between the two groups, not one of the golfers this time and too old to fit in with the other caddies. This is going to be a long game.
When the time comes to get underway, Greg falls into step beside Trey. Thank God for the convention that keeps a golfer with his caddy while on the fairway—he’d die if he had to waste the afternoon alone. None of Trey’s friends have so much as looked his way, none of them. He wonders if anything were said to explain his presence. “Oh, he used to caddy for my old man. Damn fucker left me with a bad case of blue balls last night, let me tell you. He has no idea what he threw away.”
Greg hopes Trey’s seriously thinking about his offer of a second chance because if he gets one, he swears he won’t walk out again. Now that he sees what Trey could’ve had and didn’t? He’s flattered, of course, and more than a little determined to get back in that bed he left so gracelessly last night. He was a fool, he knows that. He wants to apologize again but Trey still hasn’t said a word to him yet and he doesn’t want to interrupt the golfer before the game.
To what, say he’s sorry? Trey heard it already. The ball’s his to play.
At the first hole, Greg hangs to the left of the tee, where he used to stand while Mr. Johns swung so he wouldn’t be in the golfer’s line of vision. Trey plays the same side, his back to Greg as he lines up his club with the ball. After a moment’s deliberation, he turns and signals Greg with a slight hand gesture that has the caddy running to his side. “Too windy for a driver, do you think?” he asks.
All golf. There’s no smile, no wink, nothing flirty at all about his demeanor today. Greg clears his throat and resolves to be just as stoic. Lifting his face to the sun, he squints as he mentally assesses the wind. “You should be fine,” he says. “Those trees on the right block most of it farther down the green. It’s par two, so it’s an easy hole.”
“They’re all easy once you’re right up on them,” Trey tells him. “I’ve only ever had one that wouldn’t putt out.”
The pun isn’t lost on Greg—he knows Trey’s talking of him. But before he can comment, Trey’s throwing his elbows for more room and Greg retreats back into place.
Once he swings, Trey holds his follow-through position as he watches the ball take flight. Greg sees it sail through the air and fall, bouncing once on the green before rolling to a stop mere yards from the first flag. He marks it mentally, but he doesn’t need to worry—each of Trey’s teammates have different colored logos on their balls to tell them apart at a glance. Still, he’s a caddy and keeping up with Trey’s shots are part of his job.
As he jots down the stroke number on the score pad he carries, Trey comes over and digs into the front pocket of the golf bag for the bottle of water Greg has inside. “This my dad’s?”
“The clubs, yeah.” Greg tucks the score pad and its little nub of a pencil into his back pocket.
At the tee, Trey’s friend yells out a comical, “Fore!” that makes the other golfers snicker.
Greg wants to apologize again—he thinks this might be a better time to say it, when Trey’s distracted by the game and his guard is down. But then Trey turns his back to Greg as he watches his friend’s swing and the moment is lost.
* * * *
The next few holes are the same. Trey tees off, then stands by Greg without speaking as his friends finish the hole. Of the foursome, he’s the best golfer, and is pretty much playing the course for par. His friends aren’t as serious about their game—oh, they’re quiet enough when Trey’s
at the tee, but they joke and kid around when their turns come. By the third hole, Greg’s fed up with them, and he wishes he could get them thrown off the green. “What the hell do you see in them?” he asks.
Trey stands beside him, watching one of the guys line up a shot. It takes three swings before he hits the ball. The others laugh when it finally sails into the distance, and his own caddy teases, “You’re already over par, Chet. I wouldn’t hit it again if I were you.”
At first, Greg doesn’t think Trey will answer. When he does, he just shrugs. “They’re my friends, what can I say? We’re just here to have a good time.”
The words hang between them, balanced precariously on their double meaning.
“Trey, look,” Greg starts, “about last night—”
But Trey waves him aside, dismissive. “It’s cool. I’m over it.”
Over it? What’s he mean by that?
Dread curls into Greg’s stomach. “Give me another chance. I didn’t mean…”
Trey waves his hand again, the fingerless glove he wears a flash of white through Greg’s grass-filled line of sight. “I said it’s cool. Just drop it.”
He steps forward, distancing himself from Greg, and leans on his golf club as he watches the next play. Greg rocks back on his heels, dismissed. At this moment, he hates himself. He made a mistake, he’s admitted as much, but Trey doesn’t seem to want to let him make up for it. He wishes he could turn back the clock, rewind the time, play back the hours leading up to the moment he walked out of Trey’s room. This time he’d force himself to stay. This time, he wouldn’t scare so easily. It would be better to regret having done something than this constant need to apologize for something he didn’t do.
Trey keeps the talk between them light. He comments on the course, asks Greg’s advice on putters and reading the green, worries aloud about the wind and various hazards scattered around the fairway. With perfunctory answers, Greg replies. Watching these young men together makes him feel so damn old. He suspects there’s more than water in some of the guys’ bottles—their slurred speech and constant laughter tells him that. When one of them is concentrating on a shot, the others snicker behind his back, goofing off. Once they snuck up to the guy called Chet and yanked his pants down as he swung the driver. He cursed and swung the club back, hoping to hit someone, but his friends squatted to the ground as they laughed out loud. Even Trey grinned at that.
Greg finds their antics boring. They drag the game out—the sun seems stuck in the sky, unable to advance, and every hole begins to look the same to Greg, which is saying something. Usually he can tell at a glance what course he’s on, but now it all begins to run together. Chet’s the worst of the bunch, and by the fifth hole, he randomly swings his club at any ball on the green, whether or not it’s one of his. When it takes him ten minutes of back and forth putting to finally sink a shot, Greg wants to pull the heaviest iron from his bag and brain him with it. How Trey can stand there so quietly and watch his friends make a mockery of the sport, Greg hasn’t the slightest idea.
And he can’t ask, either. Any comment he makes that doesn’t relate directly to the game as Trey plays it is ignored. Trey asks his opinion—he’s the caddy, after all, and works at the lodge so he has a better understanding of the course than the others do—but there is no chit-chat between them, nothing personal, nothing real. It’s his own fault, Greg knows. He wishes they were alone, he and Trey, with no distractions, no interruptions. He wouldn’t feel the need to talk then; he’d try to recapture their evening instead, relive those kisses, and let his body tell Trey what he’s feeling instead of struggling to put it into words.
Out here on the green, the memory he harbors of Junior has changed. It’s aged, as if he watched Mr. Johns’ only son grow up from that annoying pre-teen from the past into the sure, confident young man who stands beside him now. Part of Greg wishes he had seen Junior grow—when had he dropped the nickname and started using a shortened form of his first name? When did those thin muscles appear on his arms and chest? When had he shed the nerdy awkwardness of youth and morphed into the confident, bold man Greg met the night before?
Greg wants to know. If he’d stayed in touch with Mr. Johns over the years, would things have played out the same? If he’d gone to visit the golfer when he came home from college, would he have grown closer to Trey? If he had answered the kid’s letters, had met with him during holidays, had become friends instead of just two boys who had nothing but Mr. Johns in common…would he be here now, standing on a golf course, squinting into the sun, as he waits for one of Trey’s asshole frat brothers to sober up enough to play ball?
Or would last night have been different? Would they have met, not as acquaintances but as old friends? Would sharing bottles of wine have led to more than hangovers and waking alone? Would Greg even now be thinking ahead to an evening spent cuddling nude with Trey beneath hotel sheets instead of wondering exactly how he can possibly apologize enough to hope to get that far again?
A hard slap on his ass jars him back to the moment. “I’m losing you,” Trey says.
Greg shakes himself awake. His butt stings pleasantly, and he wonders how he can get Trey to do that again. “I’m right here.”
As he hefts the golf bag, though, Trey nods at a couple of old men teeing off up ahead. “Looks like there’s a bit of a blockage on this hole. The guys have decided not to play through.”
“Oh.” Disappointed, Greg shoulders the bag and looks around. Trey’s friends weave toward the crowds gathered around the edge of the course—beyond them are restrooms, and refreshment stands. With a grimace, Greg mutters, “What, they need fresh booze?”
Trey grins, the first time he’s smiled at Greg all morning. “Something like that. The club house is nearby, if you want to wait there.”
Greg glances in the direction Trey points and sees a group of small cottages clustered together near the woods. They must be on the ninth hole, then—the cottages mark a midway point in the course, allowing golfers a bit of a break from the wind and the sun and the game. The main club house stands to one side, a large building with wireless access, a fully staffed kitchen, and a flat-screen television. In the hot Virginia summers, more golfers stay in the club house than they do on the course, socializing, drinking, and keeping out of the humidity. Around the main house, smaller cottages fan out for those who want a little privacy.
A cold drink and a soft cushion to sit down on sounds heavenly right about now. But Greg is Trey’s caddy—he goes where the golfer goes, and he doesn’t miss the way Trey stares after his friends. “It’s up to you,” he says with a shrug. “What do you want to do?”
To his pleasant surprise, Trey nods at the club house. “Why don’t you see if any of those little cottages are empty? I’ll just let the guys know where we are so they can swing by and pick us up when they get back.”
Greg suspects “the guys” won’t be in any frame of mind to continue the game after they reach the alcohol stands, but he doesn’t tell Trey that. Instead, he repositions the bag over his shoulder and heads for the nearest cottage, the promise of air-conditioning and cool water egging him on.
* * * *
The first cottage Greg tries is locked, a subtle sign that it’s already occupied. He heads to the next, and the knob turns easily in his hand. With a wave back at Trey to show this would be theirs, he pushes open the door. “Hello?” he calls out as he enters, but there’s no need—the cottage is empty. Setting his golf bag against the wall, he closes the door behind him, careful to leave it unlocked. He isn’t sure why Trey felt the need to bother with his friends in the first place; another drink or two and the one called Chet won’t be in any condition to take the field again. That guy is a nuisance with a club in his hand.
The cottage’s main room is sparsely furnished—a sofa and twin armchairs huddle together in the center of the room, a cozy nook for those looking to unwind with friends, and along the side wall is a credenza laden with food. Baskets of fresh fruit n
estle beside individual packets of chips and candy, and at either end, mini glass-fronted refrigerators offer small cans of soda or bottles of water. Greg helps himself to one of the latter, guzzling an eight-ounce bottle in one swallow, then grabbing a second to nurse.
Two doors stand like sentinels along the back wall of the cottage. Greg checks them out—one leads to a small bathroom, complete with shower stall. The lodge spares no expense for its guests. The second door opens onto a supply closet. Boxes of chips and candy are inside, as well as bulk packs of the soda and water for easy restocking. Also in the closet are a few random clubs, a bucket of balls that were retrieved from the course, complementary toiletries and towels for the bathroom, and a few extra polo-style shirts with the lodge’s crest embroidered on the left breast. For anything else a guest might need, a sign by the door suggests visiting the main club house, “To help us satisfy ALL your needs!”
Greg smirks as he settles onto the sofa and kicks off his shoes. Why is it when he sees a sign like that, he always thinks of bath houses and brothels? Now that he’s sitting down, he’s aware of one need the club house probably wouldn’t fulfill. The front of his khakis cut across his crotch with a sweet ache, reminding him of the slight erection that’s dogged him all morning. Damn Trey for doing this to him. He said he was sorry—what more could Junior want? He knows he was wrong the night before. If Trey doesn’t forgive him, that mistake will haunt him forever. How will he possibly get through the next few days, knowing what he might have had? And if Trey visits again? What then?
With a growl of frustration, Greg throws himself back against the sofa, one hand punching the cushion beside him. He leans his head back to glare at the ceiling. It’s his own fault. Now that he can think about it with a clear head, he knows that. Last night he worried what Mr. Johns might think if he learned his old caddy and son were hooking up. But today, here, now? Fuck Mr. Johns. Trey’s hotter than his father ever was, and more than willing. And he likes Greg, that’s the kicker. He’s always liked Greg. Why couldn’t he have given Greg some inkling of that earlier? If Greg had known of Junior’s affection back in the day, he would’ve been more prepared for it. Then there wouldn’t be a ten-year gap between who they used to be and who they had become. And Greg wouldn’t have freaked out so easily, and they might be together now…
