Her hands come over mine on the putter grip.
The contact is — I don't have a word. Professional is the word I should use and would use if someone asked me about it later. Her fingers are long and dry and precise, and they settle over my knuckles with the deliberate pressure of someone who hasspent a lifetime understanding exactly how grip translates into outcome. The scar on her right thumb presses against the back of my hand.
But professional doesn't cover what happens in my body when Nerys Quillan's hands close over mine.
It starts at the contact point — my knuckles, the backs of my fingers — and moves through my wrists into my forearms and then radiates outward into my shoulders, my chest, the base of my spine. A flush of warmth that is not temperature. An awareness so specific it has texture.
Her forearms bracket mine. I can see the lean muscle beneath the rolled sleeves, the fine dark hair on her wrists, the steel watch face catching the light. Her arms are longer than mine by several inches, and the effect is encompassing — I am inside the frame of her body without being held.
"Here," she says.
Her voice is close. Closer than I expected. She's leaning down slightly to see the grip from my perspective, and her breath moves the hair behind my right ear.
"You're gripping with your palms. Feel how the pressure is concentrated here —" she presses gently on the heel of my left hand "— and here." The heel of my right. "That's palm grip. It's strong. It's stable. And it's too rigid for putting, because palms activate the forearms and forearms activate the shoulders and shoulders create tension."
She adjusts my left thumb. A quarter-inch. Maybe less. The movement is minimal and absolutely devastating, because to make it she has to slide her thumb across mine, and the friction of that slide — dry skin, slow, exact — sends a pulse of heat directly into my stomach.
"Grip with your fingers instead. Feel the difference. The putter is lighter in your hands."
She's right. It is lighter. The putter has not changed weight. My perception of it has, because Nerys has moved the contact points from my palms to my fingers and the club suddenly feels like something I'm guiding rather than controlling.
"Softer," she says.
The word lands against my neck. Her mouth is close enough that I can feel the consonants — thesand thefand the breath that carries them. My fingers loosen on the grip. Other things tighten.
"The putter does the work. You just have to let it."
My breathing has become a problem. It is too fast and too shallow and happening in the upper third of my chest, and I am suddenly grateful that she is behind me rather than in front of me, because if she could see my face right now she would see something I am not ready to show anyone, least of all the woman my sponsors hired to fix my short game.
I lean back.
It's a quarter of an inch. Maybe less. A movement so small it could be postural. It could be balance adjustment. It could be the natural sway of a body standing still for too long.
It is none of those things.
My shoulders press against her chest. I can feel the texture of her polo through the back of my tank top. I can feel the flat plane of her sternum and the warmth of her body and the subtle, involuntary catch of her breath when the contact registers.
She holds the position for two seconds.
One. Two.
I count them because counting is the only thing keeping me from turning around and doing something that would make both of us unemployable.
Then she steps back. Clean. Precise. Hands at her sides.
The air where she was standing is cooler than the air everywhere else, and I feel the absence of her like a door closing.
"Better," she says. Her voice is controlled. Completely controlled. Not a single frequency out of place. "Again. Alone this time."
I look down at my hands on the putter. My grip has changed. The pressure is in my fingers now, not my palms, and the club feels different — responsive, articulate, alive in a way it wasn't before she touched me.
I set up over the ball. Twenty-two feet. The double-breaking putt I nearly made earlier.
My hands are shaking. Not from nerves. Not from the yips. From the ghost of her fingers on my knuckles and the wordsofterstill vibrating against the side of my neck.
I stroke the putt.
It rolls over the ridge, takes the second break, and drops into the dead center of the cup.
