"It didn't account for me having a good day."
"You were having a good day. Through six holes, you were one under par and in position to shoot sixty-eight. The plan was working."
"It didn't feel like it was working. It felt like I was playing someone else's game."
"You were playing the game most likely to produce the lowest score."
"I don't care about the lowest score. I care about—"
She stops. She knows what she was about to say. We both know.
"You care about being seen," I finish. "You care about the broadcast reel. The commentator calling you fearless. The gallery gasping at the shot nobody else would try. You chose to perform. Those are different activities."
"Different from what?"
"From winning."
The word drops between us like a club on concrete. She flinches. Not visibly — her jaw tightens, her shoulders pull inward by a fraction, and her eyes, which have been holding mine with combative steadiness, flicker downward for a half-second before returning.
I walk to her car. I pick up the bag from where she's wedged it in the trunk. I carry it three steps and set it on the asphalt beside the driver's side door.
"I will work with a player who disagrees with me. I expect disagreement. I welcome it. If your reasoning is sound, I will adjust the plan. That is how partnership operates."
I straighten. She's watching me with an expression I haven't seen from her before — not defiance, not charm, not the camera-ready poise. Something rawer. Something that looks, if I'm being honest with myself, like a woman who has just realized she might lose something she assumed she could keep.
"I will not carry the bag for a player who never intended to listen. Disagreement requires having heard the argument. You didn't disagree with my strategy today. You dismissed it. You let me stand beside you for eighteen holes believing we wereworking together while you played the game you were always going to play, and that is not disagreement. That is disrespect."
I let the sentence settle. The parking lot is quiet. The hose has stopped. A dry wind moves across the asphalt, carrying dust and the faint mineral smell of the course.
"If you want an audience rather than a caddie, the trial ends here. There is no penalty. No financial consequence. You owe me nothing except honesty about which one you're looking for."
I walk toward my car. My keys are in my right hand. My notebook is on the hood where I left it. I have taken four steps when she speaks.
"Nerys."
I stop. I do not turn. This is deliberate. If she wants to say something worth hearing, she can say it to my back. I've spent enough of this day facing her while she ignored me.
"I'm sorry."
Two words. Spoken without the characteristic speed that I've come to associate with Tala's speech. Slower. Lower. As if the words are traveling through something dense on their way out.
"Not the kind where I say it and then do the same thing tomorrow. I'll try."
I turn.
She is standing beside her car with her hands at her sides. Not in her pockets, not crossed over her chest, not gripping anything. Just at her sides, open and visible, and the vulnerability of that posture from a woman who armors herself with motion is more persuasive than anything she could have said.
Her chin is not lifted. Her jaw is not set. The defiance has left her body and what remains is a woman who is younger than me by seventeen years and has just been told by someone she hired that she wasted both their days, and instead of firing meor arguing or storming off, she is standing still and apologizing without qualification.
The compactness of her body. The way her shoulders have dropped from their combative height to something approaching honesty. The flush on her cheeks that might be heat and might be shame and is probably both. The scar on her lower lip, pale against the bronze of her face. The gold earrings catching the last of the afternoon light.
I want to touch her cheek.
The thought arrives without permission. It is not professional. It is not strategic. It is the simple, animal recognition that the woman in front of me is showing me something genuine and my body's response is tenderness, and tenderness is not an emotion I have permitted myself in a professional context since before the yips, since before the collapse, since before I learned that caring about outcomes on a golf course can destroy you.
I do not touch her cheek.
"Trying is the minimum," I say. "I'm looking for commitment."
