I text Tala.
Signed.
The response is immediate. Under three seconds. She was waiting.
When can I see you?
I look at the marsh. The light is fading. The egret is gone. The tea is cold and the evening is warm and my body is carrying an anticipation that feels like standing over a putt I know I can make but cannot bring myself to rush.
Singapore. Hotel. After day one.
Three days. Three days of preparation and travel and professional focus and the kind of deliberate, structured waiting that I have spent my entire career teaching players to endure.
That's cruel.
I smile. The expression feels unfamiliar on my face at this hour, in this chair, alone on this porch. I have smiled professionally and strategically and socially for years. This smile is none of those things. It belongs to no audience.
That's patience. You should practice.
I set the phone down. The marsh darkens. The insects multiply their song.
Three days.
I have waited five years to feel this particular kind of terrified. Three more days is nothing.
Three more days is also, possibly, everything.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Tala
Singapore is trying to drown me.
The humidity wraps around my body like a wet towel the moment I step off the plane, and by the time I reach the hotel, my polo is plastered to my back and my hair has doubled in volume and I look like a woman who just walked through a car wash rather than an international airport.
I don't care.
Three days. I've waited three days since Nerys signed the contract and texted mepatiencelike a woman who doesn't understand that patience is not a virtue I possess. It's a skill I'm borrowing from her on a temporary and highly conditional basis.
Day one of the tournament. The course is carved out of rainforest — dense tropical vegetation, manicured fairways that feel like carpet under the heat, greens that hold everything because the humidity keeps them soft. It's the opposite of Phoenix, the opposite of Kiawah. Every variable is different.
Nerys has accounted for every variable.
Her strategy document for Singapore is forty-three pages. She has humidity-adjusted carry distances for each of my clubs. She has green-speed data that accounts for the moisture in the grass. She has notes on how the ball will fly differently in thickair — shorter carry, more roll, and a tendency for draws to turn into hooks if I don't reduce my release.
I follow the plan. Every shot. Every hole. Not because I'm performing obedience — because the plan is right, and I've learned in the past two weeks that being right feels better than being spectacular when the woman next to me notices the difference.
I shoot sixty-eight. Tied for eighth. Solid, intelligent, unspectacular golf in conditions that have already claimed three players to heat exhaustion and one to a penalty for an illegal drop.
After the round, Nerys walks beside me to the clubhouse. Her polo is damp at the collar. A strand of auburn hair sticks to her temple. She looks less composed than usual — the humidity has softened her edges the way nothing else has, and I find myself fixating on the fact that her neck is flushed and her sleeves are rolled higher than normal and I can see the flex of tendon in her forearms when she adjusts the bag on her shoulder.
"Solid round," she says.
"Solid is a word for furniture."
"Solid is a word for a player who executed a strategy under difficult conditions and didn't deviate once. I'll take solid."
We separate at the clubhouse entrance. Professional. Two colleagues completing a workday. She goes left toward the practice green. I go right toward the locker room.
