Page 1 of Wedge

1

STEPHEN

The white lights strung over the deck at Ben’s club haven’t earned their glow yet. It’s a mild June evening, the sun sliding down behind the eighteenth green of the Genesee Hills Golf Club, turning the fairway the color of honey. The whole place smells of fry oil, lemon, and fresh-cut grass. Every picnic table is full. Somewhere behind me, a kid chases a golf ball across the patio, and no one is stopping him.

I’m halfway through a basket of fried trout, back to the deck railing where I can see the whole patio, when Caleb lands on the bench across from me, all knees and elbows and floppy blond hair.

“Stevie, baby, come dancing with us!” Caleb giggles. “It’ll be a blast!”

I have to smile. His hair is in his eyes again. He’s wearing a tank top the color of orange sherbet, and he has a grin that has never once asked permission. Caleb makes me laugh whether or not I’m ready. I won’t even try to correct him on my name. If he knows it bugs me, he’ll just hammer me with it.

“Caleb, I’m too old for that. And I’m not gay,” I reply.

“You danced with me at the wedding,” he chirps.

“Only because you practically dragged me out there.” I sip my beer, the bottle cold and sweating against my palm, and take another bite of trout. The Friday Fish Fry is the only form of social life I have right now. Maybe I should go out with Caleb. Better than sitting in my apartment alone.

“Thirty-eight isn’t old, darlin’,” he says. “It’s just for fun. Come on, live a little! It’s Trans night, all kinds of people will be there, not just gays.”

“We’ll see,” I give him.

“Great! We leave at nine. Don’t disappear before that!” he says, spinning away to another table, social butterfly that he is, blond head bobbing through the crowd. He sits at a table with a few younger players, reaching over to ruffle the mohawk of a delicate-looking young man who playfully smacks Caleb’s hand away. The boy’s hair is a stripe of three-inch-high black hair, fierce and spiky.

Ben slides into a chair next to me. There’s more gray in his dark beard than there was last summer, and the creases around his eyes have deepened into happy laugh lines.

“He talked you into it,” he chuckles.

“He is very persistent,” I say wryly. “You and Geoff should come and keep me company.”

“No sitter.” He reaches for the three-year-old racing past, a fistful of fried fish clutched in her little hand. He wipes his daughter’s face clean with a napkin, picking crumbs out of her dark curls, and Jasmine promptly smashes more fish into her mouth, undoing all his work. He doesn’t seem to mind.

“Pride Tournament coming up again?” I ask.

“Amazing turnout this year. We have a waitlist of golfers wanting to enter,” he replies. “Not enough caddies, either, if you feel like doing some looping.”

Hm. Being a caddie for an unknown golfer. I’ve read a thousand greens in my life. Reading a stranger is harder. Could be fun, could be miserable.

“Maybe,” I reply, my hesitation obvious.

Ben pounces.

“One of my scholarship kids? Sweet guy, good player. Foster dad taught him. He could use a seasoned man out there. Ton of potential.”

“Everybody in a club polo has potential,” I say.

“Not like this one.” Ben sets his beer down. “Plus-two handicap. He won his high school title as a junior, and last year he shot sixty-six in a state amateur qualifier on a muni with secondhand irons, then missed the championship because he couldn’t scrape together the entry fee. His foster dad ran him through a hundred wedges every morning before school and made him log every round on paper. The kid’s got more discipline than half the guys I’ve hosted.”

“So why haven’t I heard of him?”

“Because golf is pay to play, and he never had the money. No national junior circuit, no travel team, no swing coach, so no college coach ever saw him. His foster dad died the spring of his senior year, and he went to work hauling refrigerators for a moving company.” Ben shrugs. “Nobody scouts a kid who can’t afford to be seen.”

“Fine. He can play. So what do you need me for, babysitting?”

“He’s twenty-two, not a teenager. Not a spoiled rich kid, either. Has had some really hard knocks. Feels good to give him a leg up.” Ben tilts his beer back. “I’ll pay your caddie fee.”

I don’t really need the money. Four years in the Corps and eleven on Gavin’s bag, Tour weeks and airports and four a.m. alarms, left me a nice pot of savings and a calendar with nothing on it. When Gavin retired, so did I, and nobody warned me how loud a quiet apartment gets. It isn’t the money I miss. It’s having somewhere to be at dawn, and someone whose whole day I’m quietly holding.

A muscular young man lifts the messy toddler from Ben’s lap. “Hey, Jazzy girl, let’s get you home,” he says, kissing the top of her head, then leaning over to press his mouth to Ben’s.