Page 25 of Unexpected Shot
As I get my stance set up, I’m struck by how much adult Chad is just a more douchey version of high school Chad. He’s pompous. Arrogant. Will tell anyone who will listen about all of the athletes he’s worked with. I’ve heard him drop Beau’s name around the country club on numerous occasions. I wonder if he gets off on the attention it brings him.
But none of that can matter. I can hate him as a person, but if he’s the one who can fix me, then I’ll deal with all the other bullshit.
“Fine,” I say with a groan. “But only a few more swings. I have to play in thirty minutes.”
I bend over, placing my tee into the ground and setting my ball up at the perfect height. Closing my eyes as I stand back up, I focus on all the things I need to do to hopefully, finally, make the contact I know I can.
Breathe…adjust my weight…adjust the stance…hinge slightly…slow back swing…engage…let it rip.
I do everything I can. And everything feels perfect. Until it doesn’t.
As soon as I come down on the ball, my weight feels off. Yes, it’s a new stance, and in golf, the slightest adjustment in that area can throw off a multitude of things in your swing. But I’m too far into it to stop now, so I let my driver make contact with the ball.
I don’t need to look too far to see what I already know. That it barely traveled a hundred yards.
“Fuck!” I scream, earning me disapproving looks from theother guests I’m sharing the driving range with. “What the fuck was that!”
“Sorry, everyone,” Chad says, waving and apologizing to the members as he takes me by the arm and pulls me away from the range. “Shelby, I know fuck is your favorite word in the English language, but you have to watch yourself.”
I rip away from his hold before slamming my driver back into the bag. I don’t even bother putting the head cover back on. “Don’t tell me how to react. If anything, you should be just as mad. Every single one of your suggestions has made me worse off.”
Chad steps into me, his eyes hard as he looks down at me. “This is one of your problems, you’re too stubborn and you have a mental block with thisprovensystem. I’m doing my job. It’s not my fault you’re not getting it. Do you know how many clients I’ve worked with? How many proven successes I’ve had? Dozens! And the only thing they had in common was me. So what does that tell you, Shelby? Maybe this isn’t working because of you. As for the language? You can’t fly off the handle after one bad shot.”
Oh, I’m about ready to use a lot more than one f-bomb. “It’s not just one bad shot, Chad. It’s been months.Months.I’m getting worse. I don’t have time to take two steps back for every half step I take forward. I have to play now, next week, and I’m not ready.”
When I decided last year to take the entire season off, it was to get my game to the same, if not better, form than when I had to step back. I knew I wasn’t ready last year, but never in a million years did I imagine I wouldn’t be ready by now. But the way I’m hitting the balls, I can’t even predict when my game is going to be back up to form.
“You’re ready,” Chad says as we each take a seat on the bench. “Plus, I’ll be there with you as your caddy. What could go wrong?”
If someone took a picture of me right now and the look I’mgiving him, I’m sure it could be turned into a meme in five seconds. People all over the world would recognize the universal phrase, “the fuck you thinking?”
“I’m not,” I say bluntly. “I was consistently driving at two-hundred and seventy-five yards. And that was on the low end of average for me. When I hit three hundred two years ago, people lost their minds. My game is completely tailored to not needing a lot of long irons to play. Yet here I am, a week out from my first tournament in a year, and I can barely hit two-fifty. And when I do, it’s lightning in a bottle. My long-iron game is average at best. How am I going to be competitive, especially in a field where I have to play against men, when my game isn’t my game anymore?”
I let my head fall back and close my eyes, willing away the tears threatening to spill out. I’m ShelbyFuckingLeBlanc. Tough. Hardened. Doesn’t take shit from anyone, and nothing gets to me.
Except this is. I feel it. More and more every day.
I take a deep breath, letting the gentle breeze of the Tennessee day calm me down, when I feel something touching my leg.
Not something. Someone.
“It’s okay, Belle. We’re going to get your swing back.”
I look up, the mood ruined by Chad, who, for some reason, thinks he can give me comfort right now by putting his hand on my leg.
What the fuck is he doing? And why did he call me that?
Beau calls me that. I might hate it, and I hate when he says it, but that’s Beau’s name for me. Hearing it coming out of Chad’s mouth feels…wrong.
Also, why the hell is he touching me? Aside from a few fist bumps, and the one hug I gave him the first time I thought my swing might be fixed, we don’t touch. Turns out it was a premature hug, anyway. Because the next day, I was back to hacking at the ball and it looked like it was my first lesson of my career.
But it’s like I’m frozen. I can’t stop staring at it. I don’t knowif he’s trying to be comforting or what, but his thumb is strumming back and forth. And I want to smack it off.
I’m about to do just that, while also telling him to never call me Belle again, when the bright sun is suddenly covered by a looming shadow.
“Well don’t you two look cozy.”
The deep voice startles me. But what shocks me even more is that when I look up to see Beau looking down at Chad and I, there’s something in his eyes that looks a lot like…jealousy?
