Page 43 of Wood

I look down at the coffee instead of him for a moment. Some part of me is still standing on the eleventh fairway in the mist and wind with Geoff at my side, not in a hotel bar being told what I’m worth. I hate this part.

“There’s also,” he says, and here his voice shifts slightly, softer, angling toward something he’s been saving, “some interest in you doing more press. Personality pieces. Human interest. People want the story, not just the scorecard.”

“What story?”

“Journey. Struggle. The long road to a first big finish.” He shrugs, like it’s obvious, like it’s a template he’s filled in a hundred times for a hundred other guys. He probably has. “Doesn’t have to be anything you’re not comfortable with. But it helps. Especially with the young caddie angle, if I’m honest. People love that stuff. The loyal partnership. Every camera in Royal Banks had a shot of you two on eighteen.”

Something in my chest goes tight and I know why. This is wrong.

“Geoff doesn’t love cameras,” I say.

“Geoff doesn’t have to love them. You do the interviews. He just has to exist in the frame.” Marcus says it lightly, already moving on, already scrolling to the next line item, like it’s a small thing, an inconsequential, tiny blip. Geoff is more important than all of this.

My narrative, my choice. Right now. Just no. It’s time.

“Actually,” I say, “there’s something else.”

Marcus looks up from the laptop, still distracted by whatever he’s typing. “Go on.”

“The caddie angle you mentioned. The loyal partnership stuff.” I turn my cup a quarter turn, buying half a second. “I don’t want to do that story. Not the version you’re talking about.”

“Okay.” He says it slowly, adjusting in real time. Hearing me. Closing the laptop and giving me his full attention. “What version, then?”

“The real one.”

He sets his pen down. To his credit, he doesn’t look shocked, just very still, very focused, the way he gets when a deal is about to become either super simple or so much harder. “Ben.”

“Geoff and I.” I say it bluntly, because I’ve decided blunt is the only way I’ll manage to say it at all. “We’re together. Not a caddie story. Not a friendship story. Together.” I force the word out. “Boyfriends. I’ll marry him someday, if he’ll have me.”

The bar keeps going around us, cutlery clattering, an espresso machine screeching, all completely indifferent to the fact that I’ve just said the most important sentence of my life out loud to my agent in a hotel in Belfast, Ireland.

“How long,” Marcus asks finally.

“Does it matter?”

“For planning purposes? Yes, actually, it does.” But there’s no edge in it. It’s just Marcus doing the thing Marcus does, converting feeling into strategy before it has time to become a liability. What he is paid for. Solving problems.

I hear my voice come out steadier than I expected. “Just over a month. After the Connecticut Open. But I want to control the story, Marcus. Not have someone else break it, some photo, some shameful-secret piece. I want to say it myself, on my terms, when I’m ready. And I’m ready. We’re ready. Now.”

Marcus studies me for a long moment. It's not the agent look, but something closer to actually seeing me, a human. “You understand what this does? Sponsors, some of them will love it, genuinely good optics, good story. Some won’t say anything and just quietly not renew. There’s no controlling all of it, Ben, no matter how carefully we do this.”

“I know. I’m done hiding, Marcus.”

“And the press will ask him things too. Geoff. Not just you. Dig into him.”

That lands harder than anything else he’s said all morning. I think of Geoff in the Library last night, quiet, steady, never once needing the spotlight to know his own worth. I know he made that reservation. For me. No, I won’t let the press tear him up.

“I need to protect Geoff as much as we can. He doesn’t do interviews he doesn’t want to do. He may not want to do any. That’s non-negotiable. It’s up to him.”

Marcus nods slowly, already reaching for his pen again, but softer now. Something in him has shifted from managing a problem to actually helping us build something. “Okay. Let’s talk about how you want to say it, then. Your words. We build the frame around what you tell me, not the other way round.”

I nod, and for the first time all morning, the discussion doesn’t feel like something to get through. It feels like a victory.

“I’ll do it,” Geoff states calmly. “We do it together.”

I shake my head. “You don’t have to be in the hot seat. I’m used to it,” I object. Some of those reporters are like rabid hyenas, would tear him up.

His expression is almost feral. “Mom and I used to practice at the dinner table. Debate. Tear each other’s arguments apart. It was fun.” He takes another cucumber sandwich and pops it into his mouth like popcorn. “These are good. Sound hoity toity but yum.”