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I hold my breath. He won’t make a move on me, he is saying.

What if I want him to?

5

BEN

Geoff shifts in his seat, his hand tracing the polished walnut grain of the fold-out table between us. I watch his fingers, strong and big. I force myself to look away. He is young, but he is no kid.

“I’ve never been on a plane where you don’t have to take your shoes off at security,” he says, breaking the quiet.

I look over, a smile tugging at the corner of my mouth. The sharp, hyper-focused ‘tournament eyes’ I usually wear are completely gone. Switched off.

“The Tour pays for a lot of things, Geoff. But this is one thing I spend my own money on. No lines. No fans asking why I didn’t make birdie on Eighteen. Just… quiet.”

I reach over and pull my laptop bag to me, tugging open a side pocket. I pull out a small, white plastic bottle and toss it across the aisle. It lands perfectly in Geoff’s lap.

He looks down. It is a fresh bottle of high-grade, clinical skin-repair cream, the kind doctors prescribe for severe friction burns.

“For your shoulders,” I say simply, taking a sip of water. “I saw the white athletic tape sticking out of your collar when you loaded the bags into the trunk. Mac is a good caddie, but his advice on athletic tape is twenty years out of date. It’s just going to tear your skin off when you sweat.”

Geoff’s face flushes hot. He looks down at the bottle, his thumb smoothing over the label. “You notice everything, don’t you?”

“It’s my job to notice everything,” I say. I lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees, bringing my face closer into Geoff’s space. “On the golf course, I have to know if a blade of grass is leaning left or right from two hundred yards away. If I lose focus, I lose a hundred thousand dollars.” I sink back into my chair and close my eyes for a moment before continuing. “But here? In this cabin? In our suite? I don’t want to be the guy who notices everything. I just want to be a guy.”

Geoff looks from the bottle up to my eyes. “It must be really lonely out there.”

“You have no idea,” I murmur. “I eat dinner with my agent, who is calculating his next corporate bonus. I hit balls next to a twenty-two-year-old phenom who wants to take my spot in the world rankings. I go back to a hotel room, I watch videos of my swing, and then do it again the next day. You do that for ten years, Geoff, and you start to forget what your own voice sounds like when you’re not giving an interview. ‘Just keep my focus, one stroke at a time, eye on the ball, blah blah blah blah blah’.”

He huffs a small laugh.

I stand up, make my way to the tiny toilet. As I shuffle back to my seat, the plane shudders as it hits a pocket of air, making me sway. I catch myself on the headrest of Geoff’s chair.

I don’t move away. I’m standing right beside him, inches from him, looking down at him. The proximity is intoxicating. I can smell the cheap, spicy soap he used this morning.

I look down, my fingers itching to brush against the collar of Geoff’s shirt, aching to carefully tuck a stray piece of white athletic tape back beneath the fabric of his polo. My fingers are on his chair, not quite grazing the sensitive skin of Geoff’s bruised neck, but I can feel the heat of him. Geoff’s breath hitches. I need to sit, or I will touch him. I shuffle back into my chair, adjusting myself before I turn to sit.

“When we land in New York, the circus starts,” I say softly, my eyes dropping to Geoff’s lips for a fraction of a second before locking back onto his eyes. Damn, I want those lips against mine. Be good, Ben, do not be the creepy old guy. You promised. “The media, the locker room, the guys I’ve known for a decade. I’ll have to put the mask back on. I won’t be this relaxed.”

Geoff nods. “Got it.”

I don’t think he does.

The transition from the runway at Westhampton to the south shore of Long Island is where my gut always started to tighten.

Pennecote Meadows. The American Open.

It doesn’t matter that I am safely nestled in the upper-middle tier of the world rankings. It doesn’t matter that my exemptions are secure for another two years. The American Open is a meat grinder, as the IPGA takes pristine, beautiful golf courses and turns them into psychological torture chambers, growing the rough knee-high and baking the greens until they hit the speed of concrete.

The tournament hotel isn’t some standard corporate Hilton. For a Major in the Hamptons, The Tour books us into a historic, sprawling shingle-style resort tucked away in Southampton. It looks like an old-money estate, complete with manicured hedges, white rocking chairs on the veranda, and a gravel driveway that crunches expensively under the tires of my black rental SUV.

Geoff sits in the passenger seat, his eyes wide as he looks up at the cedar-shake facade. He has his canvas duffel bag jammed between his feet. He looks like a gorgeous college kid who has taken a wrong turn on the way to a beach party. I almost feel guilty. Almost.

The valet opens my door. “Welcome back, Mr. Vance,” he says, offering a practiced, country-club nod. “Excellent week in Denver, I hope? We’ve got your bags.”

“Thanks, Tommy,” I say, handing him a crisp twenty-dollar bill before walking around to the back of the SUV.

This is where the mask goes on.