Page 14 of Iron

Fuck you, Gavin McClain. No more fucking with my game.

12

GAVIN

Three under. Christ. A quiet, unremarkable round. I spent most of the back nine somewhere other than the tee box. Thursday’s highlight reel kept running through my head. Instead of reading greens, I was thinking about TJ, and it cost me exactly what distractions do: a bunch of missed strokes, leaving me with only three birdies to TJ’s five yesterday. I’m forty-fucking-one, I do know better than this.

I told myself that showering and changing, and getting a drink on the deck would shake it off. Get TJ Harrington out of my head.

Instead, I looked up and there he was, sitting with Stephen, that furrow between his eyebrows and biting his lip the way he does when he’s concentrating. I drank the sight in and made the mistake of not looking away fast enough. His eyes locked onto mine. Four seconds. I let myself want him in plain sight of anyone who cared to notice.

Then I panicked. Turned my shoulder into a conversation I wasn’t even listening to, leaving him sitting there like I’d slammed a door in his face. Like he was nothing.

What an asshole. I didn’t give any thought to what that would do to him until Stephen mentioned it, low and careful over a beer once both our rounds were finally in for the day. TJ started his round with a bogey. Hooked his tee shot into the rough. Three-putted. Took him most of the front nine to settle back down. A fucking bogey on a hole he birdied yesterday.

“He’s fine now,” Stephen said, watching me, waiting to see how I’d react. “He shook it off. Eventually. Played the back nine clean, birdied his way to three under. But that start was brutal, Gavin.”

I didn’t ask if it was because of me. I already knew. So did Stephen. His glare told me.

Now I’m sitting in my hotel room with a room service tray I’ve barely touched, staring at exactly how much damage one damned, weak, four-second stare did to a twenty-one-year-old kid who’s already carrying so much pressure. And I added to it. I did that. I didn’t mean to, but I did it anyway, the same way I’ve been doing damage since the moment I turned around and touched his cheek at Ben’s party, then walked out the front door like a coward instead of finishing what I started.

I’ve kept telling myself distance is the kind thing. Keep myself walled off, keep my eyes and hands… and cock… to myself. Let him focus on this first tournament that’s going to make or break the start of his career. I kept thinking that this stupid, inconvenient thing I feel, that I crave, would burn itself out from lack of oxygen. It’s only burning hotter.

And it doesn't feel like kindness right now. It feels cruel. I’m being cruel. Like I’m messing with his head and he’s paying for it on the scorecard.

I pick up my phone, TJ's number saved from some group text about tee times earlier in the week. I let my thumb hover over it for longer than I want to admit. Fuck, I don’t even know what I'd say. Sorry I looked at you? Sorry I looked away like you were nothing? You are so much more than nothing. Not things a man forty-one year old should be sending a rookie the night before a cut-line round.

I put the phone down.

Tomorrow I’ll keep my eyes on my scorecard, my game, come straight back to my room and let the kid play his first tournament without my baggage bleeding into it. My shipping crates of baggage.

13

TJ

Iwake up still pissed off and don’t try to talk myself out of it.

Fuck you, Gavin McClain. No more fucking with my game. Get. The fuck. Out. Of. My. Head.

I said it to myself walking off eighteen yesterday, and I mean it even more this morning. I have coffee in my hand, the long morning stretching out ahead of me before my tee time this afternoon. He’s out there somewhere with his local caddie, and I do not check the leaderboard once. Feels like a small victory.

When Stephen and I head to the range, I’m focused, working through a bucket as Stephen calls out adjustments. He has to be reading whatever is radiating off of me, but he doesn’t ask about it. By the time we walk to the first tee for my early-afternoon start, I’ve sweated the last of yesterday’s ugliness out through sheer repetition.

No nerves this time, no shaking hands, just something harder and colder sitting in my chest where the anxiety was. I blast my drive down the center, three hundred and ten yards, and follow it with an approach that spins to eight feet. No celebrating. I just walk up and drain the putt for birdie.

“There he is,” Stephen says, low and approving. “The guy from Thursday.”

“Better,” I say. “Meaner.”

He almost laughs.

The holes blur together in a good way. I’m not thinking about anything except this shot. A par here, a two-putt there. Nothing too dramatic. Nothing that costs me. No extra putts, no shots into the rough that I’d have to dig my way out of for par. By the time we reach the twelfth, I’ve picked up another birdie. I’m not tracking anyone else’s number on the leaderboard, not checking my phone between holes, not doing anything except playing golf.

The twelfth hole is a par five, four-ninety from the tee, with water guarding the left side of the green. Stephen and I walked it twice on Wednesday because he didn't trust the pin sheet's yardage.

“Two thirty-one to the pin if you want to go for the green in two,” Stephen says. “You've got the leg for it today with that wind behind us. Question is whether you've got the head for it.”

I look down the fairway. My drive split it perfectly, a better position than I had in either practice round, wind pushing gently from behind for the first time all week.