Page 17 of Iron

We walk toward the clubhouse together, and I don’t look back at my phone, don’t need to, the numbers are burned into my head now. Late afternoon group. Two spots behind Gavin.

16

GAVIN

I’ve been doing fine, telling myself I’m fine, keeping my head down, playing steady, forgettable golf. My new caddie knows the course better than he knows how to read my temper and feeds me yardages with none of Stephen’s easy shorthand.

I don’t let myself think about which hole TJ’s on. I don’t check the leaderboard between shots. I am, by any reasonable measure, behaving myself. Very reasonable.

Then we make the turn.

The path from the ninth green to the tenth tee box cuts close along the edge of the clubhouse. TJ’s group is coming off eight as I’m walking up, close enough that for one unavoidable stretch of maybe thirty yards, there’s no course between us, no fairway, no gallery rope, nothing but open ground and the people walking it.

I see him before he sees me. Stephen’s beside him, saying something low, and TJ’s nodding, still dialed all the way into his own round, shoulders set, eyes forward. Focused. Good. That’s real good. Exactly where his head should be today.

I tell myself not to look. I look anyway.

And then, like he feels it the way I always seem to feel him, like he can feel my eyes on him, TJ’s head turns, and our eyes catch across that thirty yards of open ground.

Our steps slow but don’t stop. And for one full second, maybe two, there’s nothing else happening anywhere in the world except this. His gaze finding mine and holding, something raw and unguarded and pained flickering across his face before he catches it and smooths it back down.

I don’t look away first this time. Don’t be cruel, Gavin.

I let myself smile at him, small, nothing anyone watching would read as anything but one golfer acknowledging another, and I give him a quick nod, the kind you’d give any competitor you respect. Nothing more than that. Nothing that gives away the way my chest goes tight, the way I have to consciously unclench my jaw.

Something shifts in TJ’s expression. Surprise first, then something softer underneath it, and he nods back, just as brief, just as careful. Then Stephen says something else, and TJ forces his attention back to Stephen, back to the job, back to the last loop of his first Tour event, exactly where it needs to be.

I keep walking toward ten. The moment passes, and we’re out of sight of the clubhouse. Julio hands me my driver without a word. It takes me a full minute to remember what hole I’m even playing.

That’s it. A smile. A nod. Nothing anyone could call anything.

It still nearly takes me off my feet.

17

TJ

Icarry that smile, that nod, all the way to the tenth tee.

Stephen sees it, of course he does. The man sees fucking everything, but he doesn't say a word. He just hands me my driver and lets me have the moment. Lets me breathe. I don’t need to explain it to him.

It wasn’t much. A smile, a nod, thirty yards of open ground between us, and gone in seconds. But it wasn’t nothing either, not after two days of him turning his shoulder into a conversation and turning away like I didn’t exist. He looked at me. He let himself look right at me. Then he let me see him do it. I’m not nothing.

Stephen eyes me on the tee box and just steps back, giving me room. He can read me and he knows I’m dialed in. I’m good. I’m so fucking good.

I tee off on ten with something loose and light in my chest that has no business being there on the back nine of the biggest round of my life, and somehow it’s exactly what I needed. It moves through my mind, my body, and the ball splits the fairway, clean and easy, and I catch myself grinning as I hand the driver back to Stephen.

“There’s that smile,” he says, matter-of-fact, already walking, stuffing my driver into my bag as he moves. “Keep it. Use it.”

I birdie ten, a clean two-putt after an approach that lands soft. Par eleven, nothing dramatic, nothing lost. On twelve, the water hole from yesterday, I don’t even think about going for it in two, just lay up smart the way Stephen taught me and take my par with no drama, no double eagle magic today, just steady, competent golf that doesn’t need to be spectacular to be good.

The gallery is bigger now, and every time I walk up a fairway, there’s a ripple of applause I haven’t gotten used to. I don’t let it rattle me. Nothing can rattle me today, not even glancing up once midway through the thirteenth to see Gavin’s group two holes ahead, tiny figures on a distant green.

I just smile and keep walking.

Birdie on fourteen, the same hole that had the gallery cheering my name two days ago. This time I don’t even need a miracle putt, just a clean approach and a confident read. Fifteen and sixteen go by clean, pars that feel earned. By seventeen I’m four under for the day, tournament total climbing toward something I don’t let myself calculate too closely, not yet, not with a hole and a half still to play.

Seventeen comes and goes without incident, a smart layup and a two-putt par, no dramatics needed.