Page 25 of Iron

I don’t know yet what I’m going to do with them. But for the first time since Illinois, I let myself imagine an answer that isn’t just retreat.

23

TJ

Caleb finds me packing, phone in hand, practically vibrating.

“Boo, Boo, Boo, Boo, Boo!” He is singsonging his words in a high-pitched voice. “You will not believe what just landed in your inbox!” He hits a high note on that last bit.

“Just tell me.”

“Sponsor invite! Next month! Look!” He shoves his phone at me, and I scan the email twice before it actually registers.

Another exemption, this one smaller, a regular Tour event rather than a major, but full field, real status on the line. And filled into the same field as my father’s sponsor, confirmed already, right there in black and white: one of Gavin’s sponsors.

My stomach does something complicated, hope and dread tangled together so tightly I can’t tell which one’s winning.

“He got me sponsored. Same tournament,” I say, mostly to myself.

“Same tournament,” Caleb confirms, delighted, already bouncing on his toes. “Same city. Same week. It’s happening, babe!”

I stare at the name on the screen, printed there in plain, undeniable text, and feel something settle in my chest that isn’t quite nerves and isn’t quite excitement, some third thing I don’t have a name for yet.

Four weeks. Four weeks until I’m standing on the same course as him again, no thirty yards of open ground between our fairways this time. Whatever excuse he has been hiding behind is finally running out.

“Guess I better figure out what I’m going to say to him,” I mutter.

“Oh, we are absolutely workshopping that.” Caleb’s already pulling out a notepad, entirely too enthusiastic about this. “Sit down. This is happening!” He is back to singing. “We have four weeks and I refuse to let you fuck this up.”

For the first time in a month, I actually laugh, real and unguarded, and let him drag me into planning a conversation I have no idea how I’m actually going to survive having.

I find Geoff in the equipment shed at Genesee Hills, restringing a set of demo clubs for a member, and I hover in the doorway longer than I mean to before he even looks up.

“You gonna stand there all afternoon, or you got something on your mind?”

“How’d you know?”

“You’ve got a face like your dad when he’s about to ask me for a favor.” Geoff sets down the club, wipes his hands, and nods at the stool across the workbench. “Sit. Talk.”

I sit. I take a minute to actually get any words out, turning a loose grip wrap over in my hands instead of looking at him. I need to talk this through, get it out of my head before I see Gavin. Fucking Matt. I’d like to find him and punch his lights out.

“Can I ask you something? About you and Ben.”

“Of course.”

“When you two first got together. Were you scared?”

Geoff considers that for a moment, leaning back against the bench. “Scared of what, specifically?”

“Just.” I huff a breath and blurt it out. “Letting him…” He waits. He’s good that way. I finally look up. “I had something happen back in college. Bad. And it’s not that I don’t want… I do… want. With Gavin. But….”

Something shifts in Geoff’s face, gentle, unsurprised, like he’d already guessed there was more underneath the question than just curiosity.

“You don’t have to tell me what happened,” he says. “Not unless you want to.”

I blurt it all out. “Guy I trusted. Freshman year. He wasn’t… careful, didn’t… wasn’t patient… just went for it… and afterward he acted like it was nothing. Like I was nothing.” I swallow hard. “It hurt. Bad. For days. And it wasn’t just my body that got wrecked.”

“TJ.” Geoff’s voice softens further. “That wasn’t your fault. None of that is on you.”