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“Left edge,” Caleb says, crouched behind the ball, dead serious. “It'll break maybe two inches, no more. Green's fast. Baby it.”

“Left edge,” I repeat, and trust him completely.

I take my time over the putt, breathing the way Stephen taught me back in Illinois, the way I’ve done a hundred times since. Step up. Look. Shuffle. Breathe. Focus.

I stroke it clean.

The ball rolls true, tracking the exact line Caleb called. For three full seconds I hold my breath, watching it break left just enough, just enough, dead center of the cup, dropping in.

The gallery erupts. Caleb screams something incoherent and tackles me in a hug that nearly takes us both to the ground. I’m laughing, crying a little, and completely overwhelmed. Birdie, the win, my first Miles Ferry Tour victory, right here, right now.

I won.

Aldrich shakes my hand with a wry smile and walks off. My father shoves his way onto the green and hugs me hard, lifting me and spinning me around in circles, bellowing, “That’s my boy!”

They hand me the trophy on the green, smaller than I expected, and someone from the tour office presses an oversized novelty check into my other hand, $180,000 in block letters that still doesn't feel real. Caleb's crying openly beside me, not even trying to hide it.

The small press gaggle gathers, bigger than usual for a regular Miles Ferry stop, more cameras than a rookie win normally warrants. They fire questions before I've even caught my breath. Somewhere in the noise I hear “500 points” and “moves him into the top twenty”, and let myself actually believe, for the first time all season, that a pro card is within reach.

38

GAVIN

Sunday at Bellerive is hot, thick Missouri August at its most punishing. I spend the front nine grinding out pars, a couple of birdies, nothing spectacular, nothing lost, patient golf against a course that's chewing up players left and right. My shirt is plastered to me before I finish warming up.

Stephen's steady beside me the way he always is, dry commentary, precise yardages, no wasted words. Somewhere around the fifth hole I catch myself thinking about TJ, about Idaho, about whatever's happening on his own leaderboard three states away. I'm out here fighting for a top-ten finish in a penultimate game that would've meant everything to me two months ago, and now it's competing for space in my head with a scoreboard I can't see.

Fuck, Gavin, be here, on this hole.

I birdie seven. Bogey nine, a sloppy three-putt that costs me exactly when I can't afford it. Stephen doesn't say anything, just hands me my driver on ten and lets the silence do its own kind of reminder.

The back nine is a fight. I claw back the bogey with a birdie on twelve, hold steady through a brutal stretch of pin positions on thirteen and fourteen that punish anything short of perfect. By seventeen I'm sitting right on the edge of the top ten.

My approach on eighteen lands twenty feet from the pin, a putt away from locking up the week, and I stand over it feeling an odd ambivalence, like I am performing golf rather than glorying in it. I am at the top of my game and I am thinking about a beautiful boy playing without me in Idaho.

I tap it clean, following the line, and it drops in.

Tenth place. Solid, respectable, real points toward the Cup, real proof the last two months of chaos, distance, doubt, love, all of it, hasn't cost me what I thought it could.

Stephen claps me on the shoulder, walking off the green, no dry commentary this time, just quiet, genuine pride. “Good week.”

“Yeah.” I check my phone out of habit while I sign my card. TJ’s still out there somewhere, last group, hours of golf still ahead of him in a different time zone entirely. Nothing to check yet. I’ll know when I know.

“See you Tuesday in Georgia,” I tell Stephen. He doesn’t even bother with the stare this time.

I don’t waste time. Media obligations, a quick scorecard formality, and I’m in the car to the airport within the hour, the charter already waiting. Kansas City is the only thing on my mind now that Bellerive’s finished with me.

As we land in Kansas City, my phone buzzes.

TJ Harrington wins in Boise.

I read it twice, then a third time. The man I love has just won his first professional tournament.

And I wasn’t there.

“Eat, TJ,” I cajole. He’s barely touched his grilled ham and cheese and barely picked at the soup.

“Too tired,” he sighs, pushing the food away. “Throat is scratchy.”