Chapter 8
Zaire stretched out in the full-size bed in the guest house and stared at the ceiling until his eyes blurred.
The little spot Ray set him up in was nice enough - old but taken care of with clean sheets that smelled like detergent and something floral, a working TV he hadn’t cut on a dresser he hadn’t used, and a small bathroom where the hot water hit his back harder than most country club showers ever had.
None of it fixed the noise in his head.
Juniper Falls was too damn quiet for him. Sometimes silence gave him anxiety. When you’d lived in a war zone all your life, that was all you knew, the only way you knew how to thrive.
He lay there in just his shorts, one arm thrown over his eyes, the other resting on his stomach.
The quietness pressed forward. No freeway hum, no occasional gunshot or siren in the distance, no neighbors yelling through the thin apartment walls, no Mama hollering at the TV and no homies downstairs arguing over a game of spades.
Just crickets, wind, the faint rumble of Ray’s old pump kicking on and off, and his own thoughts.
His body was stuck in alert mode.
He kept his gun on the nightstand, not tucked deep in a bag, not hidden under clothes but right there…
close enough to graze with the tip of his fingers.
He’d tried to keep it holstered on his hip when he first walked into the guest house, but something about setting it down - fully visible, untouched…
told his nervous system he could relax for a second, except he wasn’t relaxing.
His wrist ached in that dull, angry way that always hit him when the day slowed down. The tape Ray had wrapped him in helped but didn’t erase the way it throbbed beneath the skin. It was a reminder of what he’d risked, and what the league now claimed he’d jeopardized.
His career…his endorsements…his image.
He exhaled with pinched brows. “Man…”
The last month played in flashes…the press conference and the judgmental faces in linen and ugly shoes. The commissioner’s non-smiling face. The brand reps who wouldn’t look him in the eye after they’d happily cut their checks when the ratings spiked.
Zaire, your behavior does not align with the league’s values.
We’re concerned about the direction of your personal brand.
We need you to meet people halfway.
Halfway where? he thought. They never came his way. They just wanted him to shave himself down into something their mamas would clap for on Sunday afternoons.
He shifted, jaw working, hand riding over his chest where that knot stayed tight. Golf had been his way out and somehow it turned into just another room where he had to fight for his life. Same him…different course.
He dragged his hand over his face and rolled onto his side.
From the little window over the bed, he could see a slice of the main house and. one corner of the porch. He noticed a faint glow from a bedroom window upstairs.
He wondered if it was her window…pretended that it might be.
He imagined her there. Thought about the ways she moved through her room. How did it look and smell? Zaire just let himself imagine he knew.
He could still hear her voice from breakfast earlier. Soft with an edge. Snapping at her Daddy one second, worrying about her Mama the next, then turning around and frying bacon like she didn’t have the weight of the damn world stuffed in her bonnet.
His lips pulled in the dark.
Meadow walked heavily but quickly through the house.
She rolled her eyes fast, talking even faster.
She had this way of filling a room even when she tried to slide in quietly.
He’d peeped how she checked the stove twice, lifted her mama’s cup to see how much tea she drank, wiped down the counters without being asked.
Snappy...sweet…stressed…all at once.
He’d been around a lot of women - some loud, some quiet, some who wanted him for his name and some who wanted to be seen next to him when the cameras were out.
Meadow, on the other hand, didn’t seem to want shit from him.
If anything, she wanted him gone so she could breathe again.
That did something ugly and good to his chest.
“Chill,” he warned to himself, dragging his hand down his face again. “You just got here.”
He was a man at the end of the day and would always appreciate the curve of a Black woman…the strength of a Black woman…the soft edges she had that she thought no one noticed.
Instead of thinking about the way Meadow’s laugh filled him in the kitchen, he closed his eyes, thinking about the swing Ray helped him find earlier.
He focused on the feel of the club in his hands, the way his body fell into that old rhythm when he stopped thinking about who was watching and just hit the damn ball.
Walkin’ them greens, you can hear yourself again, Ray had said.
Zaire heard himself now and didn’t like half of what came up.
He turned over again and checked his phone.
Missed texts from Ertan. A link from some sports blog with his face on the thumbnail. He tossed the phone aside before he read more than the headline. They loved to talk about him. They just didn’t like to listen to him.
The glow from Meadow’s window went dark.
He stared at the black square for a minute.
He was tired, but sleep stayed just out of reach.
His body felt wired. He felt that old edge that never fully left since Crescent…
since he watched people bleed out on cracked sidewalks and memorized which cars slowed down at the wrong time.
You didn’t unlearn that. Not even with a million-dollar swing.
Sighing, Zaire looked over at his gun.
He hated the part of himself that needed it close by just to settle in for the night...hated the part of himself the league would never understand…hated that no matter how much money he acquired, he still went to sleep with his fist ready in case he had to fight- to protect himself.
The same fist that had him in Juniper to clear his head when clearing his head wasn’t even possible.
He lay there until the ceiling fan started to make him dizzy…until the ache in his wrist blended with the restlessness crawling under his skin.
Finally, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up.
His whole frame protested the movement because it was just as restless as his mind.
Grabbing a tee, Zaire slid it on, shoved his feet into slides, and snatched his headphones off the little nightstand.
The greens called to him louder than the bed ever could.
The night air hit him with that country chill. He swallowed it in anyway, the cold cutting through some of the fuzziness in his head. Stars sat low, and bright as hell without the city lights trying to drown them out.
He followed the path Ray had shown him earlier, hands tucked into his pockets, shoulders hunched a little.
Crickets chirped from the trees. Something rustled in the field, probably some country ass animal he’d never seen in real life because Cali didn’t have shit like that. At least, not the part he was from.
He made it to the small shed and eased the door open. It squeaked the way it had that morning. He grabbed one of the loaner clubs Ray said he could use, then walked out to the open stretch of grass where he’d been working earlier.
The dark didn’t bother him. He’d grown up with worse things hiding in the shadows.
He slid his headphones on and scrolled until the right song hit. Something with bass and a lazy drum that matched his pulse. That Nar track Meadow had been listening to in the house replayed in his head. The way she hit every bar under her breath, not caring who heard.
He lined up without a tee, dropped the first ball on the grass, and set his stance.
The ball took off, arching into the dark until he lost track of it. The sound of impact cut through everything.
He exhaled, some of that buzzing in his body releasing.
Another ball.
Again.
He wasn’t practicing. He was punishing his body into quiet. Trying to out-swing the video clips, the think pieces, the comments, the men in suits talking about “cleaning up the sport” while hiding their own shit.
You’re better than them, his Mama’s voice echoed in his head. But the league stayed acting like he wasn’t.
Sweat collected at his hairline. His wrist barked with every follow-through but he didn’t stop. His breath came out louder between songs, the headphones barely keeping up with the sound of his heart thudding in his ears.
After God knows how many swings, he finally let the club drop and bent at the waist, hands braced on his thighs. His chest rose and fell rapidly. The world felt a little less tilted.
The light in the house, on the top floor, flickered on again. He straightened, squinting. The outline of a body crossed in front of it…curvy…familiar.
He stilled, watching her move around her room. It felt wrong to stare, so he didn’t let himself do it long. Just enough to catch the way her shadow paused at the window like she sensed him out there, but she never pulled the thin curtain back to look.
A slow ache slid through his chest.
He lifted his hand in reflex, even though she couldn’t see him from that distance. Then he dropped it, annoyed with himself.
“You not here to be thinkin’ about some girl,” he reminded himself. “You here to get your head straight, get your swing back…let this storm blow over.”
His eyes flicked to the house again.
He was lying and he knew it.
He wanted his career back…wanted to prove everybody wrong…wanted to show they never should’ve doubted him in the first place.
He also wanted to know what Meadow’s laugh sounded like when she wasn’t tired…when she wasn’t snapping at him…when she wasn’t carrying her Mama and this whole range on her back.
Zaire picked the club back up and leaned on it, breathing in the night air. He didn’t know what Juniper had in store for him…didn’t even know if another tournament was in his future. That uncertainty scared him more than losing a game ever could.