Chapter 11 #2
He pointed at Karter’s chest. “You trying to kill it. This ain’t football. You can’t smack the ball into submission. This game is about making it do what you want with the least effort.”
“So lazy people win?” Karter asked.
“Nah,” Zaire corrected. “Smart people win…patient people win…people who know how to calm their mind, win.”
Meadow watched him from the other side, still correcting grips but listening to every word. His tone was light. His words were not.
“You ever get mad and swing harder?” Lay asked him, turning her visor around.
“All the time,” he answered. “That’s usually when I mess up the worst.”
“So what you do?” Mya wanted to know.
He took a breath and let it out slow. “You remember that the goal is not to punish the ball. The goal is to place it.”
Meadow’s fingers paused on a little girl’s hands. She looked over at him, eyes tracing his profile…placing it, not punishing it. The man stayed dropping lines without trying.
Ray would have loved this.
She shook the thought away before it pooled in her chest.
They ran little challenges. Who could get the closest to the cone. Who could keep their form right two times in a row. Meadow bet snacks from the clubhouse fridge. Zaire bet bragging rights.
The kids fed off both their energies.
At one point, Mya connected and sent her ball flying past the boys. She dropped her club and broke into a little victory dance.
“So y’all gon’ keep saying this not for us?” Meadow called.
DJ groaned. “She got lucky.”
“That was not luck,” Zaire told him. “That was focus. You hate when girls beat you, huh?”
DJ frowned. “I don’t hate it. I just don’t like it.”
The whole group fell out.
When they circled back in for water, the kids flopped onto the grass in a half-circle. Meadow handed out small bottles. Zaire stayed standing, club in his hand, looking over the range.
Karter wiped his forehead with his arm. “How you do this all day? My back hurt.”
“Your back hurt because your posture is trash,” Meadow informed him.
Zaire lifted his chin at the boy. “You get used to it. Plus, I been doing this since I was younger than y’all. It’s muscle memory now. Mind memory too.”
“What that mean?” Mya asked.
“It means even when my life a mess, this the one thing that feels familiar,” he said. “When everything’s out of my control, I can come out here and breathe.”
Meadow felt those words hit her right in the center.
She looked at the kids. Some picked at the grass…some stared at him…some were only halfway listening. But she knew at least one of them would remember that line later in life when it mattered the most. Maybe more than one.
“Alright,” she called. “We got twenty more minutes left. Last round, then y’all can go home and pretend y’all don’t love it out here.”
They groaned and got up.
By the time they finished, swings had improved. Not by a miracle, but enough to count… enough to show progress…enough to make them feel proud of themselves.
Parents started pulling up. Car doors slammed in the distance. A few Dads nodded toward Zaire with that look of recognition, especially the one that came with ESPN subscriptions and weekend tournaments on repeat.
“You him, ain’t you,” one man said as his son climbed into the backseat.
“Sometimes,” Zaire shrugged.
Meadow caught the way he said it. The way his gaze slid away like fame was something that cost more than it paid.
She wanted him to be proud of who he was and what he’d accomplished when so much had been stacked against him. Still, she just let him sulk.
When the last car pulled off, the field went quiet again. Range balls scattered everywhere. Cones tipped over. The sun sitting higher now, but the air still kind enough to stand in.
Meadow looked around. “They wore me out.”
“You handled it like a professional,” Zaire complimented.
She turned toward him. “You did too. You’re good with them.”
He shrugged. “Kids see through bullshit. I ain’t got the energy to fake it around them.”
“That’s why they like you,” she told him. “You don’t talk to them like they’re stupid.”
He lifted his eyes to her. “You don’t either.”
They stood there for a moment, just looking at each other, the day stretching out around them. No Magnolia crying out. No investor calling her phone. No cameras in his face. Just grass and quiet and a handful of range balls waiting to be picked up.
Meadow broke eye contact first. “Grab a bucket,” she said. “Since you staff now.”
He smirked. “I get paid?”
“You got free food and my presence,” she replied. “You’re welcome.”
“Your presence?” he repeated. “That’s part of the compensation package?”
“Premium benefit.”
He chuckled. “You crazy, cuh.”
They walked side by side, picking up balls, dropping them into the wire buckets with dull clinks. Every once in a while their hands brushed when they both reached for the same one. Neither of them mentioned it.
As they worked through the field, Meadow glanced over at him again.
“You meant what you said, earlier?” she asked.
“About what?”
“Out here being the only place you can breathe sometimes.”
He didn’t rush his answer. “Yeah.”
She nodded slowly. “Same.”
Zaire watched her pick up another ball and toss it into the bucket …without looking. “This your 19th hole too?”
She thought about it. About the kids…her mama…Ray…the land people kept trying to buy. The way standing on this ground made her feel connected to something bigger than all of it.
“Yeah.” She nodded. “I think it is.”
He held her gaze with something in his eyes she hadn’t seen before. Not flirtation, not play…just understanding. “Good,” he told her. “You deserve one.”
Her chest tugged.
So did his.
They bent back down for more balls, the moment sliding into the quiet again, but neither of them walked away from what had just settled between them.
Whatever it was, it had roots now.
Meadow lay across her bed, bonnet on, wearing a tank top and shorts, her legs kicked up behind her. She hit the FaceTime icon without thinking, still smiling from the kids’ chaos earlier.
Tia answered on the second ring, hair wrapped, lashes off, robe sliding off one shoulder like she owned the night. “Hey, ho.”
Meadow snorted. “Hi, bitch.”
Tia smiled. “You look tired.”
“I am. Them kids dragged me by my scalp.”
Tia laughed. “You always say that and you always go back.”
“Because I’m dedicated. And they funny.”
“You love them,” Tia corrected. “Just admit it.”
Meadow sighed. “Fine. I love them. Especially Mya. That girl is me reincarnated.”
Tia grinned. “Well…you was a handful.”
“You still one,” Meadow countered.
“True.” Tia adjusted her phone and sat crisscross on the bed. “Alright, tell me about your day. Start with the part where you was flirting with that man.”
“I was not—”
Tia stared dead into the camera. “Meadow.”
“Okay, yes but also no.”
“Yes but also yes,” Tia corrected. “Don’t lie. You was cheesing hard as hell when I picked up this phone.”
Meadow groaned and rolled onto her back. “Tia…I don’t know what to do with him.”
“What’s he doing?”
“Breathing.”
Tia screamed into the pillow, kicking her feet like she was twelve. “Oh my God.”
“I’m serious,” Meadow insisted. “He just…be existing around me and my whole body starts doing the absolute most.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means I be trying to mind my business and then he walk in smelling like sunlight and Black boy peace and my damn stomach flips.”
Tia blinked, nodding her head in understanding because she got that feeling with Blain. That man was her whole heart in human form. “Sunlight and Black boy peace?”
“Exactly, I don’t know why I said that.”
Tia grinned. “Cause you like him.”
“I don’t.”
“You do.”
“I don’t, hoe.”
Tia tilted her head. “Say it again like you believe it.”
Meadow opened her mouth…and closed it.
Tia softened. “Tell me how he makes you feel.”
Meadow stared up at her ceiling. “Like, I can breathe around him…and I didn’t even know I wasn’t breathing.”
“Oh,” Tia whispered. “That’s dangerous.”
“I know.”
“What about Brent?”
Meadow groaned into her comforter. “Don’t bring him up.”
“No, we need to talk about that too. You know he likes you.”
“He don’t like me,” Meadow argued. “He likes being liked by me.”
Tia raised a brow. “Meadow…”
“Okay, he’s cute and checks all the boxes,” Meadow admitted. “But he don’t…do nothing for me.”
“So, your pussy don’t dance for him?” Tia asked casually, already knowing her friend had a thing for Brent.
Meadow gasped. “Tia!”
“What?” Tia shrugged. “Hoe, I’ve seen you naked.”
Meadow laughed, covering her face. “Stop.”
“I’m right though.”
“Okay, yes, but still-”
Tia leaned forward. “So, what’s the real issue? You scared of something real? Or scared Zaire too real?”
Meadow hesitated. “Both.”
Tia nodded slowly. “Makes sense… with everything going on.”
Meadow’s expression softened. “Ti…”
“What?”
“You okay?” Meadow hadn’t meant to ask it out loud. It slipped out before she could stop it.
Tia’s smile had been wide, loud, teasing…
the same one she always used when they talked about men and mess.
But Meadow knew her, she knew the difference between Tia’s real smile and the one she put on when she didn’t want to ruin the mood.
Her friend was good at hiding it from everyone else, but Meadow saw it immediately.
The brightness was there, but the joy wasn’t sitting behind her eyes.
Something sagged around the edges, something tired and forced.
It was the kind of look Meadow recognized because she’d worn that same expression too many times this year. The kind where you laugh so nobody asks why you’re hurting or the one you used to fake flirt with a man like Brent or when you became annoyed with a man like Zaire.
That’s why she asked.
Not because the conversation shifted…not because they were talking about men…but because Tia’s face changed, just a little and Meadow didn’t like when her friend tried to hold something heavy alone.
Tia tried to wave her off, but her smile cracked. “I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not.”