Bryn
“Take any longer and our balls are going to turn blue,” my sister Kelsey yells from the next tee box, where she and her friends are waiting for me.
I heft the golf bag onto my shoulders, and the straps immediately dig into my skin.
Relishing the warm sun on my face, I make my way over to the group.
The course looks exactly the same as when I used to caddie here as a teen.
Luckily, today I’m carrying my own bag rather than schlepping around someone else’s.
Developed in an old cow pasture, Wild Bluffs Country Club was built on the sand dunes that surround Wild Bluffs, Colorado. With its golf holes enveloped by a natural grass rough, you have a hard time finding golf balls if your shot isn’t straight down the fairway.
I spent many an hour searching for members’ lost balls, working to get a better tip as a teen. Even at that age, I knew college wasn’t going to pay for itself.
I swear under my breath. The sun is too bright to follow the ball. It’s definitely somewhere between the second or third yucca clump, right?
Why did I let Kels talk me into a bottle of wine each last night? It wasn’t even her birthday yet.
Making my way through the sandhills, I search for my ball with my 7-iron, hoping to get out of the weeds before finding any rattlesnakes. Spotting a Titleist approximately where mine landed, I quickly hit it back into the fairway where the other girls had all managed to find their tee-shots.
As I follow its trajectory, I suddenly hear the thud of a bag being set down and somehow know it wasn’t my ball that just flew off.
Oops.
Turning around, I see a dark-haired man standing there, looking in disbelief at the ground. I slowly approach him and see my Titleist 4 golf ball lying next to his feet, complete with the small penis Izzy drew on it this morning.
“So you know how to mark a ball, you just don’t know how to use the mark to identify your ball?”
Looking into his face, I can’t help but cringe a bit at the bitterness in his voice, despite being pleasantly surprised by the fact that I am actually looking up at a man for a change, a rarity at five feet, ten inches.
“Oh. Shoot. I’m playing a Titleist 4 too, and I wasn’t paying enough attention, I guess. Yours was right over there.” Recognizing how ridiculous I look pointing at the spot he had clearly just seen me hitting from, I quickly lower my arm and glance at his face again.
In addition to being tall, this man is all kinds of eye candy. He clearly hits the gym on a regular basis, if how tight his white, collared shirt is pulling across his chest is any indication. His dark brown hair matches a thick beard.
Don’t I know him from somewhere? I’m usually pretty good at matching faces with names, and there is something about his dark green eyes that seems familiar. Maybe the facial hair is throwing me off.
Would it be inappropriate to ask if he has a beard all the time?
He crosses his arms, the movement drawing my attention to his defined biceps. “Sure, well, a lot of good that does me. It’s still a stroke. Maybe pay more attention next time you and your sorority sisters decide to use Daddy’s golf membership, okay?”
Definitely an inappropriate time to ask about the beard, then.
“Excuse me?” I feel my eyebrows shoot up under my baseball cap. “First, you’ve got to be joking about it being a stroke. You are out here”—I look around—“alone? You get to decide what number you write on your scorecard. Second, fuck you. This is my sister’s membership, you arrogant prick.”
I turn to point at Izzy, an almost six-foot-tall brunette decked out in Wild Bluffs Country Club attire, nicely proving my point.
The fact that she decided to curtsy with her hot-pink golf skort after her shot does not help my case, but, in her defense, it was a pretty damn good shot.
He pulls his baseball cap off and runs his hand through his hair, a gesture I find irritatingly handsome. “Ahh, yes. A real credit to the sport of golf, that one.”
“Again, fuck you. Just play my ball. It will be easy for everyone to identify as yours.”
Arms crossed warily across his chest, he shoots me a confused look.
“...because you’re such a dick?”
Continuing to search his face to figure out who this man is, I’m surprised when I see an almost smile pulling at the corner of his mouth.
“Original. I’ve never been called a dick before.”
Despite his gruff attitude, I feel a pull to keep talking to this man. Okay, yes. By pull, I mean a purely physical attraction that is entirely due to his large frame and handsome smile now on display.
“Well, welcome to Wild Bluffs. Home of the honest.”
“Wow. What a tagline. I’m surprised they’ve managed to keep its existence a secret from the world for as long as they have.”
I laugh, my annoyance morphing into something else. He’s got a sense of humor and can at least keep up with me in a verbal sparring session.
“Oh, the town hired the same PR team that helps keep Atlantis’s location a mystery. It’s a bit pricey but clearly worth every penny.”
He chuckles, leaning casually on his golf club while we banter back and forth.
“Do you think they’d let me in on the secret?”
“Not a chance. It’s not for the likes of you.”
“Oh really? And just how is that decided?” he asks.
“Multiple rounds of interviews, an IQ test, and an intense psychological evaluation. Unfortunately, I don’t think you’re going to make the cut,” I tease.
“How will I ever recover?”
“I’d suggest therapy, which you can clearly pay for if you’re a member here, but I’m not sure it will help. If you can’t pass the test, you can’t pass the test.”
“Of course you’d go there. Whatever.” His face changes abruptly, his eyebrows pulling together into a deep crease.
He swings his bag onto his shoulders, making me realize again how tall he is.
I watch him stomp away, leaving me and my penis ball behind to recover from that emotional roller coaster of a conversation.
***
The back nine flies by in a flurry of stories and laughter. By the time we reach the eighteenth hole, the sun is starting to set, staining the sky with its own watercolor painting of pink and purple.
Becca leads us back toward the clubhouse, talking excitedly about her new plan to stay single for a while.
“Taking a couple months off from the dating scene will allow me to find my sshpecial sshomeone,” she slurs slightly at the end, clearly in need of some hydration and likely some food to soak up the booze from today. “You agree, don’t you, Bryn? It’s working for you, right?”
Before I can answer, Kelsey grins over at us, clearly ready for some mind ninjaing, a side effect of her days with the Marines and now at her cybersecurity firm.
“I don’t know if three years can actually be considered ‘a couple months,’ Becca.”
Becca looks at me, her warm green eyes widening at the revelation.
“You haven’t had sex in YEARS?” she practically yells.
I grab her elbow as she loses her footing and her bag starts to tip her backward.
“Jesus, Becca, could you say it a little louder? I don’t think all the old men in the locker room heard you,” I angrily whisper back.
“One”—Becca holds up her finger—“you know most of those men are not that old and would totally be doable at this point. You’re twenty-eight. Also, three years is a long, long time to go without…ya know…companionship.”
I sigh deeply, hoping she’ll get distracted if I just stay silent.
“Bryn.” She grabs my face so I have to look at her.
I spot Izzy and Kelsey over her right shoulder, waving to the rest of the birthday party already encircling the firepit but clearly planning to stay and enjoy the show.
Just great. The last thing I want is for my sisters to start thinking they need to meddle in my love life. Like I don’t get enough of that from my mom, and apparently now Becca.
“Peter was a dick,” she continues at a more reasonable volume. “It wasn’t fair that he put all the blame on you when you guys broke it off. Relationships are two-sided. He expected a lot from you he wasn’t willing to give in return.”
Goodness, I’m tearing up a little bit, which I most definitely do not want to do.
Unluckily for me, Becca isn’t done. “It’s not a good enough reason to go without S. E. X. for”—she drops her voice to a whisper—“three whole years.”
“I promise it has nothing to do with asshole Peter. Have you met the men who are on dating apps these days? None of them have been worth a second date, let alone actually sleeping with. Plus, there is no need to worry, Beccs. I can take care of myself, if you know what I mean?” I say with a wink, hoping I can get out of sharing that it has been a hell of a lot longer than three years—twenty-eight, to be exact.
True to Becca form, she turns bright red and starts giggling. She’s been this way forever. She so badly does not want to be a prude, but she most definitely is, at least at heart.
Not that I have a leg to stand on, of course.
Becca turns and starts toward the fire, muttering something about needing some damn s’mores in her life if she isn’t going to be getting any action, and I can’t help but roll my eyes.
My sister Izzy hangs back, the only one who knows about my unpopped cherry. “You could tell them, you know. I don’t think they’d make you being a twenty-eight-year-old virgin into as big of a deal as you seem to think they would.”
“But they would make it into a deal. Which is the exact opposite of what I want. You know I don’t care about being a virgin. If I did, I wouldn’t be one. It just hasn’t happened. And it’s not like I’m lying to them.”
Izzy gives my shoulder a squeeze, prompting me to continue before she offers me sympathy I most certainly do not want.
“They’ve literally never asked me if I’ve had sex with someone.
Plus, all the men I’ve gone out with in the last three years have been complete skeazeballs.
I wouldn’t have slept with them even if it weren’t my first time. ”