CHAPTER EIGHT
Nerys
I leave at five in the morning.
Not because I want to — because I need the forty-five minutes between the hotel room and the practice green to rebuild the architecture that Tala Sarmiento dismantled with the efficiency of a controlled detonation sometime around the moment she said my neck, start with my neck and I discovered that I am capable of touching someone with sustained attention for the first time in five years.
The Singapore dawn is thick and pink. The hotel gym is empty. I run on the treadmill for thirty minutes, not because I need the exercise but because the repetitive motion gives my brain something rhythmic to organize itself around while the rest of me tries to reprocess the previous evening.
I touched her.
I put my hands on Tala Sarmiento's body and I did not shake. My fingers found the geography of her — the warm bronze skin, the defined muscle, the specific softness of her inner thighs — and they were steady. Precise. Obedient in a way they haven't been since before the collapse.
I brought her to orgasm with my hands. These hands.
The ones that couldn't draw back a putter.
The ones the entire golfing world watched freeze on a three-foot putt.
Those hands pressed inside her and felt her tighten and release and I did not lose my nerve and I did not lose my rhythm and I did not freeze.
The treadmill beeps. I've exceeded my target heart rate. I slow to a walk and grip the side rails and I breathe through the realization that last night was not just sex.
It was proof.
Proof that the thing my hands lost was specific and contained and did not metastasize into every form of intimate precision. They failed at one skill. They did not fail universally.
I step off the treadmill and stand in the empty gym and look at my reflection in the mirror.
Flushed. Sweating. My hair is pushed back and the silver streak is damp against my temple and my expression is one I do not recognize because it belongs to a version of me I haven't accessed since before I retired.
I look like a woman who feels capable.
I shower at the gym. Dress. Walk to the practice green.
And I wait for Tala to arrive, fully prepared for the version of her that Keoni warned me about — the charming, satisfied, slightly dismissive version that treats completed conquests as closed accounts.
She arrives at six thirty-eight. Two minutes early.
In practice clothes — fitted polo, dark trousers, golf shoes.
Her hair is up. No jewelry except the gold studs.
She looks professional and rested and not at all like a woman who intends to discuss last night in salacious detail or leverage it into something transactional.
She walks to the practice green. Sets her bag down. Looks at me.
"What do you need to keep this separate from work?"
The question is so far from what I expected that I don't respond for three full seconds.
I expected teasing. Negotiation. A playful renegotiation of last night's boundary around reciprocation.
I expected charm — the specific, high-wattage Tala charm that Keoni described, the kind designed to make the recipient feel so valued that they don't notice the conversation has been redirected away from accountability.
Instead, she's asking me what I need.
"Can you be more specific?" I say, because I want to hear her articulate it. Because specificity is how Tala proves she's thinking rather than reacting.
"The contract protects us professionally.
But contracts don't cover what happens when you're reading a green and I'm thinking about last night instead of the slope.
Or when I disagree with a club selection and I can't tell if I'm disagreeing with my caddie or my —" She pauses. Searches. "Whatever you are to me now."
"What rules would help?"
She's thought about this. I can tell because the answer comes structured rather than improvised.
"No sexual contact during active rounds or official practice.
Professional disagreements stay on the course and never follow us into a bedroom.
Neither of us uses sex to settle a strategy argument.
Either of us can ask for separate hotels without it meaning anything about the relationship.
The contracts stay enforceable no matter what.
And we tell Bisi, Phaedra, and Dr. Oona. Nobody else."
I absorb each point. They're sound. More than sound — they're precisely the boundaries I would have proposed, which means she's either an excellent strategic thinker or she anticipated what I'd want and built it before I could ask.
Either explanation is attractive.
"Agreed on all points," I say. "I have one addition.
We disclose professional conflicts to each other before they become resentment.
I have a history of—" I stop. Choose the precise language.
"I have a pattern of storing dissatisfaction privately and then withdrawing when the accumulation becomes unmanageable.
It cost me a marriage. I won't repeat it. "
Tala watches me. The mention of Saskia — implied, not named — lands visibly. Her expression shifts into something attentive and careful.
"Okay. And I have one more. Mine." She straightens. "If I do something on the course that pisses you off, tell me on the course. Don't save it for private and punish me by going cold. I'd rather you yell at me over a 7-iron than freeze me out at dinner."
The request hits a nerve I did not expect to be exposed this early.
Saskia said nearly the same thing. Not in these words — Saskia's version was quieter, more exhausted, delivered during the final months of a marriage that was dying of silence rather than conflict.
I'd rather you fight with me than disappear, she said.
At least a fight means you're still in the room.
I didn't stay in the room.
"Agreed," I say. My voice is steadier than the memory deserves.
Tala nods. She picks up a wedge. Walks to the practice area.
"The tee time is at eight forty," she says. "Walk me through the front nine strategy while I warm up."
I open my course notebook. We work.
·
Tala shoots sixty-nine. Solid, smart, disciplined golf in suffocating humidity.
She follows the strategy. She consults me before every approach shot.
She argues with one club selection — the fifth hole, a long par-3, where she wants a 4-iron and I recommend a smooth 3 — and she argues with data rather than instinct, citing her carry numbers in similar humidity, and she's right. I adjust.
She makes birdie with the 4-iron.
"Nice club selection," I tell her walking off the green.
"I learned from someone." A glance. Quick. Warm. The corner of her mouth pulling at the scar. Then she's looking forward again, already thinking about the sixth hole.
She finishes the tournament tied for eighth. Consistent. Unremarkable. Precisely the kind of result that rebuilds a ranking and reassures sponsors without generating headlines.
I am more proud of her for this tied-for-eighth than I would be for a victory.
·
The hotel's indoor practice facility is an unremarkable room in the lower level — synthetic carpet, fluorescent-adjacent lighting, a long strip of artificial putting surface that extends thirty feet along one wall.
It is designed for guests who want to maintain their stroke during business trips, which means it is usually empty after seven PM.
At eight forty-five, it is empty except for Tala, who has been hitting lag putts for the past hour.
I sit in a chair near the door. I have my course notebook open to tomorrow's strategy — the third round, which is where tournaments begin to apply real pressure and where Tala's historical data shows the most significant spike in aggressive deviations.
I am not reading the strategy. I am watching Tala hit putts.
Something is wrong. Her stroke is mechanically sound — the grip correction from Arizona has held, and her pace control on the synthetic surface is excellent.
But her body language is compressed. Tight shoulders.
Abbreviated follow-through. A tendency to hit each putt harder than necessary, sending the ball two feet past the target on a surface where her usual touch is precise to six inches.
She's punishing the ball.
I've seen this pattern on the course — the redirected aggression, the frustration expressed through force rather than language. But I've never seen it in a practice setting, and I've never seen it aimed at a putting stroke that has no strategic reason to be aggressive.
I give her twenty minutes. Twenty minutes to name it herself. Twenty minutes to do what we agreed this morning — to articulate the problem before it becomes resentment.
She doesn't.
"You're angry," I say.
"I'm not angry, I'm putting." She strokes another ball. Three feet past the target.
"You're punishing the ball because something is bothering you and you won't name it."
She slams the putter head into the carpet. Not hard enough to damage anything. Hard enough to communicate.
"I'm bothered because you didn't let me touch you last night and I keep thinking about whether that means you don't want me to."
The words arrive with velocity. She's been holding them since last night — since I said not tonight and she accepted it and fell asleep in my arms and woke up to a note instead of a conversation.
I close the notebook. Set it on the chair.
The practice room is empty. The door is closed. The synthetic light is flat and unflattering. This is not a Singapore suite with a skyline view. This is a carpeted basement with fluorescent bulbs and the faint smell of rubber.
"Practice is over," I say quietly. "We're no longer working."
Tala looks up. I watch the recognition move through her — the shift from athlete to woman, from the professional space to the personal one, marked by nothing more than my voice and the understanding we established this morning.
"Come here."