13. Beau
BEAU
Imight be a genius.
Okay, no might. I am a genius. Because who knew, after twenty years of fighting—and twenty years of Gabi begging us to get along—that all it would take for us to be civil was cheap alcohol and a morphed game of truth or drink?
“Did you really bash Hannah’s high school boyfriend’s windows in with your five iron?”
Shelby thinks about it for a second—or maybe more, because I have no idea what time it is right now—before taking a shot.
“Really? You actually did do it?”
“Yes and no,” she says, grabbing the bottle and sloppily pouring a refill. “Yes, I did it. Gabi has video. But it wasn’t my five iron. It was my seven. Hated that club, so I figured why not shatter a few windows with it?”
I laugh and shake my head at Shelby’s nonchalance. She should’ve been arrested—community service, if anything. Vandalism is a serious thing. But Hannah’s cheating ex was so scared of Shelby, he never admitted that he knew who did it. Before long, it became an urban legend of sorts in our town.
“Okay, my turn,” she says, tapping her finger to her chin dramatically as she thinks of a question. “Did you and Chad really have a threesome with a cart girl at the country club in college?”
I pretend to think about my answer for a second, you know, for dramatic effect. Because I know my answer, but what’s the fun if I don’t add some theater to it?
The rules of the game are simple: We each say something that we either heard over the years, or rumors that we could’ve honestly made up ourselves out of spite.
If it’s true, we drink. If it’s false, we explain what actually happened.
And also drink. Those weren't the original rules, but that was an hour and a lot of whiskey ago.
“How did you hear that rumor?” I ask, taking a drink of my beer to help temper the eventual taste of whiskey that’s about to come.
“I heard things,” she says with narrowed eyes. “I might not’ve been playing on that course anymore, but people talk. Especially when the rumor at the course I was playing at was that Ashcroft and Devereaux took some girl to Paris.”
“I didn’t,” I say before taking the shot. “I don’t want to speak for Chadwick, but I’m not a threesome kind of guy.”
That seems to surprise her. “Really? Not once? Never even thought about it?”
I lean into Shelby’s space, my chest resting against her arm as I reach for the bottle of whiskey, my mouth right next to her ear.
“I’m not the sharing kind, Belle. Never have been. Never will be.”
I linger there for a second, fighting the urge to run my nose down the frame of her face, before I pull away. My timing is perfect, and I watch her swallow the lump in her throat and do her best to pretend she’s not affected.
Pretend being the key word.
“My turn,” I say, wanting to get this back on a track of questions that doesn’t make me want to kiss her.
“Actually, no, I want to go again,” she says as she tries to straighten herself up. “I need to know. Right now. Under oath of shitty whiskey. Did you cheat?”
The air leaves my lungs. This wasn’t what I had in mind when I invented this game an hour ago. “Why are you bringing that up?”
“Because we’re playing a game where you have to tell the truth.” In her drunk musings, the reasoning sounds legit. “And because I need to know. Did you cheat, Beau?”
I suck in a breath and leave every thought of taking a drink or not to the side.
This is much more important than any loose rules.
I know we’re both drunk, so who knows if we’re even going to remember this conversation tomorrow, but at least for now, I need her to know—truly know—how I’ve felt about this situation for all these years.
“Shelby, I promise you on Ace’s life, my expensive-as-fuck driver, and my grandmother’s grave, that I did not cheat that day.
” I pause for a second, taking each of her hands in mine, really hoping this helps me get through to her.
“We both signed our scorecards. We both turned them in. When you left the table, I was under the impression that you beat me. Whatever happened from that moment until…”
I trail off, because especially now, in a drunken stupor, I don’t know what happened, nor can I even hypothesize it.
Ooh…hypothesize. That’s a big word for Elmo.
“I don’t know what happened that day, Shelby.
I was just as shocked as you were. I know I didn’t do the right thing in accepting the trophy and the scholarship, and I’ll apologize for that every day of my life.
But I promise you, I don’t know what happened.
And I promise that one day, I’m going to find out. ”
I make sure not to look away. I don’t want to miss a single reaction on her face. I want to see if she double blinks. I want to see if her shoulders ease. I want to see if she softens, even if just a little.
What I don’t expect to see is the one, single, tear, fall from the corner of her eye.
“Belle…”
I take my thumb to her cheek to wipe it away, and I brace myself for her to pull back. To slap my hand away. To tell Frank that I’m actually “stranger danger” and he needs to kick me out.
But she doesn’t. She lets me. No fight. No argument. She just…lets me.
“My turn,” I whisper. “Do you believe me?”
She doesn’t nod, but she doesn’t shake her head either. I quit breathing as I wait for her answer.
“I want to.”
I do too, Belle. I want it more than anything.
“Do you actually like your YouTube channel? Or are you just doing it because it makes you money?”
“That’s actually a very thoughtful question.”
She pretends to bow, but almost falls off her barstool. I hurry and reach my arm out to save her, which is just my shitty excuse to touch her. I’ve found every reason to do it tonight, especially after we had our moments of truth.
We quickly went back to personal questions and ones that were just plain ridiculous.
I was in stitches when I learned that she didn’t tell a tournament director to suck his own dick—like I’d heard through the grapevine—but merely to get fucked by a putter-shaped dildo. And now we’ve landed on my side hustle.
Which is fine. That’s safe. Talking about my YouTube channel won’t make me want to kiss her.
Touching her leg will, but I don’t seem to be in a hurry to remove my hand.
“I do enjoy it,” I say. “And… Can I tell you a secret?”
My overly-hushed, yet still loud, words make her laugh. “Damn. Beau trusting me with secrets. We’ve gotten real close tonight, haven’t we?”
“Yes, we have.” I lean in, really wanting to overplay how much of a secret this is. Because it’s not a secret. It’s just words I’ve never said out loud before. “My secret is that if I didn’t golf anymore, and just had the channel, I wouldn’t be sad.”
Shelby pulls away, clearly shocked by my words. And so am I. Sure, the thought has rolled through my head on occasion—and more so after the America’s Open last year—but saying them out loud makes it feel real.
“Have you seriously thought about it?”
“Not a lot, but occasionally," I admit.
“Last year?”
She doesn’t even need to ask a full question for both of us to know that answer. “I had to weigh my options. Being kicked off the tour was a serious possibility. So, I had to ask myself what would be next. Use the business degree that’s never been touched? That sounded horrible.”
“But hey, when you have to close business deals on the golf course, you’ll have a hell of an advantage.”
I snort out a laugh as I take a sip of my…what am I drinking? Not important. “Then I’d become one of those stuffy assholes at the country club when we were growing up? No fucking thank you. That would be trading one evil for a worse evil.”
“Golf has become evil?”
“Kind of,” I say, making sure my drunk brain says the right words.
“I love the game. Winning is fun. Playing is fun. I still get joy out of it. But…kissing asses of tournament big wigs? Boards of directors? Making nice with sponsors and donors who only see you as a way to make them money? It takes the fun out of the game, especially when you realize you’re the pawn. ”
Shelby seems to be letting my words sink in, and, out of habit, I brace myself for whatever crack she’s going to make. Which is why it almost knocks me off my barstool when she doesn’t.
“Wouldn’t you miss the grind though? I don’t know if I’d be able to handle life without it. Actually, I know I couldn’t. I went crazy this past year.”
“Sure, I’d miss parts of it,” I say, lazily taking her hand in mine, which she doesn’t fight off. “But don’t you miss the time when it was fun? When it was just you and the course and no pressure?”
“When was there ever no pressure?” she asks. “There was always pressure.”
“Did there have to be?”
Dumb thing to say, Beau. Now you’re not holding her hand anymore, because she ripped it back. And you like holding her hand…
“Yes, there was always pressure. You grew up with me. You saw it.”
“I did,” I say. “I know you had pressure. More than me, for sure. And I know you wanted to prove yourself. But there were times when I know you could’ve backed off the pedal. Not thought that every round we played was life or death. Maybe hit a mulligan every once in a while.”
That makes her smile just a little bit. It’s only a curve of her lip, but I’ll take it.
“Can I tell you a secret now?”
“Of course.” Hand back in mine. Victory.
“I don’t know if I know how to have fun.”
In the thirty years I’ve known Shelby— granted, twenty of them were spent hating each other—that might be the most vulnerable thing she’s ever said to me.
“Well, that I can help with.”
I reach over, pouring the last remnants of the bottle into each of our shot glasses.
“I know how to take shots.”
“Will you just trust me, woman?” I say, holding up my glass. “Because it’s official.”
“What’s official?”
“That this night is just getting started. But I need to know one thing, Shelby Lynn.”