27. Beau
BEAU
“Ihate everything about this.”
I’m trying not to laugh as Shelby approaches the golf cart we have tricked out specifically for filming days, but it’s really hard not to. She looks like a four-year-old who just got told they can’t play outside until they’ve eaten all their vegetables.
“I know, but you’re being a good sport,” I try to assure her as I pat the passenger seat. “You ready?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Nope!” I say, revving the cart as she climbs in, and zooming off to the first hole the second her butt hits the seat.
When Kat told Shelby she thought it would do wonders for our marriage—as well as our brands that we’re both trying to repair—if Shelby did an episode of The Back Nine with me, I thought she was going to punch a hole through my granite countertop.
She hates anything in the way of media, interviews, or anything in that vein.
But when Kat explained that doing one episode would put to bed any rumors going around about this being fake—because she and I were going to talk very candidly and not scripted at all about our marriage—Shelby knew she couldn’t say no.
Kat also let us know she’d already put some feelers out to some companies who wanted to sponsor the episode.
She wouldn’t tell us who, but she said they have deep pockets who normally wouldn’t touch a YouTube golf show, but if Shelby was involved to garner a female demographic, they were suddenly interested.
It took her a second, but I think it was my puppy dog face that finally sealed the deal. That and I promised her sixty percent of our earned sponsorship and the opportunity to throw it in my face that her putt was the most watched clip in the history of The Back Nine.
It was a price I was willing to pay.
“Okay, explain this to me again,” she says as we make our way past the clubhouse.
“Anything in particular you don’t understand?”
“No, I understand everything fine. But if you repeat everything right now, it’ll give me the few minutes I need to calm myself down and not make an ass of myself.”
“You’re not going to make an ass of yourself,” I reassure her. “You’re going to be yourself.” That earns me a side-eye. “Okay, maybe not that self, but you know…yourself around Gabi. Or when you were drunk. She was nice.”
The glare she gives me is noted. And expected.
“Unlike the live video you bombed that made you a star, this is all recorded and edited,” I explain.
”If there’s something you say out of context, it’s cut.
If we want to try a few different spins on some of the questions Kat wants us to talk about, we can.
You’ll be able to watch the entire episode before it goes online.
You’ll have final say-so of everything. But at the end of the day, this is just a conversation while we play some golf. Another normal day in life.”
“A normal day of a guy named Stu videoing us.”
“Stu’s great. And he’s bringing along an intern to get a second camera angle. Just treat it like the cameras that follow us around the course.”
“I hate them too.”
I laugh as I turn toward the first hole. “Can I ask you a question?”
“I mean, isn’t that why I’m here?”
“Yes, but the camera isn’t on for this one.”
That seems to relax her a little. “Fire away.”
“I know why you aren’t a fan of reporters. We’ve gone over that. But why the anti-all media? The bare minimum sponsorships? You could be making a killing.”
“Oh believe me, I know,” she says, staring off into the distance, and I don’t push her. If she’s ready to open up to me about this, I’m going to take it for the gift it is. “Want to hear something that will make you lose it?”
“Of course.”
She lets out a sigh. “I turned down a two million dollar yearly endorsement from Nike.”
I brake the cart so hard we’re nearly ejected. “You did what?”
“I know…”
“Shelby! That’s— Some male athletes don’t get that kind of money from Nike. Which is shit, and I hate that I have to say that, but that’s a battle we can fight at another time. But what do you mean you turned down two million?”
“I don’t know… It felt…icky.”
“Icky?”
“Yeah, icky,” she says, shivering like a bug just crawled up her back. “What did we say we wanted to be when we grew up?”
“Professional golfers,” I say with a sigh.
“Never in any of those dreams did we say ‘professional golfers and part time shoe peddlers.’”
“While you aren’t wrong, can I say something you’re going to hate, while it also reminds you of something I think you’re forgetting?”
She gives me a side-eye that makes me laugh. “I knew I shouldn’t have agreed to this.”
“Too bad,” I say, turning to her. “Do you remember how excited you were when women athletes were getting put on cereal boxes? Or were in commercials? Billboards around town? I seem to remember a Shelby who suddenly wanted to start playing soccer after the USA Women won the 1999 World Cup.”
She chuckles at the memory. “I lasted one day on the soccer field before I ripped off my shin guards. They were so hot.”
“But, it made you want to play the sport. It showed you that other women were doing things you could only dream of doing. Things you wanted to do. Maybe not in that sport, but making money playing a sport. Showing little girls that they could dream. Do you remember that?”
I don’t mean to make Shelby cry, but the second I see her eyes becoming glassy, I know I struck a nerve.
“Hey,” I say softly, bringing her into my hold, not caring if she wants my comfort or not. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“You’re right. Everything you said was right,” she admits. “I just want to play golf. And…I don’t know. Part of me feels like putting myself out there, posing for pictures with a certain shirt, or holding up a drink… It feels like I’m selling out. And…”
“And what?”
She looks away before she says the next words.
Words that break my heart. “I’ve never done anything in my life to make people like me, Beau.
I’ve always been the outcast. The one they had to let play with the boys because there were no girls and they didn’t want my dad raising a stink.
I swear too much. I probably drink too much.
I hate interviews. What’s going to happen when a company sponsors me and realizes after the fact that they don’t want me. ”
God…I know she hates it when I try to fix things for her, but what I wouldn’t give to go back in time and make sure every person who made her this way—her mother, Chad, every douchey member of the country club, and even myself—feels an ounce of the pain this woman carries every day.
All because she just wanted to fucking golf.
“You can’t control others,” I say, though I don’t know if my words are doing much to help her right now.
“But I promise, if a company wants you—whether it was Nike then, or Sprite now—they’re offering that because they want you.
And as for the rest of the world? Fuck them. They don’t know who you really are.”
“Well, if Sprite calls, that’s a different story.”
“I know you’re joking, but it’s really not.
” She slowly moves away from my embrace, but still lets me hold her hand.
“I mean it. I’ve been in plenty of these conversations, enough to know that big companies aren’t offering deals like that to anyone.
They pick you because they want you. As long as you believe in the product, it’s not selling out.
It’s diversifying. It’s making sure you have a nest egg that will last you well past when we’re done playing. ”
“Speak for yourself, old man.”
She laughs as I tickle her side, but I’ll take any burn she wants to give me if it gets her smiling again. “All I’m saying is you aren’t selling out. If anything, you’re making that younger Shelby proud that you’ve reached the level where you can inspire the next generation of Shelbys.”
There’s only been one other time in my and Shelby’s life that she’s ever looked at me like she wants to believe every word coming out of my mouth. Like she’s hoping against hope the words I’m saying can come true. Twenty years ago, on the eighteenth hole at Willowmere Country Club.
And it guts me just as much now as it did then. Because, God, I’d give anything for my words to come true.
“You think so?”
“I do,” I say, giving her hand a squeeze. “I just hope this next generation of Shelbys is nicer than the prototype.”
That joke gets me the punch in my arm I was looking for.
“You okay?”
She nods, pulling herself together. “Let’s go golf, Devereaux. Time to show the internet that you married the superior golfer.”
“Okay, Shelby, we've got to talk about the elephant in the room.”
“Do you mean the elephant in the cart?”
I turn to Shelby, who…just made a joke? “I didn’t expect you to have the quips today.”
“I didn’t expect a lot of things today, including filming this episode, so welcome to the club.”
I don’t know where this version of Shelby came from, but I’m liking it. And I know damn well my audience is going to eat this up when it airs.
“Funny you should say that, because the question we keep getting asked, that we’ve decided to talk about on today’s Back Nine, is why did we get married in Vegas? And why did we have our first fight in public the next day?”
Shelby knew this was coming. We even practiced the conversation this morning over breakfast. Our directives from Kat and Grayson were to tell the truth—what we could—and keep a lot vague.
Let others draw their own conclusions. We promised we wouldn’t talk about the drinking.
We weren’t going to talk about Chad. But everything else?
That was going to be open so we could control the narrative.
As for the fight? Kat told us to go with God. Wise words from our PR manager.
“Which one do we want to start with, the wedding or the fight?”
“Lady’s choice,” I say as we make our way down the fifth fairway to her ball.
“Let’s go with the fight, then. A.k.a., the day I beat up my husband.”
“She didn’t beat me up,” I say into the camera, hoping for a comedic moment, before turning back to her. “I let you have those hits.”