35. Beau #2
Okay, minor setback there. I need to get him back on track. And I need to start leading him to the bigger goal. “Can I be honest with you? Since you were so open with me?”
I swear the man’s eyes light up. “Absolutely. You can tell me anything.”
I swallow a lump in my throat for dramatic effect. “We’re staying married because Ethan told us to. We still hate each other.”
Yup. This man is glowing like a Christmas tree. “You do?”
“Of course,” I say, hating the taste of every word that’s coming out of my mouth. “It’s me and Shelby. You think we’re suddenly going to be getting along just because we accidentally drunk-married each other? And I had to fucking kiss her. That’s against everything I stand for.”
“Not going to lie, my man, I bought it for half a second,” Chad says, everything about him screaming smug asshole. “Especially when you attacked me Monday night.”
“All part of the act,” I say. “I mean, what was I supposed to do? I need to convince the world we’re happily married. I had to go after you. Make a scene.”
“Let me guess, she forced you to go on the record with that reporter?”
“Basically held a gun to my head.” I hang my head in pretend shame, gripping my barely-touched beer bottle with both hands.
“She said I had to stand by her. That if we're going to keep this sham marriage going, we need to be a united front.
You know I never would have talked about you like that.
You're my boy. I've known you longer than I've known her. I had to.”
“And Vegas?”
The way he asks it, it’s like he’s…hopeful? I, unfortunately, have to play into it, and pray this whole thing isn’t for nothing.
“She had me all fucked up in the head,” I say. “I had to play with her. You remember what it’s like playing with her? She's a pain in the ass.”
“Completely,” he says, overly-sympathetic look taking over his face, like he knew exactly what I was going to say. “Hey, I forgive you, Beau. It’s one hundred percent her fault. It always was and it still is.”
I feel like the vibe is shifting, and I’m slightly worried where it’s about to go. “Thanks man. But now I’m stuck. I have to stay married to her or she’s going to probably tell everyone I forced her to marry me when she was drunk or some shit. This is my life now.”
Chad sits back, settling into a little too much confidence. He’s entirely too smug when he says, “What if it wasn’t?”
I have no clue what he’s about to suggest, but I do have a feeling it’s going to get me closer to him fucking himself over. “What do you mean?”
Chad takes a drink of his beer. “Shelby famously doesn’t do endorsements. She’s barely played in two years. Her bank account has to be running low…”
Holy shit, he’s about to bury himself.
“I can’t pay her off,” I object quickly, you know…for the drama. “What if someone found out? Put the pieces together? Mysteriously what, ten million goes out of my checking account and magically appears in Shelby’s after we announce a divorce to a marriage that’s barely a month old?”
Chad, in his pompous glory, just shrugs. “Or…I could pay her off for you.”
I thought I was going to have to bring this up. Find a way to really play on his hatred for her and his apparent need to please me. Turns out, Chad’s full of himself enough to lead us right to the big fish. “How?”
“I’ve kept a secret from you, Beau,” he begins. “Not a lot of guys know this, but… When golfers, or others around the sport, find themselves in a pinch, I’m the guy to help them out.”
I do my best to put on my “this is brand new information” shocked face, which it looks like he buys. “Really? You’re…like a fixer?”
“Loan specialist. Fixer. I have a few different titles. But at the end of the day, it’s all the same—I do a little for you, you do a little for me… Then poof, problems go away.”
“Wow,” I say, doing my best to pretend like I’m contemplating this. “You’d do that?”
“In a heartbeat. I’d find the number she’d want to go away. Make sure she signs an NDA as well as a contract that requires her to move out of Nashville after the divorce is final. Then she’s out of your life. Just like that.”
God I hope the camera is still recording.
“What would you get in return?”
“From you, I’m not worried about the money,” he says. “But don’t tell my other clients. I don’t want to cause a stink. No, what I want from you is something different.”
“Different how?”
“I want things back the way they were,” Chad says, leaning in like he’s about to let me in on some huge life-altering secret.
Some grand scheme that only we can partake in.
“Before Shelby came back to Nashville. Me on the channel. You and me playing together every week. Video game nights. And…maybe…out of courtesy…you call the reporter up, say you lied, and get that story about me retracted.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it, Beau. I just want us back to how we were. When Shelby was out of our lives.”
Again, I pretend to think about it. I can’t be too eager to say yes. That would be even more suspicious. Although, how he doesn’t see that this is a setup, I have no idea.
“Okay,” I say. “Do it.”
Chad smiles from ear to ear, clapping his hands together in triumph. “This is actually perfect.”
That comment takes me aback. “What do you mean perfect?”
“This was the goal all along,” Chad says, a victorious edge to his voice. “Getting Shelby gone. It worked for a while. Then she moved to Nashville. But her out of the picture…that’s what I’ve always wanted. How it was always supposed to be. Just you and me.”
Excuse me, what the fuck did he just say?
“Just you and me? Chad? What are you talking about?”
“Don’t you see, Beau. She’s always been the block between us,” he says, trying to grab my hand, which I pull away, because this shit is getting weird.
“It was you and me. Best friends. Then she came along and it was ‘Shelby this’ and ‘Shelby that.’ Fuck Shelby and her apparent natural talent and her bitchy attitude.”
I have to stand up because…fucking hell did this take a hard left turn. “Are you trying to tell me you’ve hated Shelby since we were kids because it wasn’t just us anymore? That I had another friend?”
“Exactly,” Chad says, standing up as well. “I miss the days when it was just the two of us. Two best friends on the course.”
“We golfed together every day,” I say. “It’s not like you never saw me.”
“Yeah, but she was there,” he spits out. “She was always there. And she never went away.”
I take a few paces around the room, because out of all the scenarios Shelby and I planned for, this was never one of them. I’m not sure what kind of crazy is going on in his brain, but I’m officially winging it at this point.
“But you dated her. You asked her out. Why would you ask her out if you hated her?”
“To keep her away from you!” he shouts, like somehow that was supposed to be obvious.
“I could tell you liked her. And she liked you. And if you two would’ve gotten together, then I’d be gone.
You’d never remember me. But if I dated her, then I could break her heart.
She’d never want to be around me after that, which meant she’d never want to be around you either. ”
Holy shit this is so fucked up.
“Chad, that makes no sense.”
“It did. Except she put up with everything. Dumb bitch. I treated her horribly. I was getting ready to cheat on her, put the nail in the coffin. Then my pops stepped in and actually did all the work for me.”
I perk up, realizing what he’s about to admit to. “The Willowmere tournament?”