Kiss My Putt (Summersweet Island 1)

“Oh, there’s no good news.” Bodhi laughs, shaking his head. “You broke your pitching wedge over your knee and then threw it in the pond, yanked one of your shoes off your feet and chucked it in after, along with a very delicious bottle of sparkling water I was in the middle of enjoying, and shouted at the top of your lungs for your dad to ‘eat shit’ three feet from every television network in the world.”

I groan, dropping my head in my hands, the nausea coming back nice and strong.

“Actually, you shouted ‘Eat my shit.’ You were very specific about that,” Bodhi adds. “Oh, wait! There is good news.”

I swallow back the vomit long enough to look up as Bodhi pulls his phone out of one of the many unnecessary pockets of his cargo shorts and turns the screen toward me.

“The video of your mental breakdown is now on every single website with a Top Ten Golf Meltdowns list. You’re number one on all of them, so look at you winning something today!”

Before I punch the grin off his face, rock music starts playing loudly from his phone.

“And look at how fun this one is,” he continues, bringing the phone up closer between us. “This website put the part right when your shoe launches out of your hand on a loop and set it to Buckcherry’s ‘Crazy Bitch,’ so it looks like you’re throwing it over and over. Someone also already set up a GoFundMe to have T-shirts printed with your face on them saying Eat My Shit. This is all very exciting, Pal. You’re getting extra sprinkles on your ice cream tonight for making a day of golf fun for me for the first time ever.”

Snatching the phone out of his hand, much like I did with his water bottle earlier, I cut off the video and toss his phone into the cubby under the dashboard with my own.

Bodhi sighs and turns his head to look at me. “I know you’re well aware of how much I enjoyed what happened here today, since I’ve been telling you for years if you kept bottling things up, you were going to explode one day. But seriously, man. What the fuck happened? You’ve never come in dead-last. And you haven’t placed anywhere below third except for that one time two years ago when—”

“Don’t,” I cut him off, shooting a glare in his direction.

“Right. We don’t talk about that qualifier you lost two years ago, or why you lost it, or who made you lose it, because it was a blip on the radar, and that tournament didn’t count for anything. This, my friend, was not a blip on the radar.”

I sigh in annoyance, because I already know how significantly I messed everything up today.

“Can we talk about what happened at the turn to the back nine now?” Bodhi asks after a few quiet minutes of us both just silently staring out at the setting sun and listening to the crashing waves in the distance.

I was having one of the best days of golfing in weeks. Six under par going into the back nine, and all I had to do was keep up the momentum, keep my head in the game, and I would’ve had this win in the palm of my hand. And then my dad decided to get in my ear when I switched out my driver for my wedge. My shot had landed right at the edge of the fairway by the spectator rope and entirely too close to where my dad was standing. It made it pretty easy for him to whisper his bullshit at me while my back was to him and I was trying to decide what to do with my shot. My game went downhill fast after that. Hearing his constant nagging and annoying comments every time I needed to go near the spectator rope, which was often since all my fucking shots went into the rough after that, just made things worse. When one of my shots splashed right into the center of the water hazard on the last hole—something I haven’t done since high school—my dad wouldn’t shut up about how epically I screwed up today. I completely lost my composure for the first time in my career.

“Dale Campbell decided the 10th hole was the best time to tell me, ‘Don’t mess anything up today. Be on your best behavior, and for God’s sake, smile more. The reality show will be using footage from today for the pilot episode.’”

Bodhi’s mouth drops open in shock just as widely as it did when I broke my club in half.

“That dick,” he mutters. “I was busy talking to one of the other caddies a few feet away; otherwise, I would have punched him in the mouth for you. You told him no about the reality show. Many times. Over several months and very loudly with a lot of swearing.”