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\f0\fs24 The patio behind the restaurant was in shade for another twenty minutes, maybe thirty, before the sun would clear the line of palms along the cart path and make sitting outside genuinely unpleasant. For now it was tolerable. A ceiling fan turned overhead without much conviction, and a mockingbird somewhere in the palms was cycling through its repertoire with the manic energy of something that had nowhere to be.\par
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Ella had a Sprite and a sleeve of Oreos she'd bought from the vending machine inside. Bobby had a Gatorade, orange, and a bag of pretzels. This was their standard intermission configuration, established over enough Saturday mornings that it had the quality of tradition.\par
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The scorecard was on the table between them, flattened under Ella's elbow. Two under each. Eighteen holes of trading the lead and giving it back and taking it again, neither of them pulling more than one hole clear at any point. It was the kind of round that was satisfying and infuriating in equal measure, and Ella had spent the last quarter mile of the walk back to the clubhouse turning over the par five on sixteen where she'd three-putted from twelve feet and handed him a push when she should have won the hole outright.\par
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"You want to talk about sixteen?" Bobby said.\par
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"I don't."\par
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"Because I'm happy to talk about sixteen."\par
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"Bobby."\par
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"I'm just saying, that second putt\u8212?"\par
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"If you finish that sentence I'm going to eat all of these Oreos and not give you any, and I was going to give you some."\par
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He leaned back in his chair and held up both hands. "Not another word about sixteen."\par
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She pushed three Oreos across the table. He took them without ceremony.\par
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They sat for a moment in the particular comfortable silence that was one of the things Ella actually valued about Bobby Carpenter\u8212?not many people she could be quiet with without it becoming awkward, but Bobby was one of them. He'd been her Saturday morning for three years now, through two swing coaches and a growth spurt and the whole evolving calculus of what she needed to become the golfer she intended to be. He'd seen her cry exactly once, after the district tournament junior year, and he had said nothing then either, which was exactly right.\par
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"Palms this afternoon," he said.\par
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"Palms this afternoon."\par
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"You know I'm going to birdie six, seven, and eight."\par
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"You've been threatening to birdie six, seven, and eight since February and you've done it exactly zero times."\par
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"Today's the day."\par
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"You say that about a lot of days."\par
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"I'm an optimist." He ate an Oreo in one piece, which Ella found obscurely irritating. "Whereas you are a pessimist who happens to play golf well enough that it looks like confidence."\par
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"That's the most wrong thing you've ever said, and you once told me I was gripping the club like I was trying to strangle a raccoon."\par
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"You were."\par
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"I was not."\par
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"Your knuckles were white, Ella."\par
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She drank her Sprite. The mockingbird had moved closer, or found a more ambitious portion of its repertoire. Somewhere inside, through the glass, she could see her father at the bar with Alex, two cold beers between them, deep in whatever conversation fathers had when their children were occupied. She had never fully understood how her father could drink two beers at the turn and then go out and shoot thirty-eight on the back nine with the same untroubled swing he'd had on the front. It didn't seem fair and it didn't seem physiologically consistent with what she'd learned in health class.\par
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Bobby was watching her watch her father.\par
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"He's fine," Bobby said.\par
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"I know he's fine. I've seen him chug a beer and make a forty-foot putt."\par
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"My dad's on his third."\par
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"Your dad is not fine."\par
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"My dad is going to birdie six anyway because he doesn't know enough about the hole to be scared of it." Bobby pulled his chair slightly forward and rested his elbows on the table. He had, Ella noticed with mild irritation, gotten significantly taller in the last year. He was now legitimately tall rather than just taller-than-average, which was part of what was doing things to his driving distance and creating new problems for her. "Hey, so. Ella."\par
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She recognized the tone. "No."\par
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"I haven't said anything."\par
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"You were about to."\par
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"I might have been about to say literally anything."\par
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"You were about to ask me to the movies or something and I'm telling you no in advance so we can skip the whole part where you ask and I say no and then you pretend you don't care."\par
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Bobby grinned. He had an aggravating grin, easy and undefeated, the grin of someone who had asked a question so many times that the answer had stopped landing. "Would you consider dinner instead of movies?"\par
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"Bobby."\par
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"Just dinner. There's that Italian place in Sunrise that you like."\par
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"I like the bread there. The bread is the absolute best. That's not the same as liking going to dinner. With you."\par
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"You could go for the bread."\par
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"I'm not going to dinner with you."\par
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"What about just the bread then, strictly a bread-acquisition errand, no romantic implications\u8212?"\par
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"You are in the friend zone," Ella said. "You have been in the friend zone. The friend zone is, for you, a permanent and non-negotiable territory with clearly established borders. There is no diplomatic mission that gets you out of the friend zone."\par
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He didn't stop grinning. "I appreciate the clarity."\par
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"I don't know why you keep asking."\par
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"Because one day you're going to run out of metaphors for the friend zone and you'll have to say yes by default."\par
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"I have an unlimited supply of friend zone metaphors. I could do this all afternoon."\par
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"We have an hour."\par
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"I'm very efficient."\par
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He ate another Oreo, this one in two pieces, which felt like a concession of some kind. Outside the shade perimeter, the sun was doing serious work on the cart path, and the heat coming off the asphalt had a visible quality to it, a slight atmospheric distortion that made the distant palms look like they were breathing.\par
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"For the record," Bobby said, "I'm going to keep asking."\par
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"I know you are."\par
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"It's not a thing I'm going to stop doing."\par
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"I know that too."\par
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"Just wanted to be transparent about my intentions."\par
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"Your intentions are transparent. They've always been transparent. You're not exactly a complicated person, Bobby."\par
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"And yet here you are, spending your entire summer playing golf with me."\par
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"I always spend my summers playing golf," Ella said. "You happen to be the best available opponent. Don't read into it more than that."\par
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"It's going in my memory as reading into it."\par
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She didn't say anything to that. The fan turned. The mockingbird finished one cycle and started another. Her father laughed at something Alex said, the sound coming through the glass slightly muffled.\par
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At ten minutes to noon, Ella stood, gathered her Sprite and the remaining Oreos, and nodded toward the clubhouse. "Let's go get the cart."\par
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The clubhouse was cool and dark inside after the patio, and the woman at the counter handed over the key without ceremony. Cart fourteen. Ella took the key before Bobby's hand was halfway across the counter.\par
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"I'm driving," she said.\par
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"You always drive."\par
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"Because you tried to put us in the water on eleven."\par
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"That was one time and the path curves."\par
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"The path has always curved. It curved the week before that and the week before that. The curve is not a new development." She pushed through the side door into the cart barn, found fourteen, and swung into the driver's seat with the efficiency of someone claiming territory. Bobby came around the other side and got in.\par
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"You know," he said, "in certain cultures, letting the passenger drive occasionally is considered a mark of social maturity."\par
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"Good thing I don't live in those cultures."\par
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"I'm just noting that you have control issues."\par
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"I don't have control issues. I have correct-decision-making habits. These are different."\par
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He settled back against the seat and put his arm along the back of it, easy and comfortable, and she was aware of this peripherally and in a way that she filed immediately into the category of things she didn't examine. Bobby Carpenter was her Saturday morning. He was her best opponent and the person who'd seen her three-putt from twelve feet and not said anything devastating about it. He was funny and tall and an infuriating driver of golf carts, and none of that was relevant to anything.\par
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She started the cart.\par
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"Palms, hole one," she said.\par
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"Hole one," he agreed.\par
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The cart rolled forward out of the staging area and into the white blaze of the afternoon, and ahead of them the Palms course opened up wide and shimmering in the heat, soft and forgiving and ready to be argued over, hole by hole, for the rest of the day. As she drove off, she saw her father and Bobby's father come out and walk towards the cart barn. It was time to play golf.
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