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\f0\fs24 The patio caught whatever breeze came off the course, which wasn't much. A ceiling fan overhead stirred the humid air into slow circles without cooling anything, and the umbrella over their table threw shade that felt warm rather than cool. Ella had a lemonade and a basket of onion rings she was working through methodically. Bobby had a Coke and a club sandwich he was destroying with the focused efficiency of someone who'd just walked thirty-six holes of Broward County in late May.\par
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"You got lucky on eleven," Ella said.\par
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"I made a twenty-foot putt on eleven."\par
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"After you blocked your tee shot into the rough and punched out sideways. The putt was the one good thing that happened to you on that hole."\par
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"I halved the hole."\par
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"I'm aware." She pulled an onion ring apart and ate half of it. "My point is you shouldn't have."\par
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Bobby leaned back in his chair and looked at her with the expression he wore when he was deciding how much trouble he wanted to get into. It was a look she knew the way she knew her own yardage book. "Ella."\par
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"Bobby."\par
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"I shot two under."\par
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"And I shot two under and I didn't need a twenty-foot miracle to do it."\par
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"We finished even."\par
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"Barely," she said, which was what he'd said to her on the first green, and she watched him register it.\par
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He pointed at her. "You've been saving that."\par
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"Since the first hole."\par
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He laughed, a short, genuine laugh, and drank his Coke. Inside the clubhouse, through the tinted glass, she could see the bar where her father and Alex Carpenter were sitting on stools with what appeared to be their third beers. Her father was big and easy on the barstool and Alex was leaning forward with his elbows on the bar, and both of them were laughing at something. She wondered sometimes how he could put away beer on a Saturday like this and still make pars. She'd watched him carefully over the years for some sign of it \u8212? a shortened backswing, a loose grip, anything \u8212? and she had never found it. It seemed profoundly unfair.\par
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"You nervous about the afternoon?" Bobby asked.\par
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She looked back at him. "Why would I be nervous?"\par
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"Heat. We walked this morning. You might be tired."\par
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"I'm not tired."\par
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"You might be."\par
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"Bobby, I could play thirty-six holes in a sauna and beat you."\par
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He considered this. "That's probably not true."\par
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"It's absolutely true and you know it." She finished the other half of the onion ring. "Anyway, we're taking a cart this afternoon. Unlike some people, I don't require motorized assistance to compete."\par
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"We're taking a cart because it's ninety-three degrees."\par
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"Ninety-four," she said. She'd checked the thermometer on the wall by the pro shop on their way through. "And I'm driving."\par
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He opened his mouth.\par
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"Don't," she said.\par
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"I just think\u8212?"\par
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"The pond, Bobby. I'm going to say one word to you and that word is pond."\par
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"I was eighteen inches from the pond."\par
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"You drove a golf cart eighteen inches from a water hazard with me in it and I had my bag on the back and it was the second hole."\par
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"I was looking at a bird."\par
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"You were looking at a bird," she repeated. She stared at him. "A bird."\par
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"It was an unusual bird."\par
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"It was an anhinga. They're everywhere."\par
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"I hadn't seen one before."\par
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"You grew up in Pompano Beach."\par
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He had no answer for that. He ate the last corner of his sandwich and chased it with Coke and had the decency to look mildly embarrassed. Ella gathered the last of the onion rings into a neat pile, ate two more, and pushed the basket toward him.\par
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"Finish those if you want them."\par
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"Thank you." He took one. "Hey, Ella."\par
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She looked at him. The afternoon light was direct and flat on the patio and it caught the angles of his face, which had gotten sharper in the last year. He was taller than she'd realized when they were both standing at the bag drop that morning. She filed this observation away somewhere and didn't examine it.\par
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"What," she said.\par
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"You want to get dinner sometime? After a round?"\par
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She let three full seconds go by. "No."\par
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"Just dinner."\par
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"Bobby."\par
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"I'm talking about food. You eat food."\par
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"You're in the friend zone. You've always been in the friend zone. You will remain in the friend zone until one of us is dead, and possibly after."\par
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"That's a really long time."\par
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"Yes."\par
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He nodded as though she'd confirmed something he already knew. There was no wound in it, no bruised quality to the silence. This was the thing about Bobby Carpenter that she couldn't quite explain to anyone \u8212? he asked, she declined, and they went right on being whatever they were without it costing either of them anything. The boys at school who'd asked her out had looked destroyed afterward, or angry, and she'd felt obscurely blamed for it. Bobby just grinned.\par
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He was grinning now.\par
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"What," she said again.\par
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"Nothing."\par
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"You're grinning."\par
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"I grin. It's a thing I do."\par
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"You think you're going to outlast me."\par
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"I think," he said, "that you're going to Stanford in a year and I'm going to Florida, and I'm making the most of my available time."\par
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"That is the most optimistic interpretation of available time I have ever heard."\par
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"I'm an optimistic person."\par
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"You're a delusional person."\par
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"Those are sometimes the same thing." He finished the onion rings. "Your backswing got shorter today. On the back nine. Did you notice that?"\par
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The shift was so clean she almost missed it. This was also Bobby \u8212? the way golf could appear in a sentence like a key in a lock. She sat up slightly. "It didn't."\par
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"Seven and eight both. Your takeaway stayed connected but the shoulder turn stopped a little early. Still made good contact but you lost maybe five yards."\par
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She thought about seven and eight. The seven iron on seven, the six on eight. She'd been slightly under the green on both, had chipped and scrambled. She'd attributed it to the lie on seven and the wrong read on eight. "That's not what happened."\par
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"Okay," he said.\par
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"The lie on seven was\u8212?"\par
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"Flat lie, tight fairway. You were a club short. You hit your seven like a seven and a half."\par
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She was quiet for a moment. The ceiling fan made its slow revolution overhead. "When did you start noticing my backswing?"\par
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"I always notice your backswing."\par
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"That's either very analytical or very creepy."\par
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"It's both." He said it cheerfully. "I'm telling you because we're playing the Palms in an hour and it's ninety-four degrees and your shoulder is going to tighten up more, not less, and if you don't make a conscious adjustment on the first tee you're going to give me two holes."\par
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Ella looked at him. His face was open and even and entirely sincere. This was also Bobby. The grin and the dinner invitations and the look on the first green when he drained the putt and spread his arms \u8212? and then this. The information offered straight because it was information, because she would use it, because he wanted the match to mean something.\par
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She hated that he was right about her shoulder.\par
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"Thank you," she said.\par
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"You're welcome."\par
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She looked at her watch. Twenty minutes. Inside the bar, her father said something and Alex threw his head back and laughed. "We should get the cart key."\par
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"Yep."\par
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They cleared the table and carried their plates inside to the bin by the kitchen and passed the bar where Andy looked up and tracked them with the unhurried ease of a man who had nowhere else to be.\par
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"Round two?" he said.\par
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"Twenty minutes," Ella told him.\par
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"Don't get in a hurry. It's hot out there."\par
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"I'm fine."\par
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"I know you are." He turned back to Alex and whatever they'd been saying.\par
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She and Bobby went to the counter and she got the key from the kid behind it, a summer hire with a slow smile who said something to Bobby about the Marlins that Bobby answered without stopping. Outside in the cart lot it was bright and sharp and the afternoon heat sat on everything with its full weight.\par
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The cart was a standard white two-seater with a canopy. She went to the driver's side without ceremony, put the key in, adjusted the seat. Bobby loaded both bags onto the back rack and got in on the passenger side and stretched his long legs out into the footwell.\par
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She looked at him.\par
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"What?" he said.\par
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"I just want to make sure you're not looking at any birds."\par
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"I won't look at any birds."\par
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"Any unusual waterfowl of any kind."\par
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"Ella."\par
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"Herons. Egrets. Anything in that general category."\par
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"I'll close my eyes."\par
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"Please don't close your eyes." She put the cart in reverse. "One down at the turn," she said. "That's what I'm thinking."\par
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"I'm thinking two up at the turn," he said. "But I'm an optimist."\par
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She backed the cart out and pointed it toward the Palms.
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