Gerald and Ron immediately backpedaled, explaining that they hadn’t meant it that way.
Yeah, whatever. Jericho leaned over to examine his putt again. “So, what’s Tiffany’s story?”
He stared at the ball and the grass that seemed to be growing in the wrong direction underneath it. What the hell was up with this green?
Gerald shrugged. “She’s the assistant pro. Kowalski hired her over a year ago.”
Jericho tapped his golf ball with his putter, and it meandered the exact opposite path he thought it would go. Instead of curving toward the hole, the ball rolled straight uphill as far as he could tell and ended up three feet away from the flag.
Dammit, that ball had defied the laws of physics.
Jericho said, “Right. Anything else about her I should know?”
Ron frowned. “I think she’s a Methodist?”
That would explain the delicate gold cross nestled in the hollow of her throat that had glinted in the sunlight and kept drawing Jericho’s attention.
He walked over to his ball and tapped it again, powering it uphill toward the hole to take any break out of his line.
Again defying the law of gravity, that devil ball picked up speed and bounced off the back edge of the cup, popping up into the air and curling to a stop a foot from the hole.
Oh, God. Maybe he had the yips.
Please, God. Not the yips.
The yips were a dreaded malady that afflicted golfers young and old, tall and short, hairy and bald. The feared condition began with a wobble in the putts and often ended with a complete inability to swing or even look at a golf club. It was rumored to be psychological, but other golfers treated people with the yips as if it were highly infectious, just in case.
Through his embarrassment about his imminent three-putt, Jericho growled, “What else about her?”
The two other golfers looked at each other and then back at him. Finally, Ron asked, “What are you asking about?”
He stood over the ball again. “You know, anything about her.” He stared at the ball as if he could shoot lasers from his eyes and set it on fire.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ron backhand Gerald on the arm. Ron said, “I don’t think she dates members, Jericho. She’s not a beer girl, and this isn’t that kind of club.”
He said all that in Jericho’s backswing of his putt, and the insinuation about Tiffany made his hand shake and his putter head wobble. His golf ball staggered three inches sideways and then stopped.
Yep, definitely the yips.
It couldn’t be anything else, right?
Jericho said, “I didn’t mean that. I wouldn’t even ask that, jeez.”
This time, Gerald slapped Ron on the arm. “I don’t think she’s dating anybody if that’s what you’re asking. Her father’s been a member of this club for decades, and I don’t think anybody here would have the nerve to date Master Sergeant Sherman Jones’s daughter. If anybody made her cry, Sherman is a townie who knows every secluded deer-hunting spot for a hundred miles. The police would never find the body.”
And that made Jericho completely miss the golf ball, but the breeze from his whiffing putter head blew the ball a few inches closer to the hole, close enough for him to tap it in.
Five putts.
Jericho hadn’t taken five putts to finish out a hole for years.
Absolutely mortifying.
Must be the yips.
Cousins
Tiffany
Tiffany breezed into the kitchen of her apartment and swung her purse onto a chair beside her tiny kitchen table.
Her phone started chiming again.
And again.
Her phone had chimed most of her drive home, but she didn’t check her phone while she was driving, ever. But when she’d been sitting in her car in the parking space behind her house, she’d texted her cousins in their massive, ongoing group chat, I’m home.
Her phone continued to bing-bing-bing-bing-bing.
Since she hadn’t thought ahead to dig her charging cord out of her purse while she was still in the parking lot, all that chiming and vibrating was probably draining her weak battery. She needed a new phone.
Tiffany would deal with it in a minute. Her stomach was growling and roaming around her abdomen, looking for food.
Dang it, her banana bowl was empty, as was her snack shelf.
She didn’t have any munchie food in her entire apartment, dangit.
Her place wasn’t a flat in a high-rise apartment building but rather half of a hundred-year-old Victorian house that was sometimes charming and sometimes interesting. The white wooden siding outside was desperately in need of paint, and what was left was peeling off in places. Rust was eating through the pink enamel on the kitchen cabinets. The bathroom, however, had been renovated right before she’d moved in last year, and the gleaming glass tile, clawfoot tub, and separate shower nearly made up for the fact that cooking on that gas stove might blow up the century-old Vicky someday.
Her phone chimed seven times in quick succession.
Fine.
Tiffany pointed the screen at her face, and the messages opened up to her group chat with her cousins Asia and Imani.
Sis, where are you?
Why aren’t you answering our texts?
Yo baby girl why aren’t you answering us?
Sis! Yo SIS!
HEY ANSWER US
They were not patient people, her cousins.
Tiffany texted back, yeah, I’m home from work. @Asia, how did things go with Scott last night?
She had planned to warm up some leftover pizza from last night for her supper while she waited for Asia and Imani to answer her, but her phone started pinging and vibrating so much it nearly crawled out of her hand.
Imani: Asia broke up with Scott.
Asia: where on a break.
Imani: they broke up. Asia picked up an extra shift, and he came in for breakfast with some other beach. He knew she works at the spa’s café. But he thought she was off and like no one would tell her.
Asia: *we’re. Ducking AutoCorrect
Tiffany shook her head. Scott always had been astonishingly clueless.
Imani: I told you Scott was no good. Didn’t I, Tiffany? Didn’t I tell both you girls that Scott was leaverite?
Tiffany snorted at the reference to her father’s sarcasm. When he’d taken Tiffany and her two cousins hiking, he’d taught them to identify rocks. Gray granite, sparkling mica, and the commonplace, valueless leaverite, as in you leave-’er-right there.
Tiffany typed into her phone, yes, @Imani. You might have mentioned once or twice that Scott was indeed no good.
Imani had harped on Scott’s inadequacies and failings as a human being, of which there were many, ever since Asia had started dating him their senior year of high school. Secretly, Tiffany was relieved that the relationship had finally broken up. Scott was also a slacker whom Asia would never have been able to bring home to meet her uncle, Tiffany’s dad. If Scott would’ve tried to explain to Sherman Jones that he was somewhat-employed part-time at a skateboard shop while he worked on his music career, even though no evidence existed that Scott could play any musical instrument, her father would have the eviscerated the guy. Sherman Jones’s thorough, methodical takedowns of anyone he deemed a slacker were legendary.
Her phone chimed again.
Imani: why didn’t you answer us all day @Tiff?