Page 53 of The Perfect Putt

I’ll never be able to go back to the time before he touched me like this. If this all washes away with the tide, I’ll be tortured by the memories of his emerald eyes and soft touch for days to come.

“There,” he says, his raspy voice barely heard over the crash of the waves. “I think you’re covered.” His hands move away as a breeze blows, making me shiver.

“Thank you.”

The tension is thick between us. Even though I’m not looking at him, I can feel the weight of his stare. The ghost of his touch. The chair shifts as he abruptly stands.

“Last one to the water buys the other a slice of pie?” he suggests out of the blue.

I stand up and meet his gaze.

“You’re on.”

Chapter twenty-six

Miles Day

This is perfect. I smile with my eyes closed, basking in the afternoon sun. After swimming and laughing until our fingers pruned and our sides ached, we trudged up the beach to our chairs and shared a lunch of cold sandwiches and spicy barbeque chips. Once our bellies were full, we leaned the chairs back to soak up the sun, letting the rays dry our skin and hair.

I roll my head to the side, looking at Ellie through the filter of my sunglasses. Her hair is the color of rich red wine, and the constellation of freckles on her skin is made darker by my lenses and her time in the sun. She looks happy, which only increases her beauty. Her lips are turned up in a content smile and she’s so relaxed I wonder if she’s fallen asleep.

I’m tempted to take a nap myself. It wouldn’t be the first time I've fallen asleep on the beach. I’m lucky enough that I rarely ever burn, so it’s not much of a risk for me to stay out for hours. I did apply a little sunscreen before laying down though just to be safe, because playing golf with a sunburn would be miserable.

Ellie’s head turns my way, surprising me. Is she awake? Can she tell I’m staring through my sunglasses? She doesn’t say anything, so I continue admiring her. Her large sunglasses are perched on her button nose, and though they take up most of her face, I can still see the flush of pink on the apples of her cheeks. Her full lips are shining with some kind of balm she put on before laying down. It makes me want to kiss her even more than I already do.

I turn my head back toward the sky, letting my eyes drift shut. Today only made my feelings for Ellie grow. She took the time to put together a whole beach day just because Fitz told her it would help me feel better. That alone made me want to draw her in my arms and kiss her right there in the parking lot. But then we spent the day together, and I got to see this wilder, freer version of her. A version that laughed with reckless abandon and dove head first into the ocean waves. She was magnetic.

I’ve never bothered to get to know a woman like this before. But now I know that she loves flowers and the beach, that her sister is her best friend and her nephew is her world. She loves to wear lavender and green but she likes to decorate in shades of blue, and her favorite way to eat pizza is straight out of the fridge. I’m collecting details like shells in a bucket, and each time I get one all I can think is more. I want to know more. I want more of her.

Anxiety creeps into my thoughts like a thief in the night ready to steal the happiness I’ve found. I want to kick it out and ignore it, but I can’t. I have to face the facts. There’s a good chance–at least fifty percent–that Ellie and I don’t work out. Probably more if you factor in that I come from a home of divorced parents.

I clench my fists in the towel beneath me. I’m not my father. Or at least, I don’t want to be. My whole life I’ve done my best to avoid any similarities to him. Which is difficult, considering I share his sandy brown hair and grass green eyes. Every morning I look in the mirror and I see a little bit of him in me. It’s what’s made me stick to my anti-marriage vow for so long. I picture him staring back at me in the mirror and I commit every day to be different.

But now, Ellie has swept into my life and shaken it up. She’s brightened my world. I don’t want to lose that. I don’t want to lose her. So now I have to choose between pining after her as a friend, or risking it all in order to be something more. The part of me that lives in the moment wants to throw caution to the wind and wake her up with a kiss right now. But the cynic that’s resided in my heart since I was old enough to understand that just because two people are married doesn’t mean they’re in love…that part of me wants to draw a line between us in permanent marker never to be crossed.

A low beeping noise startles me from my thoughts. Ellie reaches for the bag next to her chair and pulls out her phone. After she taps a few times, the beeping stops.

“Sorry,” she murmurs in a sleepy voice that makes me smile. “I must have dozed off. I set the alarm to make sure we weren’t late for your actual physical therapy appointment.”

“I haven’t checked the time since we got here. Am I going to have to buy you pie another day?”

She stretches her arms overhead, her back arching up in a way that has my blood heating. “We have time to stop by the diner. I gave us enough of a buffer.”

“You thought of everything,” I say as I sit up in the chair. She follows suit, swinging her legs over the side.

“I wouldn’t say everything. I forgot chairs and an umbrella.”

I shrug. “I like the ones we ended up with. I was on my way to falling asleep right along with you when the alarm went off.”

She grabs her shirt out of the beach bag and pulls it over her head. Her red curls stand out against the white of the fabric. She’s so unbelievably beautiful it doesn’t seem real.

“I hate that we can’t stay even longer.” She stands and shimmies on her shorts, then pulls out my shirt and throws it to me.

“Me too,” I say as I pull it on. There’s something oddly intimate about getting dressed in front of each other. It feels like something a married couple would do.

“Do you ever think about quitting?” she asks, catching me off guard.

“Not really, no.” I tie up the grocery bag we were using as a trash bag while I answer. “There have been bad days where I think of just going home and not finishing a round, but I’ve never considered quitting.”

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