Page 116 of Unexpected Shot
“Oh believe me, I know,” she says, staring off into the distance, and I don’t push her. If she’s ready to open up to me about this, I’m going to take it for the gift it is. “Want to hear something that will make you lose it?”
“Of course.”
She lets out a sigh. “I turned down a two million dollar yearly endorsement from Nike.”
I brake the cart so hard we’re nearly ejected. “You did what?”
“I know…”
“Shelby! That’s— Some male athletes don’t get that kind of money from Nike. Which is shit, and I hate that I have to say that, but that’s a battle we can fight at another time. But what do you mean you turned down two million?”
“I don’t know… It felt…icky.”
“Icky?”
“Yeah, icky,” she says, shivering like a bug just crawled up her back. “What did we say we wanted to be when we grew up?”
“Professional golfers,” I say with a sigh.
“Never in any of those dreams did we say ‘professional golfers and part time shoe peddlers.’”
“While you aren’t wrong, can I say something you’re going to hate, while it also reminds you of something I think you’re forgetting?”
She gives me a side-eye that makes me laugh. “I knew I shouldn’t have agreed to this.”
“Too bad,” I say, turning to her. “Do you remember how excited you were when women athletes were getting put on cereal boxes? Or were in commercials? Billboards around town? I seem to remember a Shelby who suddenly wanted to start playing soccer after the USA Women won the 1999 World Cup.”
She chuckles at the memory. “I lasted one day on the soccer field before I ripped off my shin guards. They were so hot.”
“But, it made you want to play the sport. It showed you that other women were doing things you could only dream of doing. Things you wanted to do. Maybe not in that sport, but making money playingasport. Showing little girls that they could dream. Do you remember that?”
I don’t mean to make Shelby cry, but the second I see her eyes becoming glassy, I know I struck a nerve.
“Hey,” I say softly, bringing her into my hold, not caring if she wants my comfort or not. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean?—”
“You’re right. Everything you said was right,” she admits. “I just want to play golf. And…I don’t know. Part of me feels like putting myself out there, posing for pictures with a certain shirt, or holding up a drink… It feels like I’m selling out. And…”
“And what?”
She looks away before she says the next words. Words that break my heart. “I’ve never done anything in my life to make people like me, Beau. I’ve always been the outcast. The one they had to let play with the boys because there were no girls and they didn’t want my dad raising a stink. I swear too much. I probably drink too much. I hate interviews. What’s going to happen when a company sponsors me and realizes after the fact that they don’t want me.”
God…I know she hates it when I try to fix things for her, but what I wouldn’t give to go back in time and make sure every person who made her this way—her mother, Chad, every douchey member of the country club, and even myself—feels an ounce of the pain this woman carries every day. All because she just wanted to fucking golf.
“You can’t control others,” I say, though I don’t know if my words are doing much to help her right now. “But I promise, if a company wants you—whether it was Nike then, or Sprite now—they’re offering that because they want you. And as for the rest of the world? Fuck them. They don’t know who you really are.”
“Well, if Sprite calls, that’s a different story.”
“I know you’re joking, but it’s really not.” She slowly moves away from my embrace, but still lets me hold her hand. “I mean it. I’ve been in plenty of these conversations, enough to know that big companies aren’t offering deals like that to anyone. They pick you because they want you. As long as you believe in the product, it’s not selling out. It’s diversifying. It’s making sure you have a nest egg that will last you well past when we’re done playing.”
“Speak for yourself, old man.”
She laughs as I tickle her side, but I’ll take any burn she wants to give me if it gets her smiling again. “All I’m saying is you aren’t selling out. If anything, you’re making that younger Shelby proud that you’ve reached the level where you can inspire the next generation of Shelbys.”
There’s only been one other time in my and Shelby’s life that she’s ever looked at me like she wants to believe every word coming out of my mouth. Like she’s hoping against hope the words I’m saying can come true. Twenty years ago, on the eighteenth hole at Willowmere Country Club.
And it guts me just as much now as it did then. Because, God, I’d give anything for my words to come true.
“You think so?”
