Page 117 of Unexpected Shot
“I do,” I say, giving her hand a squeeze. “I just hope this next generation of Shelbys is nicer than the prototype.”
That joke gets me the punch in my arm I was looking for.
“You okay?”
She nods, pulling herself together. “Let’s go golf, Devereaux. Time to show the internet that you married the superior golfer.”
“Okay, Shelby, we've got to talk about the elephant in the room.”
“Do you mean the elephant in the cart?”
I turn to Shelby, who…just made a joke? “I didn’t expect you to have the quips today.”
“I didn’t expect a lot of things today, including filming this episode, so welcome to the club.”
I don’t know where this version of Shelby came from, but I’m liking it. And I know damn well my audience is going to eat this up when it airs.
“Funny you should say that, because the question we keep getting asked, that we’ve decided to talk about on today’sBack Nine, is why did we get married in Vegas? And why did we have our first fight in public the next day?”
Shelby knew this was coming. We even practiced the conversation this morning over breakfast. Our directives from Kat and Grayson were to tell the truth—what we could—and keep a lot vague. Let others draw their own conclusions. We promised we wouldn’t talk about the drinking. We weren’t going to talk about Chad. But everything else? That was going to be open so we could control the narrative.
As for the fight? Kat told us to go with God. Wise words from our PR manager.
“Which one do we want to start with, the wedding or the fight?”
“Lady’s choice,” I say as we make our way down the fifth fairway to her ball.
“Let’s go with the fight, then. A.k.a., the day I beat up my husband.”
“She didn’t beat me up,” I say into the camera, hoping for acomedic moment, before turning back to her. “I let you have those hits.”
“Surrrrrre,” she says unconvincingly. “But all I’ll say is, and I think any woman watching will back me up on this, sometimes when your husband is an ass, no matter if it’s day one or a thousand of your marriage, you need to jump on his back and punch him a bunch of times.”
I look over to Shelby and my jaw is fully dropped. Who is this woman being charming? And funny. At the same time! I don't know who she is, but I’m pretty sure I’m falling for her more than I’m comfortable admitting to myself.
“Really? You’re going to blame it all on me?”
“Well, did you or did you not swallow a bug on the green, then coughed so loud you could hear it back here in Nashville, causing me to miss a putt?”
“Yes. I did. But it was a really big bug. And I said I was sorry,” I defend. “And it was you who was giving me lip up the fairway.”
“Me? You were the one who was grumpy all day.”
“And why was that? Could it be because we were up late getting married? Which, by the way, was your idea, Shelby.”
We might not be admitting how drunk we were, but time stamps don’t lie, so we have to continue with the narrative that we were just feeling the flow of the night that led us to the chapel well after midnight. We share a look, because she knows I’ve got her, and this is the part of the story where we can’t tell the entire truth.
As the weeks have gone along, more of the night has come back into our memories. Not everything. We blacked out good and hard after we started playing pool, so those memories are fuzzy at best. But other things we convinced ourselves we’d made up? We didn’t make those up at all.
“Can we agree, and compromise—because, you know, that’s what married people do—that we both had a hand in the wedding, as well as our bad moods on Thursday?”
“Fine,” I groan. “Guys, y’all weren’t lying when you told me happy wife, happy life.”
“Damn straight.” Shelby sends me a wink with those last words, before popping out of the cart.
I can’t help but smile and sit back as I watch her head to her ball. This is what we’re doing today. We’re playing a regular round, and, in between, we’re just talking. A little about our games and our swings. The stuff I’d talk about with any other pro golfer who came on the show. But we were told we also need to talk about Vegas—a.k.a. the main reason everyone is going to watch. And I must say, it’s going pretty well.
Then again, we’re only four-and-a-half holes in, and this is Shelby and me. Truly anything can happen.
