“Is that right?” said Byron, doing well to not sound in the least bit frazzled in the face of this obvious ambush. “And what might that be?”
“Oh, it’s nothin’, really,” answered Fletcher, his mood flipping from deathly serious to oddly relaxed with an eerie amount of ease. “Just a small favour – and, hey, what’s that among teammates, right?”
If there was one thing Mustang knew for sure, there was never any such thing as a ‘small favour’ with people like Fletcher – only demands dressed up as requests. He just hoped Byron knew that as well.
“That depends …” said Byron, his poker face looking firmly locked in. “What kinda favour we talking ‘bout?”
“Well, it’s to do with this whole business about the playin’ order tomorrow mornin’,” explained Fletcher, taking on the troubled air of someone who’d been going back and forth on a particularly irksome topic for some time. “See, while I’m well aware that Dallas chose you and Blake to go out in the top match … well, I’m afraid I’m gonna need you to go tell him that you and Blake have changed your minds about going out first and that you’d prefer to take the second slot currently occupied by myself and Conrad here.”
“What?!” snapped Mustang, the sheer audacity of Fletcher’s request seeing him blurt out his response before he could catch himself.
Having blatantly ignored his presence up until now, a once again grim-faced Fletcher turned and looked at Mustang, his ice-blue eyes boring a hole straight through the middle of his head. “My apologies, perhaps I should have made myself a tad clearer …” he sneered, his contempt for Mustang thinly veiled. “See, this right here? This is official team business. So, as you can imagine, the opinion of nothing more than a glorified waterboy don’t really hold all that much sway. So, why don’t you go ahead, do yourself a favour, and ride along before you make the mistake of havin’ me take in an interest in you doin’ otherwise.”
After managing to avoid him all week, to find himself, once again, on the receiving end of a not-so-subtle threat from Fletcher hit Mustang more than he would have liked to admit. Obviously, he’d experienced all of this the previous Sunday, where the implied follow-through was far clearer and much more tangible. But for it to be happening now inside that bathroom, beneath the cold, sterile halogen lights embedded into the ceiling, something about the whole picture just made it feel all the more threatening. On Sunday, in the gloom and ghostly spotlighting provided by the headlights of the golf carts, seeing Fletcher reveal who he truly was had almost taken on an other-worldly quality; the kind of feeling where, once it’s over, you’re not quite sure if it actually happened or not – like trying to remember the finer details of a dream. Yet, standing in that bathroom, there was no escaping the reality of who Fletcher Rhodes really was. The mask was off and everything underneath was laid bare for everyone inside those four walls to see. No denying it. And no unseeing it.
But, just like he’d done out on that green with the lake beckoning him, Mustang wasn’t about to just roll over and let Fletcher have his way.
“Naw …” said Mustang, standing his ground. “If it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll stay right here.”
Though clearly seething at this direct affront to his perceived status over him, Fletcher forced himself into hoisting a smile across his face – an act which, when he wasn’t in front of a camera or large crowd of people, seemed physically uncomfortable for him to actually perform.
“Boy, you really are a tenacious little swamp rat, aren’t ya?” he said, speaking through the gritted teeth he was attempting to pass off as a smile.
“Look, never mind him,” said Byron, doing his best impression of a rodeo clown to quickly interject and draw Fletcher’s attention away from Mustang, whose own temper was just beginning to bubble up beneath his stern exterior. “Why would I possibly go tell Dallas that I want you and Conrad to play in the first match instead of me and Blake?”
“Well, let me answer that question by hittin’ you with one of my own …” replied Fletcher, managing to recompose himself as he shifted his focus off of Mustang and turned it back onto Byron. “Do you like Dallas?”
Byron’s face screwed up in confusion. “What do you mean ‘do I like him’?” he asked, not getting how such a question was in any way relevant to what they’d been speaking about.
“Do you like him?” said Fletcher, repeating his question, though doing so a tad more slowly. “I’d have thought that was a pretty straightforward question, no?”
After continuing to look momentarily lost as to what kind of path Fletcher was attempting to lead him down, Byron decided to just take the honest approach. “Well, yeah … of course, I do.”
“Good – so do I,” replied Fletcher, agreeably. “And it’s because I like him so much that I’m lookin’ to you to help me out here. See, anyone with even a lick of sense knows that I should be playing in the first match out tomorrow – I mean, that’s obvious. You’re lucky enough to have the best player in the world on your team and you’re not puttin’ him out first? That’s a mistake. I mean, if you’re playin’ in the Superbowl and Tom Brady’s fit and healthy, you ain’t startin’ him on the bench, now are ya? Well, this right here? This is the exact same situation. And if we let it happen? That’s all anyone’s gonna be talkin’ ‘bout tomorrow. The media? They’re gonna be all over Dallas, you, Blake, me, askin’ us all kinds of questions seein’ what we thought of it. Now, do you, honestly, want to be dealing with that kind of distraction? For the team to have to be dealin’ with it when it blows up in our faces?”
Though his intuition, once again, told him to just keep his mouth shut, Mustang couldn’t help himself from jumping back into the fray.
“Well, who’s to say that it is gonna blow up in our faces?” he said, challenging Fletcher’s argument. “If Byron and Blake go out tomorrow and win their match or even halve it, then no one’s gonna bat an eye at them going out first.”
This time, there was no attempt from Fletcher to hide his displeasure behind a forced smile. He glared at Mustang; his eyes, just like they had been the previous Sunday, striking a contradictory mix of scornful, yet at the same time utterly lifeless – like having a staring match with a hungry Great White.
“Now, a fair warnin’?” growled Fletcher. “I am rapidly runnin’ outta patience for you and your constant interr-…”
“He has a point …” said Byron, cutting across Fletcher mid-sentence, much to his annoyance. “The way you’re talking, it’s almost like you think me and Blake losing tomorrow is already a foregone conclusion.”
Before Fletcher could answer, Conrad played the risky game of jumping in ahead of him. “Well, to be fair …” he said, glancing at Fletcher to make sure he hadn’t displeased him too greatly. “Finn texted me after their meeting and said that it’s him and Fraser Campbell heading out first for the GB&I boys tomorrow, so …”
“So what?” sniped Byron, not sounding best pleased with what Conrad seemed to be implying. “You saying you don’t think me and Blake have it in us to beat them or something?”
“Gentlemen, please …” said an irritated Fletcher, hurriedly taking the floor back from Conrad before he could vocalize the answer he had all lined up for Byron. “We’re after strayin’ wildly off-topic here. This ain’t about sizin’ one another up against the GB&I boys; in fact, it’s not about any one individual, period. All this is, is me attemptin’ to do what’s best for both Dallas and the team – that’s it.”
“Oh, you are so full of it!” said Mustang, his utter disbelief at the garbage Fletcher seemed to think he could get away with spewing actually drawing a bemused laugh from his chest. “This isn’t about any one individual?! Are you kidding me?! This entire thing is about one person and one person only, and that’s you! Your ego can’t stand the fact that Dallas chose Byron and Blake to go out in the first match over “Mister World Number 1”, so now you’re tryna’ weasel your way into it instead! So, spare us the whole ‘valiant leader’ schtick about how you’re thinking about the team and Dallas – ‘cause we all know you don’t give a damn about either one of ‘em!”
A horrifically tense silence fell over the bathroom as soon as Mustang finished speaking. No one had ever heard someone speak to Fletcher like that – not even Fletcher himself. And he was furious. His jaw began to quiver. His nostrils flared in and out. Even his eyes looked as though they were physically shaking with the height of intensity with which he was glaring at Mustang. Things were sitting on a knife-edge; as if Mustang had hit a tripwire and everyone was just waiting for the ensuing explosion to happen.
“You sayin’ I’m lyin’?” snarled Fletcher, the volume of his voice dropping to a menacingly low level as he began to slowly angle his body towards Mustang. “Cause back where I’m from? You call a man a liar, you best be prepared to face the consequences, boy.”
“You can throw around all the threats you want, Fletcher …” said Mustang, somehow finding the required mettle to respond despite his legs feeling like jelly. “I’m not taking back what I said. Greyson and Conrad here? They might be happy to go along with everything you say just to stay on your good side, but that ain’t me. And while I can’t speak for everyone who else lives there? Where I’m from now? I reckon most people would agree that being your own person is pretty damn important.”
Without warning, Byron took a step closer towards Mustang as if to block Fletcher’s path to where he was standing. “No matter what the consequences might be,” he added, throwing his weight behind Mustang’s point as he stared Fletcher down.
Whilst still sporting the same threatening expression, Fletcher now took to angrily eyeballing Byron, staring deep into his pupils as if trying to get him to crack. Pretty quickly, however, he realized he was wasting his time. Because whilst he could physically impose himself over the majority of people stood inside that bathroom, the one person it wasn’t quite as effective on was Byron. For, yes, Fletcher may have been ever-so-slightly taller than Byron and more blatantly athletic-looking to the naked eye. But what one couldn’t forget is that Byron was still a Ballas; and, just like his father, that meant he’d been blessed with a wide, bearish frame that made him look more than capable of handling himself should things get physical.
And Fletcher knew this – so he smiled.
“I take it from this heartwarming little ‘show of solidarity’ that you won’t be seein’ sense and talkin’ to Dallas ‘bout tomorrow, then?” he asked, snorting derisively.
“Nope,” replied Byron flatly, still looking ready-to-go should the need arise. “Dallas chose me and Blake to lead us all off. So, as far as I’m concerned, the only way that doesn’t happen tomorrow morning? Is if I physically can’t swing a club. And unless you plan on finally backing up all this ‘tough guy’ talk you’ve been doing to actually make that a reality? I suggest you respect Dallas’ decision, think about your own match, and leave me to think about mine.” Byron took a step closer to Fletcher, his eyes not leaving his for even a second. “Or if that don’t sound all that appealing …” he snarled. “You can always puff that chest of yours back out and we can come up with a different way to decide who should go out first tomorrow.”
Conrad and Greyson exchanged a nervous glance between one another. When they’d signed up to Fletcher’s plan to go find Byron and attempt to intimidate him into relinquishing his spot in the top match, they most certainly didn’t envision it ending like this, with him and Fletcher locked eyeball to eyeball and on the verge of having a full-on brawl inside a bathroom – a prospect that, unsurprisingly, neither of the two of them wanted any part of.
And, luckily for them, neither did their boss.
“Good luck in your match …” said Fletcher, cranking the corners of his mouth upwards to form a cold, unconvincing smile. “I’ll be rootin’ for ya.”
Without another word, Fletcher turned around, brushed past Greyson and Conrad, and swept back out through the door of the bathroom, leaving the aforementioned Conrad and Greyson no choice but to dash out after him like a pair of lost toddlers.
Now alone once again – and after they’d both subconsciously waited a moment to make doubly sure that Fletcher was not, in fact, coming back – Mustang and Byron afforded themselves the opportunity to drop their respective guards and relax.
“You really think that’s the last you’re gonna hear about that?” Mustang asked, his lungs, gratefully, feeling as though they could expand to their fullest capacity once more.
“At this stage? It don’t matter if I do or not …” replied Byron, he, too, clearing out his lungs with a heavy sigh. “We’re less than twelve hours out from the first match actually teeing off, so, realistically, what’s he gonna do?”
Before Mustang could answer Byron, the door of the bathroom swung violently open, the handle smacking into the wall with such force it sounded like someone had just fired a gun. Acting on pure instinct, Mustang and Byron both whipped around in the direction of the door, fists automatically up and prepared to throw if needed.
When they saw who was actually standing there, however, the pair of them quickly re-holstered their fists.
“Goddamnit, Rodney, ya scared the crap out of us!” sighed Mustang, his heart feeling as though it were bouncing around his ribcage like a squash ball.
Seeing that his entrance may have been a touch overdramatic given it was just Mustang and Byron inside the bathroom, a slowly relaxing Rodney lowered the pool cue he’d come armed with as though it were a makeshift bo staff.
“Sorry …” he said, sounding mightily relieved that the brawl he’d imagined himself possibly wading into had failed to materialize. “When I saw Greyson and Conrad running out of here I thought there might have been a scuffle, so I came rushing over …”
“To what? Go all John Wick on ‘em?” asked Byron, dryly, as he gestured at the pool cue.
“If I’d needed to …” said Rodney, standing up a little straighter and puffing out his chest in a bid to look as formidable as possible.
“Well, let’s just thank our lucky stars it didn’t have to come to that,” quipped a smiling Mustang, now moving towards the bathroom door as his heart rate gradually dropped back down to a non-life-threatening level.
“So, given there, unfortunately, wasn’t a brawl for me to get stuck into …” joked Rodney, still doing his best Jason Statham impression as he began to stride confidently after Mustang. “What did happen?”
Mustang pulled open the door and held it for Rodney to walk through. “Come on, I’ll tell ya while you use that cue for it what was actually designed for …” Mustang answered.
“Beating you in pool?” asked Rodney, cheekily stopping in the doorway before being playfully pushed through it by Mustang.
With a laughing Rodney now making his way back across the hallway towards the arcade, Mustang turned back and looked into the bathroom. Byron was still standing in the same spot, looking as though he was still trying to process the rather bizarre events that had just unfolded.
“You wanna play too?” asked Mustang, thinking Byron might appreciate the distraction.
“Uh, naw, I’m good …” said Byron, sounding a touch taken aback by the offer.
“You sure?” said Mustang, extending the olive branch a little further. “Cause I could do with the help.”
“I’m sure you could …” replied Byron, unable to resist such an easy opening for a dig at Mustang’s expense. “But, still … I’m good, really.”
“Well, if you change your mind, you know where we’ll be,” said Mustang, smiling warmly before making a move towards leaving.
Just as the door began to swing shut, however, the sound of Byron’s voice rang out behind him.
“Thanks …” he said, the word erupting out of him as though it had been the end result of quite the internal debate as to whether or not he should actually say it.
Keeping the door propped open, Mustang turned and looked back at Byron. “For what?” he asked, confused as to what exactly he was being thanked for.
“Having my back with Fletcher,” answered Byron, sounding a touch embarrassed. “After what I’d said before they came in, you could’ve easily not … so, thanks – that was cool of you.”
“Don’t worry about it,” replied Mustang, smiling genuinely in an effort to help Byron feel less self-conscious. “I mean, I could be thanking you for the exact same thing, so … how ‘bout we just call it even, huh?”
Byron smiled. “Yeah …” he said, shaking his head in amusement. “We’re even.”
*
FWWWEEEEESSSSHHHH!!!
No sooner had he finished his follow-through, than Byron – such was the level of recoil he’d generated – whipped his driver back down around his body and began to march confidently towards the edge of the tee-box, his eyes glued to the ever brightening sky as he watched his ball sear through the deathly still, frigid morning air.
Between Byron’s reaction and that of those with a good enough view of it flying through the air telling them that his tee-shot was winding up nowhere else but smack-bang in the middle of the fairway, the colourful crowd packed tightly in around the 1st-tee at Seminole erupted in a mixture of applause and loud, boisterous chants of, “U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!”.
“Let’s go, Byron!” shouted Mustang, still enthusiastically clapping his hands amongst the mass of people who’d gathered on the tee to see the Walker Cup, officially, get underway – two of whom were Mason Sedgwick and Miles Radford, the pair of Americans who’d be sitting out the foursomes session ahead of the singles in the afternoon. “You too, Blake!”
With Byron and Blake now striding off together in the direction of the 1st-fairway – Finn Hennessy and Fraser Campbell already a good 20-yards ahead of them as they’d started walking the moment Byron had made contact with his ball – Mustang turned to Dallas just as the ‘U-S-A’ chants began to peter back out.
“Pretty good start, huh?!” said Mustang, an excited smile lighting up his face. “Told ya Byron was a killer!”
“It was an impressive tee-shot, I’ll give ya that,” replied Dallas, a wry smile on his face as he blew out a cloud of smoke from the cigar he’d been nursing since stepping foot off the bus earlier that morning. “But there’s a lot of golf still to be played, kid – especially so, against Hennessy and Campbell.”
As Dallas’ attention was momentarily garnered by having a word with yet another celebrity well-wisher wearing one of the golden ticket-like, all-access passes he’d seen slung around the necks of a handful of other wealthy-looking people, Mustang took a moment to gather himself as it had been a pretty crazy morning – probably right up there amongst the most exhilaratingly bizarre he’d ever put down in a golfing context.
Following a 5:30 a.m. wake-up call – though he’d been soundly awake long before Ray had come walking into his room – Mustang had put on the outfit that had been scripted for the opening day (along with the extra few layers that had come with it to combat the early morning chill); forced himself into eating some kind of breakfast down in the dining room (even though food had been the very last thing on his mind); and had then jumped on the bus with Ray and the rest of the team to head for Seminole.
There, of course, had been something of a tense atmosphere on the bus as it navigated the 12-mile journey through Palm Beach via police escort, what with the vast majority of people aboard feeling nervous over what the day ahead would have in store. But once they actually arrived at Seminole, and the bus weaved its way in through the rather understated entrance of the famous old track, those same nerves very quickly turned to a shared sense of excitement as soon as everyone took in the sight of the hundreds of people already milling around the course waiting for the day’s play to begin in the dawn gloom.
People carrying American flags. People dressed as American flags. There’d, clearly, even been a healthy contingent of Great Britain & Ireland supporters after making the journey across the Atlantic, as evidenced by the various Union Jacks and Irish tricolours dotted in and around the plethora of stars and stripes. In short, the atmosphere had been electric – and as the day wore on, it promised to only grow in intensity as the crowd numbers swelled even further and the pleasant sunshine that was forecast began to beat down on the links.
Between drinking in the sight of all the people and enjoying the rather rapturous cheer they’d received from them when disembarking from the bus, however, Mustang had become so distracted by the carnival-like atmosphere surrounding the clubhouse that, for a moment or two, he’d actually forgotten he was there as part of the actual team – with Ray, eventually, needing to step in and remind him that they had to go to the range to warm-up.
Of course, while breaking out the clubs and working his way through a bag of balls had been mildly distracting, Mustang’s mind, regardless, had been anything but focused on what he’d been doing – mainly because he’d been thinking about the previous night. As opposed to the downright brazenness of Fletcher’s failed attempt to coerce Byron into giving up his spot in the top match, however, what had been really bothering Mustang about what had gone down in that bathroom was just how easily Fletcher had ‘given up the ghost’ after Byron had made it clear he wouldn’t be budging on his decision.
After going to the trouble of tracking him through the hotel alongside his cronies, Conrad and Greyson, Mustang would have thought that, of all people, Fletcher would’ve been the kind of person to have a plan ‘B’ in his back pocket should he not have gotten the answer he’d wanted from Byron – an outcome he, surely, must have predicted would happen. Yet, apparently, he hadn’t. Byron had said ‘no’ and that was that. Fletcher merely wished him ‘good luck’ and instantly retreated.
And that’s what had been bothering Mustang in the back of his mind since getting on the bus outside the hotel that morning.
Because ever since he’d revealed who he truly was when there were no cameras around, Mustang knew that Fletcher was the type of person who always had a plan ‘B’ – meaning, no matter how hard he’d tried to shake it, Mustang just couldn’t help but feel that, as opposed to not having anything up his sleeve, he and Byron had just yet to actually see what Fletcher did have up there.
Obviously, throughout the course of the morning, those feelings of suspicion had somewhat waned for Mustang between seeing Fletcher laughing and joking en route to the course; happily signing autographs and taking pictures with fans once they arrived; and then comfortably working his way through his warm-up on the range (where, admittedly, his swing had looked to be at its imperious best).
But, still, even as he’d wrapped up his own warm-up and made his way to the 1st-tee in order to catch Byron’s tee-shot and soak in the atmosphere, there had still remained that niggling thought in the back of Mustang’s mind that Fletcher was up to something – he just hadn’t known what it could possibly be.
Now that Byron and Blake were safely halfway down the 1st fairway, however – therefore, meaning, their place in the top match was definitively out of Fletcher’s grasp – that same metaphorical stone in his shoe had, for all intents and purposes, disappeared for Mustang. It was over, leaving the only thing for him to do now but be a good teammate and, despite everything they’d done, support Fletcher and Conrad the exact same way he had just done for Byron and Blake.
BLEEP! BLEEP! – BLEEP! BLEEP!
Hearing the sound of the walkie-talkie he had attached to his hip suddenly beginning to ring, Dallas quickly excused himself from his conversation and answered the call.
“Go for Dallas.”
With his walkie-talkie working off a hands-free system via a Bluetooth microphone and earpiece, though Mustang couldn’t hear who was on the other end of the line, seeing as he knew all of Dallas’ vice-captains had been hooked up with the exact same rig, he figured it had to be one of them.
“Wait a minute …” said Dallas, his face suddenly contorting in panicked confusion as he pressed his finger against the earpiece to try and drown out the noise of the crowd. “He’s what?!”
Mustang’s stomach immediately dropped. There was only one person Dallas could be speaking about. The stone was back.
“Alright, leave it with me!” barked Dallas, abruptly ending his call before taking a moment to rub his shovel-sized hand frustratedly over his face.
“What is it? What’s happened?” said Mustang, almost afraid to ask the question given Dallas’ agitated state.
Dallas brought his hand back down. “It’s Fletcher …” he sighed, looking as though he, himself, was still trying to believe that this was actually happening. “He’s not playin’ – pulled a muscle in his back just before the end of his warm-up.”
“Are you serious?!” said Mustang, eyes narrowing in suspicion. “But I saw him warming up! He looked fine!”
“So did I, but that’s what I’ve been told …” replied Dallas, his mind now looking as though it were trying to compute a million different things at once. “All I know now is I gotta go decide which one of the boys here is gonna fill in for him, and only have two goddamn minutes to get ‘em ready …”
With Dallas hurriedly brushing past him in order to fill Mason and Miles in on what was happening, Mustang could only shake his head in disbelief. Fletcher was lying about being hurt – Mustang knew he was.
This had been his plan all along. The big reveal. The only thing Mustang had gotten wrong, however, was thinking that he and Byron would be the sole focus of Fletcher’s vindictiveness. But that had been him thinking too small. After all, this was the ‘Fletcher Rhodes’ they were dealing with. Punishing just him and Byron? No, that wouldn’t be enough. He was going to punish everybody who’d had the audacity to not give him exactly what he wanted. And the main culprit behind that happening? Dallas. So, of course, he would want him to feel his ire as well – need to. And the best way to do that? Leave him in the lurch at the very last minute, citing a fake injury as his excuse, and then sit back and watch as Dallas desperately scrambled to fix the mess he’d made.
It was the perfect plan.
Like dropping a bomb from a plane.
The only thing that remained to be seen now, however, was how much damage it would actually do?
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