Once the mayhem of Sunday night gave way to the peace and quiet of sunrise early Monday morning, ‘Walker Cup Week’ had officially begun in Florida – and Mustang, for one, was glad of the distraction.
Of course, the trips out to Seminole each day were a touch awkward, what with Mustang having to share a bus with Fletcher, Conrad, and those other members of the American team who had been very much looking forward to heaving him and Rodney into a greenside lake on Sunday night. But whenever that luxury coach would actually arrive at Seminole and pull up outside the famous terracotta-coloured clubhouse, any and all thoughts Mustang had about Fletcher or anyone else who’d been on that green in the early hours of Monday morning were pushed firmly to the back of his mind.
Well, for the most part anyway.
Because there had been one person who’d been out on the Ocean Course that night who, despite his best efforts, Mustang had been unable to shake from his mind, and that was the very same person who’d saved him and Rodney from taking a midnight swim at the hands of Fletcher Rhodes and the others – one, Byron Ballas. And the reason Mustang’s oldest nemesis had proven so difficult to relegate to some darkened corner of his subconscious? To be dealt with at a later date when he wasn’t trying to decipher the puzzle that was Seminole’s undulating fairways and greens? Because, no matter how much he’d tried to ignore it, Mustang had needed an answer to one simple question: why had Byron bailed him and Rodney out?
Of all the people who Mustang thought would have been delighted to see him getting thrown into a lake in the middle of the night, Byron Ballas would have, most definitely, topped that list. In fact, if there was one person who Mustang had been surprised to find not front and centre of everything that had gone down Sunday night, it had been Byron. Because after seeing the way he’d been sitting at the same table with Conrad, Greyson, and Fletcher at the welcome dinner, Byron helping them enact their little ‘test’ would, surely, have struck the perfect balance between humiliating Mustang, whilst at the same time ingratiating himself to the self-appointed ‘head honchos’ of the American team.
And, yet, as Mustang now well knew, Byron hadn’t been on that green as one of the mob intent on embarrassing him and Rodney. Far from it. Instead, as Mustang had been playing and replaying over in his head since it happened, Byron, out of nowhere, had swooped in on a golf cart and whisked him and Rodney away at the very last second like some daring getaway driver in a heist movie.
Obviously, when the three of them had finally landed back at the rear of the hotel – and after making sure the others hadn’t decided to give chase – Mustang had, of course, tried to ask Byron there and then why he’d helped them. But, no sooner had he actually brought the golf cart to a halt and allowed Mustang and Rodney to disembark, however, than Byron – after saying nothing more than, “Go straight to your rooms” – planted his foot straight back down onto the gas pedal and, with a faint screech of the tyres grinding against the concrete, disappeared into the night to dump the cart off somewhere a little less conspicuous.
And from then on? That had been the closest Mustang had come all week to talking to Byron about what had happened – though, it hadn’t been for the lack of trying on Mustang’s part.
Trying to speak to him on the bus to and fro from Seminole every day had been a non-goer, as between being constantly planted alongside his po-faced caddie and the fact he had a pair of AirPods perennially stuck in his ears every time he stepped foot on the bus, it hadn’t really been conducive to he and Mustang sitting down for a chat. Speaking to him while they’d actually been out on the course grinding hadn’t worked either, as the practice groups Dallas had put together for the week had been all about trying out different combinations and seeing who might gel well together come the foursomes sessions at the weekend – an experiment which, given he was an alternate, didn’t really see Mustang being included in the mix. Even trying to catch Byron in and around the confines of the hotel had proved frustratingly difficult for Mustang, because when he wasn’t surrounded by his father or those members of the team he’d been practicing with, like Blake Landor and Austin Andrade, at mealtimes, Byron had just been holed up in his room – and while Mustang had been eager to talk to him, the idea of rocking up unannounced at his door didn’t really seem as though it would have had the best outcome.
With it now being Friday night, however, Mustang’s desperation levels had reached breaking point.
“So, how goes the effort to wrangle Byron?” Rodney asked, sounding a hair distracted as he chalked the top of his pool cue and carefully plotted out his next move. “Found out why he helped us yet?”
Having arrived back at the Breakers earlier that evening from the opening ceremony out at Seminole – a very formal affair filled with speeches and the traditional hoisting of the flags that marked the official beginning of the Walker Cup – Mustang and Rodney, both of whom were still dressed in their uber-swanky team suits, had taken to playing pool inside the in-house arcade at the hotel after their respective team meetings ahead of the opening foursomes sessions the following morning had both wrapped up and each team had been given ‘leave’ for the rest of the night to relax.
Little did Mustang know when he’d agreed to play with Rodney, however, that he was wading straight into the deep end with a full-blown ‘pool shark’.
“Nope,” answered Mustang with a hopeless sigh. “Been trying all week and nothing. To be honest, though, I think he’s been deliberately avoiding me, so, that hasn’t helped – ‘cause there’s no way it should be this hard to talk to someone when you’re both staying in the same hotel.”
After choosing the shot he wanted to take, Rodney proceeded to sink an audacious long pot straight into one of the far-off corner pockets with unnerving ease.
“Though, speaking of finding things ‘hard’ …” lamented Mustang dryly, as the sound of yet another striped pool ball clanking its way through the inner workings of the table reminded him how badly he was being beaten. “It’s nice to see ‘playing pool’ is, obviously, not one of those things for you! How the heck did you get so good at this, man?!”
“My gran and grandad have a pub in Scotland …” replied Rodney, still sporting an incredibly concentrated expression on his face as he walked around the side of the table to where the chalk-marked cue ball had ended up. “And when me and my family visit during the summer, if the weather’s bad – which, given it’s Scotland during the summer, is most of the bloody time – me and my brother just wind up playing pool for the day inside the pub.”
“Well, I wish you’d told me that before we’d started playing!” smiled Mustang, rightfully feeling as though he’d been swindled out of the 50 cents they’d wagered on the outcome of the game.
“And miss out on the chance to say I’ve beaten Mustang Peyton at something?!” joked Rodney, a wry grin on his face as he bent down to go about taking another shot. “Not on your life!”
With another sharp rock of his elbow, Rodney sent his final striped ball crashing beneath the felt-topped surface of the table, leaving only the 8-ball as his one remaining target. Mustang knew the end was nigh.
“So, you think you’re just gonna leave it, then?” Rodney asked, postponing the inevitable end by taking a moment to apply another whisper-thin layer of blue chalk to the tip of his cue. “As in, trying to talk to Byron?”
Mustang took a contemplative breath in. He’d, of course, already considered such a proposition at various times throughout the week, of just giving up trying to talk to Byron. But after everything the pair of them had been through in the past and given how wildly out-of-character his actions on Sunday night had been, Mustang just couldn’t let it go – he needed to know the answer to his question.
“Naw, I think I might try and give it one more go,” sighed Mustang, now leaning on his cue a little. “Cause all I need is just thirty seconds alone with him, you know? Where he isn’t surrounded by his father, or his caddie, or one of the other guys from the team. Just one brief window where I can get him on his own and ask him why he helped us – that’s all. But it’s just trying to find that window is the problem.”
As Rodney turned to look at him, something interesting caught his eye off behind Mustang’s shoulder. “Hmm, I dunno …” he said teasingly, trying his best to stave off a smile as he popped the chalk back down onto the side of the table. “That might not be as difficult as you think it is …”
“Trust me …” said Mustang, adamant that he had the requisite insider knowledge on this particular subject matter. “Take it from someone who’s been actively trying to corner Byron all week – it ain’t easy.”
“Oh, I’m sure it’s not,” replied Rodney, his tone now deliberately leading. “But, uh … I dunno … have you perhaps considered – and, bear in mind, I’m just spitballing here, obviously – waiting until he goes to the bathroom or something?”
“Well, seeing as how I thought showing up at his room wouldn’t go down all that well,” answered Mustang, his face screwing up in mild confusion as though he felt Rodney hadn’t fully thought through his suggestion. “You can probably imagine how I feel about the prospect of ambushing him in his bathroom.”
“Not in his bathroom, obviously!” scoffed Rodney, even if he was internally amused by the idea of Mustang leaping out of Byron’s shower like some deranged stalker. “I meant in, like, a public bathroom!”
“Oh!” laughed Mustang, thinking that idea made a lot more sense than him somehow breaking into Byron’s room. “Well, obviously, yeah, that would be great, but what are the chances of that realistically happening?”
“Well, considering Byron just walked into that loo over there a minute ago …” said Rodney, smiling brazenly as he pointed loosely off behind Mustang in the direction of the hallway just outside the arcade. “I’d reckon pretty good, to be fair.”
After whipping quickly around to take in the sight of the bathroom in question, a smiling Mustang turned back and just looked at Rodney, ruefully shaking his head as he did so. “And you couldn’t have just told me that right away, no?!” he asked.
“I’m sure I could’ve …” replied Rodney, dryly, as his smile didn’t look as though it was going to be fading anytime soon. “But where would the fun have been in that?!”
“Pool changes you,” said Mustang, jokingly narrowing his eyes and affecting a faux-suspicious tone as he turned and popped his cue back onto the rack with the others. “Not sure if I like it or not …”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah …” laughed Rodney, bending down to line up his ‘coup de grȃce’ on the 8-ball. “Just hurry back …” With that said, Rodney fired the tip of his cue right into the back of the cue ball and promptly dispatched the 8-ball right into the heart of the middle pocket. Whilst still hunched over the table, Rodney stole a glance at Mustang. “Cause you could do with the practice,” he said, punctuating his remark with a cheeky wink.
“Yeah … I definitely don’t like it,” smiled Mustang, before turning and setting off walking at pace in the direction of the bathroom. “Just rack ‘em back up – I want double or nothing on that 50 cents when I get back!”
With the thunderous sound of Rodney releasing the balls from the inside of the table following him across the hallway, Mustang pushed open the heavy, wooden door of the bathroom and walked inside. As the door swung gently shut after him, pleasantly muffling the cacophony of video game music and electronic-sounding jingles emanating from the arcade, the first thing Mustang noticed inside the bathroom was the pungent aroma of perfumed bleach and urinal cakes lingering in the vaguely warm air – which, all things considered, wasn’t the worst smell to find himself confronted with inside a public bathroom. The second thing he noticed, however – and by far the most important – was the one stall door among the row of open ones that was actually closed. His target was acquired.
After giving a cursory check around the rest of the bathroom to make sure that they were, indeed, fully alone, Mustang, despite feeling suddenly self-conscious about this ad hoc plan, realized he’d come too far just to chicken out now and decided to go for broke.
“Uh … Byron?” he said, his voice echoing more than he would’ve like around the cavernous bathroom.
“Ugh, you’ve got to be kidding me!” groaned Byron, his disgruntled voice spilling out over the neatly-painted, wooden sides of the the stall.
“Look, I know this isn’t ideal – believe me, given where we are, this ain’t no picnic for me either,” said Mustang, looking to reason with Byron before he could get any more agitated over this interruption. “But I just want to talk – and as it feels like you’ve been avoiding me all week … well, you know, ‘desperate times’ and all that.”
Hearing the sound of the toilet flushing, followed closely by that of the lock being slid back out of the way, Mustang watched as Byron pulled open the door of the stall and came marching out into the open like a bull at a rodeo.
“Well, it probably feels like I’ve been avoiding you because that’s exactly what I was doing,” he said, not mincing his words as he walked straight towards the row of spotlessly clean sinks located directly across from the stalls. “Something which, by the way, most normal people would just take the hint on and leave me alone – not take as a cue to follow me into a goddamn bathroom like some kinda weirdo.” Byron paused from pumping some soap into his hand to look over at Mustang. “Yet, here you are.”
“Ok, well, answer me this then,” said Mustang, looking to counter Byron’s point with one of his own. “Why have you been avoiding me?”
“Probably the same reason everybody else does,” Byron answered, flicking on the faucet with his elbow and rinsing his now lathered hands under the high-pressured stream of water funneling out of it. “Cause you’re annoying.”
“Naw, that’s bull and you know it,” said Mustang, confidently disagreeing with Byron as he watched him turn the faucet back off and grab some paper towels with which to dry his hands. “This is because of last Sunday – you knew I’d want to find out why you helped me and Rodney, but for whatever reason, you didn’t want to tell me.”
“Get over yourself, man,” tutted Byron, though his indignation appeared forced. “Last Sunday was no big deal – so, just drop it.”
“Well, if that’s really true you should have no problem telling me why you did it then, right?” asked Mustang, springing his trap.
With his hands now fully dry, an irritated Byron balled up the paper towels he’d been using and tossed them down into the chrome-covered trash can sitting at his feet. “You’re really not gonna let this go, are you?” he asked, sighing in exasperation as he wiped the final few remnants of damp from his hands.
“Not likely, no,” answered Mustang, honestly.
Letting out another frustrated sigh after staring aimlessly off into nothing to try and figure out how exactly he’d ended up in this particular moment, Byron took in the sight of Mustang once more, a look of unwilling resignation now plastered across his face.
“Alright, fine …” he began, reluctantly, as he slid his hands inside the pockets of his suit trousers. “I did it because Dallas told me what you said to him about me – there, happy?”
Mustang could feel his face wrinkling up in confusion as he began furiously replaying every interaction he’d had with Dallas to try and remember what he’d, apparently, said about Byron.
“What I said?” asked Mustang, as his frantic search continued to turn up no discernible results.
“About me being a great golfer?” said Byron, begrudgingly attempting to jog Mustang’s memory. “And that if anyone had the stones to go up against ‘The Six’ and get a point -…”
“It would be you …” said Mustang, finishing Byron’s sentence for him as he suddenly remembered the exact interaction with Dallas he was referencing. “Yeah, I remember now. I said that to him when he dropped by my room just after me and Ray had checked in. But when did he say that to you?”
“After the welcome dinner had just started to wrap up,” Byron answered, any previous reluctance to talk now, seemingly, evaporated, and, instead, replaced with a stoic resoluteness to get this encounter over and done with as quickly as possible. “I was getting ready to go meet up with Conrad and Greyson after they’d said they wanted to talk to me about something they’d planned for later that night …”
“I wonder what that could have been?” quipped Mustang, knowing full well they’d been referring to their planned abduction of him and Rodney.
“Yeah, well, either way …” continued Byron, unperturbed by Mustang’s interruption. “There I am, at our table, getting my stuff together to leave, when, out of nowhere, Dallas comes over and starts talking to me. Now, at first, it’s just general small talk – you know, how was the trip down? Did I enjoy the meal? – the usual. But then, after a while, he comes right out and says, ‘Hey, look, I’m thinking of having you lead us off in the first match out on Saturday – you think you could handle that?’”
Mustang’s mouth fell open in amazement. Having been in the team meeting earlier that night, he, himself, had listened to Dallas reading out the names of those eight players who’d be lining out in the opening foursomes session the following morning. And, sure enough, in the top match out, Dallas had chosen Byron and Blake Landor as the pair to go out and try to get some red on the scoreboard early on – a decision which, going on the quietly furious expression that had been slapped across his face, had not sat well with Fletcher, who had been given the nod to head out in the second match alongside Conrad.
What was blowing Mustang’s mind, however, was the fact that Dallas had, evidently, come to this decision so early in the week.
“And going on the fact that you are heading out first tomorrow …” said Mustang, slowly slipping the puzzle pieces into place. “I’m assuming you said that you could handle it?”
“Are you kidding? Of course, I did!” said Byron, his level of animation now reaching such a state that he could no longer keep his hands rooted in his pockets. “When I said that, though, what does Dallas go and say back to me? ‘Good; then make sure you work hard this week, and if I see what Mustang sees in you? The spot is yours’. Needless to say, when I heard that? Well, as you can imagine, I just had to know what he meant. So, I asked him. He told me. And … well, you know the rest.”
Mustang could only shake his head in stunned disbelief. “So, you bailing me and Rodney out?” he said, figuring he had the right answer in his mind, but wanting to make doubly sure. “That was what … you thanking me or something?”
“Naw, it wasn’t even that,” replied Byron, his tone stern and matter-of-fact. “It was just me making things even. You helped me. So, I helped you. That’s all. Nothing more, nothing less. Hell, if Conrad came rolling through that door right now talking about how he was gonna drag you down to the beach and throw you into the ocean to make up for last Sunday? I wouldn’t lift a finger to stop him – because, again, Seabiscuit … we’re even.”
Sounding as though he’d said all he was going to say on the matter, Byron took to checking out his appearance in the reflection of the large mirror running right the way along the wall behind the row of sinks. Despite his attempt to appear dismissive and detached, however, as Mustang watched Byron obsess over his reflection like a parakeet after being given a mirror for the first time, he couldn’t help but get the impression that this was all for show.
Granted, Mustang fully believed Byron when he said he’d shown up Sunday night out of some sense of ‘owing him one’. But as for his whole stance on letting Conrad do whatever should he and the others turn up for attempt number two at finishing what they’d started that same Sunday night? Mustang wasn’t buying it. Not for a second. He knew how much this tournament meant to Byron because of his grandfather winning it. And the fact that he was now going to be leading out the American team on the opening day of play because of something Mustang had said to Dallas? For all his talk and bravado, Mustang knew, deep down, Byron wouldn’t be forgetting that any time soon – even if, for the sake of appearances, he needed to pretend as if he already had done.
“No, sure … I understand,” said Mustang, deciding to yield to the paradigm Byron wanted to reinstate between them. “Either way, though, I just wanted to say thanks for doing what you did – me and Rodney really appreciated it, so … yeah.”
Finally happy that he was looking his absolute best, Byron tore his attention away from his reflection and turned it back onto Mustang.
“Whatever …” he said, admirably keeping up his charade of being completely indifferent, even if Mustang could spy the cracks in its veneer. “So, I take it we’re done here? Cause I kinda got places I need to be, so … if you don’t mind.”
“Yeah, no, we’re done,” said Mustang, stepping to the side and gesturing as if he was clearing the way for Byron to leave. “I think we’ve covered everything.”
Not feeling the need to respond with anything else bar a dismissive shake of his head, Byron walked past Mustang and carried on his way towards the bathroom door, the heels of his dress shoes clicking noisily off the tiled floor with each step he took.
“Actually …” said Mustang, suddenly thinking of something else he’d been meaning to say to Byron. “Now that you mention it, there is one other thing.”
Stopping a few steps short of the door, Byron let out a purposefully irritated-sounding sigh. “What?” he asked, not even having the common courtesy to turn back around and look at Mustang to see what he had to say.
“I just wanted to say … good luck tomorrow, alright?” said Mustang. “You deserve it.”
Despite his best efforts to brush off his well wishes, Byron couldn’t prevent his shoulders from blatantly slumping – despite his stubbornness to prevent it from happening, his hastily built walls had been breached.
“Thanks …” said Byron quietly, sounding the most genuine Mustang had ever heard him as he looked discreetly over his shoulder in his direction.
After sitting in this rare moment of shared mutual respect between one another – the kind not seen since their shared few words on the 18th at the Creek after Mustang had won the Memorial – Byron began to take the final few steps needed to reach the door of the bathroom. Before he could get there, though, Byron was caught off guard by the door swinging briskly open, the force of which seeing the handle smack straight into the wall behind it with a loud, bone-grating thump.
“Yeah, he’s in here!” said Greyson, calling out to some unseen person outside the bathroom as he leaned against the door to keep it open. “And, wouldn’t ya know, his little buddy’s in here too!”
Mustang and Byron both scowled at Greyson. They knew that whatever was happening, it couldn’t be good – especially so, given the devilish grin currently stretching Greyson’s weaselly mouth.
“What do you want, Greyson?” growled Byron, not sounding like he was much in the mood for joking around.
Suddenly, a voice spoke out from outside the bathroom. One with an all-too-familiar South Carolina accent.
“Well, it’s not so much what he wants, Byron …” said Fletcher, sounding quietly intimidating as he came walking casually in through the door of the bathroom, his head slightly bowed into his chest as Conrad followed closely behind him.
Once fully inside and no more than a few steps away from where Byron was standing, Fletcher came to a stop.
Right on cue, Greyson let the door swing closed behind the three of them, sealing the bathroom off from any prying eyes outside in the hallway.
There was no doubting it now: Mustang and Byron were well and truly cornered.
“And more about what I want …” snarled Fletcher, finally looking up at Byron. “From you.”
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