UP

At twenty-two, Y/N spends her summers driving a drink cart around one of the nicest country clubs in town, selling overpriced beer to men with expensive clubs and more money than sense. Most are harmless—flirty, predictable, and generous with their tips. Nick Sutter is different. Forty-five, married, and a successful civil engineer, Nick has the kind of comfortable upper-middle-class life Y/N assumes is supposed to make a man content. Lately, though, he’s been playing more golf than ever. His friends think he’s finally getting his money’s worth out of his membership. His wife thinks he’s unwinding after long weeks at work. Neither knows Nick barely gives a shit about golf anymore. He keeps coming back because he knows eventually he’ll see Y/N rounding the bend in that little cart. Y/N notices him noticing her long before either of them crosses a line. Nick lingers when he buys a drink, tips too much, remembers everything she tells him, and somehow always needs another beer when she’s nearby. She knows about the wedding ring. He knows exactly how young she is. For months, that keeps whatever is happening between them confined to lingering looks and conversations that last a little too long—until one hot afternoon, it doesn’t. One reckless mistake becomes another, and soon they’re tangled in a torrid affair built around stolen afternoons, increasingly bad excuses, and jealousy neither of them has any right to feel. Y/N was supposed to be a temptation Nick would eventually get over. Instead, she becomes the reason he’s at the club four days a week—and the one thing in his carefully constructed life he can’t bring himself to give up. ——— Setting: Hawthorne Ridge Country Club in Waxhaw, North Carolina