Blackened
Mahi Tacos

High noon. Sunglasses on. A cloudless June sky so blue it looked edited.

I was playing with my niece, nineteen, home from her first year of college and newly fearless about everything, including uphill putts. She hits them hard and makes an alarming number of them.

On the eighth green at PopStroke Scottsdale, a wide shelf with a back tier, she charged one up the slope, past the hole, onto the upper level, and it trickled back down and fell in. She looked at me as if this had been the plan all along. Perhaps it had.

At the turn we stepped off for lunch at a patio table in the sun, and I ordered the blackened mahi tacos, because the best fish tacos taste, in my imagination, like a vacation I never quite took.

Corn tortillas. Mahi, flaky and bold under that dark, peppery blackening. Cabbage crunch for texture. Sweet sriracha aioli, creamy and glowing. Onion and cilantro, sharp and green and bright. Seasoned cotija crumbled over the top like salt on a summer shoulder. Jalapenos, for courage. And pickled onion, tangy and vivid pink.

She asked if she could have one. I said no. She took one. I have learned to choose my battles.

Back on the course she beat me by four strokes, her sunglasses pushed up in her hair, humming. I put my card in my pocket and told her mother it was close.