Blackened
Mahi Wrap

July, the last hour of daylight. The light so thick and honeyed you could spread it on toast.

Teddy and I were college roommates. Twenty-two years ago we ate cereal for dinner and thought it was freedom. Now here we were on the 11th green at PopStroke Myrtle Beach, two men with reading glasses in our shirt pockets, debating whether a putt broke left or broke more left.

It broke more left. He made it. Birdie. He raised his putter to the sky like a man who'd just been released from prison.

Celebration called for something with a little fire, so I ordered the mahi wrap. Blackened mahi, wrapped up in a spinach wrap, green as the 11th. Mango habanero, sweet at first and then, a beat later, not sweet at all. Crisp lettuce. Mango salsa, bright and juicy, the taste of a vacation you haven't booked yet. House-made chips alongside, salty and gone too fast. A pickle spear, cool and composed, there to talk you down.

We ate on the patio while the sun slid down behind the course and stretched every slope of every green into long shadow.

"Cereal," Teddy said, between bites. "We ate cereal." He shook his head. I passed him the last chip. Some debts take twenty-two years to settle.