Natural Attraction

by C L Green

  “No.”

  Well there you have it I think to myself. He’s single – yay! It is then that it hits me that I may be an idiot and I may have misread the situation. A brief feeling of embarrassment passes over me but being the direct question queen that I am, I have to ask.

  “Okay, are you gay then?”

  This question is met with silence.

  Dead silence.

  Crap.

  Me and my big old mouth just don’t know when to stop do we?

  Why did I have to say that? Does it matter if he is gay? This is supposed to be the guy who is going to help me retrain my horse and here I am firing personal questions at him at the first opportunity. I am about to fess up and apologize for my disgraceful behavior when I hear the familiar beeping sound of disconnection on my phone.

  He has hung up.

  Fuck.

  He has jumped right in on the ‘leave me’ category of people that know me. Well I don’t suppose I can blame him. Being direct with people when they do something to annoy me, or when they do something I don’t take kindly to is a different thing to asking some guy I’ve just me whether he is gay.

  How stupid was that?

  Oh God.

  Now I’m going to have to check myself into a Health Service for stupidity treatment. Could the day get any worse?

  My IPhone starts ringing again.

  To my utter astonishment it is the same number calling again. Now this is weird, why would he ring me back?

  I swipe across the screen to answer the call and hold the phone to my ear wondering what on earth I am going to say to him to apologize for my stupidity. I am still carefully considering my words when he growls through the phone.

  “Don’t do that shit again.”

  “Um…” How to respond to that?

  “Ya hearing me? Don’t do that shit again,” he growls again.

  “Um… I…”

  “When I meet a new horse, the first thing I do is just walk on over and stand nearby, but not too close. I do this to watch ‘em in their own zone, no ropes and free to do their own thing. I do this to get a feel for what they are thinking and to set a base for trust and communication. Horses can tell you a lot of things during their down time when they’re doing what looks a lot like nothing. They are master communicators.

  At first, I didn’t understand the importance of this unpressured introduction between a human and a horse. At first I didn’t’ listen to them telling me their thoughts on this space invasion. Their thoughts were shown in a lot of different ways. These ranged from mild indifference, just walking away, to stronger shit like gettin’ their teeth into me, their back feet on me, or in one particular case, charging direct at me in an attempt to flatten me.

  Sadly, it took me a few lessons to learn the shit I needed to know. To understand the importance of building trust and friendship. I had to learn you don’t push in against a horse without ‘em first inviting you in.

  Lucky for you I learned this and I’m willing to give you a go and invite you in. Lucky for you for those horses forgave me enough to let me start over and get it right the next time.

  Those horses taught me the value of forgiving.

  If you have plans to communicate with me and establish a friendship with me, you need to quit that fucked up straight line thinking and direct attack shit. You especially need to do this if you plan to establish communication and friendship with your horse. That direct attack approach shit won’t work with me and it won’t work with horses.

  Lucky for you I speak English and I can give you this lesson in one short conversation. Lucky for you there is no need for you to make multiple attempts to work out what the hell you are doing wrong like I had to do with all those horses. Are you hearing me? Oh and no, I am most definitely not gay.”

  Wow, not only am I now embarrassed by my own actions, but I now feel like I’ve been told off by a schoolteacher as well.

  A weird mixture of feelings and emotions swarm through my body. His words are very sage. There is also good news in that he is not gay.

  “Okay, thanks. Does this mean you are giving me a second chance?” I ask at a barely audible whisper.

  “Yeah it does. Do you want a second chance?” He replies softly, sending a small thrill of excitement through my veins.

  Is this not the nicest guy on earth?

  How could he be so ready to forgive me for being a rude bitch so easily? One thing I do know is that I do want a second chance and I am going to do whatever it takes to make sure I prove it.

  “More than anything.”

  “Good,” his deep, smooth, sexy voice echoes quietly in the phone. “I was ringing to talk about Maverick. I know you are injured and it may be a few weeks before you can think about doing too much physical work with him. This is not all bad, this down time can be a good thing.

  Use this time to establish a relationship with him. Spend unpressured time with him over the coming weeks doing shit like sitting in his paddock reading a book. You need to just hang out with him in a relaxing way for both you and him.

  When you are starting to feel a bit better, try going out and giving him a brush without catching him or tying him up. Find all his itchy spots and make sure you can run your hands all over his body without him showing signs of discomfort. Signs of discomfort mean twitching at your touch or flattening his ears. Do you get what I’m saying?”

  “Sure, I can do that,” I say in the steadiest voice I can muster considering my stomach is contracting.

  A little spark of hope that I am going to get to see Jax again some-time in the future starts igniting in my soul. “And then what do I do?”

  “You call me, on this number, tell me your bones are all healed up. Then you come back to my place with Maverick for that riding demonstration you promised me.”

  “Okay. Thanks for the tips... and thanks for giving me a second chance, I’m an idiot, I know.”

  I feel myself relaxing. My world is starting to balance out again and I have something to look forward to.

  “You’re welcome.”

  I listen to his beautiful voice echoing through the phone as he hangs up. I sit quietly, staring out my lounge room window reflecting on our conversation and what I need to do next.

  Clearly, I need get outside and start building my relationship with Maverick. I need to do this because the only thing I want to do right now is prove to Jax that I have been listening. This said, I doubt my poor ribs can take any more twanging today. Tomorrow morning at first light I’ll be out there with a book doing exactly as I have been told.

  I lean back into the couch and sigh as I hear the sound of Jen’s footsteps approaching my back door. She has barely made it through the door when I say, “You are not going to believe the phone conversation I just had.”

  I watch the edge of her lips and mouth lift into a gentle smile. She swings by the counter to grab her cold drink and then plops down next to me on the couch.

  “Okay, spill.” She says leaning back into my couch looking like she is about to watch a new release movie.

  So I spill.

  She agrees I am an idiot and then she leaves me to crawl into my bed where I quickly fall asleep without even thinking about watching another episode of Sons of Anarchy.

  Chapter Two

  Trouble

  It has been a busy six weeks for me.

  The day after my phone conversation with Jax I kept my promise to myself and started my new ‘getting to you know you’ regime with Maverick. Over the course of the days that followed, I kept up the regime, learning a whole lot about my horse as I learned new ways to get him to engage with me.

  It was with a heavy heart and an extra dose of annoyance that I returned to work just ten short days after my accident. This meant scaling back the hours that I could spend with Maverick.

  This did not make me happy.

  Today, however, is the day of reckoning. My ribs have healed and my wrist has finally stopped hurting every time I twist
it in a particular direction it doesn’t like. I feel like a new woman as I gear down and slowly drive the turn into the road that will lead me to Jax’s house.

  To say I am excited would be an understatement.

  Today is Saturday, so not only does it herald the start of a whole two days off from work, it is also the day I am going to finally get to see Jax again, in the flesh. As well as this, I am excited to get a chance to tell him all about the things I have learned about Maverick.

  Over the past weeks I have learned a lot. I am excited to get an opportunity to show him all the things I can do without even putting a halter on Maverick. I have traveled a road to equine enlightenment and I can’t wait for further enlightenment.

  I finish making my turn and gear back up again to drive the last few kilometers to my much anticipated destination. It is as the engine starts humming that steady drone of top gear that my thoughts wander to what I have learned about Maverick since first stepping out into his paddock on that first day.

  Day one saw me take Jax’s first piece of advice and I found myself sitting under a large, shady, flowering gum tree right in the middle of Mavericks paddock. I had chosen this particular tree (being the direct thinker that I was) because I figured the middle of the paddock was the best place for him to be able to find me.

  I had taken my latest book, one of my beloved romance novels, and I had successfully managed to be swept away into the world of alpha men. As I read, I fantasized the lead male in the book was of course Jax and I was the leading female.

  After what only felt like five minutes, but what had turned out to be a whole three hours, I started to notice a couple of things.

  The first was that I had a sore butt.

  Stupidly I had been sitting on the ground and a much better plan would have been to bring a deck chair and not torture yet another part of my poor wounded body. The second, surprisingly, was that sitting under a tree reading a book meant absolutely nothing to Maverick.

  And I mean nothing.

  As far as I could see, he hadn’t even looked at me. Not once.

  The entire time I had been sitting there he had simply stood under another tree at the far end of the paddock (the furthest tree from my house come to think of it), and stared at our neighbors cows.

  Now I find cows fascinating too, they have beautiful eyes and they come in a massive range of colors, but really? Staring at them for three hours had to be a record for any man or beast.

  I chalked his interest in cows up to a less than satisfactory childhood with limited-access to bovine friends. With this in mind, I packed up my book, stood up, gave my poor tortured butt a good rub and decided that I would call it a day.

  It was at the exact moment that I exited the paddock, and just as I finished clicking the latch into place on the gate, that Maverick moved. It was a slow, casual movement. One that saw him slowly swing his head towards me, prick his ears up brightly and I swear if he could talk, he would have said, “Leaving so early?”

  Cheeky bastard.

  Day two saw me doing an exact repeat of the day before, this time with a deck chair. I’m not sure whether it was the unexpected effort he saw me taking to do the same thing two days in or a row, or whether it was my fluorescent yellow deck chair, but that day did see him spend the three hours facing my direction.

  I was pleased to see that day that I was more interesting than the cows next door. I was not so pleased to see that he remained under his same distant tree. I figured that it was at least progress and it was at that point that my stubbornness began to kick in. I started vowing I would do this every day until he at least approached me of his own accord.

  It had ended up taking four days for this happen and when it did I was almost excited enough to contact the local paper and pay for them to post up a congratulations notice to myself.

  This was because day three had been similar to day two, with one small exception. This exception was that after placing my deck chair under the tree, Maverick watched me for a short time and then casually wandered a couple of trees closer to me.

  This placed him about a quarter of the way up the paddock and at almost the halfway mark between me and his normal position at the back of the paddock. He then spent the rest of our time under his new tree looking like it was the normal place for him to be to do whatever he did when he stood around doing ‘nothing’.

  Day four was just plain exciting. Day four saw me barely setting my deck chair on the ground underneath my tree when Maverick turned from his spot at the back of the paddock and pricked both his ears. He then set his big round eyes on me and walked straight across the paddock to my tree.

  On arrival, he gave my chair a sniff and then leaned across and gave me an almighty shove in the shoulder that nearly doubled me over with the pain of my ribs twanging from his assault.

  The only reason I didn’t scream was because I was so damned proud of him. I was so proud that he had approached me directly that I was scared to move a muscle in case he took off back to his distant lookout position. So, instead of buckling over and howling at the top of my lungs, I simply sucked it up. I sucked it up and sat down on my chair and started reading. Reading with silent tears of pain running down my face, but doing what I planned to do. Reading.

  Maverick then decided that my deckchair and I were here for his sole amusement. He then spent the next few hours gently lip nibbling my chair, my clothes, my hair, my book and at one stage, he even tried to lick my face. I think he was chasing the salty tears.

  At one stage I started to wonder if he wasn’t part golden retriever (tactile). To say that I was astounded at this new horse that had arrived under my tree would have been an understatement. I was in heaven. I was falling in love with my Arabian gelding called Maverick.

  The coming weeks after first ‘contact’, Maverick revealed more and more to me about his personality and his likes and dislikes. It soon became clear that Maverick was a horse who insisted that unless he chose to touch you first, there was no way he was going to put up with being touched for the rest of the day. I slowly worked this out through a series of trial and errors that saw me accidentally offending him on a few occasions and wrecking what I was now referring to as our ‘dates’.

  I also continued to follow Jax’s advice and spent many hours grooming and touching him all over. Only doing this after he had of course made his first contact by lip nibbling me to advise I had permission to touch.

  These sessions grooming him proved to be far more challenging than I had first expected. I had always caught and tied a horse up before brushing them and I soon realized there was a reason for this.

  In the beginning, it appeared the slightest fast or erratic movement on my behalf would result in him spinning, kicking out and racing off back down the paddock to his favorite distant sentry point. I soon also worked out these outbursts could be triggered by a twig snapping, a cow mooing, a car driving past or even a bee farting. In other words he pretty much over-reacted to anything once he decided he was out of there.

  Luckily he did appear to be as forgiving as Jax said all horses were and, each day, he would wander back up to our allotted tree and we would restart whatever I had been practicing the day before (like brushing his belly).

  Despite his efforts to best me, we continued to progress getting a little further each day. It was not until about the three week mark that I could pretty much do anything to him with a brush or my bare hand. For either, he would just stand there looking lazy and relaxed like I was his personal slave performing a manicure.

  The next three weeks saw me focus on finding his itchy spots. Man did he love a scratch at the base of his shoulder and between his front legs. We then progressed to me picking up and cleaning out his feet in the middle of paddock.

  At some stage during all this I also realized that we were no longer spending time together under the gum tree in the middle of the paddock, he was always waiting for me at the gate when I got there.

  And so all the time spent
with Maverick had led me on a merry journey that brought me back to here. My imminent arrival at Jax’s house being the exciting next step in riding my beloved Maverick and what I hope will be the exciting next step in getting to know Jax himself.

  The Jax side of things I figure will be a lot easier than the Maverick side of things. To be honest about it all, even though I now feel like Maverick and I are buddies, I am just not brave enough to get on him on my own. This is because my last round of injuries have done a number on me. I am scared and no matter how much I try to talk myself out of it, I can’t shake that fear.

  I once again hope (and pray), that Jax will take pity on me and just get on and ride Maverick himself. I can fully understand that he also needs to work with me on my riding skills. Knowing this, I still hope that even if he can just take away that initial pressure from me, I will be one step closer to regaining my confidence enough to climb back in the saddle.

  I see Jax’s front entranceway looming up ahead and gear down to make the slow turn into his driveway. The six weeks that have elapsed since my last visit have seen the property transform from lush green pastures to tinder dry, brown crispy paddocks. It has been a long, hot summer and the land looks parched.

  The small garden beds at the end of the driveway are looking a little worse for wear but remain neatly manicured and have been receiving regular attention to keep them watered.

  I slow to a stop, press the button for the automatic gate opener and start slowly creeping my car and float along his driveway.

  My more positive outlook on life (and horses), mean that as I creep along the driveway this time, I take the opportunity to look a little more closely at the variety of horses dotting the paddocks along Jax’s driveway. It soon becomes obvious that so many of them are Arabians with their classic dished heads, big eyes, tipped ears and high tail sets.

  One horse in particular catches my attention. A shiny black horse. He is relaxing under a tree in a paddock directly in front of Jax’s house. This horse looks to me to be perfection. With his black coat shining with sparkles of silver and purple as the sun reflects off his magnificent smooth, powerfully muscled body. This horse clearly shows that he isn’t just a paddock ornament; he is a riding horse who is ridden. A horse who is ridden a lot.