“Heartbreaker,” Cassidy said.
“He didn’t take it well.” Katie helped herself to a sip of coffee from Cassidy’s travel mug in the truck’s cup holder. “He stormed out of the restaurant and hurled the ring across the parking lot. He never spoke to me again after that.”
Cassidy felt a sudden and unexpected empathy toward teenage Justin Barnes.
“So really you got proposed to twice.” She reached over and tore a piece of Katie’s bagel for herself. “Once at the Jimmy John’s and a second time . . . I assume Paul Michael chose a more elaborate way to ask for your hand?”
“Are you kidding?” Katie said. “Paul Michael couldn’t take a dump without being elaborate.”
A nub of bagel lodged in Cassidy’s throat. She washed it down with some coffee. “I hope you don’t mean he proposed to you on the toilet.”
“Worse,” Katie said. “At a fancy brunch he put together. I preferred Justin’s way, to be honest. At least it was sweet and sincere, true to who we were at the time.”
Katie fiddled with the radio some more, switching from some soulful, aching song by Adele to something upbeat and twangy by Taylor Swift. “Paul Michael’s proposal was all about exhibiting the fancy diamond ring he got me to all his friends. The whole thing was curated. It was . . . I don’t even know how to put it.”
“All for show?” Cassidy said.
Katie nodded. “I would have preferred for him to propose with a Ring Pop. Cherry because he actually cared enough to remember it’s my favorite, you know?”
Cassidy kept her eyes on the road ahead.
“Paul Michael didn’t get me,” Katie said. “We didn’t get each other. I’m starting to think a lot of our relationship was just about . . .” She let her voice trickle off.
“Appearances?” Cassidy said.
Katie crumpled her bagel’s white deli paper into a ball and tossed it into the plastic bag between her boots. “You know what? We’re giving Paul Michael way too much airtime.” She turned up the volume on the radio. “When we should be focusing on our song!”
Cassidy laughed. “We already have a song?”
“This is ‘Our Song,’” Katie said over the blaring music. “By Taylor Swift. We can make it ours if you want to.”
She leaned over and sang into Cassidy’s ear, “’Cause our song is a slamming screen door, sneaking out late tapping on your window . . .’”
* * *
Cassidy and Katie arrived at the ranch, a secluded stretch of wooded acreage and sinewy trails, around noon. Cassidy stepped down from the truck’s running board, stretched her legs, and took it all in. Man, this place was rural. Gina wasn’t kidding. There was a lot of dust here, and flies.
They trudged uphill to a log-cabin lodge where a hefty middle-aged woman sat behind the check-in desk, knitting a wool scarf. She looked up, bright eyed.
“Hi,” Cassidy said, and the woman’s expression altered in a way that Cassidy was all too familiar with. “We booked the private cabin. It’s under the last name Price. First name Cassidy.”
The woman set down her knitting. “ID,” she said.
Cassidy handed it over.
Katie, perhaps sensing the tension, turned up her warmth. “This is such a beautiful place,” she said. “Are you one of the owners?”
“I am,” the woman said coldly. She placed a set of keys onto the counter. “Out the door to your left. It’s a five-minute walk down the trail.”
“Thank you.” Cassidy took the keys and led Katie back outside. She could see the confusion on Katie’s face, the dimmed light in her eyes, and it occurred to her that Katie had never been so quickly sized up and disliked before—by anyone.
They walked down to their cabin in silence. Cassidy unlocked and opened the door. “Rustic!” she said upon entering. “Mmm, what’s that smell? Is that what hay smells like?”
“I don’t think that woman liked us,” Katie said.
Cassidy shut the door behind them. “She doesn’t have to like us.”
“Do you think she thought . . .”
“I don’t know what she thought,” Cassidy said. “But my guess is not a lot of people who look like me come around here. That’s all.”
“She assumed we were a couple, didn’t she?” Katie said.
“Probably.” Cassidy tried to sound consoling, but did Katie really not think that was likely to happen? What did she expect? “Don’t let it ruin the weekend.” Cassidy took a step closer to Katie. She wanted to put her arms around her but didn’t.
“It won’t.” Katie walked over to the window and opened the blinds. “I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to ride.”
“I’m ready to watch you ride,” Cassidy said.
Katie turned to her. “You’re not leaving here without getting on a horse.”
“Katie, the only horses I’ve come within a foot of have had police officers on top of them.”
“Don’t be a pussy,” Katie said. “You’re getting on a horse.”
Cassidy wasn’t one to abdicate control easily, and yet she soon found herself following Katie out to the stables, where they approached a white-haired man in a tweed flat cap. Thankfully his face was friendly.
“Hi there,” Katie called out to him. “Are you Mr. Duncan?”
“Sure am.” He wiped his palms on his Carhartt overalls before offering Katie his hand. “You can call me Buddy.”
“Katie Daniels.” Katie shook the old man’s hand. “Pleased to meet you. I believe we spoke on the phone.”
“Yes, that’s right. You’re the show-jumping champ.”
“Wait, what?” Cassidy said.
“Got our Dutch Warmblood all ready for you,” he said to Katie. “Just like you asked.” Then he turned to Cassidy. “And for you, sir?”
“Uh—” Cassidy stuttered. “This is my first time.”
“Oh boy! All right. No jumper for you then.”
“No, certainly not.” Katie came to with a forced smile. “We’ll both start with some nice and easy trail horses for now.”
“All right then,” Buddy said. “Will the mister need a lesson?”
“No,” Cassidy answered for herself. “That’s not necessary.”
Katie’s face had gone disturbingly red. “I’m an instructor,” she said. “Used to be, I mean. Fully certified. I’ll take care of he—m.”
“Alrighty.” Buddy shuffled into the stable.
Katie’s cheeks, Cassidy noted, had not yet returned to their normal color. “Sorry,” she said. “That happens sometimes. Are you freaked out?”
“It’s fine.” Katie pretended to adjust something on her boot.
Buddy reemerged then with two horses, one black, one brown.
“Zorro for you,” he said to Katie. “And this here’s Cocoa Puffs.” He handed them each a helmet.
“Hold on.” Cassidy squeezed her helmet onto her head and turned to Katie. “You get Zorro, and I get Cocoa Puffs?”
“Do you want Zorro?” Katie said.
“No, it’s cool. Cocoa Puffs looks like a total stud.”
“Actually, she’s a mare.” Katie showed Cassidy how to take the reins and guide her horse toward the trail.
“Nice to give me the heads-up that you’re some riding champion or whatever,” Cassidy said.
“Back home we’re a dime a dozen,” Katie said. “And that was a long time ago.”
“Were you bullshitting him about being an instructor?”
Katie shook her head. “I taught for a few years, summers during high school.”
“You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?”
They walked till there were no other people around and no sounds but the wind in the trees and whinnies in the distance.
“Okay,” Katie said. “Ready for your lesson?”
“You r
eally expect me to get on this thing?” Cassidy eyed her horse from nose to tail. “Can’t we just keep walking them like this, like big dogs?”
“Lesson one,” Katie said. “Getting on. I want you to stick your left toe in the stirrup, and put your right hand on the back of the saddle to hoist yourself up. Then swing your right leg over the horse’s back. Once you have one leg on either side of her, sit down gently and put your other foot in the other stirrup.”
Cassidy did exactly as she was told, proud of succeeding on her first try, then immediately sorry. “Holy shit this is high up. I don’t like this. I’m going to fall.”
“You’re not going to fall,” Katie said, but she seemed poised and ready to catch Cassidy if she did. “Be confident or she’ll sense your fear, and when horses get scared they run.”
“Fantastic.”
Katie took a few steps back. “Now you’re going to make the horse walk.”
“Do I have to?” Cassidy gripped too tight to the reins.
“You have to relax,” Katie said. “And move with the horse. Sit up tall, shoulders squared, heels down in the stirrups. Keep your eyes focused ahead of you between Cocoa Puffs’s ears.”
“I think you can just call her Cocoa for short, honestly.”
“Use the reins to steer,” Katie continued. “Move the left rein left or the right rein right, in a motion like you’re opening a door. To slow down or stop, pull back gently. Got it?”
Cassidy stayed very still. “I think so.”
“Good.” In one swift motion Katie was up on her horse. “Let’s walk together,” she said. “Follow me. To get her to move, hug your legs around her, and rock forward in the saddle.”
Cassidy did as Katie said, and to her amazement Cocoa Puffs began taking steps forward, following just behind Zorro. The horse seemed to know what to do, so Cassidy tried to do as little as possible. In a few minutes, she calmed down enough to recognize how beautiful this was. The landscape. The day. Katie.
“This isn’t so bad,” she said.
Katie steered Zorro around so the two of them could continue along side by side. “Want to go a little faster?”
“Okay.”
“Listen first,” Katie said. “To tell Cocoa you want her to go from a walk to a trot, you need to gently squeeze her sides with the insides of your legs. If that doesn’t work, you might need to give her a gentle kick. But sit deeply, press your legs down, and keep your back tall and straight, otherwise—”
Cassidy did as she was told, forgetting the part about listening first, and the horse was off.
“Whoa,” Cassidy yelled. “Whoa! Stop!” She yanked at the reins, but that only made the horse run faster. “Heel! Heel! Stop running!”
Suddenly they were up on two legs, the horse’s two hind legs, and Cassidy was flying backward through midair.
She landed hard on the ground, while her horse galloped full speed ahead into the distance.
When she opened her eyes, she saw blue sky, then Katie bent over her. “Oh my god. Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
Cassidy lifted her head, made sure she could move her arms, her legs. “I’m fine. I’m—aah. I just pulled a muscle trying to break my fall.”
“I should have told you to never try to break your fall,” Katie said.
“Yeah, thanks for that.”
Katie assessed Cassidy’s body for injuries, checked for damage to her helmet. “I’m sorry I made you do this.”
“No, this is great. I’m having a great time.”
“Let’s go back to the cabin,” Katie said.
Cassidy sat up slowly. “What about Cocoa Puffs?”
“I’ll have Buddy go get her.”
* * *
In the safety of their cabin, Cassidy and Katie could finally break down and laugh.
“You flew up in the air so high.” Katie uncorked the bottle of wine they’d brought from home. “I saw it happening in slow motion.”
“It sure wasn’t happening in slow motion for me.” Cassidy rubbed at her throbbing shoulder. “It was like I blinked my eyes and the next thing I knew I had dirt in my mouth.”
“I told you to sit deeply and press your legs down.” Katie brought Cassidy her glass in bed.
“Oh fuck off,” Cassidy said.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine. Just humiliated.”
“At least let me massage your shoulder for you.” Katie set down her wineglass on the end table and climbed behind Cassidy. She kneaded her thumbs into Cassidy’s tender muscles. “How’s that?” she asked.
“That’s very good.” Cassidy closed her eyes and tried to relax.
“Can I ask you something?”
“You can ask me anything. Except to get back onto a horse ever again.”
Katie’s hands came to rest on Cassidy’s shoulders. “Why didn’t you correct Buddy before? When he called you ‘sir’?”
Cassidy reopened her eyes and turned around. She adjusted herself on the bed so that she and Katie were face-to-face. “Sometimes it’s just not worth the trouble.”
“Does it bother you?” Katie asked. “When people call you ‘sir’?”
“Not really. Does it bother you?”
Katie fidgeted with the hem of the plaid bedspread. “Do you wish you were a man?”
“Would you rather I were a man?”
“I don’t know,” Katie said.
Cassidy tried not to flinch. “I appreciate your honesty.”
“I didn’t mean that to sound . . .”
“No, I’m serious,” Cassidy said. “I want you to be honest with me.”
“This is me being honest.” Katie leaned in and kissed Cassidy gently on the lips. “The rest is me trying to understand.”
Katie was a portrait of coziness in her outdoorsy attire, framed by the knotty pine walls, but Cassidy could see she was struggling. “Are you trying to understand me?” Cassidy asked. “Or you?”
“I want to understand us,” Katie said. “But I also just want us to take our clothes off right now and not think about any of it.”
“I want that, too.” Cassidy reached for Katie’s flannel and drew her in.
They should talk about this. Of course they should talk about this.
She undid Katie’s top button.
Katie complied by reaching under Cassidy’s shirt. She ran her fingers across Cassidy’s taut stomach. “You know how you felt out there on the ranch?” she said. “Like you were out of your element?”
A trail of goose bumps followed the path of Katie’s fingertips upon Cassidy’s skin.
“That’s how I feel with you.” She traced her way down to Cassidy’s hipbones. “I don’t know how to touch you.” She glided her fingertips down the inside of Cassidy’s thigh. “But I want to.”
Cassidy kissed Katie’s neck, took her earlobe into her mouth. She whispered into Katie’s ear, “I’ll show you.”
SEVENTEEN
There was no polite way of putting it. Cassidy had fucked Katie’s brains out. Katie’s brains were lost in the mess of sheets or somewhere on the cabin floor, while the rest of her continued lying there, naked and spent, flat upon her back.
“I didn’t know my body could even do whatever that was,” she said.
Cassidy sat propped up beside her, her long legs crossed at the ankles. “That last time?”
“No, the second time. Where were you even? It felt like you were in me up to your elbow.”
“Not quite.” Cassidy chuckled.
“And then that last time.” Katie sat up, closed her eyes for a moment to reimagine it—how she had her hand full of Cassidy and Cassidy had her hand full of her, and she hadn’t thought she could come again since she’d already broken her all-time record with that second time, but then she felt it approaching, and Cassidy said, “S
low down, stay with me.”
Which was code, Katie realized, for Don’t come yet.
Katie had never tried to keep an orgasm at bay before. Usually it was a fight to get one to happen, so her first thought was, Nah, I’m gonna go with this, but you do you.
“Stay with me,” Cassidy said, and her eyes told Katie she had to at least try, so Katie did, and their bodies took on a rhythm, like the kind you think of when you think of sex, but Katie felt it this time, for real.
“Don’t hold your breath,” Cassidy said. “Breathe with me.” So Katie did, and it was a slow build of wave upon wave, “Stay with me, stay with me,” until the two of them together—
“I’ve never actually come at the same time as anyone before,” Katie said. “I thought that was just something girls pretended could happen to get the guy to finish.”
Cassidy blinked her eyes at Katie a few times but remained silent.
“Did you feel what I felt when that happened?” Katie asked.
“Of course I did.” Cassidy took Katie’s hand in hers and rested it upon her own heart. “Do you feel what I feel right now? For you?”
Katie pulled her hand away. “I’m sorry. Heartbeats freak me out. I don’t like the idea of this force pump inside us having to work so hard all the time to keep us alive.”
“Romantic,” Cassidy said.
“I do feel it, though,” Katie said. “I feel the romance.”
“Does it scare you more or less than having a beating heart?” Cassidy asked.
“Honestly?” Katie shook out the rumpled bedspread in search of her undergarments. “I thought this weekend was going to be about us becoming better friends, that you were going to say what happened between us last week was just a onetime thing, something we had to get out of the way.”
“And now?”
Katie located her underwear and slid them on. “Did you ever have girlfriends growing up? I mean, friends who were girls, who you were totally obsessed with? And it seemed like no matter how much time you spent together it was never enough?” Katie grabbed Cassidy’s chambray button-down from the floor and put it on. “You know that high-strung, excitable bond that a girl could only really have with her best girlfriend?”
When Katie Met Cassidy Page 13