“Well, that’s something.”
“Not compared to everything you’ve won.”
“You know I like pretty much choked my last year at all the eq finals, right?”
“You were fifth in the Medal. That’s pretty good to me.”
Zoe couldn’t help but be surprised that he knew exactly what ribbon she’d gotten. “I was the kid who was supposed to win one of the finals. I’m sorry if it sounds like bad sportsmanship but fifth was nothing. Everyone knew I choked.”
“I get it,” he said. “But fifth still doesn’t sound bad to me. I was on the stand-by for a while for the Medal Finals my last year and that was like amazing to me. Kelly didn’t have kids go to the Medal Finals to begin with. Usually when someone got good enough they’d leave her.”
Zoe thought about it. It was true that she ran in such circles of the horse show world that she got spoiled. That it was win or nothing. That fifth in the Medal Finals felt like an epic fail.
It was healthy for her to be around someone like John and gain some valuable perspective. But at the same time if she wanted to be the best she couldn’t be happy with low ribbons or just making the stand-by for a while.
“Why didn’t you leave Kelly? I’m sure some other trainer would have taken you on as a working student. Especially since you’re a guy. I actually can think of a few trainers who would have loved to get their hands on you.” She widened her eyes, intimating nefarious behavior.
John shuddered. “You’re skeeving me out.”
“But seriously, you never got any trainers coming up to you at shows?”
“Maybe once or twice. But it wasn’t really in the cards for my family.” John took a sip of his beer. “This one time in Vermont, Kelly actually had a nice sales horse. I showed it in the junior hunters and she had me do the derby and I laid down this crazy good first round. I got a better score than you and I came back on top for the handy round, against all the professionals and you, and you were basically like a professional, even back then.”
“What year was this?” Zoe tried to think back but a class that stuck out to John was just one of a million classes she’d ridden in as a junior.
“It was my last junior year, so three years ago.”
She shook her head. “I’m not remembering. Anyway, what happened? Did you win?”
“No. I didn’t do the hand gallop. I’m bad at hand gallops. I don’t go forward enough. You nailed the hand gallop and the rest of the course and you won.”
“What’d you finish up?”
“Sixth. It was great ribbon for me.”
“But you could have won!”
“I know.”
Zoe twirled the little straw in her drink. It was agony not to drain it and order another. But talking with John was helping distract her and she had succeeded in pushing thoughts of Brayden from her mind. So far she wasn’t doing the thing she often did where she tried to imagine what he’d look like if he were alive today.
“I love the hand gallops. The trick is to get going way back, as soon as you can. People wait too long and then they’re already looking at the jump and it’s too late. They chicken out because they’re already looking for the distance. If you establish your pace first, it all falls into place.”
“That’s good advice.”
“You should try it next time.”
“If there is a next time. I’m pretty happy just doing the riding at home for now.”
The conversation was easy between them, never forced. The longer they stayed at the pub, the more convinced she was she could make it through this night without getting wasted. But still, she’d have to go home alone, and that would be hard. Or would she?
There were none of the telltale signs, the come-ons she was used to. He wasn’t casually bumping his knee against hers under the table, he wasn’t leaning close to her, he hadn’t put his hand on her back. He wasn’t buying her drink after drink, or at the very least encouraging her to finish the one she had in front of her.
Still, he had stayed after Kirsten left, hadn’t he? He clearly enjoyed her company. But was he attracted to her?
He paid the tab, insisting that it was the least he could do since he couldn’t pay her to ride Gidget.
“What are you up to now?” she said as they readied to leave.
“Now?” He furrowed his brow. “Oh, like go out somewhere else or something? I’m really lame. I thought maybe you’d already figured that out about me. I’m just going home and going to bed.”
“Bed is good.” God, she was bad at being the one to come on to somebody. It always happened naturally, or the guy made it plain and clear what he wanted. “I haven’t been sleeping that well, actually,” Zoe continued. “I’d be up for coming over to your place and, I don’t know, hanging out more.”
He shook his head. “Nah, I don’t think so. Not tonight.”
A flat out refusal. He had no interest in her.
It stung.
The first thing that shot through her mind was that maybe he was gay after all. He could still be in the closet. There had to be some explanation for why he didn’t want to sleep with her.
They briskly said good-bye, as if both of them wanted to be out of the lingering awkwardness as soon as humanly possible. Now the whole night felt tainted, Zoe thought, as she drove home. Their warm, comfortable conversation barely mattered anymore. Her face flushed as she thought of him turning her down. Bed is good. Had she really said that? Maybe it was how bad she was at coming on to him? No, it had to be because he was gay.
Then the truth invaded her thoughts. He didn’t want her because she was a slut. Because she’d slept with so many other guys. Because he knew that Donnie had abused her. She had fooled herself into thinking that somehow he didn’t know about her history because he was a small-time player and not a permanent figure on the show circuit.
But even if you didn’t go from show to show, you heard the gossip in the same way that she knew about the latest celebrity break-up from US Magazine. He knew all about her and he didn’t want to have anything to do with her. She was good enough to show his horse but not to sleep with.
Fine, she thought, straightening her back against the interior of her car seat. She gripped the wheel tightly. Fine. She didn’t want to sleep with him anyway. He was a nice guy, sure, but he wasn’t at her level. He wasn’t at the level of Morgan, who owned a whole goddamn major league baseball team.
It was good he hadn’t reacted to her invitation, because from now on there would be nothing between them. It would be platonic and that was that. She would ride his horse and she would win on it. People would notice her again and pretty soon she’d have a real job back on the show circuit, hopefully far away from Bedford, New York.
Back in her crappy apartment, she ached inside. It was a terrible, lonely ache and she craved filling it with sex or booze or drugs. If she had been in a hotel room, she would have absolutely cracked open the mini bar and then made her way to the real bar and found a guy to sleep with. She could have gone on Tinder and seen if there was someone worth meeting up with nearby but it felt like too much effort.
Sometimes, Zoe was learning, self-control wasn’t so much about actual intention but just access to resources. Her choices for self medicating limited, she turned on the TV too loud, hoping to quiet the voices in her own head that told her everything she did was shit, and no one could ever love her.
The TV was still on when she woke up in the morning. She may not have gotten wasted the night before or slept with a near stranger only due to lack of opportunity, but the fact that she was waking up sober and alone strengthened her resolve. Maybe she could do this recovery thing after all.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Zoe lived up to her promise to herself and focused on the training of Gidget with John. She stuck to her routine. She worked in the mornings at Narrow Lane, rode at Morada in the early afternoon, and then went over to ride Gidget in the late afternoons.
Zoe did a lot of flatwork with G
idget, or worked her over cavaletti and small gymnastics. John usually had a few interesting grids set up in his ring and it was perfect for getting Gidget’s stride super adjustable and her mind dialed in too. For the handy portion of the derbies, she needed to be able to go from loping down a long line to turning on a dime to galloping a single oxer to trotting a log jump. Gidget had innate scope and style. What she needed to learn was adjustability and attentiveness.
The one thing Zoe soon learned Gidget didn’t do well was trot jumps. The first time she trotted her over a vertical, the mare crow-hopped from much too far away and Zoe got completely left behind, like a fox-hunter in one of those classic hunt prints.
“What the hell was that?” Zoe said to John when she’d gathered herself back into the tack.
He was riding Cruz, the horse that Zoe agreed might make up to be a good eq horse, especially for a tall kid. He was nearly 17 hands and had an enormous step. John spent most of his time trying to get him adjustable. He didn’t always jump the best with his front end, though—something else John was trying to work on.
“I don’t know. Try it again. I guess I haven’t done a lot of trot jumps with her.”
This time Gidget broke into a canter a few strides away. Zoe pulled her up on the other side.
“I think we found her kryptonite,” John said.
“Hello, trot jumps,” Zoe said. “From now on all we’ll be doing is trot jumps.”
It was a bit of an exaggeration. Doing only trot jumps would likely give Gidget more of a complex about them. But she needed to get good at them if she was going to be a derby horse.
Zoe started trotting out of lines to begin with and that seemed to freak Gidget out less. Then she would head to a jump at the trot, bring her back to a near walk, and then push her forward again.
John rode different horses each day while Zoe rode Gidget. She began to feel like he was rotating them so she could see them and help him. As she became more comfortable, she would tell him what she was thinking—how a certain horse needed more impulsion or another needed to jump a lot of square oxers to get his front end better. She began to think how it must have been lonely for John to be riding all day at the farm by himself.
At first Zoe thought the fact that she had to cool Gidget down and put her away was annoying but she soon found she liked it. What did she have to race home to anyway? The TV and a bag of Doritos? She liked spending the time with Gidget and with John too.
She took to spending extra time grooming Gidget. She found the mare had a favorite spot about a third of the way down her mane. Zoe would rub it until Gidget would twist her nose in pleasure.
“Who loves me now?” Zoe would say to her. “Who’s going to actually trot the trot jumps?”
They took turns using the wash stall and then grazed the horses alongside each other out front of the barn.
She and John talked about what they’d liked in school and what they hadn’t. John had been a good student, taking honors classes and getting all As, which had made his decision to drop out of college for horses even harder for his parents to swallow.
“They pretty much freaked,” he said. “I think they’re still hoping I’m going to give up and go back to school so I can get a real job. I might have to if I don’t sell a horse or two soon . . .”
Zoe hadn’t liked much about school except for a few teachers she had who were zany and fun and actually seemed to care about the students. But she’d stopped going to real school after eight grade and had gotten her diploma through tutoring services at the shows.
They had to talk a bit loudly because John couldn’t let whatever horse he was grazing get too close to Gidget. Once or twice their conversation had gotten interesting and John had let his horse meander closer so they could talk more intimately. Of course this always ended with Gidget flattening her ears and threatening to kick or bite.
“Don’t mess with the princess,” Zoe told him.
Zoe had gotten used to Gidget’s ornery personality, especially since it was mostly directed at other horses, not people. Gidget made nasty faces at Zoe from time to time but she’d never followed through on any of her threats and Zoe now kind of liked the fact that Gidget was a tough broad. The mare didn’t take crap from anyone and Zoe admired that about her.
Zoe had also figured out that Gidget’s favorite snack was bananas and glazed donuts so most days she brought her both.
“Don’t you dare bite me,” Zoe said to Gidget with affection when the mare made a face at her, or even went so far as to gnash her teeth.
John noticed Zoe becoming fond of the mare. “What’s going on between you two?” he said. “Some sort of female-bonding-we-hate-men thing?”
“Gidget hates everyone, not just men,” Zoe said. “She doesn’t discriminate.”
“What about you?” John asked.
“I don’t think anyone has ever claimed I hate men,” she said. Not wanting to go much further on the subject she added, “I love the fact that Gidget doesn’t give a shit what anyone thinks about her. She doesn’t apologize or feel badly for who she is. It’s awesome.”
“I’m glad you two are getting along.”
“We are,” Zoe said. “I can officially say she’s one of the coolest horses I’ve ridden.”
“That’s saying something.”
“Well, actually, in fairness, I’ve ridden a lot of crazy horses. Horses no trainer would let anyone else get on. And you should have seen the things my mother put me on when I was younger. It’s a miracle I lived. I can’t tell you how many times I got tossed off or crashed.”
“And you kept riding?”
Zoe shrugged. “It didn’t really bother me.”
“I guess I can see why you and Gidget get along then.”
Zoe had sworn she would keep it platonic with John and she did. But having a platonic relationship could not keep them from becoming close. Sometimes they skipped the ring work and went straight into the woods. There was a trail that led to a beautiful grassy field with perfect hills for training. A derby horse had to be fit and walking and trotting up the gentle slopes helped Gidget become aerobically fit at the same time that it built up her hind end.
Gidget was pretty brave in the woods. She didn’t spook at every shadow or strangely-bent tree branch. Birds alighting from bushes or a squirrel rushing out from a pile of leaves didn’t leave her in a jittering heap with her heart beating so hard Zoe could feel it through her legs against the mare’s sides.
She did hate bugs, though, and just one deer fly could make her crazy even with her requisite ear bonnet. She would swing her head to one side and then the other, anticipating one landing on her back.
Zoe nearly soaked her in fly spray before they went out and bought a fly whisk with a large plume of white hair from the nearby tack shop so she could vanquish any deer flies that dared land on the mare.
But once a deer fly had been in the general vicinity of Gidget, even if Zoe had then managed to smack it dead against the mare’s neck, Gidget was a sweat-covered wreck. It was funny how such a large animal could be made nearly apoplectic by a small, albeit annoying, insect.
Once or twice a week, John brought Gidget over to Morada for Zoe to ride there. Then they could school her over the bright and imposing Morada jumps, and also jump the naturals on the grand prix field. On those days, Linda watched and helped and oftentimes so did Dakota.
Soon John asked Zoe to ride some of his other horses and the afternoons were spent training them together. He’d be setting the jumps or she would. Or they’d both be riding but would stop to watch each other and make suggestions.
“What was riding for Donnie like?” John asked.
Zoe felt heat rise up her back and neck. Besides the fact that he verbally abused me at the ring and then physically abused me back at the barn, she thought to herself? But that wasn’t what he meant, hopefully.
“Donnie isn’t exactly a rule-follower.” She quickly added, “But he had nice horses and after my performance at
the finals I wasn’t exactly in high demand as a rider.”
She worried he’d ask what happened, why she wasn’t still riding for him.
“So you two broke up and that was it? He didn’t want you riding his horses anymore?”
So he knew she’d been with Donnie. Not just riding for him, but with him with him. She told herself it didn’t matter what he knew about whom she’d been with. She had no interest in him romantically. None at all. Well, that was what she told herself anyway.
“I left him,” she said. “I couldn’t be a part of the things he was doing anymore.”
That was true. She couldn’t be a part of getting beat up anymore.
“If you could work for anyone now, who would it be?” he asked.
“Honestly, I don’t really know. I mean every trainer and barn has its plusses and minuses. They’re some really great trainers but I don’t know that they’d have the horses I’d want.”
“Like who?”
“Well, like Linda for one. I’d love to work for Linda permanently but she doesn’t have horses for me to show.”
“Okay, another question. What one horse would you want to show if you could pick?”
“Present day horse or past horse?”
“Both,” I guess.
“Past horse, Rox Dene. Present horse, hmmm, I guess Three Wishes. That horse is freaking amazing,” Zoe said of the horse that had won Derby Finals two years running.
“Good choice.”
“How about you?”
“Past horse . . . I guess I would have liked to get a shot at the eq finals on a horse like Clearway or Helio Rouge. Hell, even just on a horse that wasn’t dead green and had been to Indoors before. Today . . . I’d have to say Rothchild. That horse looks like so much fun. He’s just such a scrappy trier. I’d like to think if I were a horse I’d be Rothchild.”
“If I were a horse, I don’t know who I’d be.”
Zoe laughed, thinking of the qualities that would make a horse like her. The horse would have to be pretty and a little crazy and make terrible decisions. “I’d like to be like Gidget. A suffer-no-fools kinda girl.”
Hunter Derby: (Show Circuit Series -- Book 3) Page 8