“Stand still!” I commanded, but he backed up, pulling on the lead rope. I gave him a hard tug and told him again that he better stand still. I pointed the hose at his chest and sprayed. He swung around quickly, dodging the spray, and in the process knocked over the bucket I’d filled with liniment. I reached down to grab the bucket and he pulled back again, this time knocking the hose out of my hand. It landed a foot away and the spray nozzle hit the ground, turning it on and spraying me all over. It was wriggling like a snake, spraying everything. I was soaked; Logan was freaking out. I somehow managed to grab the rogue hose and turn off the sprayer while barely holding on to Logan. I took a deep breath and looked over to see Mike chuckling at me.
“Never good to battle the hose,” he said. “The hose always wins.”
I wiped back my drenched hair. I knew I looked like I’d just stepped out of the shower, only clothed. “He won’t stand still.”
Mike was holding a chestnut horse and a bucket like mine. He put the bucket down. “Watch and learn.” He started out by gently spraying the horse’s legs. “You have to get them acclimated. Would you like a shower all of a sudden?”
“No,” I said. I’d just had one and it hadn’t felt good.
“First the legs, then the chest, neck, and hind-end. Then the back and stomach. Those are the most sensitive parts.”
His horse stood still, looking as if he was even enjoying the wash-down. Mike finished by sponging his head. “Never spray close to the head or ears. Most horses hate that. Some people do it anyway, but they’re cruel.”
“You’re really good with horses,” I told him. I didn’t add that no one would ever expect burly Motorcycle Mike to do anything with animals except maybe leave them behind as road kill.
“Your turn,” Mike said. “Start with his legs—from the knee down.”
Mike supervised, instructing and encouraging me as I went. Logan didn’t exactly stand still—this was Logan—but it went much better. Mike even watched me use the sweat scraper, telling me to be gentle on Logan’s stomach. “He’s a horse, not a car. Now take him in and dry off his legs real good with a towel so he doesn’t get rain rot.”
“What’s rain rot?”
“A skin infection. It’s gross. All their hair falls out. You don’t want him to get it.”
Mike started leading the chestnut back to the barn.
“Thanks!” I called after him.
Chapter 7
I showed Logan in the 1.00 meter class again on Thursday and then in the children’s jumpers on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Sunday I realized I didn’t have any clean saddle pads and had to use a filthy one. Not a good start to the day. How had I not realized all my laundry was dirty and taken it to the horse-laundry truck?
In total, I made it over jumps in four days. Mostly I listened to Jamie find new ways to insult me ringside. At night, I holed up in my condo feeling lonely and sorry for myself. To make matters worse, there seemed to be fireworks each night, including on the Fourth. Every time I saw a spark of light or heard a boom, I pictured people out having fun together and celebrating, while I was by myself.
On Sunday, I was back in the tent after my round when Zoe came into the aisle. I’d heard her name announced all day. She was small junior hunter champion, large junior hunter champion, and won the high junior jumper classic.
“Wanna go out tonight?” Zoe asked. “A bunch of us are going to Backcountry.”
I wasn’t sure who the ‘us’ was or whether I was ready for the infamous Sunday nights. “I don’t have a fake ID.”
“I don’t either. They don’t care up here. They just want the business.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
I was toweling off Logan’s legs. Mike had left me terrified of Logan’s getting rain rot. Thanks to Mike, though, bathing Logan was going much better, as evidenced by the fact that only Logan was wet and I was still dry. “Okay, I guess.”
“You could use to go out.”
“You saw my round today?”
“Round?” Zoe said.
“Okay, my three jumps.” I hesitated and then added, “This is really weird, but I think I saw that guy—Chris Kern—watching me today. And he was at the ring before too.”
Zoe shrugged. “I don’t know what’s up with that. He did just break up with his girlfriend but, no offense, I don’t really see you as his type.”
I tried hard, but couldn’t hide my curiosity. “Of course not, I mean, well, who was his girlfriend?”
Zoe explained that Chris had been dating another grand prix rider, Mary Beth McCord. They had been juniors together—the horse show equivalent of high school sweethearts. “He walked in on her with John Burke. Thank God she’s off on tour in Europe now. Maybe he’s on the prowl . . . checking out chicks in the jumper ring. The high A/Os were going after you—he might have his eye on some rich ammy. Look at Kevin Prince. He’s totally got it made with the horses his wife’s money buys him.”
“Speaking of guys,” I said. “Mike’s really nice.”
“Mike?” Zoe made a face. “Never in a million years is that happening.”
“Really? But he’s so nice and he clearly likes you.”
Zoe shook her head. “The guy I’m totally after? He’s Irish. I mean, from Ireland. Dermott Nugent. He’s a jumper rider. Just that name, Dermott. Totally sexy. And his accent?”
I had finished with Logan’s legs and stood up. “Is he a junior?”
“Junior, no! I don’t date boys my age. You know that, right?”
I threw the towel in my dirty laundry pile. “I guess I forgot.”
“He’s maybe thirty.”
“Thirty?”
“Well, I’m not sure exactly. But something like that. You have to see him.” Zoe exhaled dramatically. “You’ll see him tonight if you come out with us. You have to come.”
I glanced around my tack stall. I still had to clean my tack and get Logan all put away. It was going to be a while. After only a few days of taking care of my own horse, I had new respect for grooms like Mike. Day after day they were at the barn before the sun was up and they were always the last ones to leave. They took care of four or five horses, not just one. I was physically exhausted from mucking Logan’s stall and dragging the hose in and everything else I had to do that I never had even thought about before. But maybe I could leave some tack undone or not pick out Logan’s stall . . .
“What time are you going?” I asked.
“Not till later, like eight or nine.”
“Well, I guess that gives me plenty of time.”
“To get ready?” Zoe looked at me like she was confused. I’m sure she’d noticed that I didn’t exactly spend hours choosing an outfit or blowing out my hair.
I picked up my tack bucket, which I’d need to go fill with water. “No, to clean my tack and get everything put away.”
“Oh.” Zoe looked around. “So this is where being the good friend I am, I offer to help you, right?”
“That would be super amazing.”
Zoe sighed. “I’m not really loving this you-doing-all-your-own-work thing.”
I handed Zoe the bucket. “Ah, neither am I. Can you go ask Mike for some leather conditioner? I left mine open and I came back and found some dog licking the last bit of it up. I haven’t gotten around to getting more yet.”
Zoe’s flirty smile immediately took over her face. “That I can totally do.”
With Zoe’s help, it only took an hour and a half to get everything done at the barn. If it had been just me, it would have taken at least three hours. As much as Zoe pretended to be one of the wealthy kids who’d never lifted a pitchfork, she actually knew a lot about horses. Usually I wouldn’t have cared to learn any tricks of the trade, but I’d figured out that not knowing what I was doing made things take a lot longer. I was eager to learn any shortcuts. Zoe showed me how to pick out Logan’s stall, quickly assessing where his pee spots were. “He probably goes in the same place all the time. Hor
ses are like that—they choose a spot.” She told me that if I could pick out the manure a few times throughout the day, cleaning his stall the next morning wouldn’t be as involved. She also told me to come back to check on Logan each night. I could pick out his stall again and if it was chilly as it sometimes got on summer nights in Vermont, I could throw a light sheet on him. “That’ll keep him warm and also keep him clean if he lies down, which equals less time spent getting out manure stains,” she explained. Genius!
It was almost six by the time we left the barn. I was going to pick Zoe up at her condo at eight. Jed’s parents had come in for the weekend and were taking him out to the fancy, expensive French bistro. Zoe said he was going to try to come by later if he could escape them.
Cheryl was sitting on the couch when I came into the condo. Her little Jack Russell, Maven, was on her lap and she had a trashy magazine in her hands. Cheryl showed in the younger A/O hunters and jumpers, which made her somewhere over eighteen and younger than thirty-five. She didn’t seem to work. Instead, she spent her days following the show circuit from New England and New York in the summers to Florida in the winters. She had three horses, lots of designer handbags, and dated a guy who was a course designer. My mother had made my father promise to have me live with someone who would be “mature and responsible.” I guess the best they could come up with was Cheryl.
“You look ragged,” she said as I came in carrying my ring bag and my wrinkled show jacket on a hanger.
“Long day.”
Cheryl flipped a page of her magazine. “Did you show?”
“Uh, sort of.”
“What does that mean?”
“I didn’t make it around.”
“Oh.” Cheryl scrunched up her nose. She had a short bob of blonde hair and perfectly manicured nails that I didn’t understand how anyone could ride with. “Sorry to hear it.”
I shrugged. “I’m going to go shower. I’m going out tonight . . .” I paused, waiting to see if she’d express any protective-like behavior. “To Backcountry, I guess it’s called.”
“Cool,” she said. “I’ll probably see you there.”
So much for “mature and responsible.” I dumped my ring bag in my room. The condo was typical rental-bland: sturdy but plain furniture, the occasional throw rug, and a few landscape paintings on the walls. My room had two twin beds. I slept in one and kept all my clothes that didn’t fit in the one dresser neatly organized on the other.
After a long, hot shower, I lay down on my bed. It was only six-thirty and I wasn’t picking Zoe up till eight. I’d rest a few minutes and then get up, get something to eat, and figure out what I was going to wear.
Only, of course I fell dead asleep and woke when I heard Cheryl shut the front door. I checked the clock. Ten of eight. Crap! I jumped up and riffled through clothes in my dresser. I wasn’t sure what I should wear to a bar. Would I see Chris? I decided on jeans and a kind of tight white T-shirt. I ran into the bathroom to brush my hair. It had dried funny from being slept on and the best I could do was tie it up on the top of my head in a messy knot. Make-up? I didn’t do much make-up, but this night did seem to call for a quick patting of pressed-powder and a little lipstick.
I dug around the bottom of the closet to find my ballet flats. When I got to Zoe’s, she was sitting on her couch, drinking a glass of red wine. She looked even prettier than she did in her riding clothes. Her blond hair fell artfully over her shoulders, somehow both styled and natural at the same time. Mascara and eyeliner made her brown eyes stand out from her tan skin. She had on a sexy, shimmery tank top that slipped off her shoulders and kept showing her bra straps, with white jeans. Cute leopard print kitten heels completed the outfit.
“You look really good,” I said.
She grinned. “Thank you. I hope Irish feels the same way.”
Chapter 8
Zoe was right. In Weathersville, Vermont, they really didn’t care whether you had an ID. Still, I held my breath all the way through the entrance and tried to smile as over-21 as possible whenever I saw someone who looked like he might be an employee.
Backcountry had a small dance floor, a few pub tables, plus a pool table, darts, and basketball-shooting games. The seats at the bar and the pub tables were practically full.
“Look, there’s Amanda,” I said, spotting another student of Jamie’s over by the darts.
“And there’s Chris,” Zoe said, looking toward the bar.
I immediately turned red. I was even more embarrassed that I was embarrassed because there was nothing between us at all. I was just some bad rider who had crashed into him in the ring. Like Zoe had said, I wasn’t even his type.
“You want to meet him?”
“Um—”
“Come on, you did crash into him and everything.”
Before I could come up with a reason we shouldn’t, Zoe had pulled me toward the bar. Chris was drinking a beer, facing away from the bar so he could look out at the rest of the room. He was leaning back on the bar, slouching in the most sexy way I’d ever seen. I took a few moments to absorb what he looked like without his helmet on. Sometimes guys can look sort of cute with a helmet on but when you see them without it’s a huge disappointment—bad hair or a weird forehead or something. But Chris without his helmet did not disappoint. Chris wasn’t just horse-show-hot, he was real world hot. He was Hollywood hot. He had brown hair that was cut pretty short and his features were perfectly proportioned. I always felt like guys had one thing on their face that was wrong—a crooked nose, overly-thick eyebrows, a pointy chin, thin lips, goofy ears. Maybe it was just my way of finding fault with every guy I saw—as if they’d ever be interested in me anyway—but Chris’s mouth, nose, lips, chin, and forehead were all perfect. It was really wrong that anyone should be so gorgeous.
I gave Zoe a last minute plea. It wasn’t too late to flee to the other side of the bar. “I don’t know. This feels weird—”
“We’ll just get a drink next to him. What’s the big deal?”
“Fine, but don’t say I was the one who crashed into him or anything, okay?”
There was only one stool open, one down from Chris.
“We can share it,” Zoe said.
“That’s okay, I’ll stand.”
In fact, I preferred to stand. I was close to five-foot-seven now and maybe still growing a little, so standing next to Zoe as she sat on the bar stool made us pretty much at eye level. I had a great build for a rider—there were talented juniors who would have killed to have my height and slim frame. Of course, I had the body, but none of the talent.
Waiting for Zoe to say something to Chris, I had the sudden urge to start biting my nails, a habit I had supposedly abandoned years before. Now I had a trick that no one knew about. I would let my nails grow long and then alone, before bed, I would chew them down, leaving just enough white to still file and make it look like I had filed them to begin with. It was such a relief to chew them, even if it was only once a month. Afterwards, I always felt like I had the best night’s sleep in forever.
But I swore to myself I would never chew them again in public. And now, as I wondered whether Chris would recognize me, was no time to break down.
Zoe ordered two rum-and-cokes and handed me one. I envied how automatic and mature the words rum-and-coke sounded coming out of her mouth.
The person between Zoe and Chris left and Zoe leaned forward on her stool. “Hey, Chris.”
He turned to us. “Oh, hey, Zoe. What’s up?”
His voice sounded different than when he had said, watch where you’re going next time. More casual and calm.
“Not much,” Zoe said. “How’d you do in the grand prix yesterday?”
“I was third with Titan.”
“That’s great. I was sorry to hear about Nova.”
Chris hung his head a little. “Yeah, thanks.”
“Wait, isn’t Sunday when the grand prix goes?” I asked.
“Here they’re on Saturdays because of HITS.
Some of the riders keep horses here and at HITS so they can ride in the grand prix here on Saturdays and there on Sundays,” Chris explained.
“Oh,” I said, feeling like I should have known and certainly should have kept quiet.
Zoe said, “Chris, this is Hannah. She’s up here for the summer. She rides with Jamie too.”
“My condolences,” Chris said. “I mean, on the riding-with-Jamie part.”
I hadn’t realized that other people knew how Jamie could be and it was such a relief. I laughed. “No kidding.”
I waited for Chris to have some kind of revelation from looking at me. But he turned his head when a very tan man at the pool table said, “You wanted next game, right?”
Chris nodded and stood up, taking the cue from the guy’s hand. He turned to me. “It was nice meeting you.”
Zoe swiveled around in her seat. She held out her drink for me to clink glasses. “Now was that so bad?”
I clinked back. “I don’t think he remembered me, thank God.”
“To a great summer,” Zoe said.
“To a great summer.”
We both took a sip of our drinks. Half of Zoe’s was already gone. I hadn’t touched mine yet. It burned my throat. I must have made a face because Zoe laughed. “You’re going to have to get into the swing of things. Sometime we’re gonna have to come and get you totally plastered.”
“Not tonight. I have to get up early and take care of Logan tomorrow.”
“You didn’t ask one of the guys to feed him?”
“No, should I have?”
Zoe shrugged. “If you want to sleep in on a Monday.” Zoe looked down the bar. “Okay, we have to find Irish. I heard he’d be here tonight.”
Chapter 9
By midnight, Zoe had downed two more rum-and-cokes and was dancing incredibly closely, even to fast songs, with Dermott. Dermott was cute, I did have to give Zoe that. And his accent was cool too. But there was something I didn’t really like about him. He was loud and boisterous and funny and kind of too much of all those things.
Summer Circuit (The Show Circuit -- Book 1) Page 3