Summer Circuit (The Show Circuit -- Book 1)

by Kim Ablon Whitney

  That night Zoe suggested we drive an hour to see a local rodeo. I had never been to a rodeo and of course I was happy to do anything that included Chris. Jed couldn’t go so it was just the three of us. Chris offered to drive and Zoe sat up front. She had a can of Arizona iced tea that she sipped out of occasionally. What I didn’t know, but would find out from her later, was that the can was a mix of iced tea and vodka. Zoe turned the radio onto a country station and she sang along to the songs she knew, which were a lot of them. It made me realize she was a real southern girl, born and bred. Finally a song came on that I knew by heart—Mission, by Low Flying Planes. It was kind of a combo between country and pop and it was getting a lot of airtime on both stations. It was about a guy making it his mission to get this girl to fall in love with him. Zoe turned it up and belted out the lyrics.

  The first half hour of driving was on the highway, but then we drove on smaller and smaller roads until we bumped along on a dirt road for several miles. I would never have believed we were going the right way if it weren’t for the other cars kicking up dust in front and behind us.

  Finally we passed a shed-row stable and parked alongside hundreds of other pick-up trucks and cars in a huge grass field. The rodeo ring was small but well lit with metal bleachers around it like the kind you find at high school baseball games. There was one food stand offering corn dogs, fried dough, hot dogs, and sodas, with a huge line of people waiting. There were families, older people, and girls in tight jeans, tighter shirts, and cowboy boots, and guys in cowboy hats. It was a world away from the horse show scene and I felt like we had been dropped into another life.

  We sat down in the stands and Zoe struck up a flirtatious conversation with two cowboys. One was cuter than the other, with blue eyes and blond hair and a goatee. She got them to explain all about the different events. I knew how annoying horse show people found it when they had to try to explain the hunters and the jumpers and the eq, but these two guys didn’t seem to mind, probably because they hoped it might lead somewhere with Zoe.

  The cute cowboy offered to get beers from his truck and Zoe jumped up and followed him. She had finished the vodka in her iced tea can on the way.

  “Oh God,” I said to Chris. “Here we go again.”

  He smiled at me like I was being a little dramatic. Even though he’d known Zoe for much longer than I had, I felt like I knew her better than he did. I could see just where this was going. How could Chris not see what I was seeing?

  The line for food had dwindled and Chris decided to buy us fried dough. I sat there the whole time he was gone, hoping Zoe would come back. But when Chris climbed the risers carrying a paper plate with fried dough that smelled amazing, she hadn’t returned. The friend of the cute cowboy had told me he was going to go see what was taking them so long, but I had watched him and he’d just gone across the ring and sat with some other friends so clearly checking on them was a big fat lie.

  Chris broke off a piece of the fried dough and handed it to me. It tasted so good, especially the slightly damp confectioners sugar on top, that for a few moments I stopped thinking about Zoe. I also let myself bask in the fact that I was at a rodeo with Chris Kern. Would something happen between us tonight to finally make this undeniably real? But by the time the dough was almost all the way gone, I checked the stands across the ring and saw the friend of the cute cowboy laughing with his other buddies. That brought me straight back to Zoe.

  “We have to go find her,” I said. “Make sure she’s okay.” I was having terrible thoughts of her getting raped by the cute cowboy. His friend knew better than to go check on him—he knew just what was going on. Zoe was flirting with the guy, but she didn’t actually want to hook up with some total stranger at a rodeo, did she?

  Chris didn’t argue with me. Maybe he was thinking some of the same stuff I was thinking, imagining the worst.

  The field was lined with cars now. And it was dark.

  “I don’t know how we’ll ever find her,” I said as we got to the first row of cars.

  “I guess we call her name,” Chris said. He cupped his hand to his mouth. “Zoe?”

  We walked through the lines of cars just like that, calling her name. I started walking faster and then I was nearly running, imagining her in my mind trying to push the guy off her. I’d gotten farther away from Chris and then I heard him say, “Hannah, over here.”

  I ran over, my heart beating, just waiting to find disaster. What I found was Chris with his hands on his hips giving me a look that said, “Glad we were so worried.”

  And there was Zoe, with the guy’s cowboy hat on her head, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. The first few buttons of her shirt were undone and the cute cowboy was doing up his shiny belt buckle. I had the distinct feeling Chris had found him with his jeans down around his cowboy boots and Zoe kneeling in front of him. I couldn’t understand what she would want to do that for. Why would she want to blow some random guy in a rodeo parking lot? Didn’t she think better of herself than that? And for that matter, what had Chris thought of seeing Zoe and him?

  “Zoe,” I said. “We’re leaving.”

  “I can give her a ride home,” the cute cowboy said.

  “No,” Chris said.

  It took Zoe a few pouty faces until she walked away from him. She scowled once more at us, acting like we were parents ruining all her fun. She took off his hat and tossed it back to him.

  In the car driving out the dirt driveway, she was giggling. “I’ve always wanted to mess around with a cowboy.”

  “I don’t even think he was a real cowboy,” I said. “The real ones were riding.”

  “Cowboy enough for me,” she said.

  The ride home didn’t feel as long as the ride there. Maybe it was because the small, dirt roads came first this time and then we were on the highway.

  Chris had to drop me off first—my condo was before Zoe’s and it would have been weird to go past my house to hers. I thought of saying I’d keep him company, but decided not to. Right before I got out of the car, Chris and I locked gazes and it was as if we were both wanting the same thing and couldn’t say it.

  “Bye, now,” Zoe said, in a heavy cowgirl accent, oblivious about interrupting our moment. “Y’all take care!”

  “Bye,” I said.

  Chris waited till I was inside to pull away.

  In bed, later, I wanted to text him so badly. And I prayed he would text me, but the only texts I got were from Zoe about the cute cowboy. The texts started out saying how good a kisser he was and got more rapid and explicit as the night went on, saying what she wanted to do to him.

  Aren’t you going to go to sleep? I finally wrote at 1:30.

  Nah, wired. Can’t sleep. Probably gonna stay up all nite.

  Go to bed!

  Yes, Mom.

  Now!

  You’re no fun.

  Turning off my phone, I wrote back.

  Lame-o.

  Yeah, I know.

  Chapter 23

  Chris taught me on Tuesday like usual. We were jumping every other day now, but he still kept focusing on fundamentals like gymnastics and getting my eye working. He set up a broken line with low jumps set on the half-stride and made me do it leaving out the stride and then adding the stride over and over again until I got it right.

  On Wednesday I was back showing again. I did the 1.00 meter class at the beginning of the week and then the children’s on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I had definitely improved, but that didn’t always translate into doing particularly well in the ring. Typically, I still had a stop every now and then, and I nearly always had at least one rail. But some things had gotten better. Logan wasn’t running away with me anymore and the stops I had were because I asked for a terrible distance.

  In the schooling ring, Jamie called to me occasionally as she did five other things including text and talk to another trainer. “Get the oxer one more time,” she said. “Don’t pull to nothing this time, Hannah.”

&nbs
p; Okay, so I wasn’t supposed to pull to nothing. But what was I supposed to be doing so I didn’t end up pulling to nothing? I decided whatever I did, this time I wouldn’t pull.

  I came around the corner and did not take back on the reins. We caught a major flyer and nearly ran into another rider after the jump when I could barely turn Logan.

  “Okay, you didn’t pull, but you also didn’t make a choice either.”

  I didn’t make a choice. What the hell did that mean? All Jamie did was utterly confuse me. I pulled Logan up and asked very gingerly, “Um, what should I have done there?” I wasn’t being impertinent. I literally wanted to know what I should be doing. But in Jamie’s world, riders were supposed to do, not ask.

  “What do you think you were supposed to do? Find a distance and then ride it! Is that really that hard for you? Try it again.”

  Well, that cleared it all up. This time I pulled a little, and somehow we didn’t completely chip. Jamie said it was good enough and I was ready to go in the ring.

  It was like in my lessons with Chris, everything about riding became clear and made sense. I think I relaxed because I knew he cared about me and actually knew what he was doing. And therefore Logan relaxed. Then everything changed when Jamie was helping me and I went back to my old bad-riding self.

  At the in-gate, I told myself to forget about Jamie. To try to ride like Chris was watching me, which he usually was if he could. I scanned the outside of the ring. Yup, there he was on Buddy at the far corner of the ring.

  I took a deep breath and when it was my turn, walked calmly into the ring, trying to channel Chris. The tone sounded and I pressed Logan into a canter. The first jump was an inviting ramp oxer with blue and yellow rails. It was funny how the color of the rails could make a jump inviting or not. I personally did not like red or black rails. Yellow and blue were my favorites. Green, pink, and purple were okay. Chris said Logan loved to jump and at first I had thought he was crazy because Logan had refused so many times with me. But I had come to realize he was right. Logan always pricked up his ears and he wanted at that jump badly. It was just that sometimes I messed him up so much when we got there.

  I turned to the oxer. Thankfully it was a short approach off the rail so Logan didn’t have time to build. A good, normal distance was there and we were over fence one and headed to two, three, and four—a line across the diagonal. Logan raced a little to two and we were deep, but it was a vertical and he managed to clear it. The jump height wasn’t the problem for him. The rails were always rider-error. I lost count of the strides to fence three. I was supposed to do five strides and I hoped that was what I did. I made sure to count to fence four—I did the six strides I was supposed to do there. I turned to the in-and-out on the short side of the ring. It was up next to the spectator tent and had box walls underneath it that made it spooky. Logan sucked back a little and then burst forward—his version of a spook. We chipped the in, but made it out okay. All in all this was going pretty darn well.

  Fence six was a rainbow swoop skinny. We were long to it and then on the other side I had to pull pretty hard to slow Logan down. Somehow we managed to get over fence seven, a square lime-green oxer. Then it was on to the last line—a vertical to a triple combination. It was headed toward the in-gate and I was fighting to slow Logan down nearly all the way around the corner. I tried to let go a little so I wouldn’t pull to nothing, if that was even what I was doing, and the vertical was fine. It was six strides to the triple. When we had walked it, Jamie said the steady six strides was a definite maybe. I was counting out loud, one, two, three. Oh no, it was becoming clear to me that six was not ever going to happen at this rate. Stride four I did nothing—kind of like I was in a state of shock, frozen. Stride five I made a lame attempt at steadying Logan, but it was too late. He left out the stride and we flew into the triple. I braced myself for rails to clatter and maybe for Logan to crash. I said, “whoa” out loud, a pathetic attempt at saving our lives. Somehow Logan managed to pop through the triple, picking his knees up, and not coming close to touching the rails of the first two jumps. I was so surprised I fell behind him on the last effort and caught him in the mouth. He dragged his back toes and had the rail of the last oxer down. Rider-error again.

  “And the last jump unfortunately comes down for four faults,” the announcer said as I circled Logan.

  I breathed a sigh of relief. I learned the jump-off every time, but I think I would have fainted if I had to do it. Would I even remember it? Maybe. Let’s just say four faults was fine with me. I wondered if somehow Logan had even pulled the rail on purpose. It was a ridiculous thought but I felt like the look on his face said, “Don’t worry, I know you’re not ready for that. Maybe soon.”

  Jamie was waiting for me as I came out of the ring. “Better,” she said. She gave me a funny look, like she was trying to figure out how the hell I pulled off a round that was one step above my usual tragic and treacherous.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  I think I must have stunned her into silence because she just said once more, “Better.”

  Chapter 24

  Chris texted me: pretty good ride.

  I wrote back: i know, right?!

  That week we started texting a lot. We would keep in touch about what we were both doing. What he was doing was always more exciting than what I was doing. I would be cleaning Logan’s stall or giving him a bath while Chris was schooling a horse or riding in a class. When I could, I always watched him show. I loved watching him. I got to know his horses and what they went like. I knew what was hard for them and what Chris was working on with them. I liked the horse that Chris had thought was special, Arkos, but Chris wasn’t exaggerating—he always had at least one rail down, even when it looked like Chris rode it perfectly. It drove Chris crazy. He had done everything to figure out what might be bothering the horse. He’d checked for ulcers and sores in his mouth. He’d tried acupuncture, massage, a new saddle that was custom designed for his back, an ergonomic girth, unconventional bits, therapeutic saddle pads, even a full body bone scan—you name it, he had tried it. The only thing he hadn’t tried yet was a psychic.

  “You could try it, why not?” I said, when I was at Chris’s barn after yet another four-fault performance by Arkos. There was one particular psychic, Ann, whom tons of horse show people used. “Zoe swears by it. Her mother had a horse that was lame and they couldn’t figure out why and the psychic said it was because his blankets didn’t fit right. They got different blankets and he was sound the next day. I mean, how would she know that?”

  Chris shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m just not sure I’m so desperate I’m going to go the psychic route.” Chris went to work on the dry-erase chart that outlined what each horse would do each day. “Do you want to go out to dinner tonight?” he asked.

  “Like just you and me?” I said.

  “Ah, yeah, that’s what I was thinking.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  I had wondered if Chris was embarrassed about being seen with me, but if he wanted to have dinner alone with me, he had to be okay with it. Did that mean I could tell Zoe about our make-out session?

  “I know a great place. It’s a little farther from here, but you’ll love it. I’ll pick you up at seven.”

  A little farther from here. Did that mean just the opposite—that he didn’t want to be seen with me? Why wouldn’t we go to one of the places around here? Oh well. I tried not to care. Chris had asked me out to dinner and that was what I would focus on.

  The place Chris took me to looked like a rustic cabin from the outside. And it didn’t have amazing décor in the inside either—plain, chunky wooden tables covered in old school red checkered vinyl tablecloths and solid wooden chairs. But it was packed and we got the last table. The menu was simple too—spaghetti with a choice of sauces, ravioli, a house salad with homemade dressing they sold in mason jars at the front counter. The waitress brought us bread right after she handed us the menus.

  “This is
one of my favorite restaurants,” Chris said.

  I wanted to believe him, but I worried he was just trying to cover up the fact that he wasn’t sure he wanted to be seen with me.

  “How did you find this place?” I asked.

  “Jimmy told me about it. His summer place is around here.”

  I assumed he meant grand prix rider, Jimmy Sharpe. I wasn’t going to ask and seem dumb.

  Chris offered me a piece of bread. “Do you like garlic bread? It’s straight from the oven. The most amazing garlic bread I’ve ever eaten.”

  I took a piece and bit into it. Chris was right. It was delicious. But as I swallowed I wondered if we’d kiss tonight. I sure hoped so, but now my breath would smell like garlic. Of course, so would Chris’s.

  “I guess I should have asked if you liked Italian food,” Chris said.

  “Who doesn’t like Italian?” I said.

  “Only people on diets, I guess,” Chris said. “My ex, she was always dieting.”

  Chris bit his lower lip, like he wished he hadn’t said anything about his ex. I decided I would be all mature about it and not pretend I had no idea he had dated Mary Beth for years.

  “That was Mary Beth McCord?” I said.

  He nodded. “Yeah.”

  “And she’s in Europe with the Developing Riders Team?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She was always dieting?”

  “She was skinny, she just was a little obsessed with the way she looked. She stayed away from carbs.”

  I took another big bite of bread as if to make a statement.