It’s been a week since Kat’s rain check with Lou. I bite my tongue every time I’m around either of them, wanting to ask, terrified to ask, but neither of them is talking about it. Until now.
“Hey, coming out tonight to the horse show?” Lou passes me in the barn aisle, the big gray mare behind her.
“Maybe. Have a driving lesson first.”
“You’re doing carriage work, too?”
I laugh. “No, in a car.” Leave it to a horse person to jump to the alternate meaning of the word.
“You don’t have a license?”
“No.” Now’s as good a time as any to probe. “Figured Kat would have told you. My grandmother hired her to teach me to drive this summer.”
Lou puts the mare in her stall and fishes a peppermint out of her pocket that she lets the horse lip off her palm. “We haven’t had time to talk about that.” She smirks.
I look at loose strands of hay on the barn floor. Of course, they’ve been seeing each other. Why wouldn’t they have been? But Kat has been letting me drive her van home every day she’s picked me up. And she’s never gone out of her way to see if Lou is around at the barn. She doesn’t talk about her. She doesn’t tell me she’s had some great big girl-kissing epiphany. But then, she wouldn’t. Not her style. Kat’s not a gossip. Not someone to flaunt her private life. It’s yet another thing I seriously like about her.
“Right, of course,” I say.
“Heard through the grapevine you’re sticking around.”
“Really?” Since I’d only been given an extremely tentative maybe after a week of begging and pleading, it can only mean one thing. MaMolly must be in negotiations to buy Dan. Bubbles of excitement work their way up through my body. She wouldn’t buy such an expensive horse if it didn’t mean I’d have a future riding him, would she? “I mean, yeah, maybe. If it all works out.”
“Cool. Well, see you at the horse show maybe.”
She leaves and I sweep up the offending hay before hurrying to saddle Dan. It makes sense now, how Dilara put me on the schedule to ride him, with her as my instructor.
“Hey, sweet boy.” I croon to the horse as I curry his coat, bringing dust to the top that I sweep off with a bristled brush. I pick out his hooves, spray no-tangle spray on his mane and tail and brush them out, before giving him a quick spritz of fly spray. His eyes are half closed in pleasure as I work. I can’t believe he might actually be mine.
Once I have him tacked, I lead him over to the covered arena. Dilara is finishing up her own schooling session, so I mount and stay to the inside of the ring to warm him up. I want to pinch myself. I’m riding a horse in a ring with an actual Olympian. God, I hope my parents say yes.
She finishes her ride, hands the horse over to a groom, and turns her attention to me. She puts us immediately into transitions. Walk to trot to walk to halt to trot to canter. Speeding and slowing each gait. She barks when I use too much bend with the rein or let my body sit heavier on my right seat bone. I’m so focused on the work that I don’t notice the observation deck.
Until I check my position in one of the mirrors lining the arena.
And I see Lou.
Who’s leaning in saying something to Kat.
Who is smiling and looking extra cute in a Red Sox T-shirt I’d given her as a thank-you. She’s got her eyelids tilted down and her lips, in their usual matte red, lifted slightly.
“Get out of your head!” Dilara barks from center ring.
Lou’s eyes meet mine in the mirror before I refocus.
I make my shoulders tall and sink my body into the saddle. This is why I’m here. To ride. To train. To become a star. I need to get the stars out of my eyes when it comes to love.
I finish the lesson with laser-sharp focus. When it’s time to cool down and I once again look at the observation deck, it’s only Kat I see. She’s leaned forward, her chin planted on her hands, watching me with a huge smile. She sits up, waves big, and gives me two thumbs-up. But of course, she would. We’re friends. It doesn’t stop my traitorous breath from catching in my chest though.
After I have Dan untacked, with not even a hint from Dilara about the quality of my ride or the possibility of him being mine, I make my way to the front of the barn where Kat is sitting on a bench with one of the barn kittens in her lap. Is she looking intentionally adorable?
“Hey.” She lifts her head. “You looked amazing out there. Super fancy.” She stands and puts the kitten on the cushion. It pounces at a loose piece of string before leaping away and running down the aisle in pursuit of one of its littermates.
“Not that fancy. But thanks.” Is it bad that I love that she was watching me? And had an opinion on how I looked?
She hands over the van keys. I notice she’s added the Red Sox charm I gave her at the same time I gave her the T-shirt, even though she protested that she was a Braves fan and could never put it on her key ring. She nudges me with her elbow. “Don’t be modest. Aren’t competitors supposed to know they’re fierce?”
Like Lou, she’s got the fierce thing down cold. But yeah, Kat’s right. Fierce. I should be fierce, too.
“I guess I’m not half bad.”
“Half bad is half good. You’re definitely more than half good. And your driving? You’re practically a pro now. I can’t believe the difference between our first lesson and now. You will nail your driving test.”
“Thanks.”
I back us out of the parking spot and head to the main road.
“Are you going to the horse show thing tonight?” Kat points to a car approaching from the left. I brake, but the approaching car rolls obediently to a stop when it’s supposed to and I reapply the gas.
Lou had asked the same thing. I guess she’d asked Kat to go. “I hadn’t planned on it.”
Every weekend riders came from all around the Southeast and further afield to compete at the Equestrian Center horse shows for enormous purse money. Because the classes are speed jumping with huge jumps, the Friday night shows are a draw for the locals, horse people or not. Everybody can understand the adrenaline of pushing horses over such substantial jumps in a timed event.
Plus, it’s something to do in the otherwise sleepy community. There are a bunch of restaurants and shops, even an open-air bar that, though I’ve heard they aren’t slack about checking ID’s, do allow not quite legal drinkers to hang out in the hammocks and at the picnic table benches and sing karaoke. As long as you don’t try to imbibe.
“Lou was saying there was karaoke at the Sunset Bar after the show. She asked me to come. Said a bunch of your kind would be hanging out.”
“My kind? Isn’t that your kind too now?”
Kat turns crimson. “That’s not . . .” She blows an exasperated breath. “You know what I mean. Riders.”
I turn on my blinker and look twice before turning left onto MaMolly’s road. Karaoke. Isn’t that what Beatriz and Elliot had talked about? If Kat’s going to be there and I can find the perfect song . . .
Gah. What am I doing.
Everything doesn’t have to be about having a girlfriend.
And now I might even have a horse. My own amazing competitive dressage horse. Focus on the horses. It’s what MaMolly would say.
“Well?” Kat asks again. “Are you going?” Her smile is shy as she reaches out and puts one finger on my arm before pulling it back. “I’d love it if you were there.”
My arm buzzes where she’d barely touched me.
My mom always says that MaMolly doesn’t know everything.
“Yeah.” I put the van in park in front of my grandmother’s house. “I’ll try and make it.”
Kat’s smile is all I need to solidify the rightness of the decision.