Manties in a Twist (The Subs Club Book 3) (27 page)

“I’m not a furry, Dave. I’m a pony. There’s a difference.”

Dave looked at Ryan, who nodded.

“There is a difference,” Ryan said.

I nodded too. “Also, you should quit hating on furries, because there’s nothing wrong with them.”

Dave let out an exaggerated sigh. “I know. I’m trying to get better. But something about people acting like animals just makes me so uncomfortable. But you,” he added quickly. “You look . . . um . . . good.”

Ryan looped my reins in his hand. “We started doing pony play because we wanted to take down Cinnamon at PetPlayFest at the end of the month.”

“Cinnamon?” Dave looked confused.

“Yeah,” I said. “She and I got in a fight at Riddle, and she was going on about how pony play was so hard, and I could never do it. So I wanted to prove her wrong.”

“Are you serious?”

“Plus she’s always harassing you on Fet, and, like, I just think this is a really good way to get her back.” What was crazy was this didn’t feel totally true anymore. Like, yeah, Cinnamon was why the pony play had
started
. But now it was about more than that. It was about how I wasn’t afraid to try new things, and about how I didn’t need to think of Ryan as some guy I had to listen to because he was my dom. He could just be my friend and my favorite person in the universe and the guy I wanted to try new things
for
.

Ryan shrugged. “We’re a ragtag team of misfits. And we want to come from behind and win this competition.”

I snickered. “Come from behind.” I wanted to put my hoof up for a high-five, but handcuffs.

Ryan explained a little more about PetPlayFest. Like about the five competitions we had to do, and the horse ballet and shit.

Dave was looking back and forth between the two of us, but he was kind of smiling now. “You’re going to defeat Cinnamon.”

Ryan and I nodded.

“Publicly?”

“Yeah,” we said together.

“Goddamn it.” He set down the box, stepped forward, and hugged me. Kissed my cheek strap. “You beautiful beast you. This will be a Subs Club victory like no other.”

I grinned. “I know.”

He turned to Ryan, and I was nervous for a second. I remembered what he’d said about not being able to make himself care about Ryan, and it hurt, but I reminded myself Dave was allowed to have his feelings.

Dave leaned forward and gave Ryan an awkward hug. “Go,” he said, stepping back. “Put that bit back in his mouth and ride the fuck out of him. You’ve got a competition to win.”

Ryan and I smiled at each other.

Dave took his phone out. “What day is this thing? And what time? I’ll tell the others immediately.”

“Uhhh . . .” Even back when I’d considered telling my friends I was doing pony play, I’d imagined, like,
telling
them. As in, coming home from PetPlayFest with a trophy and giving them all the deets. Not having them watch me. “You really don’t have to be there.”

He looked up. “Don’t be ridiculous. You think I’d miss you trotting around with a tail up your ass? Date and time.”

I told him.

My phone blew up that evening with horse puns from everyone, from Gould to Miles and Drix to Maya to Ricky.
I heard they’re actually moving the competition
, Maya texted. And I freaked for a second that she was serious. But when I asked her
WTF
, she was like.
Yeah, to Pennsylvania. Up near Filly, I think.

Just promise you won’t bale if the going gets tough
, Dave said.
That wouldn’t be farrier to the rest of us.

This went on for a while. But amid the puns, there was a lot of support too. Ricky and Drix weren’t gonna be able to make the competition, and Maya would have to arrive late. But Gould, Miles, Dave, and D would be there. And though I was still pretty embarrassed at the idea of them seeing me in my pony gear, struggling to prance, I decided I was fucking glad they’d be there to cheer me on.

Cinnamon didn’t stand a chance.

Saturday Ryan and I slept in and arrived at our practice spot late in the afternoon, ready to tackle dressage. It was hot out. Ryan and I hauled the bag of pony gear out into the meadow. The grass was getting longish, and right from the get-go I barely had the energy to pick up my feet. We were so sweaty that all he did was give me a brief rubdown with a cloth and put some sunscreen on us both before we got started.

“So I guess we just need to start practicing the moves.” He pulled up the list on his phone. “Here, I’ll leave the bridle off for now, and you just face me and try to do the thing I describe. All right?”

“Okay.” I took a few steps forward and turned to him. “Hit me with it.”

“You’re gonna have to enter the arena at a working trot. Which is just like the trotting you’ve been doing, except your hands aren’t gonna be behind you. In dressage, you have to move your arms like they’re legs. So each time you lift a foot, you move the opposite hand forward, like in the videos.”

“So, like, left hand at the same time as right foot.”

“Exactly.”

I gave it a go.

“Not bad. Your legs and arms are a little out of synch. And maybe lift your knees a little higher.”

“Easy for you to say. You just get to stand there and watch while I die of heatstroke.” I got my arms and legs synched, and then we worked on the extended trot, which was the same thing but with longer strides. My T-shirt was soaked through, and the idea of having to put hooves and tack on eventually was making me want to die.

“The extended trot needs to be like a glide,” Ryan called, glancing at the phone and then shielding the screen with one hand so he could read it. “Really throw those legs forward and imagine you’re floating.”

I imagined I was drowning in a sea of my own sweat.

We practiced the salute, which was like a horse curtsy that took place at marker X. Dressage rings had a bunch of posts with letters, and I guess marker X was something special. “We need to make some letter posts,” Ryan said.

I rolled my eyes.
Yep. Maybe we should’ve brought our craft shit so we could sit here making letter posts in the blazing-as-balls sun.

Next we tried a
passage
—which, according to Ryan, was pronounced “
pa-sahhhge
.” The
passage
was a collected trot with very little forward movement. So it was almost like jogging in place, but you still moved forward a little. “I do not feel graceful,” I complained.

“Shh. Work on keeping your arms moving with your legs.”

I grumbled under my breath. Shushing me? Really?

We kept going. Cantering with lead changes—
tempi
. Piaffe. Pirouette. I was terrible at everything. Though I did kind of like the pirouette, since it involved spinning around. He put my bridle on and tried to practice cuing me with the whip for all the different moves, but all I could think about was AC. A cold beer. Curling up in front of the TV with Collingsworth.

“Prance when you trot,” he urged me. “Lift those legs.”

I seriously tried to prance, but it was exhausting. He kept tentatively tapping my calves with the whip and telling me to lift my legs higher, which was pissing me off. So then I started pulling away whenever the whip came near me, and finally I yanked the reins right out of his hands and bolted. I hadn’t planned to do it, but it felt pretty great. There wasn’t really anything I could do with all my gear on, so I just stopped a few feet away and stared at him.

“Thunder!” he shouted. “Not cool.”

I backed up a little as he approached, since he was still holding the whip. When he got too close, I turned and jogged away again. What was interesting was that even though I was irritated with him, I felt as close as I ever had to slipping into a pony headspace. To communicating as a horse rather than a person.

He tossed the whip aside.

Reached into his pocket and took out a Jolly Rancher.

Game changer.

“C’mere,” he said. “Come on over here. No more dressage today.”

For a second I thought maybe it was a trap. But the Jolly Rancher was green apple, so I walked forward until I was right in front of him. He took my bridle off and set it on the ground. Unwrapped the Jolly Rancher and fed it to me. Then he helped me drink half a bottle of water and poured the rest over my head.

“You worked harder than I did today. I think you’ve earned something when we get home.”

“Is it wings?” I asked hopefully.

“It’s better than wings. If I do my job right.”

We took my tail out, and walked over to the trees. Sat in the grass together, under the shade. He picked a blade of grass and spun it between his thumb and finger. I watched him.

“What if we lose?” I asked after a while.

He turned to me. “What if we do?”

“Will it all be for nothing, then? Like, the hundreds of dollars we spent, and all the drives out here, and the guys building the cart for us . . .”

“Kamen.” He shook his head and kinda huffed, smiling. “It’s not for nothing. I’m having, like, the best time ever.”

I nodded. “I mostly know that. I just wanted to make a dramatic speech because it’s, like, that moment in the movie when we have a crisis of conscience right before the big day.”

“You mean crisis of confidence?”

“Sure.” I took the piece of grass from him. “And I also wanted to make sure you feel like I do. This is really fun. Even though I hate dressage.”

“Look, we’re probably going to win. Because we’re awesome. But if we don’t, it’s fine.”

“Because we’re still awesome?”

“Exactly.”

I twirled the grass against his forehead. “I really want to win, though.”

“Good.” He slapped the grass out of my hand. “Then let’s get home and get your reward. And we’ll be back at this in a couple of days.”

He took me home, and we showered together. And I guess he did his job right, because everything that happened that night was better than wings.

We took off early the next morning to have brunch at Ryan’s family’s house, leaving a key under the matt so Gould could walk Collingsworth. We spent the drive there singing along to the radio, and I tried to teach Ryan how to harmonize.

“Are you nervous?” he asked as we got close.

“Are you kidding? I hung out with your parents that one time. They were awesome.”

“Yeah, you hung out with them for, like, two seconds. This is your first experience spending any significant amount of time with them. And meeting my sister.”

“I am one hundred percent looking forward to it.” Parents freaking loved me. Especially moms.

We had an awesome time. Ryan’s mom was a weatherwoman for a local station, so I got her to do the weather voice for me. His dad was charming as fuck, and just super chill. Ryan’s sister, Jacey, was all breathtakingly beautiful and wickedly sarcastic, and even though during brunch I saw her put her finger in her ear and then look at it, she made my list of favorite people ever.

The meal conversation sort of turned into embarrassing stories about Ryan’s childhood, which I loved, even though Ryan looked like he wanted to drown himself in his OJ.

“One time—” His mom laughed. “Ohhh, God. Ry was six, and I took him with me to the grocery store. We passed this
really
tall black man in the produce section, and Ry goes, loud enough for the whole store to hear, ‘Look, Mom! It’s Michael Jordan!’”

Everyone got a kick out of that.

Ryan’s mom rubbed her temples. “I thought I was going to die of embarrassment.”

I took more crepe thingies. “Dude, that sounds so much like stuff I did when I was little.”

Jacey flashed Ryan a grin. “That’s what I remember most about you as a kid. You never knew when to shut up.”

Ryan flushed but grinned back. “That hasn’t changed.”

Ryan’s mom shook her head. “What
I
remember is Ryan had so many interests. School and drawing and sports and clubs . . .” She looked at Ryan. “And you would work
so
hard to do things perfectly. But then always, right before you finished something, you’d stop.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“It’s true!” She turned to me. “We have all these unfinished drawings of Ry’s. And then school, you know, he studied and studied for the ACT. He was so determined to get into the college he wanted. But then once he’d taken the ACT, he didn’t do anything to prepare for the SAT, and—”