Winter Circuit (The Show Circuit -- Book 2) (4 page)

Chris hadn’t exactly taken the bait. He could have written back any number of things. But he did tell her she was a great rider. Why did he have to flatter her like that? And why didn’t he say something that made it clear how things stood between them now. Like, Not sure I have time to look at the horse. Things are really busy for me.

I still had his phone in my hand when Chris came out of the bathroom, wearing only a towel around his waist. A very good look for him. Of course Mary Beth was after him again. Who wouldn’t be? Chris was gorgeous, he was successful, he was kind. She must have realized she had been insane to cheat on him and she’d do anything to get him back.

“Did someone call?” Chris asked. “I thought I heard my phone ring.”

“Yeah, it was Lily. I was going to come get you but then I figured we couldn’t waste any time and you could call back in the car.”

He came to the bed and took the phone from me. If he was mad I didn’t come get him or suspected me of snooping, he didn’t let on. Instead, he leaned over and kissed me, making me feel guilty. “Better get going yourself. You sure you want to come with me? It’s going to be cold.”

“Don’t they have a heated viewing room?” I asked.

“I hope so but you never know. Changing your mind?”

“No way,” I said. “I’m coming.”

I didn’t care if I froze my butt off. I wasn’t saying good-bye to Chris eight hours earlier than I had to. If it was up to me, I’d never let him out of my sight again. Because if I wasn’t keeping an eye on him, there was no telling what Mary Beth would be up to.

We didn’t get too far from the hotel when Mary Beth came up in conversation. Or, to be more accurate, when I brought her up.

“Have you talked to Mary Beth?” I asked as Chris followed the GPS directions his phone was issuing. “Or seen her?”

His car smelled deliciously horsey. A combination of horse and tack. One of his saddles was in the back seat and there was plenty of white hair from his dog, Jasper, whom I realized he must have left with Dale for the weekend.

Chris gave me a confused look. “What’s that about?”

“What’s what about? I’m just asking a question, and you’re not answering it, which seems kind of, I don’t know, suspicious?”

Siri spoke, prompting Chris to stay left to go onto Route 2 West toward Concord. He glanced at the screen of his phone to double check the route and I felt like he was also giving himself a moment to figure out how to respond to me. Was he trying to figure out how to hide something?

“I’m not answering it because it feels like the question is not really what you want to ask. It seems like what you’re asking is really something else, like do I still have feelings for her, which I think I answered pretty clearly this summer.”

“Why can’t you just answer the question?” I couldn’t stop jabbing at him. It felt very un-me. Chris and I had never had an official fight. There was the time he’d abruptly cut me out of his life when he’d thought I had posted online about our relationship and sex life but that seemed understandable.

“Why are you picking a fight?” he said.

“I’m not,” I said, even though I knew I was.

“I haven’t seen her. I’ve texted with her. And no, I don’t have feelings for her.”

Chris’s hands looked tight on the steering wheel and he was going pretty fast on what was a small two-lane highway. Part of me hated myself for annoying him. Was I trying to ruin this trip? But I couldn’t stop thinking about the flirtatious nature of her texts.

We drove the rest of the way in near silence. There was no traffic and soon we were driving through historic Concord, passing stately colonials bearing historical society plaques, on the way out further to Littleton.

“I’m sorry I said anything about Mary Beth,” I told him as the GPS told us the destination would be ahead on our right. I wanted to get back on good terms before we arrived at the farm.

“Okay,” he said, but he didn’t look convinced.

I put my hand on his arm. “I shouldn’t have. I just miss you, that’s all. Don’t let what I said ruin this trip.”

We turned up the long driveway passing a few pastures and a fenced outdoor ring covered in snow. Chris angled into a spot in front of the barn. He started to get out of the car and I followed him, quickly putting on my jacket. He zipped up his jacket and we went inside the barn.

Oh, the smells. If the car smelled deliciously horsey, I could have eaten the barn up in one big bite. The sweet hay. The musty horse blankets. The sooty footing in the indoor arena, which was attached to the barn. I missed all the smells of the barn, not to mention the horses themselves. One had its head over the stall door and I went and played with him, while Chris talked to Ginny, the trainer who had arranged the clinic. His nameplate read
MILO
. He was a chestnut and he was friendly, playfully poking me with his nose and breathing on me. His breath was hot and grassy, I guess from hay since the pastures were blanketed in snow except for small patches where brown grass poked through. His muzzle was unclipped with long spiny whiskers unheard of for any of Chris’s horses.

“You are cute,” I told him, missing Logan terribly. I’d heard people talk about the delicious smell of babies but babies had nothing on horses. Horses were the most beautifully smelling animals on the planet and if you didn’t believe that, then you weren’t a horse person. Even the manure in the barn smelled good to me.

Chris and Ginny—a solid woman in her fifties—came into the aisle.

“Making friends?” Chris said. He had either moved past our tiff in the car, or wanted to act like he had in front of Ginny.

“He’s really sweet,” I said. “Makes me miss Logan.”

Chris introduced me to Ginny. I knew her from some of the Massachusetts shows I’d gone to with my old trainer, Jamie. She ran a solid program but mostly stuck with the A shows in the area, not venturing much beyond Connecticut. I think she did a week or two at Vermont each summer, but that was Maple Valley’s one big show of the year. If riders who trained with Ginny got really good and wanted more, they usually left for other barns. She gave them good basics and foundations, but for whatever reason wasn’t interested in the life you had to live in order to have students who were competitive at the biggest shows.

I was sure Ginny had no idea who I was. Chris introduced me as his girlfriend. “She goes to Tufts,” he said.

“Oh, do you ride for the team?” Ginny asked. “One of my students is on the Tufts team, Jenna Ramsey?”

“I’m not riding this semester,” I said. It wasn’t much of an explanation but I left it at that. And why wasn’t I riding on the Tufts’ IHSA team? Maybe I wouldn’t be so miserable and friendless if I were going out to a local barn once a week for a lesson, and competing at IHSA shows on some weekends. But after being taught by Chris, I felt like I didn’t want to ever be taught by anyone else. I knew that sounded—and probably was—ridiculous. But after so long of having Jamie scream at me and put me down, it was a revelation to have Chris teach me. He had made me feel like I could ride a little, and like I was worth teaching. I was sure the Tufts coach was nice but I hadn’t wanted to risk it. The end of the summer had been perfect—I had finally made progress with Logan and ridden well. I didn’t want to tarnish that.

Ginny pointed me toward the viewing room and took Chris into the ring. I sat with a few other riders and mothers in the viewing room, which was heated but not exactly balmy. Still, it was warmer than it must have been for Chris in the ring. I couldn’t hear what he was saying because there was no intercom in the viewing room so it was sort of like watching TV without the sound. I could generally figure out what was going on but it felt like I wasn’t getting the whole story. Still, I observed Chris being Chris. I could tell, even without hearing him speak, how he was kind and encouraging to the riders. He taught four riders in the first session and three in the next session. The first session, I learned from some of the others in the viewing room was three-feet, and the second session was three-foot-three. None of the riders or horses was amazing. In fact, many trainers of Chris’s caliber would have turned up their noses at teaching at a barn like Ginny’s where horses’ whiskers and coats grew long. As I watched him, I felt a pang of guilt and love. Chris was doing all this for me. There was nothing he was getting out of this experience. He was only breaking even on the trip or making enough for a new pair of breeches. He wasn’t going to find his next grand prix horse here. He had come all this way and was teaching this clinic solely so he could see me. That was how much I meant to him. Again, I was plagued by the feeling of
Why Me
? How could I mean that much to him that he’d be willing to do this? I didn’t feel worthy of his love.

He gave the riders his full attention, working them solidly on the flat, before moving on to jumps. He called them in sometimes to talk to him and I could see him asking them questions about their horses and he would nod along with them; he was truly listening to their answers. He would then explain something about how he wanted them to ride. He would use his own body to show them how to look in the air after a jump, or turn their hips in the saddle. And when they got it right he clapped his hands and cheered as if they had just put in the winning ride in a jump-off in a big class at an A show.

We broke for a quick lunch and I overheard the riders in the barn saying how great their lesson had been and how thrilled they were with Chris. I stood listening, letting the praise for Chris wash warmly over me. I felt like someone was complimenting me and I felt my admiration for Chris well up inside me in the same way it had when I watched him compete in Vermont.

“He’s good,” one rider said to another. “I didn’t think he’d be that good at teaching. He zeroed right in on what Rio needed with keeping her shoulder from popping out.”

It was true that often some of the best riders weren’t the best teachers and vice-versa. Chris was good at both.

“I thought he might throw up all over our horses,” the other rider confided to the first. “But he told me Paddy’s great. I think he really liked him.”

After the break, Chris taught two more sessions—both at three-foot-six. The combination of the small indoor and the sparsely decorated jumps—most were just rails, maybe the odd gate or box wall—made three-six look big. These were the best riders Ginny had in the barn and to give her credit they were really good. They might not have had the most expensive tack, the best horse, or the best style in the saddle, but they could ride, which was more than could be said of many of the people on the A circuit now that big shows included endless divisions under three-foot. I could tell Chris enjoyed teaching the higher groups, although he had given his all to the less experienced riders too. I felt so proud to be associated with Chris. So many Big Name Trainers were snobs and gave the horse show world a bad name. Not Chris. Chris truly loved horses—not just the horses that could jump the big jumps, but the common-folk blue-collar horses that taught people to ride, the ones he’d seen today with their trace clips, fuzzy ears, and blanket rubs on their shoulders.

Ginny thanked him profusely and told him she’d love him to come back any time. In the car, Chris upped the seat warmers and put the heat on high. He took out the envelope Ginny had given him and transferred the checks and twenty-dollar bills into his wallet as the car warmed up.

“It looked cold out there,” I said.

“It was freezing.”

“You looked like you were having fun, though.”

“Would I have rather been teaching the same clinic in seventy degree weather? Yes. But it was fun. It’s always fun to teach people who’re hungry to learn.”

I smiled and shook my head.

“What?” he said.

“You’re perfect. You’re just perfect. I feel like I suck in comparison to you.”

In the barn I’d been so self-satisfied that Chris was who he was, making me fall in love with him all over again. But now, the two of us alone, I nearly wished he had more faults. I didn’t understand myself.

“Is that supposed to be a compliment? Because it doesn’t feel much like one.”

“I don’t know what it’s supposed to be. It’s supposed to be how you make me feel.”

Chris gave me a confused look. “I thought I was pretty good at making you feel good. Judging from last night…”

“Of course you make me feel good. But I just feel like I can’t compare to you in real life.”

“Why do we have to compare you to me, or me to you? Aren’t we supposed to compliment each other? That’s what the best couples do.”

“See, even just saying that, that’s… that’s, like the perfect thing to say.”

Chris shook his head. “I’m missing something here. You’re upset because I’m saying the right thing?”

The car had warmed up and he reversed out of the parking spot, and headed out the barn driveway. It was already getting dark.

We didn’t really conclude that line of discussion. It was like there wasn’t much else to say really. I felt inadequate next to Chris, not to mention worried that he’d wake up and realize he could do better than me. But I loved him for being so great all the same. The qualities I’d seen in him today were why I’d fallen in love with him.

He drove me back to campus and we sat outside my dorm in his car for a time. He should have been kicking me out of the car because he had the whole entire drive back to Pennsylvania. But, of course, he didn’t say a word about having all those hours in the car alone ahead of him.

We kissed for a while and he told me he was going to miss me. Sometime while we were kissing I started crying.

“What’s wrong?” He lifted my chin and looked at me carefully. “I feel like I’m missing something that’s going on between us. Like I’m a step behind.”

“Nothing’s going on,” I said through my tears. “I just miss you, that’s all. You’ve got this whole life going on—”

“So do you,” Chris said.

But he didn’t know that I didn’t, not really. Not like he did. And I wasn’t going to tell him. He’d think I was turning crazy, like my mother. Something I had begun to worry about myself.

“I just miss you and I love you,” I said.