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“Is this what you wanted...A big, juicy carrot?”
I’m putting the root end between my teeth as I enter the stall, and nearly lose my lunch when I see him crouched down gathering my notebook from the floor.
He chokes on his laughter when he catches sight of me, eyes wide with amusement. “Holy shit, Neidermeyer. I didn’t know people actually did that in real life.”
I remove the large phallic symbol from my mouth and clear my throat, trying my best to regain the upper hand. I sound ridiculously snotty to my own ears when I shoot back, “What are you eventalkingabout?”
“Um, Neidermeyer?” When he sees that I don’t get the reference, he clarifies, “Animal House?” I’m still shaking my head, completely baffled, while simultaneously trying my best to act like this entire episode is tiresome. “Never mind,” he says with a shrug. He tosses the notebook on the bench and leaves the stall, calling over his shoulder, “Half of your answers are wrong, by the way.”
“What?”
He does a piss-poor job of concealing a smirk when he says, “If you’re studying for a test, I’d say you’ve got your work cut out for you.”
“And you know this, how?”
“Yeah, that’s right, I shovel horse shit for a living so I couldn’t possibly know my way around a basic math problem.”
“No,” I counter cautiously. Even though, seriously, I am kind of wondering how he thinks he’s more knowledgeable than I am. His look, the careless attitude—the vibe he gives off doesn’t exactly scream academic. “It’s just that I’m pretty good at math, and this is anything but basic. It’s advanced placement calculus and those answers look right to me.”
“Sorry to burst your bubble, sweetheart, but they don’t look right to me.”
I lift the notebook and flip back to the page that was opened, a piece of dry straw serving as a convenient bookmark. He’s making his way back towards the tack room when he hears me mutter, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He lets out a short laugh that comes off as mean-spirited. “No, I probably don’t. Good luck on your test, Neidermeyer.”
I wind up brushing Shadow for the next twenty minutes, waiting in vain for this drenching rainstorm to let up. It doesn’t stop, and Liam doesn’t even slow his steps when he passes me, making a run for his car as I walk across the parking lot getting soaked. I think he even stomped extra hard to splash me as he ran past.
And what do I do as soon as soon as I get home? Shower and get into dry, warm clothes? Study for tomorrow’s calculus test? Nope. I cue upAnimal Houseand then nearly die of embarrassment when I watch that scene he was referring to. And then I laugh, knowing I’m busted, because while Neidermeyer is no doubt an arrogant, sadistic monster, the man does love his horse, and I probably do sound a little bit like him when I’m loving on my Shadow.
I relive that episode in the barn over and over. I reimagine it. This time it’s a friendly exchange. He smiles when he sees me feeding Shadow, and then looks at me with soft eyes when he points out the mistakes in my notebook. “It’s a common error, Sarah. Everyone puts a 2 in the denominator, but it’s B minus A. Look, I’ll show you,” he whispers as he leans over me and takes the pencil from my hand. It’s like that cheesy scene from my mother’s favorite movie, except Liam is filling in for Patrick Swayze, and we’re proving Rolle’s Theorem instead of engaging in foreplay that involves wet clay and a sculpting wheel.
Liam is a nice person in my fairytale version of events, while in reality he reminds me of a caged animal: tense, angry, positioned and ready to attack. Nothing about him is relaxed or easy. His clipped, condescending words are like claws, and his height gives him the advantage of looking down on others with cold, judgmental eyes. Even the way he moves is violent. Coiled tight and aggravated, as if his body can’t contain his rage.
Every word I’ve used to describe him is negative and ugly, yet I will freely admit that Liam is the most physically beautiful person I’ve ever laid eyes on. He stands tall and broad and capable, a smoking hot Gulliver next to my Lilliputian frame.
I’m not one to describe myself as the epitome of fierce female empowerment or anything, but I’m not a shrinking violet either. I think one of the reasons he makes me so mad is that I don’t like the way I act around him. I feel small, literally and figuratively, and I feel unsure of what to say or how to act. When he was in the confined space of Shadow’s stall with me the other day, I could hardly move, or catch my breath for that matter.
And, oh yeah, I only got an eighty-one on that test. The fact that he was right and I was wrong has me burning with indignation while simultaneously fangirling over his intellect.
The next week, I’m careful to sound casual and disinterested when I ask Mr. Murphy why he hasn’t been around.
“Is your nephew going to be working in the stables now, or does he still work in the dining room?”
“He’s helping me out here and still waiting tables. Doing a little bit of everything, I suppose. Grabbing as many extra shifts as he can.”
I try and mask my relief when I respond ever so eloquently, “Oh.”
Liam has been missing in action. I was actually weighing the pros and cons of thanking him for trying to help me with those calculus problems. I’m thinking it’s for the best that I haven’t run into him these past few days. No doubt he would have fired back with some insult, and really, besides pointing out my errors he didn’t help me one bit.
“He’s a handful, that one. But Liam is a hard worker, and he’s always looking to help his mother out by sending whatever extra he has her way.”
I say, “That’s kind of him,” as I think to myself that it’s also shockingly decent.
Yes, I have to remind my idiotic self, Liam has a mother, and he has a life outside of the two barely civil exchanges we’ve shared. Does that life include a big family with lots of sisters and brothers? Maybe underneath it all he’s just a big old softie who lets his little brothers climb all over him and drives his sisters to soccer practice. Is there a girlfriend? I decide the girlfriend thing is fifty-fifty. I have no doubt that girls fawn over Liam, but he seems too hardened for sweet words.
“It’stookind, if you ask me. He should be saving for his own future.” As Mr. Murphy takes the saddle from me and places it on the rack, he adds, “He should be saving for college.”
“Um, yeah...He seems very smart.” I laugh when I add, “He barked at me when he saw that my math notes were wrong.”
