AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Teena releases me and I whirl to face Rhinestone Sparkle Barbie. Teena goes from sweet to snake-y in the blink of an eye, pinning her ears flat and stretching her neck out like she might bite. In typical vapid Stephanie fashion, the woman doesn’t even notice. She leans in closer, over the stall door. “I can’t wait to ride her once you’re gone.”
The image of Teena rearing straight up and Stephanie slipping down her back to land in a massive, steaming pile of fresh horse shit pops into my head, accompanied by a laugh that reminds me of the giggle Snoopy always gives just before he does something naughty in the cartoons. It’s a message. From Velveteen. I pulse my own communication back to her on our secret frequency.You’re too good for her.I do the quick mental calculus and determine that yep! I can finally let loose because I’m firmly in the window of impunity now. I’m not just fired but my flight is in four hours. There’s nothing Stephanie can do to me that she hasn’t already done. Time for me to clamp my teeth around her calf and tell her what I really think.
“You couldn’t ride her even if you could manage to get a leg over—” Just as I’m about to blast the rest of the blatant truth that Stephanie is the shittiest rider that ever was shit and follow it up with a swift shin kick or a nice shoulder shove, a velvety-smooth voice cuts through the tension.
“I’m terribly sorry, darling, but I’m afraid I’ll have to keep you waiting for your chance to ride this one, because she’s mine now.” Esther Fucking-Fabulous Fitzwilliam’s tone blazes the path right between patronizing and polite and posh, and it has the effect a certain class of English accent always has on Americans: Stephanie’s tone immediately goes sugar sweet, as if EFF (that’s her official name, now) truly is royalty, and Stephanie is some homespun colonial.
“Oh, Esther! How lovely to see you!” Stephanie practically curtsies.
“Of course.” EFF waves her hand dismissively. “No time to chat, love. Tight schedule. You know how it is.” The spark plug of a woman pushes past Stephanie and holds out her hand for Teena’s lead rope. “You ready, Ms. Benoit? Because I can’t wait to see what this Thoroughbred filly can do. On the field and off.”
It’s a bitter pill poorly hidden in molasses to have outwitted Stephanie in this one small-but-of-outsized-importance way, and I wish I could snap a picture of her face twisted in a sour grapes expression that puts her ugliness on vivid display as I place Teena’s cotton lead into EFF’s palm. It feels like a victory. Or it would, if a crack didn’t split my heart and splinter into a million tiny fissures to watch EFF walk Teena out of her stall and down the barn aisle toward the waiting horse trailer, Mr. Wiggins trotting at my side. Because even if I could afford the board, there was no way I was going to leave Teena at the same polo club as Stephanie and Mariano. And EFF may somehow be friends with that boor of a man, but she’s still the one person besides Alicia I can entrust with Teena.
“You hired Lolly? But Esther, surely you heard—”
Esther tosses her curly mop of hair. “No time at all, darling. I did say the bit about my schedule aloud, didn’t I?” She lets out that trilling laugh only English women make. It’s just enough to confuse Stephanie over whether Esther was rude to her or not and to leave uncertainty over whether or not EFF really has hired me. (Newsflash Steph: that was definitely a cutting remark.) Sadly, she didn’t hire me. Not even EFF could sway the head of her polo club that I was worth the risk of Stephanie’s ire and influence.
I promised myself I was done with tearful goodbyes, but it’s all I can do not to break down at Teena and I make our way toward the trailer. We’ve already had one last mutual grooming session where I scratch her withers and she massages my shoulder with her upper lip, her eyes blissed out and half closed.I won’t forget you, and I won’t leave you,I send to her, and then I kiss her velvety-soft nose one last time, right where the warm, dusty scent of purehorseis the strongest.
I swear Teena slows as she marches up the ramp and into the trailer, offering me an extra swish in her tail by way of goodbye. This farewell breaks my heart, but it’s also the moment I know the smartest thing I’ve done since Stephanie got me fired was to call up the best female polo player ever and ask her to take Velveteen under her wing.
“I’ll hope for a miracle.” EFF is being kind, but it’s not a miracle I need. It’s just a season of hard graft, a bit of scrimping and saving, and my own money in the bank.
And it’s only then that the bottom truly falls out. Because she’s right. I don’t need a season’s worth of cash. I need a total end run around Stephanie and her cronies. I really do need a miracle.
WHAT NOT TO SAY
Mariano Arias. Leaving Florida.
There’s a temporary stable hand standing in for Gustavo, who will have left for his honeymoon in the Maldives by now. We greet, but there’s nothing to say. He will have seen my cot, and someone will have explained that I’m living here.
But as tired as I am from my sleepless night and long walk home, my sad cot in the lonely tack room is the last place I want to go—a reminder of everything I’ve lost or let slip through my fingers. Instead, I find myself striding down the barn aisle toward Lolly’s horse. Velveteen, she calls her. A soft luxury.
Except the filly is not there.
My heart leaps the same way it does when I see an open shot. Without even knowing precisely what I will say, I stride for the arena, confident the right words will come to me this time.
But the arena is empty. As is the polo field.
I go back to the new stable hand. “Adonde es la yegua bonita?” I point to the stall.
“That stall is empty.”
I very nearly shout that of course it is; I can see that—but a kind of half-understanding dawns. Without even mustering the grace to thank him, I bolt away, thundering up the stairs to the barn apartment. Her apartment.
It, too, is empty, the door swinging open easily when no one answers my pounding.
Or, rather, it is not empty. It’s filled with the scent of her. In the kitchen, written in a loopy script on a chalkboard-painted square, are the wordsWelcome Home.On the bathroom counter is a jeweled bobby pin—like she wore in her hair the night of the Gustavo’s wedding. I pocket it.
In the tiny living room, I sink to the floor. Lolly is gone. Her Velveteen is gone. On the wall by the door where we kissed and I failed to tell her what I felt, there’s an X. I don’t remember a picture being there, but I was so focused on Lolly I must have missed it. The irony of having an X markingthatspot when she’s gone.
I have to find her.
I toy with my phone, but the words are insufficient to tell her what I want to say.I think I love you, Lolly Benoit.Scratch that. Weak opening. There is no “I think.” I know. But how can I tell her that?Lolly Benoit, I’m not who you think I am.Damn. I’ve already tried that, and it still just sounds defensive. What I feel for Lolly is different from anything I’ve felt before.
I tap and delete, tap and delete, over and again, but never find precisely the right words.
Back in the tack room, there’s almost nothing to pack and no goodbyes I can stomach.
