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“Loll, you there?”
I take a deep breath, determined not to cry in the first thirty seconds of our call. “You will NOT believe who I just interviewed w—” I have to hold the phone farther away because thesqueeeeeeeshe lets out is so piercing. Wiggins pulls his ears back, gives me his I-am-so-put-upon look, and heaves his heaviest sigh. If he could roll his eyes, he would. Polo crushes and squealing are for lesser mortals than he. And he’s right, I should shake myself like a damned Polaroid picture, but I can’t control the onslaught of happy-sad, yes-no, I-want-him/fuck-you feelings that have me in their grip.
“Wait, don’t tell me.” Alicia loves surprises but even more than that she loves being right, so I let her guess. “Your Heartthrob, The One, The Only, The Polo Hero Mariano?” She says each word like there is a stop sign after it, and I have no idea how she does it—how she knows I’ve seen him.
“Yeah, I guess you could …” I really just need to tell someone about the nightmare that was me barging into Mariano’s suite for a job interview for a position I never imagined he’d be looking to fill, but Alicia lets out another squee, and I can just imagine her fanning herself. But she’s so excited she’s completely missed the undertone oficklacing my voice.
Instead, like a Thoroughbred let out of the starting gate, she goes straight from squee-mode to rapid-fire question mode. “You interviewed with him? For a job? Are you just in heaven? OMG, what a dream come true! What was it like to actually get totalkto your idol? Properly? Wait—no. What was it like to be sitting in the same room as the Sexiest Man Alive?”
“Wow. Okay, Niagara Falls! Yes, he’s hot but more like nuclear waste—”
She doesn’t acknowledge that I’ve spoken. “Obviously he fell in love with you. Everyone loves you. Only a zombie wouldn’t. Wait, no. I mean, you obviously have brains, so zombies would freaking adore you! Nom-nom-nomz! What I meant was, anyone who doesn’t love you is a brainless skin sack.” She barely pauses for breath. “I am so excited I can barely breathe, Lollz!”
She sounds exactly like how I thought I’d be feeling once Mariano had given me the job—which I thought was to be his assistanttrainer. As in, I’d get to move up from being a lowly stable hand and groom and actually get to exercise the top horses and learn from the best-of-the-best instead of the rich-but-talentless. Instead, I have visions of rubbing myself up against an Argentinian gigolo, a rose between my teeth and a pair of castanets in each hand. Okay, that’s Spanish and a crappy caricature butjiminy christmas, what am I supposed to think? Mariano Arias is looking for someoneto fake-fuck and fake-laugh and fake-date?He didn’t say the fucking bit, but whatevs. Who knows what happens when you rub yourself up against a former polo god?
Alicia’s laugh slows to a wheeze. “Okay. I’m back. Just don’t say anything toooooooooo sessy or funny or I’ll fall off the laugh truck and injure myself!” I can just see her wiping the tears away and settling back into her seat, ready for round two. But I need to say theickstuff out loud, if only to get my head around it.
“Here’s a not-funny for you: he definitely did not fall in love with me.” I shouldn’t care. The man himself is nothing to me. It’s not like heknowsme. But everything he said—someone who doesn’t look like you, sound like you, act like you—just hurts. Every effort to stay afloat gets a swift stab in the floatation device.
It’s pretty much the same thing my mum said when she uprooted us, moving us from the States all the way to overcast, rainy England for the season.It’s always the way… This is how these things go.Blah, blah, blah.Shut up, little girl. Nothing ever changes.She’s been saying that for so long it’s like a mantra I can’t shake.Stay small and hidden, and don’t bother speaking your truth.
Alicia finally registers my tone. “Hold on. Nuclear waste hot? He didn’t fall in love with you? Well, he is a brainless skin sack, after all!” One thing I love about Alicia is how she can turn on a dime like the best of polo ponies.
“He is one hundred percent a pretty face and a hot bod and…” I want to say that he’s a garbage human being, but I can’t square it with the man I’ve seen give wither scratches to his horse after each chukka. Or how any of what I’ve witnessed in the past matches the man I met today. It gets so much worse. I don’t know how to tell Alicia that he was trying to hire someone to be his date, to make the old rich women jealous so they’ll be falling all over him, wanting to be his patron. Because I agreed to do just that.
What is your damage, Charlotte Benoit, that you agreed to do this with him? Have you lost your ever-loving mind? It was that finger-brush that clinched it, wasn’t it?
I’ve heard whispers about this practice. The players dating the older women. Not for fun but compensation in the form of sponsorship.
There’s so much I have to tell her, but it’s all jammed up behind the realization that I had a meltdown in there, a system-wide malfunction so great I can’t even comprehend its scope.
First up, I don’t know what possessed me to lay out for him all the ways in which I waswrongfor the job. It was as if my subconscious went into overdrive and decided to test him or something. Like I needed to prove to myself that I was every bit as unattractive as I felt in that moment. All the moments. Every moment since that slimeball trainer felt us all up in seventh grade and it got swept under the carpet. I know it was forever ago, but things like that stain and stay.
Keep it together, Lolly. Stick to the facts.“He basically said I was the last woman he could ever be induced to date.”
“What?!” Alicia is a magnet drawing all the sharp, metallic weapons in a fifty-mile radius to her core.
I haven’t told her the worst of it, but I’m not sure I fully understand what I just did.
“Say no more. Consider it done. I’m coming to murder him, right now. How should I do it? Axe? Scythe? Weenie roast?” Her voice isn’t loud, but it is full of stabby ferocity. The razored edges make me feel better.
“I said yes to his proposition, Lish.” Only I’m allowed to call her that. Just as she’s the only one allowed to call me Lollz. Anyway, it’s the only way, dive right in and face the music. “I said I’d be his date. Tomorrow. For the gala.”
The silence on the other end of the phone stretches out, vibrating between us with a million unspoken questions.
“Okay?”
“The deal is: I help him snag a sponsor, he helps me get a shot at a spot on theGolden Horseshoesteam.”
“Does it…” I can feel the love and care in her hesitation. “Does it work like that?” She rushes on, talking over me. “I don’t know squat about polo, so I could be way off base here, but from everything you’ve told me…” And then she trails into the quagmire I’ve created. “Are you sure, Lollz? You’re okay being his fake-date?”
You make your bed, you lie in it. “We shook hands.” The tears prick, because this moment should be exciting and it’s not. Because I thought Mariano was one kind of person and he isn’t. But I will not cry over this. “It’s the start of a beautiful not-relationship! We’re un-dating.” Rather than un-dressing and un-fucking and un-getting to know one another. Not necessarily in that order. “You un-derstand how it goes. We’re un-der the radar. Un-detected. Un-…”
She doesn’t laugh, though, and the silence says more than any words. Lish thinks this is a terrible idea. “I’m here if you change your mind, you know that?” Bless her for not saying it. “Meanwhile, I think this not-a-date requires a not-insignificant-other dress. What are you gonna wear? The red slinky number?”
“You’re the best, Lish.”
“Here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to go for a ride. Clear your mind. Get back to what you love best. Then we can plan your not-knocking-his-not-socks-off outfit.”
