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“I need to try something different.” I blurt out the statement before I have any idea what I mean.
“Anything. Anything for you.” Mariano’s unrelenting dedication, his steadfastness, only makes me want to release my hold on Miss P and let her be the one to put as much distance as possible between Mariano and his words and my feelings.
“Leapfrog. Let’s try leapfrog.”
His brow creases. “Leapfrog? I do not know this.”
“You know, like the endurance riders do? I’ll pass everyone and ride to the front, then you do the same, then Hettie, then Pippa, and so on, so the horses are always changing places. I just think Rum Punch needs—”
“After you.” Mariano tips his head and gestures to the front of the line.
For a span of several strides—relief flooding through me that I have at least a moment away from him—I ease Miss P forward. When we’re abreast with Pippa on Kahlua, I shorten the reins and Miss P’s stride while I explain.
“Got it!” Pippa looks enthused at the idea of the new game.
Leaving Mariano behind is freeing. There’s too much weight between us now, too much history, too much hurt. We have been nothing but professional toward each other, but always, even as I rein Miss P in next to Alan and explain that we’re playing leapfrog, the string that ties something in me to something in Mariano stretches and tugs.
By the time we’ve made several passes of leapfrog, each member of our group—both horses and humans—has settled, even Rum Punch. We pull up with the rest of the hilltoppers along the edge of a field. The baying of the hounds grows louder and closer, and we all watch in something approximating awe as the hounds stream over and through the brush, and the Master of Foxhounds leaps and makes a wide turn back around to hurtle across a stone wall, and then gallops away from us, disappearing down a bank and then reappearing at the other side. Behind him, the rest of the field gallops on.
When the last of them have gone, the hilltoppers follow an easier route through an open gate in the stone wall, across the field to what I realize is not a bank at all but a sunken water crossing at which we have to wait our turn. As the first horse leaps awkwardly across the entire crossing, my stomach flips.
“Crap.” I don’t mean to say it aloud, but Hettie whirls in her saddle to look at me. Beside her, Pippa makes throat cutting gestures. “Oh! Sorry! I didn’t mean to—I just”—I scramble to think of something, anything to convince them I wasn’t actually referring to the challenges of navigating the creek. I pull out my phone. “I keep getting messages from”—I look down to check who’s been texting me—“my mum.” That really does make me frown, but I swipe away the notifications. Five missed messages. Ugh, probably complaining about my dour face in all the photos Johannes snapped of us inTS&Kgear, or else—
“I don’t think I can do that.” Hettie looks positively green-gilled as she watches horse after horse awkwardly leap the water instead of calmly walking through it. It’s one of those annoying water crossings that’s just skinny and deep enough that the horses figure jumping it is better than getting wet.
She has to have jumped ditches before. What the hell’s her problem?
Pippa leans in her saddle. “It’s nothing! A trickle. Nothing more. You’ve got this.”
“She’s right. Sapphire’s a pro.” I have no idea if this is true, but with horses, confidence is more than half the battle. At least that’s what I’m telling myself, because I have no idea what to expect out of Rum Punch, who has surely never done anything like this. “Just grab your oh-shit-strap”—I demonstrate by grabbing onto the neck strap Mariano has thoughtfully buckled around Miss P’s neck—“and you’ll be fine.” I can’t make her out. She was almost giddy when we set off, and now she’s jittery as hell. She’s a horsewoman, for crying out loud. She can’t balk now. But that’s precisely what she’s doing, so I have to find a way to get her mind off the perceived difficulty of the jump. “Hey—you want to see something really cute?”
Even as I say it, Mariano edges closer on Whiskey and Pippa circles Kahlua around. I open EFF’s message thread and pass the phone to Hettie. “That’s my horse back home. Velveteen. Isn’t she adorable?”
Not everyone thinks horses are the cutest creation on earth, but Hettie nods politely and hands my phone to Pippa, her hand trembling. Something’s not right. I can’t put my finger on it, but she’s far too nervous for a woman who’s supposedly ridden to hounds all her life.
“What a doll!” Pippa pulls her glove off with her teeth and scrolls through all the pictures of Velveteen EFF has sent, which ought to seem like a violation but somehow doesn’t. She passes the phone off to Mariano, which is not at all what I intended, but I can’t very well grab it from him and tell him to go to hell because he broke my heart and I never want to see him again.
He does the same as Pippa, scrolling through each photo, pausing on some of them. When he smiles at one, I wonder which it is and my heart goes warm and fuzzy seeing the way he looks at my sweet, special horse. That sets off alarm bells. Warm fuzziness and Mariano are no longer allowed in the same sentence or the same thought, let alone in real life. He turns to me, my phone just out of reach.
“Your Teena is with Esther?” His brow is creased.
“Yeah. I couldn’t—the cost—” My throat closes too painfully, and before I can explain, Alan lets out a yell.
“It’s my turn! What do I do?” But Alan, in his true face-death-with-bare-knuckles fashion, doesn’t wait for an answer, and instead kicks good old Schnapps into a trot. The horse lurches and Alan flops—air visible between him and the saddle—but Schnapps is a pro and manages to keep right under his rider. Alan lets out a whoop when he lands and pulls up on the wildly too-long reins, a triumphant grin on his face. Chris on Grenadine makes a more elegant leap across, followed by Gin Fizz and Gemma who can, it seems, actually ride. And then Alan yells, “Come on, Hettie!”
With a grim-faced glance back at us, Hettie urges Sapphire toward the water crossing.
“Keep your eyes and toes up!” I call.
“And grab your strap!” Pippa adds while Alan, Chris, and Gemma add in their own encouragements. Beyond them the rest of the hilltoppers wait for our group, and from even farther off comes the echoing baying of the hounds.
Like the lady’s horse she is, Sapphire carefully picks her way down the embankment, and splashes into the water like a seasoned trail horse, instead of jumping across like a hunter.
“You go now.” Mariano points toward Sapphire’s rump.
Whatever. I was already going.I urge Miss P into a trot so that she is picking her way down the embankment. Sapphire is still in the water, pawing at it playfully while Hettie giggles and shrieks as droplets splash her.
“Give her a squeeze so she doesn’t roll!” One of the spectators on the other side of the water crossing clucks, to urge Sapphire on.
