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Who wouldn’t want a friend like her? She’s right. I need to center myself. I need to ride.
“Love you.”
“Love you more.”
We hang up and I pull out of the parking lot and head back to the barn, which means leftovers, a cold bed, and a mocking mirror, but my darling Velveteen is the counterweight to all of that. And more. I could be drowning in sorrow and she’d make it better.
As soon as she hears my footstep in the barn aisle, Velveteen nickers and my shoulders finally relax. With Mr. Wiggins trotting behind me, I make a beeline for my horse’s stall, giving each of the other horses a glance as I go by because I love them. All of them. Horses are the most sensitive, the most willing, the most magnificent creatures to partner with. The dance we do is thousands of years old. When we ride, we charge through time and space, honoring that bond that was forged on the steppes of Kazakhstan. I feel the women who wooed those wild beasts off the tundra and brought them close to hearth and home and entrusted their lives to them.
Damn. Now I’m crying. What the hell. I always get that way when I go down horse philosophy lane. But the sound of horses grinding hay and sighing and blowing their noses draws the agitation right out of me. In the barn, everything feels right. The horses have never cared what I look like or how much money I have or where exactly my legs begin and end. What they care about is how I treat them. And yeah, that means more than just carrots.
“Hey Velvety-Velvet, Teena-girl.” I slip into her stall and she grabs one more mouthful of hay before turning to me and pressing the flat front of her head against my side. “Okay, fine.” We have a deal, which is that I let her rub against me so long as she doesn’t push so hard she knocks me over. Once she’s finished itching herself, she gives me a little shove and then her gate a bigger one. Message received.
“I want out too, Teena. Shall we go?” She shoves the gate again and moves to walk out into the aisle. I put a hand to her chest. “Um, excuse me, lady. There are rules.”
Ten minutes later, I’ve given Teena a quick brush, swapped out my barn-soiled flats for boots, and tacked her up. She stands for me at the mounting block, but the second my seat touches the saddle, she’s marching off, her long strides making her back swing beneath me.
The instant her hooves hit the polo pitch, she wants to race. “Let’s look at that sky for a second.” We make a lap around the field, the almost-full moon lighting the whole thing. When we get back to where we started, she jigs, eager to run. All I have to do is breathe out and lay my palm against her neck and she stays steady. But for some stupid reason, it makes me think of Mariano and the way it felt when he took my resumé from me.
The second our fingers touched, I felt him. Likefelt-himfelt him. Inside me. Not likethatbut that-adjacent. Something I’ve never had—not with any man. A connection that—ah, shit, why do I torment myself with these thoughts; they’re toxic, but that doesn’t dial them down. Time to be honest with Ms. Lolly Benoit (that’d be me talking about myself in the third person, always a good sign), who has been ducking and diving whenever she’s gotten close to this one, particular truth (and here’s why I’m trying to slide away from that warm, luscious fact): there’s a reason I agreed to be his date, and it wasn’t just the potential of a spot on theGolden Horseshoes.
For three seconds in that awful hotel room, maybe four, I thought he was looking at me like there was somethingmorefor him too. Like he was feelingmelike that.Seeing me.And what he saw? He liked! More than liked, Lolly! He wasnuclear-fusion-reactor-makes-mutant-lovebeast-emergehot for me. I shake my head to clear my thoughts because that can’t possibly be true. Not after what else passed between us. Whatever current there was, however much it felt for a moment like we clicked, like we weresimpatico, any kind of connection between us is utterly impossible now. The man was a horse’s ass! With dingleberries! And a tail that hasn’t been brushed for months!
What would Alicia say, if she could talk me out of this?
Ha! ‘I bet he fucks like a teeny-weeny marmoset.’ She’d have some theory, or fact even, about what that looked like.Fast & Furious? Oh, she’d love the movie theme! She’d run with it until it ran out of gas. She’s my bestie for a reason and would do anything—any damned thing—to cheer me up. Other titles for marmo-lovin’?Love and Friendship? (No, that would be her ideal mate butnothinglike joke-sex with Mr. Polo-sausage.) I’ve got it!Willy Wonka! Alicia would die of laughing, just over ‘willy.’ It’s good to have her voice in my head. It makes allllllll the difference. I’m almost myself again.
“Pffft. Can you believe he actually said he wanted someone who didn’t look a bit like me?” Teena tosses her head and I’m reminded of the first time I saw her, back when she was a racehorse. The guy who’d been her exercise rider kept showing me too-tall horses, and finally I’d pointed to her. “What about that one?” She was small and too thin, but she was watching me. “That one? You don’t want her,” the guy said. “She’sloca. Wild.” But she came to her stall door and nosed my arm and the moment I’d stroked her neck, I’d known. Something in me had recognized the same thing she’d already recognized in me. We clicked. We recognized something in each other. Wesawthe truth of the other. And maybe she was crazy with the guy who’d been riding her, but she’s never been crazy with me.
“You’re just sensitive, aren’t you girlfriend?” I give her another pat. “That’s why I’m yours and you’re mine.” I must have felt something else when Mariano touched me, when he looked at me. Because it wasn’t the truth.
And just like that, I’m irritated again. Willy Wonka, indeed! Teena feels it too, and jigs. But this time I give her the slightest squeeze with my calves and all the power she’s been holding back surges, her hindquarters pushing hard as she elongates her stride and covers ground. I laugh as she finds a new gear and charges harder, just because she loves running. In that moment, it’s just me and my horse and the moon and the connection between us. The connection I’ve never shared with anyone else.
The ride restores me to myself, and after I cool Teena out and leave her in her stall with a fresh flake of hay, I make a decision. I’m going to do better than what Alicia suggested. I’m going to more than wow that asshole, I’m going to make him sit up and beg, then wish he’d never set eyes on me.
BELLYACHING
Lolly Benoit. High Winds Polo Club. Palm Beach, Florida.
Islept like a turnip in a mouse house, which is to say, invasive thoughts nibbling and pressing at every turn.
He doesn’t want me.
But I went ahead and offered myself anyway.
And I’m mad at myself, not just for suggesting it. But for wanting it. For making it happen.
There are other ways to be seen.
The only strategythat has ever proven effective when I’m up in my brain and making myself nuts, is to work. So I shuck my blankets, pull on my barn duds, and march down the stairs from my apartment while the sky is still lit with pinpricks of glittering hope and nothing more.
Mr. Wiggins is not amusedby our pre-dawn excursion, but he follows me down to the barn and makes a bed for himself outside Tattle’s stall.
Mr. Wiggins wantsto be near me. UNLIKE SOME PEOPLE.
The barn’s quiet,just the swish of glorious tails and the nose-blowing satisfaction of a string of polo ponies who are treated like royalty to accompany the morning birdsong and the gentle rise of morning mist off the grass.
Mr. Wiggins’snores don’t count as noise. They’re like my own heartbeat, only audiblein extremis. When it’s just him and me, he’s the best, sleepy, do-nothing guard dog in the world. And that’s how I like it: just him and me. Because Mr. Wiggins doesn’t give a fuck about my legs not being stilts and my square dance being too square and my face not being handsome enough to tempt him... Oh, to find a Mr. Darcy!
