Love Story

by Jennifer Echols

  This was déjà vu, standing next to Hunter at a fence with horses on the other side. I did not want to like him or have a good time today. I wished that the stallion in front of us didn’t remind me of Boo-boo, and that I wasn’t itching to touch him, just to feel his warm skin and sheer power under my palm.

  “Hey, it’s Boo-boo,” Hunter said.

  He meant the horse’s markings, but I chose to take him more literally. Paging through the tip sheet, I said, “No, this guy’s bloodlines are from California.” Then I flipped through the booklet for the next horse shaking its mane in front of us. The sire was from my farm. I’d never been too impressed with the father even though he’d won the Stephen Foster Handicap, but the dam was from a prestigious farm, and she’d won the Kentucky Oaks.

  The bottom line was that horse races were never sure things. That’s why people bet on them. And all the information available to me about these horses was available to everyone at the track. All I could do with my background was give it the proper weight. I muttered, “This is nothing Manohar’s friends wouldn’t know if they’d just done their homework.”

  “It’s a fraternity,” Hunter said. “They want the easy way out. You are the homework.”

  As he spoke, something loomed large in the corner of my vision. We both turned back to the paddock in time to see a groom lead the next thoroughbred past, an enormous bay with black points. This horse looked like strength and speed, the veins standing out in his chest as his muscles strained with the effort to keep himself from bolting over the paddock fence, through the crowd, and out into the parking lot just for kicks. He was the kind of horse I would have been afraid of back home.

  “That is a beautiful horse,” I murmured at the same time Hunter breathed, “That is a beautiful horse.”

  We glanced at each other. He smiled at me. Despite myself, I smiled back.

  “You telling the boys to bet on him?” he asked.

  Shaking off the chill that had washed through me when he smiled at me, I consulted the brochure again. “Not with that jockey.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Who’s supposed to be the horse prodigy here, me or you?”

  “You’re going to get Manohar blackballed,” he said, but he wasn’t looking at me. It wasn’t like Hunter to let on that someone didn’t have his full attention in a conversation. I followed his gaze to a blood bay colt with a white blaze. The horse looked out of his league in a race like this.

  Then I realized Hunter wasn’t looking at the horse. He gazed at the groom, a lanky, white-haired African-American man. I figured this out when the groom’s eyes passed casually over the crowd and stopped on Hunter. His eyes widened, his jaw dropped, and then he broke into a big grin.

  Hunter grinned, too. He lifted one finger from the fence in greeting.

  The man realized he was still leading the horse. Down by his side, he flattened his hand, motioning for Hunter to wait.

  Hunter nodded.

  Then, as the man led the horse past us and made the turn in the paddock, he circled his finger at his side, asking Hunter to meet him back in the stables, I guessed.

  Casually Hunter straightened and stretched his arms over his head. “I’m going to slip around back and try to talk my way into the stables. I doubt it will work, but you never know.”

  “Is he a friend of yours?” I asked. “Did your dad work with him when you lived here?”

  Hunter glanced at me in surprise. “Yeah. I hoped I might run into him, but I never thought he’d recognize me.”

  I nodded. “Because you were only twelve when you left?”

  “Yeah.” His eyes followed the groom and colt out of the paddock. “He looks exactly the same.”

  “Go ahead.” I nodded in the direction the groom had gone. “I’ll cover for you. I won’t let the others know you’re human.”

  He gave me a look I couldn’t read. He bent down, ducked under the wide brim of my hat, and kissed my cheek.

  And then he was gone, sashaying through the crowd milling around the fence, holding his blazer slung over his shoulder with two fingers.

  8

  I watched the rest of the horses parade around the paddock, perused the tip sheet carefully, and told the boys which horse to bet on. I gave them my warning that horse racing was not an exact science and that my knowledge of the sport might give them an edge or lead them straight to the poorhouse. Nevertheless, they bet on the horse I picked, the horse won at twenty-five to one (everybody else at the track had bet on the impressive bay), and afterward the boys did not listen to my words of caution anymore.

  By the lull before the last post time of the afternoon, the boys had gotten drunk and greedy. They’d insisted I pick the trifecta for them, which meant the horses that came in first, second, and third, in order. If I hit it, it would pay unbelievable odds, precisely because hitting it was nearly impossible. They were so excited that they wandered out of the stands and down to the fence where they could cheer on their horses right next to the track. I was glad. When they lost their entire winnings for the afternoon on this one race, I didn’t want to be around.

  But Manohar and Summer had forgotten all about betting. They had gotten drunk and fallen in love. They’d talked with their heads close together all afternoon, and from what I could overhear, none of it had anything to do with horses. Huddled close and holding hands on the armrest between their seats, they didn’t seem to notice when Hunter stepped into our booth and tossed his blazer over the back of a seat, his temples shining with sweat as if he’d done some work in the stables.

  “Did you see who you wanted to see?” I asked, watching the tractor tow the gate to the starting line.

  “Lots of old friends.” He smiled to himself.

  I looked up at him, then back to the field in front of us, which was filled with warm sunlight and the slanting shadows of evening. “This track is huge. When you first came to Churchill Downs, did it seem small?”

  “I never saw much of it,” he said. “I was back in the stables, not out on the track.” But maybe he realized that he sounded like a recording stuck on replay—we both did, reminding ourselves of what we used to be and what we’d done to each other—because he took a breath and went on, “We had our own house here on Long Island. We rented it, but it seemed like ours. And we went into the city a lot. In Louisville we lived on your grandmother’s farm and that’s all there was. Churchill Downs seemed tiny in comparison, yeah, but so did my whole world.”

  “So tell me something, stable boy,” Manohar called from his seat. “I’ve been puzzling through this. If you stole Erin’s birthright on graduation night—”

  Hunter opened his mouth to protest, but Summer broke in. “Let him finish, Hunter. We’ve both been wondering about this.”

  “—how did you get admitted to college so quickly?” Manohar asked. “You’ve cast yourself as an innocent who happened to be handed Erin’s fortune—”

  I snorted. Then realized I should not have snorted while wearing an elegant autumn hat.

  “Exactly.” Manohar pointed at me. “To be admitted, Hunter must have applied to school ahead of time, when you did, Erin. So the corporate takeover was premeditated.”

  “That’s not what happened,” Hunter said. I couldn’t see his eyes behind his sunglasses, but he sounded angry. “I’d always planned to come to school here. I’m from here, and I wanted to get back here. I got a scholarship. The same one Erin got, actually. But it wasn’t enough, and if it hadn’t been for Erin’s grandmother, I would have been stuck in Kentucky.”

  “Unless you worked your way through school slaving forty hours a week in a coffee shop,” I cut in. “God forbid.”

  “Actually,” Hunter’s voice rose, “Erin got the idea from me to come to school here, not the other way around.”

  I had kept a curious distance from this conversation, watching Hunter squirm from a few feet away. But I should have known Hunter would turn it around so he sounded blameless. I plopped down in the se
at between him and Manohar, exclaiming, “That’s ridiculous. My grandmother went to school here. She wanted me to go here, and when I did some research and discovered they had a great creative-writing program, I agreed. I planned on this all along. It was only when she insisted on controlling my major and my career and my life that things fell apart.”

  “That’s not what happened,” Hunter said again. “When I first met you, you swore you were going back to California.”

  “Back to California?” Summer broke in. “Erin, you never told me you moved to Kentucky from California.”

  Hunter talked right over her. “You only got interested in New York when I told you how cool it was, and I gave you a magnet with the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building and the other landmarks on it. My grandma gave it to me before I left Long Island, and I gave it to you, and you’re going to sit there and say I stole your life from you?”

  I was glad I wore sunglasses and a hat, because I could feel my face burning. Could Hunter really be the source of my treasured New York magnet? The months surrounding my mom’s death were a blur to me now. I really didn’t remember where the magnet had come from. I was embarrassed that I couldn’t say for sure, and even more ashamed that I’d never even considered he might have a grandmother, too.

  “What have you done?” Summer murmured to Manohar.

  “Hey, kids,” Manohar said, “I was just curious about the timing. I didn’t mean to—”

  Stony faced, Hunter told me, “You plagiarized my life. You’re like a seventh-grader. You take notes from the internet, forget where the information came from, and copy it straight into your school paper. You plagiarized my life without even knowing it.”

  A bell went off in my head. After a few seconds of staring at Hunter’s hardened face and thinking I was going crazy, I realized the race had started. All four of us jumped up and leaned on the rail.

  “Erin, which horse did you tell them would come in first?” Summer asked.

  “Number nine,” I said, hoping Hunter couldn’t hear over the noise of the crowd how my voice was shaking with emotion. I cleared my throat. “In the pink-and-white silks.”

  “He’s way back in the pack,” Manohar said.

  “Wait for it,” I muttered. “I’ve watched that jockey for years. On this horse, he’ll come through.”

  “Which one did you say would come in second?” Summer asked.

  “Ten, in the yellow,” I told her.

  “I guess that’s okay,” she said. “He’s second now. Do the boys win anything if you’re right only about that one?”

  Hunter leaned toward me. “Did you tell them to box the horses?”

  Hating how my pulse raced when his shirtsleeve brushed my sweater, I nodded.

  “So they’ll win some,” Hunter told Summer. “Not nearly as much as if she hits the trifecta.”

  “Which one did you say would come in third?” Summer asked.

  “Number seven,” I said, “in blue.”

  “What are you doing to me, woman?” Manohar exclaimed. “That horse is dead last in a field of fourteen!”

  “Wait for it,” I said again. “It’s a big track and a long race.” I tuned them out, tuned the crowd out, focused on lucky number seven. I loved to watch horses run, extending those long muscles and battling past each other in a rush of adrenaline and mud. I would have loved to be a horse—though not a racehorse, bred and trained and prodded and controlled. I would have wanted to run wild on some plain, running because it felt good and I could.

  “Erin.” Summer pushed Manohar out of the way and stood between us at the rail. She squeezed my hand. “Erin, here come your horses. Oh my God! What if you were right?”

  “Come on, number nine!” Manohar hollered. This was out of character for him. He stood taller on the bottom rung of the rail and pumped his fist in the air. “Number nine! Number ten!”

  The pack spaced way out in the home stretch, so there was a good ten seconds at the end when number nine led, number ten ran second, and number seven ran third, and Summer bounced beside me and squeezed my hand harder and harder, and Manohar yelled louder. I expected the number four horse I’d almost put in this trifecta to come from behind, but he didn’t. The crowd noise pitched higher and higher, to a climax as the horses zoomed past us. The crowd noise died off but Summer was still squealing. Manohar was shouting, “Erin Blackwell, I love you and I am sorry for every negative comment I ever made about your lascivious stories.” Way below us at the fence around the field, the other four boys cheered drunkenly.

  Hunter chuckled beside me. “Erin,” he said, “you just won Manohar’s fraternity brothers nine thousand dollars.”

  AS I’D PREDICTED, AFTER THE RACES the fraternity boys were too drunk to drive. They celebrated their victory with another beer apiece while the losing bettors milled out of the stands. They downed more shots of bourbon back in the limo. Hunter slipped effortlessly into the driver’s seat. The boisterous boys piled into the back. With Manohar and Summer inseparable, that left me in the front beside Hunter.

  “Where are you going?” I asked as he passed the entrance for the Cross Island Parkway.

  “The bay,” he said. “A little seafood joint I’ve missed.” He glanced over at me. “My treat.”

  He must have guessed what I was thinking: dinner out was not in my budget. But I’d be damned if I’d accept it from him, after that business about plagiarizing his life. “No thanks,” I said. “I don’t need your charity, or my grandmother’s, either.”

  Shouts of laughter came through the window from the backseat. “The guys owe you dinner out of their nine thousand dollars,” Hunter said.

  “Maybe, but they’re too drunk to realize it.”

  “Well, you’re not sitting in the limo while we go in and eat.” His voice grew tight. “Somebody will buy your dinner and you will eat it, or I will tell Gabe I am the stable boy.”

  I huffed out an exasperated sigh. “I’ve just solved this problem with Manohar. I’ve paid my dues. You can’t hold the stable boy over my head and make me do anything you want.”

  He pulled the limo to a stop at a light. “Yes, I can.”

  We eyed each other for a few heartbeats. I glared angrily at him. I was mad at him for manipulating me, and madder at myself for letting him see I was angry. He half-smiled back at me, eyebrows raised in question. Then he glanced at his Rolex, a gesture strategically planned to look casual. I knew it was staged and the message was clear: I have your grandmother’s credit card, and you don’t.

  Then he cocked his head to one side. The smile fell away, and he lowered his voice to an offended growl. “It’s only dinner.” Horns honked behind us, but he held my gaze for a few more seconds before pulling the limo forward. Then he asked, “How much weight have you lost since you’ve been here? The freshman fifteen refers to gaining fifteen pounds, not losing it.”

  Normally Hunter was the politest person I knew—on the surface, anyway. He’d only made this rude comment about my weight because he was already angry with himself for rudely forcing me to go to dinner. I waited for him to hear himself and feel even guiltier. My most effective response to Hunter was to say nothing at all—if I could stand it. He expected a retort from me. He didn’t expect silence.

  “You look great,” he said quickly. “You always look great. I just mean …” His voice trailed off.

  I watched him from under the brim of my hat.

  He scowled at the road, swinging the limo into as tight a turn as he could manage at an intersection crowded with restaurants and hungry Long Islanders. “You’ve told me before that you’re not spending every cent you make on the dorm. You’re still going to plays and movies, right? You could spend some of that money on food. Restaurants are a huge part of the New York experience.”

  “Peanut butter and crackers are fine,” I said breezily. “I see what you mean, but I have to draw the line somewhere.”

  Manohar turned around and spoke to us through the window. “Why don�
�t you move out of the dorm?” he asked.

  “No,” Hunter said quietly. Somewhere in the backseat, Summer squealed, “No!”

  Manohar went on, “Wouldn’t it be cheaper to live in an apartment with a lot of roommates? Not as nice, maybe, but at least you could afford it.”

  “No,” Hunter said again. This time Manohar craned his neck to look at him.

  “Yes,” I told Manohar, “it would be cheaper. I did that last summer.”

  “And she had a bad experience that spooked her,” Hunter said.

  “It didn’t spook me,” I said. “It only made me very angry and got me fired.”

  “It should have spooked you,” Hunter said. “Manohar, she hasn’t lived here long enough to know who she can trust. She needs to be in the dorm with a sign-in desk and security. Don’t bring it up again.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Manohar insisted. “How do you know she can trust her randomly assigned dorm roommates? Jørdis with a slash, for God’s sake!”

  “She seems less dangerous as you get to know her,” I said.

  “And Summer could be a serial killer,” Manohar said.

  Summer’s giggle reached us from the backseat.

  “It’s my life, Hunter,” I said, “and you’re going to have to trust my judgment. Sorry.”

  Without taking his eyes off the road, Hunter reached behind him and slid the window shut with a bang. “You are so stubborn!” he burst out, loud enough that the boys in the back quieted, listening through the window for what dark path our conversation had taken.

  “You’re just doing all of this to get back at your grandmother,” he said. “How can you keep insisting you don’t belong on that farm? Don’t you take the trifecta as a sign?”

  “You know as well as I do that hitting the trifecta was pure luck. I nearly picked the number four horse to show.”

  “But you didn’t. This business is in your blood.”

  The sun was setting now. As Hunter laboriously pulled the limo into a congested parking lot, orange light shone directly into his blue eyes, making him squint.