Winter Circuit (The Show Circuit -- Book 2)

by Kim Ablon Whitney

  “I’ll email her to tell her what we’ve discussed. But you’ll still have to hear her flapping her wings about it.”

  Flapping her wings. Dad’s choice of words made me cringe, for Mom’s sake. Mom was a dedicated bird-lover. Birds were all she cared about, besides Ryan and me. Mostly it was a way to deal with her terrible, pervasive anxiety. Flap her wings felt like a horrible insult.

  I hung up with Dad and immediately walked over to Academic Services to fill out the necessary paperwork. I had to fill out a Request for Personal Leave of Absence Form so that I would still maintain my matriculated status. Next I texted Linda to tell her I could start by the end of December. I’d spend Christmas with my mom and then head to Florida, getting there only a week after Chris.

  I would talk to my mom soon but before I did, there was a more important person to call.

  “Hey,” Chris said, when he picked up.

  “What’re you up to?” I asked.

  “I’m actually on Logan. Just schooled him and he was super.”

  “Aw, I miss him so much,” I said. “But I have really good news. You’re not going to believe it, actually.”

  “What?” Chris said.

  “Well, I decided I want to be there with you in Florida this winter, watching Logan, and I just miss the horses and everything so much. So I found out about this job—with the Pearce family? Dakota Pearce? I don’t know if you know her but she’s apparently a pony rider just moving up to the big eq and junior jumpers. Linda Maro is her private trainer. They need someone to look after Dakota, make sure she does her homework, help out in the barn sometimes, help flat the horses.”

  “I know her a little and I know who Linda is,” Chris said.

  “I’m taking the job!” I blurted. “I’m starting after Christmas.”

  “Wait, but what about school?”

  “I’ve submitted forms for a leave of absence—a semester off. It’s not a big deal—people do it all the time.” I had no idea if people did it all the time. Riders did take gap years fairly often. A year between finishing high school and college to concentrate on riding. “This is kind of like taking a gap year,” I said. “But I didn’t know I wanted to take a gap year till too late in the summer.”

  “Till you met me,” Chris said.

  “No, this isn’t only about you. I mean, of course, I’m going to love being with you all winter.”

  “Where are you staying?” Chris asked.

  “On the farm—they have housing on the property.” Was Chris worried I was going to stay with him? Was he not excited I’d be in Florida this winter? He was supposed to be overjoyed.

  I said, “You seem… I don’t know, skeptical. Like, not entirely happy.”

  “I’m in a little bit of shock, I guess. I just never thought you’d drop out of college—”

  “I’m not dropping out! I’m taking a semester off. That’s it. Not dropping out.”

  Chris’s voice was tinny in the acoustics of the indoor arena. “Okay, I never thought you’d take a semester off because of me.”

  “This isn’t because of you. It’s everything. I miss everything. Logan, the horses in general, the shows. I haven’t been happy here at school.”

  “Okay, but I can’t help but think that if you’d never met me this wouldn’t have happened. You’d have gone off to college and been a regular, happy college student. Maybe we should have broken up at the end of the summer. Because I feel like you’re not living life there because of me.”

  “You wish you’d broken up with me?” I said.

  “No, I didn’t say that.”

  “That sounded like what you were saying.”

  “I just don’t want all this to be because of me,” Chris said.

  “It’s not, I promise.”

  “Your dad’s really going to be happy with me now. I wouldn’t be surprised if he wants to find a new rider for Logan.”

  “No, he’s fine with it. He is, I swear.”

  Chris was quiet. I could hear the fabric of his jacket as it moved while Logan walked. I could picture him on Logan, his reins in one hand, the other hand holding the phone to his ear. I couldn’t wait to be there with Chris and Logan—to see them myself.

  “Give Logan a mint for me,” I said. “I can’t wait to see him. This is going to be good. Trust me.”

  Chris still didn’t speak.

  “Be happy,” I pleaded.

  “I’m happy,” he said, his voice sounding loud coming out of the silence.

  “I love you,” I told him.

  “I love you too,” he said.

  He might have been a little shocked, or not sure about the idea, but I knew he would change his mind once I was down there and he saw how great it was to be together all the time again.

  Chapter 8

  The days passed achingly slowly as I finished out the semester and went home for Christmas. It was weird to pack up my stuff from my dorm room. I didn’t have all that much to bring home, but it felt—and was—premature. This wasn’t May when Kate and Katie, or Jen and Jenny, would be lovingly packing their cute dry-erase boards and shoe-racks, exchanging hugs and shedding the occasional tears. This was me, alone, packing up like I had been kicked out or cracked up. Van was packing too, but just for winter break. She stuffed a few things into a nondescript gray backpack and that was it. She was getting a ride to the airport. She wasn’t thrilled that I was leaving her with what would probably be a new roommate. If she got really lucky, she’d have a single for the rest of the year but it was more likely she would get someone who couldn’t get along with her first semester roommate and had requested a room change.

  Christmas day was quiet. We watched a movie in the afternoon and ordered take-out. Ryan had decided to stay in California—he had a lot of work to do on the next round of venture funding for one of his businesses. Mom and I got along fine. My plan wasn’t what she would have chosen for me but she seemed to have gotten comfortable with the idea. She turned any anxiety she had into helping me online shop for clothes I’d need for Florida, which I wasn’t complaining about since, as Dad had made clear, I was going to be paying my own way down there. In fact, I’d gotten a letter in the mail while I was home saying my credit card that Dad paid for had been canceled. Yup, financially this one was on me.

  If my mom were a normal mom we would have gone to an actual store to shop. But my mom was different and had been since I could remember. She suffered from serious anxiety, which limited everything about her life: where she went (hardly anywhere), what she did (only bird-watching and blogging about it), and whom she did it with (basically no one). But you wouldn’t be able to tell she had so much anxiety from looking at her. She didn’t have any of the telltale signs you’d associate with anxiety. She didn’t look like she hadn’t showered in days; she didn’t wear sweatpants; her nails weren’t bitten to the quick. No, she looked good. Even though she didn’t go out much, or ever, during the day, she wore nice clothes that she bought online. She had become a champion of online shopping. The UPS guy knew her by first name and she knew exactly which sites had solid return policies with bags that you could easily repackage and send back with said UPS guy, equaling no trips to the post office.

  Today she had on nice jeans and an open front cardigan. Her hair was a rich brown color and she kept it shoulder length. She hosted a haircut and color club with a few women from the neighborhood every six-weeks at our house. Mom did well at home—it was out in the real world that she came to pieces. She had crafted a workable life for herself as long as, for the most part, she stayed home.

  “Ooh, look at these colors,” she said, as she clicked on a pair of breeches. “How about one in the blue, one in the brown, and one in the dark gray?”

  “Three pairs?” I said. “I don’t even know how much I’m going to be riding.”

  “It’s better to have a few extra,” Mom said. Sage advice from the woman who never wanted to run out of anything that would force an unplanned trip into the outside world.<
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  She moved the breeches into the shopping cart and deftly auto-filled the necessary information. Once we had finished shopping for breeches, she clicked over to Vineyard Vines and picked out polo shirts. Then, on to Patagonia for a raincoat, and a down vest for the chilly mornings.

  “Mom, what was it like when you met Dad?” I asked. Totally random out of the blue question.

  “What do you mean? When I first met him, like the day I met him when he came into the store?”

  “No, I mean like when you were first dating and falling in love.”

  Mom drew back from the computer. She smiled a nostalgic smile. “It was perfectly lovely.”

  “Because you two seemed right for each other?”

  “Clearly we weren’t right for each other,” Mom said. “But being in love… well, I don’t have to tell you, do I? It’s like the world is a sunnier, happier place when you’re in love.”

  I nodded. I did know what she meant. Or I used to know. Now my days were anything but sunny. I hoped the color would come back to them soon.

  “And then you fell out of love?” I said.

  I hadn’t talked to either of my parents much about their divorce. In a way it seemed like ancient history, a kind of family story that had been told so many times there was nothing else to add to it. Of course, I hadn’t told it that many times to people in reality. But I’d probably told it to myself again and again in my head, trying to make sense of it. They’d fallen in love and quickly after getting married had Ryan and me, then realized they were all wrong for each other, and my father had asked for a divorce. Somehow I knew that part, but I couldn’t remember being told it. I couldn’t remember any TV-like scene where the parents sat the kids down and told them they were splitting up and one kid cried and the other yelled, “I hate you both,” and ran out of the room.

  “One of us fell out of love,” Mom said sadly. “But I guess I understand why.”

  The “why” that she was alluding to was her anxiety, which she’d had somewhat under control when she met my father. But it had surged back, and he had left her. But had more happened that I didn’t know about? I thought about Mary Beth.

  “Did Dad… I mean was there someone else?”

  “It wasn’t because of someone else,” she said.

  But that didn’t mean there wasn’t someone else. I wanted to know more but I also didn’t want to upset Mom, making her relive painful memories of when Dad left her.

  “We were too different,” Mom said. “We lived in different worlds. Your father’s life is the business world. I couldn’t be more different than that.”

  So that was why they’d divorced? It made sense in a way. Dad’s relationship with Monica seemed to work because they both lived business lifestyles and understood the sacrifices that way of life involved.

  Mom returned to the computer. She opened her email, reviewing the confirmation emails from the stores. “You are going to have such a good time in Florida. It’ll be so nice to have good weather. I always thought Ryan was smart to go to college in California. Maybe you might want to transfer to a warmer climate. That might make school better for you?”

  We hadn’t really talked about why school was bad for me. But I guess it didn’t take a genius to figure out it wasn’t going swimmingly if I was suddenly taking a leave of absence and heading to Florida.

  “I don’t know. We’ll see.” I couldn’t think beyond April right now. Getting to Florida and getting my relationship with Chris back on track was about the only thing on my radar. “Do you think you’d ever move somewhere warmer?” I asked her.

  More than anything, she loved being out in our yard, with all her bird feeders and roosting boxes, watching birds. But in the winter there weren’t as many birds to watch. Somewhere warmer she’d have more varieties of birds all year round.

  “I don’t think I could move,” she said.

  I understood why she wasn’t the type of person who could pick up and move across the country. But not much beyond birds made her happy so it was hard to hear that she couldn’t move even if it would mean two times more happiness.

  “What about coming to Florida to visit me?” I spoke the words before I’d had a chance to really think about them, to think about how insane what I was proposing was. Mom had a hard time going to the grocery store. She wasn’t going to be getting on a plane.

  “I would love to see a purple gallinule,” she said.

  I had expected her to say no. To come up with the usual excuses. “So come. You could see the horse show, meet Chris, watch Logan… and see birds. Tons of birds, I’m sure.”

  Mom smiled. “Maybe I will.”

  I felt a flutter of hopefulness. Of excitement. Would she actually come to visit? Maybe her desire to see me, or even to see birds, would outweigh her anxiety.

  She clicked over to her blog, Feathered Friends, to look at the comments other bird-crazy people had left her. “Oh, look what BirdLover89 said…”

  I stood behind her and watched her for a few moments. She leaned close to the computer, chuckling at some comment by another bird-friend. Did these other bird people leave their homes? Did they have lives?

  I knew that Mom would never come to Florida. She couldn’t handle the airport, the flight, even if she would get to see spectacular birds. I felt sad for having thought she would ever be able to come—and stupid too. Wasn’t I old enough to know that things didn’t change just because you wanted them to?

  Chapter 9

  I took an uber to the airport and boarded the plane, leaving behind the frigid New England weather for sunny Florida. Twelve weeks with Chris lay ahead.

  The grayness was gone even before the plane landed. Out the small oval plane window were a blue sky and plump white clouds. Actual blue—pretty, charming, hopeful blue. No more blocks of sky the color of smog. And there were rays of sun! As we started our descent some people pulled on their sunglasses. I was sitting near the wing and the sun was glinting off the metal. Then, as we came closer to landing, I saw green. Grass, trees. No monotonous layer of dirty snow. The first palm trees I saw were along the runway as we touched down.

  “Welcome to the North Pole,” the steward cracked over the PA, fulfilling that newly-found need for airlines to live up to their zany commercials and also offer in-flight comic relief.

  Everyone chuckled. This was far from the North Pole.

  Linda had asked whether she should pick me up at the airport but I told her Chris would. I came down the escalator to the few obligatory men in suits holding placards with the names of the people they were waiting for. I guess a part of me that had seen one too many romantic comedies hoped that Chris might be waiting for me with a sign that said HANNAH or even I LOVE YOU HANNAH! But that was pretty silly. In fact, Chris texted me and said he was in his car waiting outside. I wasn’t even worthy of parking, which I guess was legit.

  I got my huge bag from the carousel and headed out. I wouldn’t exactly say a rush of hot air hit me but the air was temperate. I found Chris right away. He hopped out to help me with my bag and we kissed. I had arrived.

  The first part of the drive was four-lane highways bordered by scrub grass. Nothing scenic. But after fifteen minutes, the roads got smaller, turning to two lanes and then one. The grass on the side of the roads became greener and trimmed. We began passing one development of condos after another. Each had a prominent sign that fronted the road and each seemed to have a nature-themed name: The Shores, Treetops, Meadowland Cove, Greenview Shores, Emerald Forest.

  “Is this where all the horse show people stay?” I asked Chris.

  “All the horse show people who don’t own their own beautiful farm,” he said. “These are actually kind of the down-scale condos. If you really have money you either have your own farm complete with gorgeous house, or you live in Palm Beach Polo.”

  I nodded as I stared out the window. Wellington was all new to me. I was trying to get a handle on it, to get my bearings, but I had the feeling it would take a while.
“Where do you live?”

  Chris pointed as we drove past another development. “In there. I’ll take you later.”

  He showed me Palm Beach Polo with its prominent sign and gatehouse. We continued down the road, called South Shore, and came to a stoplight. We turned right onto a road called Pierson. Now things were starting to look distinctly horsey. For one thing, alongside the sidewalk was a bridle path and I could see from the hoof prints in the sand it had been recently ridden on. Alongside the road on the right were paddocks, complete with horses turned out. I could see barns on the other side of the paddocks and the occasional ring or jumping field.

  “Wow,” I said.

  “Just wait.” Chris pointed to the left. “That’s the main entrance to the horse show.”

  I could see a security gate but not too much more beyond it.

  “And this,” Chris added, taking a left, and pulling up to another gate, “is Grand Prix Village.”

  “Is this where all the grand prix horses live?”

  Chris chuckled. I guess my naiveté was kind of cute to him. Thank goodness. To most people I’d just seem like a clueless idiot. He punched a code into the keypad and the gate swung open. “No, it’s just called that. It’s the closest set of farms to the horse show so it’s basically the most exclusive and expensive. Just look around.”

  What I saw was farm after gorgeous farm. Chris told me that most of the elite trainers and riders owned their own stables within hacking distance to the show grounds. If a rider couldn’t afford his own second barn in Wellington, he rented stalls at one, which is what Chris did. Trainers and riders usually kept a set of stalls on the show grounds as well for when they were competing, but otherwise they could train their horses at their home base, where they had all the necessary amenities like beautiful wash stalls, treadmills, hot-walkers, and turnout—not to mention rings and even grand prix fields full of jumps to practice over. There would be no fighting over jumps in the schooling ring; no watchful eyes of USEF stewards.