Riding on Air

by Maggie Gilbert

  As I followed him and Jinx to the tack shed my head started to throb in time to my steps. I squashed any thought of skull fractures of brain bleeds before it could get any kind of grip on my imagination and went to sit on a bucket while William got Jinx unsaddled and put away in less time that I could have unbuckled the girth. On a good day.

  William would have got it done even faster, but he kept casting anxious glances at me, as if worried I was going to keel over. His concern sent a little thrill of pleasure zinging through me at this evidence that he really did care. Underneath that, though, was an increasing sense of all not being quite as it should be. My head felt sort of light and floaty and I was starting to feel distinctly puke-stomach, although that was hardly a novelty for me.

  Although I’d argued and carried on, I was starting to feel relieved that I was going to the doctor’s or casualty or whatever. The longer I sat here the worse I felt and the bigger that fall seemed. Although if I could remember all of it—and I could—then it couldn’t have been that bad, really. And I still had to come up with some kind of plan. How to make an over-anxious, over-reacting boyfriend agree to letting you do something he thought was too dangerous. Hmmm.

  When William came jogging back from letting Jinx go in the paddock, I stood carefully and let him steer me back up towards the house. Maybe I’d think about that later. I had to run the gauntlet that was Dad and Jennie before anything else and if they totally freaked out then I might need some other plan altogether.

  “I told you I was fine,” I said as William parked his ute behind Dad’s car on our return from the hospital. William pulled the handbrake on and turned off the engine. He glanced at me sideways and shrugged.

  “A happy coincidence.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Last time I looked you didn’t have a medical degree.”

  “I don’t need a doctor to tell me how I feel, William. I’ve been monitoring myself for years. I know when there’s something wrong.”

  William slid his hand across the top of the steering wheel and flexed his fingers around the curved leather.

  “If that’s the case, what were you doing riding Jinx today?”

  I turned my head slowly, my neck now painfully stiff, and looked at him curiously. “I have a dressage competition in four weeks. A major competition that could decide whether Jinx gets into the state squad or not. Why do you think?”

  “I know why you were riding him. I’m not an idiot, so please don’t treat me like one.”

  I gaped, but William wasn’t done. Twisting his fists around the steering wheel he stared straight ahead out the windscreen.

  “I meant, if you’re so good at judging how you are then why were you riding a horse you aren’t able to control anymore?”

  “I can so control Jinx,” I said, offended. “Where do you get off saying my horse is uncontrollable?”

  “I didn’t,” William said, his jaw thrust stubbornly forward. “I said you couldn’t control him.”

  “That’s the same thing.”

  “No it isn’t. If Jinx was uncontrollable then nobody would be able to control him. If he was uncontrollable for you then he would have always been that way. I said, you can’t control Jinx anymore and that’s exactly what I meant.”

  “You’re twisting words,” I said crankily.

  William shook his dark head and again his blue eyes took that flickering, sidelong glance towards me. “No, you are. Your hands are too bad to hold him. You’ve fallen off twice that I know of, come awfully close one other time I’ve seen for myself and god knows how many busters you’ve had that nobody even knows about—”

  “I have not!” I protested hotly, my skin literally heating up with indignation.

  “Alright then, but that’s still three times. Haven’t you ever heard of three strikes and you’re out? Or in your case, dead?” William dragged a hand through his hair, leaving it rumpled like a morning doona cover, although I didn’t have my usual reflex to want to smooth it down again. I didn’t have any desire to touch him when he was attacking me like this.

  I didn’t understand why. Why was he hassling me about Jinx? And why now when I was sick and stiff and sore?

  “I can control my horse perfectly well, William. It’s just that I’ve been having a bad bout with my hands and I’m trying to teach Jinx something new and he’s getting confused. It happens in dressage training, you know.”

  “It happens in polocrosse training too, so don’t go all snotty dressage queen on me.”

  I snorted. “Polocrosse isn’t anything like dressage. You just gallop and catch balls and throw them again.”

  “Like to see you try it. No, on second thoughts, we’re not going there. You’re not turning this into an argument about whether dressage is more important than polocrosse, because I don’t care. I only care about you and I’m not going to sit here and let you kill yourself.”

  I laughed. “What are you talking about?”

  William turned towards me, reached out and circled my wrists with his hands. It was the closest we ever got to holding hands. The stab of regret that tightened my chest was an unwelcome one at any time, but particularly then.

  “I’m talking about you staying off your horse until your hands are better.”

  I looked at him, the earnest blue of his eyes holding mine. I swallowed the rush of fear that had risen to choke my throat and the words that wanted to tumble out. I wouldn’t permit them. I tried never to think them, let alone speak them aloud. It was like a talisman that kept me safe, that warded off the inevitable for as long as possible. If I just didn’t acknowledge it, then it hadn’t happened yet. I took another tack.

  “I’m fine, Will, you heard the doctor. I can ride in 48 hours.”

  “Providing you don’t have any other symptoms like dizziness or blurred vision,” William reminded me. “And that’s beside the point. Are your hands going to be OK in 48 hours?”

  “Sure,” I said, because I couldn’t say anything else. I had to believe that they would be. It was my rule and it had worked for all these years. No matter how bad my hands were or had been on any given day, when I got into bed that night and was lying there with my joints twisting and burning with that incessant ache, I’d close my eyes and tell myself that tomorrow morning when I woke up my hands would be better. Better, for me, was always relative, not an absolute. Better didn’t mean healed, normal or miraculously restored. Better meant improved. As in, not as bad as they had been today.

  I searched William’s shuttered face even as I racked my brain for a way to explain that to him. I could see that he didn’t believe me and that he thought I was just lying to myself and to him. How could I begin to explain how necessary it was for me to keep going? How could I even begin to articulate how his disbelief and his insistence on facts and truth was squeezing my heart so much it hurt?

  “William, I know you don’t believe me, but I—I have to believe it.”

  “I know,” William sighed, stoking my wrists lightly with his fingertips. A shiver wriggled up my back and my skin prickled all over, but it wasn’t the usual response I had to his caress.

  “I can see in your face that you think I’m just saying that,” he continued, “but I do get it. God, I admire you so much that you can be so positive and keep going no matter how bad it is. So I do understand that you need to have hope. But I don’t understand how you can be so stubborn and so reckless and so, so—stupid.”

  “Stupid?” I gasped, unable to believe that he had just actually called me stupid to my face.

  “Yes, stupid. What would you call it if I drove my ute drunk or rode a green broke horse with no helmet? Or swam in the ocean at night alone, or took drugs?”

  “You don’t do any of those things.”

  “But if I did, wouldn’t that be stupid?”

  “Yes, of course, but I don’t do any of that.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “I do not. I don’t do any dangerous stuff like tha
t, because I can’t. I can’t even ride a pushbike to fall off, like poor Eleni.”

  William became very still. “When did that happen?”

  “Uh, last week.”

  “Before or after she rode Jinx? She did ride Jinx, right?”

  “No. She broke her collarbone before she could come over. You knew that.”

  “I did not.”

  “I told you.”

  “You did not. I definitely thought Eleni had ridden Jinx this week.”

  “Well she didn’t.”

  “That changes things.”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “You went ahead and rode Jinx even though you knew you weren’t up to it. And don’t tell me,” he said as I opened my mouth, “how that isn’t true because I know you never would have agreed to Eleni riding Jinx unless you absolutely had to. I can’t believe you.”

  “I can’t believe you,” I echoed him, anger starting to simmer along my veins, heating my blood. I pulled my arms back and he instantly released me, that hair-trigger awareness he had of avoiding hurting me obviously still functioning. At the anxious look that creased his face I felt a stab of guilt—had I maybe counted on it when I jerked back like that?—but I squashed it along with the knowledge that it was mean to scare him like that and make him think he might have hurt me. At that moment I didn’t care. And maybe just a tiny bit of me did want to throw a scare into him or maybe even hurt him a bit. After all, nearly every word he’d said in the past 10 minutes had hurt either my feelings or my pride or my heart.

  My head was pounding and my neck hurt and I just didn’t want to have this conversation anymore. I reached for the door handle, but my fingers let out a severe warning snarl as soon as I tried to close them.

  “And there’s the proof. You can’t even open a car door right now, so how do you expect to control a hot thoroughbred while you try to help him through a difficult training stage?”

  “I always have before,” I muttered and could have bitten my tongue off.

  “Before? Have you ridden through a patch this bad before?”

  “Not exactly.” Damn it, why could I never pull off a lie to people who mattered to me? That really was stupid because they were always the people who you most needed to lie to so you could stop them from worrying and getting upset.

  “So you make a habit of riding when you shouldn’t.”

  “No.” That really did make me sound as stupid as he thought I was.

  “I assume your Dad doesn’t know.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Is there anything else you maybe should be telling me?” William asked, his voice thick.

  I frowned, fluttery little qualms of anxiety whipping up the insides of my stomach like a bitter acid brew. “Like what?”

  “Like exactly how you’ve managed to ride when your hands are so bad? Are you sure that was the only time you’ve taken a painkiller when you weren’t supposed to?”

  “Now you sound like Dad.”

  “That isn’t an answer.”

  “Fine. No, I don’t take painkillers when I’m not supposed to. Happy now?”

  “Not at all,” he said, his voice sounding really strange. “Now you’re definitely lying to me.”

  “The hell I am.”

  William’s face went stiff. “I know about your stash.”

  “What?”

  “Bottle of pills in the medicine box in the tack room? Your Dad know about that, does he?”

  I sat there with my mouth hanging open and no words coming out. “What the hell? What were you doing looking in there?”

  “When I put Jinx’s gear away after your fall I was looking for the fly spray you use. I just hadn’t had a chance to ask you about it yet. How many have you been taking?”

  I stared at William with tears welling up to sting my eyes and clog the back of my throat. I swallowed anxiously, my skin gone hard and cold, numbness creeping across my tongue.

  “What’s with the inquisition?” I choked out eventually. “You think I’m stupid and a druggie?”

  “Of course not.”

  “How can you think that? How can you say that? And why did you ever bother with me, if that’s all you think of me? God!”

  I fumbled for the door handle. Stuff the consequences; there was no way I could sit there with him for another minute. Not for another second.

  “Ow,” I cried, tears spilling over my lower lids when I banged my swollen fingers against the door.

  “Stop it. You’ll hurt yourself.” William’s fingers plucked at my sleeve, trying to draw my arm away.

  “Leave me alone, what do you care?” I sobbed, distraught and humiliated and just plain horrified. How had it come to this? How could I lose control like this and let him see me crying like a baby? I could excuse myself and blame it on being sore and tired, worried and confused, but it didn’t make me feel any better. Who wants to fall to pieces in front of their dream guy? Not me.

  William’s hands gripped my arms and his fingers dug into me so strongly I gasped, shocked into gulping back the latest rush of tears. He was never rough with me, never, not in fun, not accidentally and definitely never on purpose. But he grabbed me now and held me firmly, not enough to cause me any actual pain, but definitely enough to shock me out of my panic.

  “I care a lot, actually. I care when you’re sad, or hurting, or when you’re frustrated or when your hands are really bad. I care that I’ve upset you and made you cry and I feel like the world’s biggest bastard for that, you’ve no idea, but I’m going to keep doing it because I care. I care about you too much to stand by and watch you risk breaking your bones or your neck or your beautiful stubborn skull because you want to go to a stupid dressage competition. You might care about that more than you care about yourself, but I don’t. You are more important to me than anything.”

  I sniffled, my hair falling in my face, hiding from him while I sat silently. About a thousand conflicting thoughts were galloping through my poor overheated brain. He’d called me stupid and stubborn but also beautiful. He said he cared about me. Annoyance and delight chased themselves around my brain until I felt almost dizzy and sick. But if he cared about me, really, shouldn’t he care about what was important to me? I tried again to explain why it was so important.

  “I need to qualify Jinx for the squad. To do that I need to take him to Goulburn and do well in the Novice tests. To do that I need to get him doing better lateral work and collecting properly. And to do that I need to ride him. Can’t you understand this is my dream? Don’t you support that?”

  “Of course. But I want you safe more.”

  I don’t, I thought automatically, but managed not to say out loud. I wanted to get Jinx onto that squad more than anything else in the world.

  “I’m going to take Jinx to Goulburn and I’m going to ride him myself to get him ready. There isn’t anyone else, unless you think you can help me?”

  William shook his head. “I would if I could, but I’m no dressage rider. I could work him for you, but I can’t teach him any of that fancy lateral stuff.”

  I’d meant it sarcastically and it gave me pause that William had answered so seriously. I was impressed, even though I didn’t want to be, that he at least knew shoulder-in was a lateral movement. It was more than what my brothers knew.

  “So then I have to do it. And anyway, I want to do it. This is my dream, it’s been my dream for a long time and—and you can’t stop me.” I added that last bit in a cold sweat, terrified at how close I’d come to saying something else; to blurting out that unspeakable truth that hid deep within my heart.

  William’s hands slid from my arms and he dug at his hair again.

  “Actually, I can,” he sighed.

  Chapter 18

  “What do you mean?” I asked in a tiny voice. I shivered, cold and afraid, and huddled in on myself, struggling to get the words out to stop him saying what he was about to say. I wanted to go back and undo this whole conversation, rewrite
history so that when we pulled up I had the sense to sit there with my mouth shut while William hopped out and came around the car, as usual, to open the door for me. But there aren’t any do-overs, are there?

  “If you try riding Jinx before your hands are better, I’ll tell your Mum about the falls. I’ll tell her why.”

  “You wouldn’t.” I swallowed. It was bitter with anxiety and betrayal.

  “I would,” he said grimly. “I don’t want to, but don’t think I’ll let that stop me from doing the right thing if you won’t do it yourself.”

  “Even if I hate you for it?”

  William caught his breath, as though I’d hurt him.

  “I’d rather have you alive and hating me than be going to your funeral knowing I stood by and let you get killed.”

  “But you don’t know anything will happen! I’m fine! I fell off, so what, people fall off horses all the time. It’s a risky sport.”

  “That’s no reason to take stupid risks. Most people don’t ride a horse they can’t control. They won’t choose to get on a horse they can’t stop. Most people don’t ride when they can barely hold the reins. Wake up, Melissa, this is one stupid dressage competition. There’ll be others. You only get one life.”

  “Stop saying I’m stupid,” I said, more tears threatening to close off my throat. “I’m not stupid and my dreams are not stupid. How can you say this?”

  You can’t love me and say this, I thought. But of course I couldn’t say that.

  “I don’t think you’re stupid, I didn’t say that. But riding when you know you can’t use your hands is stupid. Stupid and dangerous. Of course you aren’t stupid, but that just makes it even more un-fucking-believable to me that you insist on doing something so reckless. William’s face was slowly changing from white to red as anger started showing in the taut lines of his neck and the rasping tones of his voice. I’d hardly ever heard him drop the f-bomb in all the years I’d known him and my stomach went a little hollow at hearing him swear like that. He must be pretty upset. But so was I.