Pas de deux

by E. J. Noyes

  The horse’s ears followed me as I walked past but I said nothing to distract him or Caitlyn, though I would have loved the distraction from my imminent meetup with Dakota Turner and her dour groom, Eleanor. I still couldn’t figure out if that was just Eleanor, or if spending years around Dakota had made her that way. At least they had the horse ready for me, and both were perfectly polite.

  Pierre was the picture of health and despite having apparently banged his knee two days prior, I saw no sign of it. Dakota was losing her mind as if he’d fractured something. I spent twenty minutes reassuring her that I wanted her to compete, and of course Pierre’s welfare was my highest concern, and yes I was indeed as good as everyone said I was, and based on my expert opinion he really didn’t need the knee imaged to confirm what my eyes and hands already knew.

  Wren had passed by Pierre’s stall a few times on her way around the barn to do whatever she was doing, making funny faces behind Dakota’s back with each pass. But now that I wanted to talk to her, she was nowhere to be found. I wandered down the laneway looking for either her or Caitlyn. Lotte’s barn was set up so that the horses’ stalls were in a different area to where they were tacked up, groomed, and washed down to help them separate work from rest.

  I found Caitlyn with the liver chestnut tied up in the cross-ties while she groomed and chattered to the horse. The horse noticed me well before Caitlyn did, and rather than risk startling her by suddenly appearing in her line of vision, I waited until she’d stepped back to exchange brushes to clear my throat. Her attention snapped to me in an instant. Her smile was quick. “Hey. I wasn’t expecting you until later.” She pressed her lips together like words were trying to escape and she was doing everything short of clapping a hand over her mouth to stop it.

  “You should enjoy me being early while you can. We vets know what everyone says about veterinarians always being late.”

  “True. I’ll bask in your timeliness.” Caitlyn’s study of me was intense. “How are you?”

  “Tired.” I offered a weary grin. “Jetlag, really not a fan.”

  “You look it.” Her mouth fell open and she hastened to backpedal. “I mean, just like…”

  Laughing, I said, “It’s fine. I’m sure I look like shit on a stick. But you watch out once I’ve had some sleep. I’ll be cute as heck.”

  I’d meant it just to tease and assure her that I didn’t mind her comment about me looking tired. But her expression made me do a double take. She looked…interested. Interesting. Even more interesting was her quiet, “I’m sure you will.”

  Though I wanted nothing more than to jump right into that, it really wasn’t the time or place. I tried to contain my smile to ask, “Who’s this?”

  “Dynamite Romance, also known as Douglas. Despite Lotte’s disapproving stare, I’ve been calling him Dougie because he’s just so damned cute.”

  “He sure is.” I checked Dougie’s mood, which seemed more than amenable, and scratched along his shoulder. “What’s his breeding?”

  “By Damon Hill, out of a Fürst Romancier mare.”

  I whistled. “Nice. Let me guess…Lotte wants you to train him up be an international Grand Prix superstar?”

  Laughing, she said, “Not quite. He belongs to a client of hers who wants to sell him, so she’s left him here for a week for me to play with. And I’m trying to decide if I can afford him on my own, or if it’s worth going into a partnership to own him, or if I even want the hassle of competing a breeding stallion.” When Dougie nuzzled her, she patted his chest. “Yes yes, I’m sure you’d love being a breeding stallion.” She turned to me. “I think I’m being swayed by the fact he’d fit right in with all my other D-named horses. Dewey, Dimity, and Dirk.”

  Given his overall demeanor, the news that the horse was an entire male was surprising. “He’s a stallion?” I bent to confirm. Yep, he sure was.

  “Mhmm. A very well-behaved one, except sometimes when we’re around other horses he gets a little boisterous and has to be reminded to pay attention to the human.” She smiled. “He’s young and still figuring himself out and how to be polite in society. Never thought I’d get attached to a stallion, but from the short time I’ve spent with him, I’m in love.” Caitlyn lowered her voice, leaning close to me. “Don’t tell Dewey.”

  I pretended to zip my lips. “Secret is safe with me. I think there’s room in all of us to change our mind or find room to love more than one thing.”

  Her gaze seemed overly measured. “True.”

  The mood hadn’t exactly grown heavy, but there was a definite shift in the vibe between us. Time for subject change. “Did anything exciting happen while I was away?”

  “Poffertje finally let Dewey sniff him for more than a microsecond, so that was a huge moment in the life of Dew.”

  “I can imagine. Do you think it’ll happen again or is it a one-time deal?”

  Caitlyn made a so-so gesture. “Conflicting answers. If you asked Dew he’d say absolutely it’ll happen again, but I’m pretty sure Poffertje wasn’t a fan of being licked.”

  “Noted.” It took all I had not to make the inappropriate comment that’d jumped into my brain at her statement about licking. To further distract my juvenile brain, I pulled out a resealable bag full of candy. Dougie’s ears pricked at the sound. “Here, I got you something. Blame Wren,” I added when Caitlyn’s expression turned suspicious.

  When she realized what was in the bag, she laughed. “Blow Pops.” She shook her head, still laughing quietly. “My secret weakness. Thank you.”

  Her obvious pleasure gave me a dose of the warm and fuzzies. “Well come find me if you need someone to help you eat them all.”

  She was already unwrapping one. “Will do.”

  After checking out Dewey and spending almost three hours in a logistics meeting with Mary and Ian, it was pushing seven p.m. Though I was almost wilting with fatigue and jetlag, going back to my apartment now would be a mistake. I knew the moment I stumbled through the door I’d be showered and in bed within ten minutes and going to sleep this early was not going to reset my body clock to Netherlands time.

  Hidden behind the barn was an area with some bench seats, a neat garden and cute metal buckets filled with sand for those who needed a nicotine fix. It seemed the perfect place to sit and chill. Though it wasn’t hot, it was surprisingly humid, and I felt damp and uncomfortable. Suck it up, Buttercup. This is nothing compared to what it’s going to be like in Brazil. I popped some gum in my mouth and sat on the grass with my back against the outer wall of the building so I could stretch out my legs.

  Blessed moment of relaxation. I was used to having very little time to decompress during workdays and had become an expert at not only quickly switching off but making the most of limited quiet time. The next few months were going to be make or break for my potential career as a USDF vet, and the weight of possibility would have been crushing if I let myself dwell on how I could screw it up. So I didn’t let myself dwell. This was no different to other jobs—do the job well, keep your paperwork in order, don’t be an arrogant dick.

  I entered today’s clinical notes on my tablet. I was happy with the fitness of the horses but the timelines for each event leading up to, and then for the Olympics themselves, didn’t leave much wiggle room. If anything went wrong I’d be fighting the clock to get things right.

  Someone came around the corner of the building and I pulled in my legs to avoid tripping them as they passed. Caitlyn. Her expression was both cautious and pleased. The pleased part pleased me. She fidgeted with her phone. “I thought I saw you sneak out here.”

  “Caught me. Is everythin’ okay in there?” I shuffled away from the wall, readying to stand. If I kept sitting, staring up at her, I was going to stare at things I shouldn’t.

  “All fine, no dramas at all. Just…” She smiled, an entirely forced and too-bright smile as if she had suddenly changed her mind about something. “Do you mind some company?”

  As if I’d say no. “Not
at all.” I settled back and gestured for her to sit.

  She sank to the ground beside me, pushing herself backward until she rested against the building in a pose similar to mine. I expected her to move sideways once she realized just how close we were, but she didn’t. Caitlyn drew her knees up. “I thought you’d be asleep by now.”

  “I’m trying to keep myself awake a little longer to get my circadian rhythms in line, and I know the moment I see a bed my resolve will crumble.”

  “Ah. Of course.” She gestured at me, and then the garden. “Do you make a habit of sitting outside barns at night?”

  “Sure do. I quit smoking almost ten years ago, but I can’t give up my love of lurking in the shadows of barns to brood.” Smiling, I peered at her. “Smoking always felt like a good way to unpack difficult cases, but eventually I got sick of being an outcast standing fifty feet away so I wouldn’t accidentally start a fire in a barn. So now it’s gum chewing. It works almost as well as a cigarette. Almost.”

  “You brooding? I don’t see it.”

  I leaned in, lowering my voice to conspiratorial. “I’ll have you know I’m very mysterious.”

  There was a long pause until she eventually murmured, “Actually, that’s true.” She cleared her throat. “I still feel like I don’t know you. I didn’t know you back then, only what I thought I knew, and I don’t know you now.” The words rushed out, as if she was unsure or wanted to get them out before she changed her mind.

  “And you want to know?” I ventured.

  There was no pause this time. “Yes.”

  This felt perhaps too intimate, but she’d started the carousel and the polite thing would be for me to stay on it. “What exactly do you want to know?” Or more importantly, why did she want to know? The obvious explanation for her curiosity was that she was interested in me in some capacity. Professional? Personal? I let myself hope it was the latter. A little bit of hope never killed anybody, and her manner had definitely softened enough for me to feel like friendship wasn’t entirely off the table.

  “Whatever you want to tell me,” she said quietly.

  Personal it is. I had to subdue my excitement so I could answer calmly. Perhaps unwisely, I blurted the first things that came to mind. “I keep my red wine in the fridge, hate it at room temperature. I love folding laundry, like it’s probably one of the most soothing monotonous things for me, aside from cooking. I love the sound of ice cubes cracking in drinks. I cheat at cards and boardgames which I accept is sneaky and shitty and makes me a bad person.” I sucked in a breath. “You asked if I still rode and when I said no, I obviously neglected to say why. Fear. I haven’t been on a horse since my last competition, right before I was due to start college, which ended in a horrendously broken leg and also made my first few months of college pretty shitty.”

  Caitlyn peered down at my legs. “I wondered about the limp but I didn’t know how to ask. I mean it’s not hugely noticeable.” After a beat she added, “But I noticed.”

  She noticed. That thought echoed in my head. I laughed, nudging her with my elbow. “Saying hey, Addie, what’s up with the limp would have been a good start. You can ask me anything you want. I might not always have an answer, but you can ask.”

  “I’ll remember that next time I’m curious about you.”

  Next time she was curious about me. The thought that she’d been curious at all made my stomach do a funny little twist. “Did you…want to know more?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “I cry every time I watch Steel Magnolias, like a full ugly cry. I’m a bed sprawler. I’m allergic to dogs which makes my job interesting because there’s always dogs and I really like them. I suck the salt off pistachio shells, which I acknowledge is a little gross. And I still have the spare ball cap you gave me from your car that day your mama gave me and Buddy a ride to the dressage day and I’d forgotten a cap.” I felt the heat in my cheeks at that last admission which felt like the most personal of everything I’d told her.

  Caitlyn was silent, slowly nodding as if thinking through everything I’d told her. After an embarrassment-laced eternity she said, “Okay. There’s a lot to unpack there.” She shifted so she faced me. “You really still have that cap?”

  “I do.”

  “Why? I’d totally forgotten I’d even given it to you.”

  More embarrassment curled through me. “Because I didn’t want to toss it. It was yours and I felt weird about returning it, but I didn’t know how to bring it up. And you never asked for it back so I figured you didn’t want something that I’d worn.”

  “Not the case at all,” she murmured.

  “Do you want it now? Well not now now but when we get back to the States? I can ship it to you.”

  Caitlyn’s smile was warm. “No. It’s yours. I don’t even remember what cap it was.”

  “New York Giants,” I said immediately.

  “Ah, my favorite team.” She touched my left leg, just below my knee. “Will you tell me about the accident?”

  The fingers remained on my leg and I stared at that hand, studied the shape of it, the taper of her fingers. I knew that hand, those fingers, would be strong yet gentle and capable of the softest nuance all at once. “I’d decided to do a one-day event at the last moment, just a last-minute kind of thing because I’d arranged to give Buddy back to his owners. They were going to sell him and had promised to give me a portion of the price for all the work I’d done with him over the past six or so years. I begged a ride to the event with another family. Our dressage test went really well and I was sitting in second place.” I smiled. “Must have been all that time I’d spent watching you ride your tests.”

  “Must have been,” she echoed teasingly.

  “Uh, there’d been some rain through the week, and most of the morning too. I was at the tail end of the competitors to ride cross-country and the footing on takeoffs and landings was muddy as heck. Buddy slipped coming into the eighth jump, this huge thick log spread. He righted himself and then just kind of hit the front part and flipped over the jump. He landed on top of the back log and crushed my leg underneath him, spooked himself I guess, then got up and galloped off but my foot was stuck in the stirrup. I’m not sure if it was him landing on it, or being dragged that broke my leg.” I shrugged. “Probably a combination of both. He was totally okay though.”

  Caitlyn looked utterly horrified and not a little nauseated. “Fuck. That’s just…fuck.”

  Nodding I agreed, “I think fuck just about sums it up. Compound fractures of my tibia and fibula, along with a displaced fracture of my ankle. I saw the scans after. The fractures were so comminuted that the X-rays looked like a bunch of scattered broken sticks. If I was a horse, I would have been taken out back and shot. Luckily I was still on my mom’s insurance because there were a lot of surgeries and PT. It’s fine now, but I just haven’t ever found the guts to get back up on a horse.” Frowning, I mused, “I think if I still rode, thinking about it and talking about it would be upsetting or frightening but instead, it’s kind of just this blank space.”

  “I’m pretty sure if I’d ever had an accident like that I probably wouldn’t want to ride again either.”

  Smiling, I disagreed, “Ah, but I doubt you ever would have that kind of accident. You were always far better at sticking on horses than me. At any rate, college helped. I already knew riding would be put on the backburner once I was at school, so it was easier to distance myself from it.”

  “Mmm. You can always hop on Dew if you want. He’s so safe I’ve had kids ride him. It’s amazing what parents will spend to let their kids ride a trained Grand Prix horse.”

  “I might take you up on that one day. If I find my courage.”

  “I’m sure you will. I always remember you as being the first to jump into anything at Pony Club. Like that time they taught us vaulting and polo.”

  I laughed. “That was before I realized I don’t bounce as well as I used to.”

  Caitlyn’s hand sli
d to my thigh. Her fingers stroked my leg, an unconscious sort of movement as if offering comfort. She repeated the movement, then paused and tensed beside me. The hand on my leg went totally still. “I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t need to be. I’m not.” Sensing her confusion, I decided to tease. “Must be all the time you’ve been spending with tactile ol’ me.”

  “Must be.” She exhaled and the fingers started moving again, tentatively as if she was either worried or wanted to really take her time to study the structure of my leg. “I…might check on Dew then go find some leftovers for dinner. Then I think it’s bed for me too.”

  The mere mention of sleep had me suppressing a yawn. “Good plan. I’m used to going for long blocks of time without sleep but over twenty-four hours being switched on is a little too much for even me.”

  “You didn’t sleep on the plane?” Caitlyn stood and offered me a hand.

  “Nope. I had to do some paperwork that I didn’t finish before I left. And I’m still trying to equilibrate, move from being one type of vet to another. I need a day to get my brain into gear, forget about all the shit going on in my workplace and focus on this job and all its specific requirements.”

  As we approached Dewey’s stall she asked, “What’s going on in your workplace?”

  Slow clap, Addie. I had no idea what was wrong with me, or what siren call her voice was that constantly made me forget to censor myself around her. “Work stuff. The usual batches of unpleasant clients, workplace politics and a boss whose passive-aggressive comments about me being away for so long are less passive and more aggressive.”