Pas de deux

by E. J. Noyes

  “About your cookin’?” she asked dryly as she began her breakfast-slash-lunch. “Always.”

  There was nothing I could throw so I settled for a muttered, “Smartass.”

  Addie’s smile stretched around her food. “I am, yes. But it’s Dewey and I trust him. Plus I figure if you can manage to ride him then surely I, with my superior equestrian skills, can pull it off.”

  “Wow, you’re on fire this afternoon.”

  “It’s delirium caused by lack of sleep. Makes me extra witty.” She frowned, then turned away and discreetly spat the mouthful she’d just forked up into a paper napkin.

  “Dammit, I even cracked the eggs into a bowl to check for shell. I swear there was none when I looked.”

  She ran her tongue around her molars. “Must have been hiding under the yolk. It’s fine, I really don’t mind a bit of texture, honey.” It was her standard response every time she found something amiss with my cooking.

  Addie held out her hand to me. When I slid mine into hers, she resumed eating her meal one-handed, the other still holding mine. She had incredible hands, delicate yet strong, and never without callouses or chunks of skin missing. I ran my thumb up and down the side of her forefinger. “I love you.”

  Her eyes widened comically. “Wow. Seriously? That is the weirdest coincidence, because I love you too. Good thing we’re together then, huh?”

  I kissed her, lingering until I felt satisfied. It took a while. “Good thing indeed.” I checked her empty plate then the time. “Whenever you’re ready, we can head out. Unless you need some chill time before we go?”

  Addie downed the last of her coffee. “I’m good. I’ll just go brush my teeth and change into my pro rider gear.”

  She emerged ten minutes later, dressed in brand-new breeches and boots and carrying a new helmet. Glancing down at herself, she said, “Well if nothing else, at least I look authentic. Feels so weird to be back in this stuff.”

  I took my time to enjoy the sight of her in breeches. She was no stranger to yoga or running tights, but this was something else entirely. “If you decide after today that you never want to ride, you’re still going to put that gear on for me again.”

  “Pervert.”

  “You can talk. Don’t think I don’t notice the way you stare at me while I’m dressed to ride.”

  “No comment.”

  Addie caught Dew while I nabbed Dirk, and we quickly got them ready together in the two sets of cross-ties that let them be close without touching. She asked me to double check everything once she’d saddled Dew then unclipped him and put her helmet on before leading him to the indoor arena. Wren and Brandon were conspicuously absent, though they were probably up in their house with binoculars watching Addie’s reentry to the equestrian world. She mounted easily and shuffled to get into position. “This saddle is so comfortable.”

  “Only the best for my girl.”

  “And for you too, given it’s one of your saddles.”

  Laughing I agreed, “True.”

  I was unsure if I should offer any tips or just sit back, but Addie thankfully solved my internal debate for me. “It’s been a while. Gimme some pointers?”

  As I shortened the stirrup leathers, I told her the same thing I told everyone who had ridden Dew. “Just think it, and he’ll do it. He’s the best body language expert I know.” With a wink, I added, “But just in case he doesn’t speak his stepmom’s language, then don’t be afraid to ask him more forcefully. He might be an Olympic superstar, but all his basics are the same. Leg for go, rein pressure and weight for slow, rein and opposite leg for steering. And despite what some people think, you’re not going to ruin him or mess up his training.”

  “Mhmm, okay.” She gathered the reins as Dew turned his head to smell her boot. He licked it, nibbled at it until she shooed him away. His expression was hilariously confused, and I could almost imagine his mental process as he tried to figure out what the hell Addie was doing up there instead of on the ground.

  Once Addie was settled, I kissed her hand then left her to walk Dew around the arena and get comfortable while I fetched Dirk. Dew was utterly trustworthy and I knew they’d be fine for a few minutes. Dew was doing the very definition of amble—not putting in an ounce more effort than Addie was asking of him. I halted Dirk at the arena gate and leaned down to adjust my stirrups ready for the trail. “How’re you doing, gorgeous?”

  “He never seems this lazy for you,” Addie called from the middle of the arena.

  “Actually, I was asking Dew.”

  She gave me a middle finger.

  Laughing, I said, “Not as easy as I make it look, is it?”

  “You would make riding an unbroken mustang look easy. Come on, let’s go.”

  I’d planned a short forty-five-minute loop, which would be more than enough for Addie’s reentry to riding. The tree-lined trail had some small hills if she felt up to a little speed, and after fifteen minutes of walk with a few short sections of trot, she popped Dew into canter after a breathless, “I’m gonna try a canter. That okay?”

  “Sure.” Dirk startled at Dew cantering away and without my asking, began cantering too. He protested when I reminded him that he had to wait for aids, but eventually settled into a nice forward trot. Dew’s canter was slow and collected which meant we were able to keep side by side and I could keep an eye on Addie. Not that I really needed to—she rode like a natural and as if she’d never taken a break.

  Once we’d slowed back to walk, her neck patting was exuberant. “God, he’s so good.”

  “It’s all about the training, darling.” I grinned. “And I suppose just a little of his natural amenability helps some.”

  “For someone who really doesn’t have an ego, you sure have some ego.”

  I blew her a kiss and she responded with one of her own, then a question. “D’you think we could do this again?”

  My answer was an immediate, “Of course. Means we’re working two horses at once and also you riding Dew out means Wren or Brandon don’t have to come out with me, and they can have a break.”

  “Maybe I’ll have to get my own horse one day, some chill Quarter Horse or something to wander around the trails with once a month.”

  “If that’s what you want, then let’s do it. It’s not like we don’t have the space for more horses.”

  She stretched forward to softly tug Dew’s ear and he responded with his happy grunty snort. “We’ll see. I don’t know if I’ll be able to ride anything else after this one.”

  “I know the feeling.”

  Addie flashed me a wicked grin. “That’s a kinda mean thing to say in front of Dirk.” She gathered her reins. “Ready for some more canter?”

  I shortened mine too. “Race ya.” Dirk pigrooted. Dimwit.

  We spent the rest of the ride alternating between walk, trot, and canter, talking and laughing and laying out plans for the fast-approaching competition season in Europe. My heart rate spiked when I noticed Dew happily passaging along the trail. A lazy passage, granted, but it was still passage and the slow, elevated, cadenced trot looked utterly ridiculous in such surroundings.

  Addie glanced over at me. “Uh…why?” She didn’t seem bothered, or in any danger of hitting the deck, so I relaxed.

  “Did you ask him to do that?”

  “I have no idea.” Her eyes widened. “But I feel like we’re not supposed to be passaging on a relaxing trail outing. And especially not when we’re almost home and we should be cooling down.”

  I collapsed forward onto Dirk’s neck, laughing so much I was almost crying. When I could finally breathe again, I offered a not entirely helpful, “Then just stop asking him to passage.”

  “If I don’t know how I asked him to start passaging, then I don’t know how to stop him, obviously.” Her mouth set in a determined line and after a moment I saw her relax, then soften the rein contact. Dew deflated to a walk and I swear he looked pleased with himself, as if he’d just given Addie a gift. She stroked
his neck, leaning forward to scratch up and down his mane. “Guess I was a little tense.”

  “Maybe a little. So now you know how to passage, would you mind riding my tests for me next weekend? I’m sure nobody would notice anything different.”

  She let both feet fall from the stirrups and pulled her leg away from Dew’s sides. Groaning, she rubbed the inside of her thigh. “I’m pretty sure I’m not going to be able to walk next weekend, let alone embark on more riding.”

  “No riding?” I asked coyly. “Well that’s a pity…”

  “No riding horses,” she quickly corrected me as she fumbled to get her feet back in the stirrups.

  I moved Dirk closer and reached over to grasp the leather, twisting it so the stirrup sat perpendicular to Dew’s belly and she could kick her toe in. “You know, the best thing for sore inner upper thigh muscles is massage.”

  “Are you offering?”

  “Mhmm, I am. But my hands have a tendency to slip while I’m massaging upper thighs.” I shrugged. “Sorry.”

  “I’m sure I’ll forgive you.”

  I would have leaned over and kissed her if Dirk hadn’t chosen that moment to spot a gremlin in the bushes right by the gate that opened onto my back field and execute a sideways twisty upward spook so violent I would have been tossed if I didn’t spend every second aboard him readying myself for such a reaction to nothing at all. Dewey had no response to the incident except for something that looked an awful lot like an equine eyeroll. As if he’d never spooked at anything in his life, the big hypocrite.

  Dirk fidgeted as I leaned down to unchain the gate connecting my property to the trails, which led to a mild argument about manners and appropriate responses to my aids. Dew looked on, bored, and with a definitely disapproving uncle vibe about him. Once we’d both made it through the gate, and Dirk had listened enough that I could close and latch it again, Addie and I rode at a walk toward the barn.

  I let the reins out to the buckle so Dirk could stretch, and twisted toward Addie who’d done the same for Dew. “So I’ve been thinking, and I have a very serious question for you.”

  “I’m listening.” She grinned. “I’m wary, but I’m listening.”

  “Do you want to make a baby with me?”

  Epilogue

  Addie

  “Come on, honey, just push for me. You can do it, give me a push and we’re going to have a beautiful baby.”

  Caitlyn sagged, wiping her face on her shirtsleeve. “God, I don’t think I can do any more. I’m exhausted.”

  I glanced up and was instantly struck dumb, enraptured and awestruck by the sight of her. Muddy and wet from the rain, she was so damned beautiful that she made my heart quicken every time I looked at her. “Take a break then, babe. She’ll be okay, you don’t need to hold her head up. But she’s not progressing the way I’d like so I’m going in to check what’s going on in there.” The white amniotic sack had appeared, but nothing else, and we’d just reached one of my most important foaling rules—if I didn’t see part of a foal twenty minutes after the sack’s appearance, it was time to investigate. “Can you grab the lube and a glove, please?”

  I washed and dried my hands, put the shoulder-length glove on my right arm and knelt in the mud. Caitlyn pumped lube all along my arm and I carefully inserted my hand and felt around, trying to figure out what the actual hell was going on in there. After so many foalings, I knew what I should be feeling but it always took a minute to puzzle it out.

  I shuffled into a more comfortable position on my stomach with my head resting on the mare’s butt. I was exhausted, wet with not only rain and mud but birth fluids, which itched like crazy. What have I got, what have I got?

  Caitlyn was trying hard to disguise her panic. “What’s going on? Is she okay?”

  “It’s okay, darling. Just trying to work out the position of the foal.”

  I finally figured it out. Instead of both forelimbs outstretched for birth with its head resting on those legs as it should be, ready to dive down the birth canal, the foal had a leg hooked around the back of its neck. I needed to reposition it or it was not going to come out. A few days ago when I’d scanned the mare, the wretched foal had been in perfect position for delivery. Not anymore. “Can you grab the clenbuterol from my vet kit please? It’s right on top, ready to go. I’m going to have to give her a shot to relax the uterus and give me some room to work.”

  Caitlyn grabbed the syringe. “I don’t know how you do this day in, day out.”

  I grinned up at her. “To be fair, I don’t have foalings every day, and certainly not overdue mares with a foal who’s decided they just had to be in a stupid position.” I poked Stella’s stomach. “Are you listening in there?”

  “If it’s anything like its uncle, I’d say no, it isn’t listening.” Caitlyn had found Stella a year ago and snapped her up. She was technically a half-sister to Dewey—by the same stallion as Dew, and her dam shared half her bloodline with Dewey’s dam, Antoinette. Caitlyn had joked that someone had been trying to make a Dewey two-point-oh. We’d used artificial insemination to put Stella in foal to Dougie and had both been waiting anxiously for the past eleven months for Dewey’s niece or nephew. The waiting had been made slightly less anxious by the fact it’d been a near-perfect pregnancy. Miracle of miracles. Of course the flipside of a near-perfect pregnancy was an annoying birth with a foaling dystocia.

  I huffed. “Of course, our foal couldn’t have a straightforward birth, could it? And it couldn’t be born inside, during the day instead of outside at night in the middle of heavy rain, could it?” Stella hated being confined and had a walk-in, walk-out stall adjoining her run. Still, the polite thing would have been to foal inside. “More lube please.”

  “What would be the fun in being warm and dry?” Caitlyn pumped more lube onto my arm. “At least out here we have a full audience.” All the horses in their stalls had been watching on and off except for Dewey who hadn’t moved from staring out his back door since Caitlyn and I had first come out of the house at the sound of the foaling alarm. He seemed utterly transfixed. Caitlyn held out the syringe of clenbuterol. “Here.”

  “Darlin’. You probably didn’t notice but I’m kinda stuck up to my shoulder in the birth canal so not exactly in a position to reach her neck to give her that injection. Can you please give it to her IV?”

  Her sheepish smile was distorted in the rainy spotlight. “Sorry.” As she crouched by Stella’s neck she asked, “What about Delilah? Dillon?”

  “Both sound good.” She’d been throwing D-names at me since I’d confirmed Stella was in foal, because now naming her horses something that began with D was a superstition.

  Seconds after Caitlyn had administered the injection, Stella apparently decided she was done with labor. She rolled back onto her stomach instead of the flat-on-her-side position she’d been in for the last fifteen minutes, and in the process just about torqued my arm out of its socket.

  Thanks.

  And because my arm hadn’t taken enough punishment, she’d also decided it was time for more contractions, the first squeezing my arm so much it felt like she’d cut off blood flow. I lay flat on my stomach in the mud and pushed the foal back through the pelvic inlet so I’d have room to manipulate the leg. The extra room was a godsend and I could have cried in relief. “That’s it, you little brat.” To protect the uterus I cupped the gelatinous underside of the foal’s hoof and carefully pushed the leg back, flexing it to get the leg over the neck. The moment I felt it pop over I extended the leg to get it into the right position with the foal’s head resting on both forelimbs.

  I kissed the wet horse hair under my cheek. “Thank you, Stella! And thank you, foal. Babe, watch out, it’s about to get noisy. She’s all slack in there so I’ll have to help and pull this foal out. Can you get the resuscitation gear ready please just in case this doesn’t go as smoothly as I’m hoping it will.”

  I waited to feel the next contraction and with my hands around the foal’s fetl
ocks, pulled toward myself. Another contraction and I had a torso. This was the moment where I always held my breath, worried about hiplock and the foal getting stuck in the pelvic canal. Apparently, Stella was worried too and I hadn’t had the next contraction I’d expected. I nudged her with my elbow. “Stella, can you fuckin’ help me out here please?”

  Stella, bless her heart, was agreeable to my suggestion. She heaved a few loud groans, I pulled, and within seconds the foal landed in my lap in a wet, slippery tangle of limbs. I tipped it to the ground and immediately propped it up to make sure its airways were clear. A few firm strokes down the foal’s head to clear fluids out of its nose and it huffed a breath. Then another. And another. And then it exhaled a snorty little whinny.

  Huffing a few relieved breaths of my own, I sank down and lowered the foal to the ground. Caitlyn dropped down beside me. “Is it okay?”

  I was crying as I usually did during foalings—a mix of being exhausted and filthy and how everything was so beautiful and miracle of life shit. “Breathing and moving, so yes.” I raised a hindleg to check the umbilical cord was still attached. “A gorgeous filly and lots of bling. Well there will be when that amniotic fluid is washed off and all the white is white instead of yellow.”

  Her laughter was part crying. “Similar markings to Dew.”

  I wiped my face with my sleeve, which was utterly useless given the rain. “It sure is.” Dewey had lost his shit at the foal’s arrival and had begun calling out, the deep sound of his whinny breaking through the hammer of rain on the roof. His vocalization was setting everyone else off, especially Dougie—fair enough, given it was his first kid—until it was like the scene in the Lion King of everyone welcoming the new baby.

  I stood and pulled Caitlyn up with me to give the mare and foal room to move. The filly was moving in that jerky, just-born, oh-my-goodness, what-is-this-new-stimulus kind of way, so I deemed her okay for now. I checked Stella who’d rolled back onto her stomach and was looking around at her foal, nickering a huffy, soft I’m-in-love sound. Seemed all okay at that end too. First hurdle of foaling overcome. I leaned into Caitlyn, crossing my arms over my chest.