Summer Circuit (The Show Circuit -- Book 1)

by Kim Ablon Whitney

  I stopped in front of him. “I was looking for you. Where were you? Did you see my round? Did you watch?”

  Chris looked at Dale, like he was waiting for some kind of signal of what to say or how to act, and then back at me. “I had to ride.”

  “But you said you—”

  Chris stood up. “Actually we’ve got to go find Doc Sheridan. Maybe I’ll see you later.”

  I started backing away from the tent. It was amazing how much could be said with so few words. He might as well have said: I made a mistake with you. A big one. And now I don’t want to have anything more to do with you. This was the same man I’d had sex with not even twenty-four hours ago.

  “Sure. Maybe later,” I said, although it was clear this was not a to-be-continued. But there was so much he wasn’t saying. Why? What happened?

  I walked back to my stalls slowly. My head was throbbing. I looked at the ground as I walked, watching my feet step, one and then the other.

  Chapter 31

  My dad glanced back and forth between his phone and the road as we drove to the restaurant, holding the steering wheel with a knee and a wrist, his phone perched on the top of the wheel.

  “I thought teenagers were the ones who were supposed to have a problem with texting and driving.”

  “I can’t get any service at my hotel. All my emails just came in—hundreds of them.”

  God forbid he didn’t answer them right away. And he had to point out how there were hundreds of them—like it was some popularity contest. Sometimes my dad seemed worse than a teenager.

  The road became winding and he had to concentrate on driving. He put his phone in the front console but he kept looking longingly at it every so often, like it had him brainwashed and was calling out to him in a language only audible to him and whales.

  The restaurant was fancy. My dad pretended to not be a foodie—who had time to care about eating when you had a business to run? But come on, he lived in Palo Alto, even mediocre places there had good food. The few times I’d visited we’d eaten a lot of organic, farm-to-table, saffron-infused food. I liked that kind of food too, but I didn’t like how my dad pretended he’d be fine with any old burger and then just wasn’t.

  He ordered the tuna and had to discuss it with the waiter first, making sure it would be seared. Then out of nowhere when I was listening to him tell me all about Ryan and his latest venture, my dad called the waiter back over and canceled the order, choosing the brick-grilled organic young chicken instead. The waiter stuttered, trying to figure out whether he could send back a probably already prepped meal and my dad explained he’d pay for both, just don’t bring the tuna. It was the right thing to do, I guess, but it was annoying too. I have so much money that I can change my mind and order two meals if I want. Let some lucky schmuck dishwasher eat my discarded tuna.

  When the waiter left, Dad said to me, “I don’t know what I was thinking ordering seafood so far from the ocean. I’ve been going so hard lately. I think I forgot where I was for a moment.”

  I began to say I was sure they shipped it up here and it was still fresh, but then I realized, why bother? He was such a snob, making the point of how California was so much better than poor landlocked Vermont.

  Over salads, I heard more about Ryan. He was preparing to go out for a round of funding. My dad was helping him where he could, but he wasn’t putting him in touch with anyone. “He has to do that on his own.”

  Somehow with the last name Waer I had the feeling VCs would take my brother’s call. And Ryan wasn’t dumb—he’d use Dad’s name if he had to.

  Dad checked his phone. I rearranged my silverware. I could have checked my own phone, but I didn’t want to stoop to his level and plus, I didn’t need to be reminded that Chris hadn’t texted me.

  He finally put his down. “Jamie says you’re improving, not considering today, of course.”

  “Definitely. Today was just like a blip or something.”

  “An aberration.”

  I nodded and wondered why it was that when I was with my father my words always got tangled.

  “And Jamie? It’s working out with her? No more from this, this other rider or whoever it was your mom was carping about?”

  I looked away. Chris should have been here with me, having dinner with my father. Instead, I was facing him alone. “Nope, no more of that.”

  “We need to talk about what to do with Logan in the fall,” Dad said.

  “I guess I thought you’d still keep him with Jamie. Campus isn’t that far away from the barn.”

  “I’m thinking of the value proposition. That doesn’t make sense.”

  Why did my dad always have to talk in business terms? My mom talked incessantly about birds and my dad used business lingo. Couldn’t someone talk like a normal person? Logan was a horse; not a value proposition.

  “Now you want to sell him?”

  “If he’s going well, or at least better, it would seem prudent.”

  I looked up at the ceiling and shook my head. “You get me this horse I hate and who hates me. I can’t ride him to save my life. You send me off to a show and make me take care of him by myself for weeks when I’ve never even taken care of a hamster. Then, you know what? I actually get good at taking care of him. I begin to get good at riding him. And I like him. For the first time since Dobby I actually like my horse. Maybe I even love him. And now—” I made a dramatic show of pretending to rip a rug out from under someone. “Now it’s, let’s sell him.”

  It hit me hard right then how much I did love Logan. I couldn’t have him taken away from me. And not now, not when I was possibly losing Chris. There were only two more weeks of the circuit—what would I have left?

  “Okay, so pitch me.” He leaned back in his chair, all Shark Tank. “What do we do with him? You’ll be immersed in school. It costs thousands of dollars a month to keep him at Jamie’s. What’s your plan?”

  “How can I have a plan? I just found out you want to sell him.”

  “You have to be thinking ahead—always running through the possible scenarios and planning your response to what you think someone might do.”

  The waiter arrived with our entrees. He seemed to have a proud look on his face, like he had rolled with the punches, and was now delivering just what my dad wanted. What he didn’t know was that the rules changed all the time with my dad. What worked one minute would be scrapped the next. The waiter slid the plate in front of my dad. He studied it, like he was assessing more than food.

  “This looks great,” I said about my meal to distract the waiter away from my dad. “Thank you.”

  The waiter gave me a grateful smile and eased away, probably realizing that he should escape before my dad pulled something else.

  “Okay, you have time,” Dad said. “Figure out a plan. But remember, thinking on the fly is key.” He tapped his own head.

  “Key to what?” I asked.

  “Life. It’s the key to life.”

  Chapter 32

  My next few days at the show were painfully quiet. No more early morning lessons. I had shown up several times at our usual time and spot—no Chris. No texts from Chris. No texts from Zoe. When I saw Zoe, she was cordial but nothing more. Everything had changed between us. Chris and I didn’t usually cross paths much unless I tried to be where he was, which I had spent the past few weeks getting very good at. Now, though, I stayed away from the grand prix ring and the grand prix schooling area. I went to the general store for lunch so I wouldn’t run into him at the food truck.

  Saturday came and went and I heard the announcer calling out about the course walk for the grand prix. Only once the class had started did I walk to the ring and sit in the back row of the stands, where Chris wouldn’t see me. He didn’t ride well. In fact, he rode the worst I’d ever seen him ride. That didn’t mean he made a big mistake—had a major chip or a refusal. But something in the way he rode didn’t look right. He was off and he had three rails with Titan. As he left the ring, his sh
oulders were hunched and he kept his eyes down. Of course I couldn’t help but wonder if his performance had to do with missing me. But that was probably ascribing too much weight to our relationship.

  I made sure Chris had left the grand prix area before I headed back to the barn. As I got down from the stands I saw two juniors pointing at me. One whispered something to the other. Why the hell were they pointing at me and what were they whispering about? Was our break-up the talk of the show now? How could it have been since as far as I knew hardly anyone knew about us in the first place? Still, I quickly turned away from them, feeling self-conscious and awful, like I’d done something wrong. I imagined their voices: That’s her. Chris was sleeping with her? What the hell was he thinking?

  I saw Jed ahead of me and I jogged to catch up with him. It wasn’t often that I found him without Zoe and I was grabbing my chance—Jed knew everything.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Oh, hi,” Jed said.

  “Did you watch the grand prix?”

  Jed nodded, but didn’t speak. Was talking to me making him uncomfortable? Why was everyone acting so weird all of a sudden?

  “Chris didn’t ride very well.”

  “Yeah, wasn’t his day,” Jed said.

  He was being cool, stand-off-ish. No easy smiles, no automatic jokes. Jed was acting like someone close to him had died.

  “Can I ask you something?” I said. Before he could say no or tell me he was late to be somewhere I continued, “Does Zoe hate me now?”

  “It’s complicated.” We had reached the general vicinity of the tents and Jed stopped, like he didn’t want to go any further toward the barn until he had gotten rid of me.

  “What the hell is going on?” I said. “It’s like the whole horse show hates me now. What did I do?”

  Jed gazed at me, like he was trying to figure out how to put something into words, or maybe just trying to figure out if I could be trusted, or whether he wanted to help me.

  “Please,” I said. “I’m like freaking out here because I have no idea what’s going on. Chris has stopped talking to me. Zoe barely says a word to me. People are pointing at me . . .”

  “It’s not a good world, Hannah,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The horse show world. It’ll eat you up and spit you out.”

  I was already figuring that one out. But I, at least, wanted to know why. What had I done that made them want to eat me up and spit me out? Was it because Chris was one of their own and I was just some for-the-summer interloper? Was it because of Mary Beth and something about her coming back and wanting Chris back? I was grasping for reasons where none seemed to exist.

  “I gotta go,” Jed said.

  “No, Jed, come on,” I pleaded. “Just tell me the truth. I can handle it, I swear.”

  “Zoe and I go back forever,” he said. “I’m sorry.” And he walked away from me.

  I wanted to yell after him, to tell him to wait, to tell him he couldn’t do this to me. That I needed one person to be honest with me and he seemed like he should be that person. What did he mean by saying he and Zoe went back forever? Zoe was mad at me for sleeping with Chris when she liked him, and then not telling her, and Jed could only pick one side—hers or mine? All I knew was something serious was going on—I had apparently done something horrible.

  It was awful sitting at home, knowing Sunday night was happening at Backcountry. I went to check on Logan, intensely glad to have something to do. I turned off my high beams upon entering the show grounds and drove slowly over to the tent. Since no one else was there, I parked close to the tent and turned off the engine.

  The weak overhead lamps in the tents that stayed on all night made it light enough for me to find my way to Logan’s stall. As I approached, I couldn’t see Logan. I looked over the stall door and found him curled up on the ground like a deer.

  “Psst,” I whispered. “Logan?”

  He lifted up his head. He had been asleep—he wasn’t sick. There were shavings stuck on his chin from where it had rested on the floor of the stall. Adorable. Once he saw me, his wide eyes softened.

  “I’m sorry I woke you.” At least one of us looked relaxed and happy. I spoke softly to him as I opened the door and walked toward him. “Don’t get up. Don’t worry.”

  I walked slowly into the stall, crouching down with each step. I kneeled by his neck, running my fingers through his mane. At first I could tell Logan wasn’t quite sure what to think, what was going on, but as I rubbed his neck, his body relaxed and he lowered his chin back onto the stall floor. Every few seconds his eyes blinked shut at the same time that one of his ears twitched. I ran my hand all the way up to Logan’s ears since his head was low enough to touch them. Logan’s ears flicked forward. Had my dad bought Logan for me to watch me fail? It was an awful thought. And now that I was succeeding, did he want to sell him out from under me? Even if it wasn’t true, the fact that I would wonder said a lot about our relationship.

  Logan rested his face against my stomach and his nostrils fluttered against my shirt. If Logan was a test, I had passed.

  I pressed my face to Logan’s neck. “I don’t hate you at all.” I felt like I had lost so much, but I still had Logan.

  I took the long way by Backcountry and saw all the cars in the lot. I was tempted to stop and look for Chris’s car or Zoe’s or Jed’s, but that felt stalker-ish, too insane even for me given the circumstances.

  So instead I went back to the condo. Cheryl was out, of course. Everyone was out. It was only me sitting on my bed, wondering why the world hated me.

  I tried to go to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. I turned over and back and over again, the sheets now tangled up by my feet. I rolled onto my back and threw off the covers so they landed on the floor. Had I even been asleep at all? I checked the clock. 1:37. I sat up, ran my hands through my hair, then lunged out of bed. Life, my dad had said, thinking on your feet was the key to life. Maybe the key to life was also being brave.

  I threw on a pair of jeans, a long sleeve T-shirt and a hoodie. In the bathroom, I pulled my hair back into a ponytail that fell all the way past my shoulders even though it was set up high on my head. As I looked at myself in the mirror, I paused. I stared at myself, at my green eyes and pale skin that was now dotted with freckles from the summer. I wondered whether it could ever have been true, that Chris once liked me? That I had once wondered whether we could have been falling in love.

  I drove over to Chris’s and I knocked hard against the door. I took a step back, listened, then knocked again, this time louder. I heard movement inside and then saw a light click on in the hallway leading to the bedroom, where we had had sex so many times, and then one went on in the front hall.

  Chris opened the door. He had on a T-shirt and striped boxers and his hair was mashed to one side. He wiped his hand across his face and shook his head.

  “What are you doing here?” he said.

  “I don’t get what happened between us.”

  Chris let out an exaggerated breath. “Really, Hannah? I thought you were better than most show people.”

  “I am, I mean I think I am.”

  “Then why tell the whole world about it? I thought we had something special.”

  “I did too. And I didn’t tell the whole world. I didn’t tell anybody. Zoe asked me after she saw us kissing and I told her how long we had been, well, you know, and that we’d, that I’d had sex with you.”

  Why were the words coming out so awful? I sounded so stupid, so young.

  “A SUMMER OF HORSE SHOW FIRSTS?” Chris said.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I replied.

  “You wrote about all of it, everything between us.”

  I still didn’t know what he was referring to, but the fuzzy outlines were taking shape like a dot-to-dot when you’re halfway done and you begin to see the picture of what you’re drawing. “Zoe,” I said. Somehow I knew she was responsible for whatever Chris was talking
about.

  Chris must have believed in that moment that maybe I hadn’t done whatever terrible thing was out there because his face softened. The old Chris I knew, the kind, open face I’d looked at when we had slept together, returned just a little bit. I took my opening. “Can you show me whatever it is you’re talking about?”

  Chris opened the door all the way to let me in. It felt like a big step forward. We went to his laptop. A couple clicks and the screen was open.

  A SUMMER OF HORSE SHOW FIRSTS

  My name is Hannah and I’m 18, but before this summer I had never had sex. I was a virgin. But then I met Chris Kern. I fell hard for Chris and I decided this was the summer everything would change for me. I made it my sole purpose to get him to fall for me. To get him to sleep with me. To get him to take away my virginity. He was way out of my league but I had to have him. Chris was up for it in every sense of the word too. I think he likes younger girls because it turned out to be easier than I thought it would be . . . .

  My hand flew to my mouth as I read. At the same time, I felt sick to my stomach. I had never, ever thought Zoe would be capable of something like this. I knew she had problems that ran deep, I knew she had seen a lot of darkness in her life. But I never knew she was this messed up.

  I started crying as I kept reading. The things she wrote about us. It only got worse. A little for myself, but more for Chris. I didn’t care if horse show people thought I was a slut or a bitch, or whatever. But Chris? He had a reputation. This was his career, his living, his everything. He couldn’t have this kind of stuff out there.

  “I can’t believe she would do this,” I said to Chris. “I guess I can believe she’d do it to me, but to you . . .”

  “I thought she was our friend,” Chris said.

  I looked at him. What he had just said . . . It meant he believed me. “So you believe it wasn’t me?” I said.

  Chris reached out. “I knew you wouldn’t do something like this . . . but I had no other way of explaining it. And Dale thought it would be better to . . . Now it all makes sense. You were right about Zoe, about her being jealous.”