Hunter Derby: (Show Circuit Series -- Book 3) (9 page)

One day, Zoe was leading a girl she’d never led before, Sara, when Sara reached out and grabbed Zoe’s hair. Completely surprised, Zoe yelped. John helped gently pry Sara’s fingers from Zoe’s hair.

“Oh yeah,” he said casually. “Sara does that sometimes.”

He took off the ball cap he was wearing and handed it to her. “You might want to put this on.”

Zoe looked at Sara’s face—old Zoe would have been furious at the teenager. But she strangely couldn’t find any anger inside of herself. She knew it wasn’t Sara’s fault.

“I’m putting on the hat,” she said to Sara as she accepted it from John and tugged it over her head. “My hair is one of my prize possessions and I can’t afford to lose it, or I’ll never get a date!”

Sara stared straight ahead. She didn’t seem connected to the world around her. When she was on the ground she made all sorts of noises and grunts and sometimes flapped her arms—in the saddle she was controlled and peaceful.

“Let’s get back to work,” Kirsten said to them all, and Zoe could see Kirsten was trying to contain her smile.

Had she known that Sara would pull Zoe’s hair and she hadn’t said anything? Had both Kirsten and John known? He did seem quick to offer his hat, like he knew the drill.

After the lesson was over and Zoe was untacking Daisy, John and Kirsten came into the barn.

“Sorry about the hair pulling,” Kirsten said. Now she was full-out smiling.

“You knew that was going to happen, didn’t you?” Zoe said.

John chuckled, which was her confirmation.

“Thanks a lot, guys. I guess I better be on my guard from now on.”

“No, definitely not,” Kirsten said. “We’ll tell you if you need to know anything about anyone else, I promise. Right, John?”

“Definitely,” he said. “We just couldn’t resist. Do you hate us now?”

“No, I just might never trust you again.”

Zoe wasn’t actually mad at them. It felt kind of like the pranking that members of a sports team might do. The harmless kind that built rapport. If anything, Zoe felt like maybe they were coming to accept her, to see her as one of the team. Maybe this had been her initiation and now she was one of them.

“We owe you a drink,” John said.

“Definitely,” Kirsten said. “At least one drink, maybe two. How hard did she get you?”

Zoe touched her hair. “She took out a decent clump.”

“Two drinks, it is,” John pronounced.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

At one point, there had been a thriving group of fox hunters in the town but the hunt club had disbanded a few years ago, sending its remaining hounds to adoptive homes. The rustic tavern that the members of the hunt frequented was now refurbished into a toney pub with exposed brick walls and framed photos of prominent sports figures, including a few race horses.

“Show jumping just never gets its due,” Zoe said as she walked in with John and Kirsten and glanced over the shots of baseball players, basketball players, football players, soccer players, and even a few boxers. “I mean when you think about it, they’re actual Olympic riders who live around here and are their pictures up on the wall? No.”

“It’s a good point,” John said. “I guess I’d never really thought about it before.”

It felt a little strange being somewhere other than the barn with them, but it wasn’t an altogether unfamiliar feeling for Zoe. It was the way it went with horse people. You formed your friendships in the barn aisles or at the in-gate and then over time that led to dinners at restaurants or outings to the mall or spa on off days.

Those first times out together in real clothes always were slightly uneasy, as if you needed to figure out who a person was out of the show world. A girl who felt confident in the show ring could be shy and reserved outside of it, and vice-versa.

Kirsten looked a little smaller, a little softer outside of Narrow Lane. They ordered a round of drinks and sat together at a table constructed from an old keg barrel.

Zoe had gone over how to deal with social drinking with her counselor.

“I’m not an alcoholic,” she had told her counselor over the phone.

“True, but you have a history of substance abuse and alcohol abuse. And you take medication for bipolar disorder.”

“Wow, you make my life sound so rosy.”

“I’m just trying to mirror the facts for you.”

“Mirror, mirror on the wall . . .” Zoe trailed off. “So I can have one drink? Just so I don’t stick out?”

“There’s no exact rulebook. You have to learn to know yourself and what you can handle. You might very well find you can’t drink at all.”

John raised his glass. “To surviving a hair-pulling!”

They clinked glasses.

“You know, I really thought I was going to hate working at Narrow Lane.” Zoe gave a quick sidelong glance at Kirsten, to make sure she wasn’t offended. She’d already tempered what she really had felt, which was that at first she
had
hated working at Narrow Lane. “I mean, I just didn’t understand how important therapeutic riding is. I guess I was just scared and worried about what I was going to see and that was really stupid.”

“A lot of people feel that way,” Kirsten kindly offered. “It’s a pretty normal feeling.”

“But the work you do is amazing.” Zoe looked at Kirsten meaningfully. “Really, it’s amazing.”

“Thank you.” Kirsten straightened in her seat like she was really pleased. “That means a lot coming from you. John told me all about how accomplished a rider you are. I don’t really follow horse showing at all.”

Horse showing—the way she referred to it drove home just how much Kirsten didn’t know about Zoe’s world. It was funny how two people could work with horses but have two completely different experiences.

“It’s great that you’re branching out and seeing these kids with the horses,” Kirsten added. “I’m sure it’s off-base but show people kind of have a reputation for being elitist assholes.”

“Some are elitist assholes,” Zoe said, laughing. She was glad to deflect the conversation away from her ‘branching out’ because of course she hadn’t exactly branched out voluntarily. Something Kirsten knew since every week she had to sign her timesheet. But something John might not yet know. “But some people are really great and do a lot of charity work.”

“I guess it’s just like any world—all kinds of people,” John put in.

Zoe asked Kirsten how she got into riding. She told her how she’d started at a local lesson barn and then had gotten involved with Pony Club, working up to earning her C-2 rating.

“I’m sure all the things I’ve done would sound crazy to you,” Kirsten said. “You’ve probably never been out of a ring.”

“Hey now,” Zoe said, trying to make light of the obvious chip on Kirsten’s shoulder. “Actually I grew up on a farm with acres to ride over and a pond where we’d take the ponies swimming.”

Zoe caught herself, feeling the familiar closing of her throat. She was almost transplanted back to that awful day that changed her life forever. The feel of her pony underneath her as she rode bareback around the pond shouting Brayden’s name till her voice hurt. Then, later, the emergency responders searching the water. Eventually the ambulance pulling out silently.

She never took her ponies swimming again.

“Well, I’m glad to hear you’re different than a lot of the horse show people,” Kirsten said.

So many people that rode in other disciplines or showed only locally thought all show circuit riders could do was ride perfectly prepared horses around eight jumps set in straight lines. Yes, it was true of some percentage of the circuit but not all. Yet, Zoe didn’t have the energy to try to explain more of that to Kirsten. Not now.

More people entered the pub, stopping in for a drink or bite to eat after work. Soon it had that nice amount of noise, enough to make a place feel popular but not so loud you couldn’t talk without screaming.

After she finished her drink, Kirsten said she really had to get home. Her kids would be waiting for help with homework and her husband had probably burned dinner.

Zoe could tell this was a stretch for Kirsten—that she didn’t usually stray from her routine of Narrow Lane and her home life. She felt oddly touched that she’d even come out for a drink at all.

Zoe wasn’t sure whether this meant she and John should leave too. She moved to get up when Kirsten did and Kirsten said, “We said two drinks. Don’t leave because of me.”

John made no movement toward leaving so Zoe sat back down. She’d only drank a quarter of her drink, pacing herself. Kirsten left a twenty-dollar bill on the table and said good-bye, and that she’d see them the next day.

“She’s nicer than I thought when I first met her,” Zoe said, after she’d gone. “I guess a lot of my first assumptions were wrong.”

“Kirsten’s really great. She doesn’t exactly rake it in doing what she does but she loves it and she’s so good with the kids.”

“She really is,” Zoe agreed.

“You’re pretty good with them too,” John said. “Molly really likes you.”

“I like them a lot. I never thought I would. I mean I like helping kids in the show world and so I guess it’s not that different. I used to love helping Jamie with the pony kids and I really like helping Linda with Dakota.”

“Maybe you should be a trainer. Have a barn full of pony kids.”

“I don’t know. I also love to show. I don’t think I could give that up and to be a really great trainer you kind of need to do just that. What about you? Do you ever want to have customers?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe someday.”

“You’d have to go to more shows. Why don’t you go to more now?”

John fiddled with his beer bottle. “I haven’t really had the right horses.”

“That doesn’t stop most people.”

John laughed. “That’s true but I only want to be in the ring if I have a chance. I don’t want to make a fool out of myself.”

“Young horses guarantee you’ll make a fool out of yourself. Plus, even the best riders totally mess up sometimes.”

“You can say that because you’re
one
of the best riders . . . it’s easy for you to say it’s not a big deal to mess up . . .”

“I don’t think anyone would say I’m one of the best riders right now. I haven’t been in a show ring for weeks.”

John didn’t ask if she wanted another drink. Maybe he knew about her history. Or maybe the two drinks thing had just been metaphorical.

Either way, Zoe was grateful because thinking back about the pond and Brayden was making her really want to have another. And then another. And another. She really wanted to get wasted. To make the thoughts in her head go away.

“I feel like we didn’t really show at the same shows as juniors . . . who did you ride with again?” Zoe said. Maybe if she kept talking to him, the suffocating feeling she had would go away.

“We showed at the same shows sometimes. You just don’t remember me,” John said.

“Really? I think I’d remember you if we had.”

“I wasn’t very good.”

“First of all, I find that hard to believe. And second of all, girls at the shows—we notice guys. Every single one of them. They kind of stick out.”

“I rode with Kelly Saver. Do you know her?”

Zoe shook her head.

“She’s more of a local trainer. We did some of the same shows you did, like Vermont, but we were basically nobodies.”

“That’s not a very nice way to talk about yourself,” Zoe pointed out.

“It is what it is. Kelly was a good trainer but it was more of a local program and my family didn’t have any money.”

“Did you do the eq or what?”

“I did a little bit of everything. I rode whatever she had for me. I never owned my own horse. My parents couldn’t afford it. I qualified for all the eq finals my last year but the horse I rode was really green. My biggest claim to fame was winning the Connecticut Junior Medal Finals.”

“Well, that’s something.”

“Not compared to everything you’ve won.”

“You know I like pretty much choked my last year at all the eq finals, right?”

“You were fifth in the Medal. That’s pretty good to me.”

Zoe couldn’t help but be surprised that he knew exactly what ribbon she’d gotten. “I was the kid who was supposed to
win
one of the finals. I’m sorry if it sounds like bad sportsmanship but fifth was nothing. Everyone knew I choked.”

“I get it,” he said. “But fifth still doesn’t sound bad to me. I was on the stand-by for a while for the Medal Finals my last year and that was like amazing to me. Kelly didn’t have kids go to the Medal Finals to begin with. Usually when someone got good enough they’d leave her.”

Zoe thought about it. It was true that she ran in such circles of the horse show world that she got spoiled. That it was win or nothing. That fifth in the Medal Finals felt like an epic fail.

It was healthy for her to be around someone like John and gain some valuable perspective. But at the same time if she wanted to be the best she couldn’t be happy with low ribbons or just making the stand-by for a while.

“Why didn’t you leave Kelly? I’m sure some other trainer would have taken you on as a working student. Especially since you’re a guy. I actually can think of a few trainers who would have
loved
to get their hands on you.” She widened her eyes, intimating nefarious behavior.

John shuddered. “You’re skeeving me out.”

“But seriously, you never got any trainers coming up to you at shows?”

“Maybe once or twice. But it wasn’t really in the cards for my family.” John took a sip of his beer. “This one time in Vermont, Kelly actually had a nice sales horse. I showed it in the junior hunters and she had me do the derby and I laid down this crazy good first round. I got a better score than you and I came back on top for the handy round, against all the professionals and you, and you were basically like a professional, even back then.”