Chapter Ten
Noah
For the most part, my first week as a bull riding coach was pretty uneventful—until Thursday, that is. As if I wasn’t already confused enough about what I wanted out of life, Jackson and Princess Laci only made it worse. I’ve always thought I was the kind of guy who never wanted to settle down and have kids, or even be in a real relationship, but on Thursday afternoon, I realized that it might be nice to have my own family one day.
Jackson and I were doing pushups together in my front yard, and I couldn’t stop myself from thinking that it would be a pretty gratifying experience to do this with a son of my own one day. Then Laci came up, huffing and puffing like the Big Bad Wolf, pressing that Jackson come to watch a mare give birth. When we arrived at the stables, the foal had already been born, but Laci got down on her knees and actually talked to the horse. I’d been under the impression that I was the only person in the world who ever did that. I have to admit, it was a major shocker to see the Princess chatting up the new mother like they mutually understood each other. She seemed comfortable around the animal—almost, dare I say, a natural.
I hoped she didn’t see me staring, but I was magnetized in that moment, drawn to her. I never imagined another person could actually share my passion for horses in that way. But it sure seemed that way at the moment. After that, she managed to shut up two guys in the middle of a full-blown teenage girl-like squabble. Owen (the moronic ranch hand) and I were going on about the best way to hang a tire swing—which, for the record, is from three points, not one—when Laci strutted up and tied the rope into a loop swing and completely disregarded the tire. I couldn’t tell if I wanted to throttle her or kiss her.
To top it all off, she made a damn good Arnold Palmer and winked at me in a way that filled my stomach with a ton of bricks. Suddenly, I was thinking back to the minute’s worth of time when it felt like she and I were Jackson’s oddly young parents. I felt like a total loon. Just a week before, I had been feeling like an ass for kissing Jaime and not wanting anything serious in my life. Now, there I was, envisioning myself doing just that with Laci. Not that I’d ever let on that I was thinking such things. The worst part was, this was a city girl, and the last thing I needed was her laughing in my face, then having to deal with her the rest of the summer. Still, my head was in a strange daze, and I couldn’t seem to shake it.
That night as I sat in the stable telling Ella all about it, I told myself over and over that I needed to snap out of it. When my phone rang, I was pulled out of my thoughts by “Flight of the Valkyries”—told you I love space—and I put the phone to my ear, not even looking at the caller ID.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Noah,” Sara’s filtered, but familiar, voice rang through the phone.
“Hey, Sara. What’s up?”
“Well,” she started, “I know you’ve been helping Jackson learn how to ride, but I have another job for you. If you’re up to it, that is.”
“And, that is?”
“Well, I had the pleasure of coming home to my go box missing.”
“What’s a go box?” I had to ask.
“Basically, it’s a little box that I keep, well, kept important things in just in case I needed to get up and go in a hurry. There were a few little trinkets that have personal meaning, but also a stack of cash I’ve been saving for about five years. It totaled up to several thousand dollars. If I didn’t need it for some emergency before the time came, I was going to use it toward Jackson’s college.”
I felt really bad for her, but a small part of me wondered who the hell kept that much money sitting in a box in their house as opposed to a bank. Then again, who am I to say she didn’t have a reason for it. “Well, damn, I’m sorry about that. Any idea what happened to it?”
“I think Owen stole it.” I knew the guy was bad news. “Jack said he saw him leaving just before I got back from the store, and he’s the only person not in the family that’s been here unsupervised. I went over to his house to check on him, and the door was unlocked, so I checked inside. His house is gutted. He’s gone.”
“What can I do to help?”
“Well, now we’re in a bit of a pickle. We need someone to help take care of the foal and break the stallion we got last month. If memory serves me correctly, you spent a lot of time doing that with your dad when you were younger, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, I did. I’d be happy to help. And, none of that secret payment where you slip money in my pocket while you hug me. I don’t need your money; I’m happy to do it for you guys,” I said with finality.
“Bless you, Noah. You’re an angel. I already talked to Jackson and told him that if you’re up to it, your bull riding lessons will need to be cut down to half a day so you can have time to help with the horses. But I can pay you and I will. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.”
“We’ll see about that,” I replied, “I’ll work with Jack in the morning, then I can help with the horses in the afternoon.”
“Thanks, honey. I really appreciate it. I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”
We said our goodbyes and she hung up.
I leaned against the door to Ella’s stall. “That means I’ll have to be around their ranch more often,” I said.
Ella blinked at me, and I took it to mean, “I think that’s a good thing.”
The next morning, I woke up and had a breakfast of eggs and grits with Jackson, then we went outside and spent the morning training grip strength by draping a towel over dumbbells and picking them up with one hand. Mine was a twenty-pound weight, Jackson’s weighed five pounds. The towel makes the dumbbell more slippery, which makes you have to grip harder. It’s one of the oldest grip strength tests in the book. We worked on that until lunch.
After grilled cheese and tomato soup, I headed out to Sara’s stables to start getting to know the horses a little bit better. Naturally, when I got there, Princess Laci was leaning against a wall, talking to Rosie.
“So, Rosie, what’s it like being a mommy?” I heard her say.
“Expecting her to answer you?” I asked, propped in the doorframe with my arms crossed over my chest. “I’d reckon she can’t speak human.”
Apparently, she wasn’t expecting anyone to be around because she jumped and whipped around in fright before realizing it was me. “Oh. You scared the crap out of me. And just so ya know, no, I wasn’t expecting her to say anything, not verbally, anyway. I just think there’s no better listener than a horse. What are you doing out here?”
“I wanted to get to know the horses a little better before I start trying to work with them. Since Owen’s an ass and disappeared, I’m taking over.”
“I hope you’re not actually going to break them.”
“Why not? What’s wrong with training a horse?”
“There’s a very distinct difference between training and breaking,” she said in a very matter-of-fact tone.
“And, that is?”
“Well, training a horse is just that—teaching them to do certain things.” The way she was speaking sounded like she was explaining it to a stupid child. “Breaking, on the other hand, not so much. The way I see it, training is a mutual give and take. You work with each other to achieve a common goal. Breaking is when you become a dictator and force them to do what you want. Like if you’re potty-training a kid, you wouldn’t scream at them every time they peed themselves until they stopped just for the sake of not getting yelled at anymore. You’d teach them the potty is for peeing in, and show them it’s a good thing to use it so they don’t need to have their clothes changed every five seconds.”
“I can’t believe you just compared training a horse to a two-year-old crappin’ his pants.”
She scoffed and rolled her eyes. “Well, how else was I supposed to say it?”
“You could’ve stopped after the dictator line, and I would’ve understood it just fine.”
“Fine. So, are you going to be a Hitler, or are you going to be a Dalai Lama?”
“The Buddhist one,” I answered. Just being around her was making my heart beat a little faster than I would’ve liked, let alone hearing her talk that way about horses and the way they should be respected. I pushed the feeling down and kept a steely composure. “Now, if ya don’t mind?”
“Not at all,” she said, turning to leave the barn. “By the way, you might wanna look into this new-fangled thing the kids are using these days—it’s called antiperspirant.”
I looked at my armpits and, sure enough…sweat marks. Guess I didn’t play it as cool as I thought. “It is the middle of June in Alabama!” I called after her.
“And, there’s a breeze!” she called back, not looking over her shoulder.
She disappeared inside as I looked at Rose and Lisa.
“Do you like her as much as I do?” I hated myself for asking the question, but I needed to get it off my chest. Lisa turned her head, and I continued. “There’s just something about her. Sass, class, and a great ass.” I laughed. “I mean, that’s definitely true, but when it comes down to it, I can see that she’s got a good head on her shoulders, you know? On the surface, she’s all the things I don’t want—a city girl, an actress, a little too stubborn for her own good, and she’s not stickin’ around. But deeper than that, she’s funny, she’s smart, and she feels things a lot more deeply than she lets on; I can tell.”
I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was that drove me crazy about her. Or why it started all of a sudden, like a switch was flipped. I’d been involved with Jaime for over two years and never felt this knot in my stomach as I found myself feeling around Laci. Like I said, though, I’d never tell her that. I planned on pushing it down until August when I would leave for the PBR circuit again. Then I’d throw myself into that and get a laser beam focus going until I forgot about her. Easy as taking candy from a baby.
“Hey there,” Sara called out as she walked into the stables. “Something told me you were out here, trying to get to know my babies a little bit.”
“Yep, that’s exactly it,” I replied.
“And how do you plan to go about that?”
“Well, talking to them.”
“Expecting them to respond?” She grinned.
“I’m getting the sneakin’ suspicion you talked to Laci.”
“Whatever gave you that idea?” she asked sweetly.
“Lucky guess. So, to what do I owe the pleasure, dear Sara?”
“Oh, I’m just coming around to pick your brain,” she said with a sly smile.
“About what?” I questioned suspiciously.
She stared at me for a few moments. There were a couple of times she started to speak, but stopped during the first word like she was changing her mind. This went on for about a minute when she seemed to decide what she wanted to say, and that was, “What do you want?”
“Hmm. A cheeseburger and a ninety-five ride would do.”
“Good to know,” she said. “But, I meant what do you want out of life?”
That was an unexpected question. “Why the sudden existential crisis?”
“I’m just thinking about Lisa and Brad and how they were so happy and alive one day, and gone the next.” I could tell this was about to get really heavy really fast, and weirdly enough, that didn’t bother me. “I can’t talk to Laci about it because I don’t want to upset her. She seems to finally be starting to get over the hump, and if I start talking about this with her, it might pull her straight back down. So, what do you want out of life?”
I was still confused about that earlier feeling concerning whether or not I wanted to settle down and have a family, but I knew one thing was for sure. Everything I wanted in life boiled down to one simple statement, so I cleared my throat and said it: “I want to be happy.”
“Aren’t you happy now, sweetheart?” It must be a mom thing to instantly assume you’re unhappy when you say something like what I’d just said because her response is exactly what my mom probably would’ve said. A chuckle bubbled up in my chest and I let it out.
Sara, however, frowned. “That doesn’t answer my question.”
“Yes. I am. But I mean, who doesn’t want more out of life? I’ve always been an adrenaline junkie, for one. My bucket list’s got at least a hundred things on it that are all geared towards me getting an adrenaline rush. The top thing’s to go skydiving. But beyond that, I’m starting to realize that I want what my parents have. I want to fall in love. You know, just like in those awful romance novels with those half clothed couples on the cover. I want a woman to be crazy about me and allow me to spoil her, and I want a white picket fence to keep my kids and golden retriever safe.”
“You’re still young, sweetie. You’ve got plenty of time to find all of that. But what about bull riding? You didn’t even mention that.”
“Oh, don’t get me wrong, I want to make it to the top. I want to be the best there is and have my kids be proud of their daddy. I remember that when I was little. I spent all my time hoping I could be as great as my dad one day. I thought being a bull rider—and such a good one, at that—was the world’s coolest, manliest job. I guess I kinda want to have a son to look at me one day with that same kind of admiration, you know? I want him to tell kids on the playground that his dad can kick their dad’s ass and that nobody’s braver or stronger.”
“Mmhm,” she responded with a small nod. She looked as though she was really thinking hard about something, so I shut up and waited for her to speak again. When she did, she asked the heavy-hitting question: “And, why is it so important for you to come off as the manliest man there is?”
“Why’d you really come out here?” I used my favorite tactic to avoid letting myself think too much—answering a question with a question.
“I told you, to pick your brain.”
“About my masculinity complex?”
“If that’s what you want to call it.”
“Look, I’m not trying to be rude, Sara, I think you know that. But why does it matter to you?”
“Because you like Laci.”
Can mothers read minds? Unwilling to give up the truth about that crucial bit of information, I picked at a spot on the bridle I had in my hands and thought of the best response. “What makes you say that?”
“Just a lucky guess,” she smirked. “Plus, I see the way you look at her. You try to hide it, but there’s a little sparkle in your eye that you just can’t mask.”
“Uh…sparkle?”
“Believe it or not, my mom’s a real romantic at heart. She used to always tell us when we were younger that you can learn everything you need to know about someone by looking in their eyes. Maybe you haven’t realized it yet, but you like her.”
Good, I thought. If she thinks I haven’t realized it, I can ride that. “I don’t think so.”
“Trust me, sweetie, you do.” She started to walk away, eerily like the way Laci had, and said, “Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell her.”
With that, she was gone.
I stood there for a moment, wondering what the hell just happened, but quickly came to the realization that I probably wasn’t going to figure it out. So, I focused on what I was there to do. Get to know the horses. And what better way was there to get to know the horses than to see what they could do? I took Greg out of his stall and put a saddle on him. It was obvious from the get-go that he wasn’t a fan of it, but, at least, it was something I could work with. I put the bit in his mouth and started to lead him around a little, trying to let him stretch his legs and get used to my presence before I mounted him. When I touched his muzzle and he didn’t flinch or shy away, I figured that was as good a time as any. I put my foot in the stirrup, and in one swift motion, I was on his back. He was taller than Ella, and a hell of a lot less experienced—obviously since I was supposed to be training him. He didn’t like it when I tried to get him to speed up. Instead, he dug his heels in and stopped each time I nudged him.
I let him walk around at his own pace for a minute while I thought. Laci had a point. I had to make sure I trained him instead of breaking him. I wondered if the term “breaking” had actually come from “breaking” someone’s spirit. Judging by the way Laci had explained it, that would make sense. I leaned down to have a little chat with Greg as I rode. “Alright, buddy, my goal here is to make you into the best horse you can be, okay? I want to be your Dalai Lama, not your Hitler.” I rubbed him along the neck and gave him a small nudge with my heels. To my surprise, he started to speed up a little bit.
“It’s almost like you can understand me,” I said aloud. “Like you heard me say I want to work with you instead of making you do all the work.”
I guess she knows what she’s talking about, after all.
I took Greg on a couple of laps around the pasture, then took off his saddle and led him back to his stall. “That’s enough for today,” I told him. “You did a great job. Princess Laci knows more than I gave her credit for.”
“You’re damn right I do,” a voice crooned.
I spun around. “Jesus, Laci, don’t sneak up on a guy like that,” I spit out.
Her lips turned up with a sly grin that made me wonder what they tasted like. “Sorry,” she said softly.
“What are you doing back out here? Come to give me tips on personal hygiene?”
“Actually, I wanted to apologize,” she said.
“Again? What for this time?”
“For being kinda bitchy.”
“You already apologized for that,” I pointed out.
“Not properly. I never told you exactly why I was being that way.”
“Oh?”
Well, this was going to be good.