Hannah & Chris: Before the Circuit (Show Circuit Series Book 0) Read online

  “Bein Sur,” he said as he grabbed a lid and handed it to me.

  I didn’t know what to say back. Was he using French because he remembered me from French class? That seemed nearly impossible since no one noticed me. Or did he just use French with everyone who got yogurt?

  I gave him my money and he made the change. I stood looking at him for a few moments wondering whether I should say something before I left, or at least say thank you in French and see if he said something back about French class. My lips refused to move and I just grabbed my change and left.

  “Au revoir,” I heard him call as I was half-way out the door.

  The girls giggled. Was it about him speaking French to me, or something completely unrelated to me? I just wanted to go home and hide.

  On my way home from the barn the next day, my phone rang. It startled me a little since I didn’t get many calls. I looked at the screen: Dad. What could he want?

  “I’m glad I caught you,” he said when I answered.

  It was just like my dad not to bother with any niceties. No hello. No what’s going on? And really, catch me? Like I was ever hard to catch. He was the one who was hard to catch. He lived on the West Coast and was always running from meeting to meeting. He was Mr. Big Executive. Sometimes it was nearly impossible to believe he’d ever been married to Mom, who barely left the house.

  He cut right to the chase. “Since you haven’t exactly been proactive about your summer plans, I went ahead and set something up for you.”

  “Really? What?” I braced myself. I was hesitantly excited. Someone had a plan for me! Because God knows I didn’t. At the same time knowing my dad it would be an internship with a company in Boston. A company owned by some business contact of his. The problem was I didn’t like businesses like Ryan did. “Because I actually had an idea of one thing I could do. I was thinking I could go to Vermont for a week or two, to ride.”

  I came to a red light on what was a one-lane road.

  “We’re on the same page,” Dad said. “You’re going to Vermont, for the circuit.”

  I was a little daunted by the idea of going away for the whole seven-week circuit but it was certainly better than some office job he might have gotten for me. “Great,” I said, thinking positively. Never mind that Logan was difficult and I didn’t really like riding him since more than half the time he stopped at the jumps. I tried to think about spending the weeks with Zoe and Jed. Zoe said it would be fun. Seven weeks was a long time, but maybe it’d be good for me.

  “You’ll be taking care of Logan too,” Dad said.

  I clutched the phone harder. The traffic light changed color and I didn’t move. The car behind me beeped and then I stepped on the gas too hard to compensate and shot forward. “What do you mean?” Did he mean like giving him carrots and going to the tack store to order things he might need?

  “Taking care of him. Cleaning his stall—mucking it, isn’t that what they call it? Feeding him. Tacking him up.” Dad said these things like they were matter of fact, like it wasn’t crazy-talk.

  “Dad, the grooms do all that. That’s part of what you pay for. You’ve seen the bills . . . It’s called day care.”

  The road turned to two lanes and the car behind me flew passed. The driver shot me an annoyed look.

  “Of course I’ve seen the bills. I pay the bills. Do you think your mother pays the bills? This time you’re not having a groom. You are doing the day care. And the night care. All the care.”

  Heat pricked my skin. I thought of the baby-faced groom putting on Logan’s boots. I couldn’t even put on his boots. I didn’t know how they went on. Or his tack. My horses had always been tacked up for me. “Are you kidding? What are you talking about? Everyone has grooms. No kid takes care of their own horse. Not one kid there.”

  “You’re eighteen. You’re not a kid anymore.”

  I tried a different tact. “What about Jamie? She’s okay with this?”

  “You have stalls near her. In the same tent. She’ll train you, same as always, but you’ll do all the barn work.”

  I decided to pull over onto the shoulder. I couldn’t think about all this and drive at the same time. I’d get in an accident.

  Jamie probably figured she’d humor Dad and by day two, he’d be changing his mind and getting me a groom. “This is ridiculous. Does Mom know about this?”

  “Yes, and you know your mother and I have wildly differing opinions on what’s good for you. It’s time for you to grow up and learn to take of yourself.”

  “Okay, myself, fine. I get that. But my horse too? I don’t know the first thing about it.”

  “You’ll learn fast. You’ll learn on the job.”

  “You never told me if I didn’t get a job you’d come up with some crazy plan. Give me a week. A few days. I’ll find a job. Maybe you have a business friend who could use a summer intern?”

  Now I was nearly begging for what I’d just been glad to avoid a few minutes earlier. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the idea of the horse show but take care of Logan? It was preposterous. Like suddenly giving me a newborn baby and saying, good luck you’re now a mom.

  “No, this is all set. The wheels are in motion. This will be good for you.”

  My chest felt tight. “So un-motion them. I could take classes? I bet Tufts has summer classes I could take. I could come into school in September with a few credits already.”

  “No go,” Dad said. “I know you can do this.”

  “I don’t think I can. I actually don’t.” My voice was bordering on hysterical.

  “That’s when we learn the most—when we’re challenged.”

  “What about when you’re in over your head? Like totally?”

  Dad laughed but I wasn’t trying to be funny.

  “I’m not Ryan,” I said. “I can’t conquer the world.”

  “I’m not asking you to conquer the world.”

  Vermont. Seven weeks, one horse, no groom. I tried to process it all.

  Dad rattled on some more about learning responsibility and accountability. Lots of words that ended in bility. Then, just like that, Dad had to take another call, and he was gone, leaving me on the side of the road, stunned. After a few moments, I put on my blinker and carefully pulled back out.

  When I burst through the front door Mom was on her laptop, no doubt posting on her Feathered Friends blog.

  “Mom!” I screamed, in full panic mode.

  “What?” Her hands flew up in the air and she jumped up from her seat.

  I usually tried to avoid getting hysterical around her. My main rule of Mom was to keep things calm so I didn’t flare her anxiety. But this was a different situation. This was unprecedented.

  “Dad said he talked to you about me taking care of Logan this summer in Vermont?”

  “I told him he was crazy,” Mom said.

  “I can’t take care of Logan. That’s what grooms are for. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t think he was serious. I think you’ll get up there and maybe you can get help from some of the grooms. Not like they’ll do all the work—”

  I cut her off. “No, if they’re not supposed to being doing it, why would they do it?” It was moments like these that I realized just how removed from reality my mother was. Her anxiety disorder kept her away from dealing with people in real life and therefore she had false ideas of the way the world worked.

  She started breathing so rapidly that I could hear her inhales and exhales. “I told your father it was ridiculous. It’s too much for you. You can’t do it. I just won’t let you go. You just won’t leave the house. The horse will go up there and you’ll stay here. You won’t go.”

  Mom was talking rapidly, her face pale. As much as I didn’t want to take care of Logan, I also couldn’t stand being the girl that Mom saw me as—helpless, clueless, fragile. Her words—you just won’t leave the house—scared me more than taking care of Logan for seven weeks ever could. If I couldn’t go out into the world and
take care of him, then could I really make it in college? Would I soon be moving home and commuting to Tufts for classes? Or enrolling in some on-line college?

  “You know what?” I said, regaining my calmness. All of a sudden, I was perfectly Zen. Everything was clear to me. I would not become my mother.

  “I’ll be fine. I’ll figure it out.” I stole Dad’s line: “We learn the most when we’re challenged.”

  “Really?” Mom said.

  “Yes,” I declared. “Really.”

  Chris

  Chris had on his breeches and show shirt, but instead of his helmet, he wore a ball cap with Willow’s Edge Farm, the farm of the owner of every horse in his stable. He worked exclusively for Harris Delaney, earning a generous yearly salary. Harris didn’t ride—he just owned several top show jumpers and several younger prospects. Chris probably should have been wearing one of his sponsor’s hats, Equifit or Animo, but Harris liked him to wear gear with his farm’s name on it whenever he was doing promotional events. Typical for an owner he was steadfastly egotistical.

  Chris was the first of the riders to arrive for the autograph session. He was nothing if not punctual. There was one of those little cards with his name on it next to a pile of printed photographs of him and Nova. He’d seen the list of who else was signing on the information Devon had sent him but he glanced down the table to see where the others were sitting. Dieter Hoffmann, the German star who now worked for an American family, was down on the far end of the table. Birdie Ross, the perennial Olympian and fan favorite, was next to Dieter. Of course, who was next to him? Mary Beth McCord. Not only did he have to be at the signing with her, he had to sit right freaking next to her. The first time he’d see her in person since he’d walked in on her with another man. Perfect. Just perfect.

  They’d been at Kentucky Spring. They had separate hotel rooms but most nights they slept in the same bed. Every now and then they’d spend the night apart before a big class. Mary Beth had brought her iPad over to Chris’s barn to show him a horse she was considering flying to Europe to try. It was a nice one. A seven-year-old with amazing scope and some good classes already under his belt. The horse was in the stable of an American rider who now lived in Holland. The expat rider thought this horse was going to make up to be a top international horse and Chris agreed with him.

  Mary Beth had ridden all her horses that day and wasn’t showing so she told him she was going back to her hotel room, catch up on some paperwork, and maybe even take a nap.

  She inadvertently left her iPad on a tack trunk and Chris found it when he went to grab a different bit from the bit trunk. He picked it up and flipped it open, just to make sure it was hers, even though he knew it was. That was the moment things changed forever. If he hadn’t flipped it open, he might never have found out. But there they were—staring him in the face. Texts back and forth between Mary Beth and John Burke. John Burke, the admittedly good-looking course designer and jumper judge who went mostly by the nickname Burkie. Chris hadn’t ever had any particular reason to dislike Burkie. He was a friendly guy with a tinge of a good old boy attitude. He was from the South, a third generation horseman. He’d ridden a little as a junior but then steered more toward the management side of the horse shows, eventually focusing on course designing and judging.

  Chris stood there, his hands gripping the iPad tightly. He never would have thought to try to snoop on her phone. He had no idea, not the slightest inkling, that she was messing around on him. How much of an idiot did that make him? She must not have realized her texts came through on the iPad too, or she’d have been more careful with it.

  When can I see you again? Burkie had written. Been thinking about you all day.

  Going back to my hotel room now. I’m free for a few hours. Come on over? Like in forty minutes?

  Not sure I can wait that long.

  Make it twenty.

  Chris never imagined he’d be the type of guy to show up at a hotel room door, banging hard with his fist and yelling, “I know you’re in there with him.” If he’d been asked beforehand the hypothetical question, “What would you do if you found out your girlfriend was cheating on you?” like sometimes people asked when they were bored to make conversation, he would have said, “I’d tell her I knew and it was over.” The obvious follow-up question would be, “Could you ever forgive her?” He would have answered: no. Simple as that. But then it had happened—his girlfriend had cheated on him. And he’d gone all Commando banging on the door so he could catch them in the act and see what Mary Beth had to say for herself. Thankfully, he didn’t actually see them doing it. But he did bang on the door harder when she told him to wait a minute and finally she opened the door and she was just wearing a T-shirt and panties and behind her near the bed was Burkie in jeans and no shirt.

  At least she hadn’t said something stupid like, “It’s not what it looks like,” or “I can explain this.” She knew better than to try any of that bullshit. Instead, she said, “This is bad.” Which it was. He knocked over a lamp and kicked a decent hole in the dresser—again, totally not what he thought he would have done, not how he would have predicted he’d act. She would have to pay for the damages, but Mary Beth had the money, and he didn’t care that he’d broken things. He didn’t beat up Burkie, or even threaten to. He wasn’t so angry at him, although he didn’t exactly want to hug the guy either. But he was more pissed that the wonderful life he and Mary Beth seemed to have constructed was gone, obliterated in a single moment. Ripped apart in less time than it took to complete a jump-off.

  After he’d kicked the dresser, he said, “If there was any doubt, we’re done.”

  But that was the second surprising thing that happened. Even though he’d said they were done and he followed through on that right away, separating his life from hers immediately, he still thought about taking her back.

  “Chris,” Mary Beth said as she breezed in.

  God damn it, of course she looked amazing. Her thick, glossy hair fell down over her fleece jacket. Then she smiled at him. It was a tentative smile, not one of her all-out grins, but still it rocked his world a little. There was something about this girl that did him in. Maybe it was that she was his first real love. And the first girl he’d had sex with. The one who took all his daydreams about sex from just that—daydreams—to reality. He remembered the sheer amazingness of her, naked, lying next to him. How he could touch any part of her body and it was happening in real life! Their relationship hadn’t always been seamless. They broke up for a few months, got back together, broke up again, got back together again. But none of those times were because she cheated on him, at least not that he knew about, although now he had to wonder. Now he was nearly grateful for those few months without her because it meant that a) she wasn’t the only girl he’d ever slept with (there was one during each of their break-up periods) and b) he could imagine life without her. Well, sort of.

  The killer was he had thought this time was for keeps, the real deal. They’d been together for two years straight and he’d thought they’d put the on-again-off-again drama of their teen years behind them. That had been their teenage relationship and he liked to think they’d moved on to a more adult relationship. He’d even begun to imagine a future where they got married. Like not super soon, but in a few years, maybe when they were 26 or 27. That seemed like a good age. They’d plan the wedding for the only real downtime show jumping riders possibly had: late fall. They probably still wouldn’t go on a honeymoon—maybe just an abbreviated few days away. But then she’d gone and slept with Burkie. And now Chris had to pretend that he could handle seeing her again and showing against her. It will get easier with time, he told himself. It has to.

  “Hey, MB,” he said. He never usually called her that. He left that nickname for others but now it seemed a good way to add distance. He was one of the others. “How’s it going?” Act casual, real casual. That was his plan.

  “The horses are great. Going well. That part’s good.” She paus
ed and then gave him what seemed like an apologetic look. “I miss you, though. Like crazy.”

  What he wanted to say was: well, you should have considered that before you put another man’s dick inside you. What he said was: “I guess we better sit down and get out our pens.”

  Before he would have pulled out her chair for her—been all gentlemanly and polite. Now he just sat down. Let her fend for herself. He neatened his pile of photos and tested out his pen. Soon Dieter and Birdie arrived and said their hellos. The PR person from the show, a young woman probably about Chris’s age, delivered bottles of water to each of them. A few people had come to stand in a small clump five or so feet away from the signing table, as if there was an invisible rope that needed to be taken down, or a buzzer yet to go off, signaling the start of the autograph session.

  “Come on up,” the PR person encouraged the waiting fans. Some clutched show programs; others T-shirts and hats. One held a horse shoe. “We’re ready for you.”

  The five or so people assembled all bee-lined for Birdie and Dieter, leaving Chris and Mary Beth with no one in front of them.

  “How’s Nova going?” Mary Beth asked.

  Chris twisted the top off the bottle of water and took a sip. He played with the cap, turning it over in his hands. “He had a good school last week. What about Bravo?”

  The truth was that Nova hadn’t schooled well at all. If Mary Beth hadn’t slept with Burkie, Chris would have been grateful to tell her everything that was going on with Nova. The horse wasn’t unsound. He seemed fine around the barn. But when Chris jumped him, something seemed off. He wasn’t getting across his oxers the way he usually did, and he kept having back rails. Chris had resorted to trying to sharpen him up during his last jump school, and then afterward he felt terrible about it. Nova was naturally careful and a tryer. He had never been the lackadaisical type of horse you had to tune up before classes. Chris had the vet out to make sure everything was right, and he couldn’t find anything wrong. He even scoped him and took blood to check for Lyme’s. Nothing. Chris felt certain the horse had just simply done too many classes. He had nearly begged Harris to skip Devon and save the horse for Europe. But Harris loved Devon, he said. He couldn’t bear not to have Nova show there. Chris loved Devon too—it was one of his favorite U.S. shows for the spectator atmosphere. But he didn’t want to walk into the ring on a horse that didn’t feel right. Especially when that was his #1 horse.