Winter Circuit (The Show Circuit -- Book 2) Read online

  “See, even just saying that, that’s… that’s, like the perfect thing to say.”

  Chris shook his head. “I’m missing something here. You’re upset because I’m saying the right thing?”

  The car had warmed up and he reversed out of the parking spot, and headed out the barn driveway. It was already getting dark.

  We didn’t really conclude that line of discussion. It was like there wasn’t much else to say really. I felt inadequate next to Chris, not to mention worried that he’d wake up and realize he could do better than me. But I loved him for being so great all the same. The qualities I’d seen in him today were why I’d fallen in love with him.

  He drove me back to campus and we sat outside my dorm in his car for a time. He should have been kicking me out of the car because he had the whole entire drive back to Pennsylvania. But, of course, he didn’t say a word about having all those hours in the car alone ahead of him.

  We kissed for a while and he told me he was going to miss me. Sometime while we were kissing I started crying.

  “What’s wrong?” He lifted my chin and looked at me carefully. “I feel like I’m missing something that’s going on between us. Like I’m a step behind.”

  “Nothing’s going on,” I said through my tears. “I just miss you, that’s all. You’ve got this whole life going on—”

  “So do you,” Chris said.

  But he didn’t know that I didn’t, not really. Not like he did. And I wasn’t going to tell him. He’d think I was turning crazy, like my mother. Something I had begun to worry about myself.

  “I just miss you and I love you,” I said.

  “I love you too. I’ll come back and give another clinic. Or you’ll come to Florida for a weekend right after I get down there, okay?”

  I nodded, afraid that if I spoke, I’d start crying again.

  We kissed again and I climbed out of the car. I watched him drive away. As I saw his tail lights go out of view, I knew seeing him sporadically wasn’t enough for me. That what we were doing wasn’t working. That I couldn’t live with it. I wouldn’t survive continuing to feel this way. Something had to change.

  Chapter 6

  I called Ryan after I’d stopped crying and pulled myself together. If I had been like a normal nineteen-year-old I’d be on the phone with my best friend, but my older brother would have to do. And Ryan was always great about thinking through big issues—he was mature beyond his 22 years and could be logical and unemotional, always giving the best advice. It might not always be the advice I wanted to hear, but it was the best advice I would get on the subject.

  I caught him between meetings. In addition to going to college, Ryan was running two start-ups.

  “Hey, do you have a minute?” I asked when he picked up.

  “For you, always.”

  I loved my brother. I knew a lot of siblings had strained relationships but Ryan and I had always been close. Although we’d never said as much to each other, something about having lived through our parents’ divorce made us both realize that we had to hang on to each other. That parents could divorce but that your sibling was with you for life.

  “So you know how Dad dropped out of school to start his business…” I began.

  I’m sure that wasn’t what Ryan had expected me to launch into. “Yeah?” he said in a tentative voice.

  I wouldn’t mince words or give some big build up to what I’d been thinking of ever since I watched Chris’s car pull away. I announced, “I’m thinking of taking a semester off.”

  “To start a business?” Ryan asked.

  Unlike Dad and Ryan, I’d never been particularly entrepreneurial. Besides the occasional lemonade stand of my single-digit years, I’d never had a job. Taking care of Logan this past summer was the closest I’d come to a job, and I hadn’t been getting paid for it. But Logan had depended on me and that had to count for something.

  “No, to go to Florida. The winter circuit starts in January and goes through April. Logan’s going to be there.”

  “And Chris’ll be there.” Ryan pointed out the obvious.

  “Yup.”

  “So what will you be doing there exactly?” Ryan asked.

  “Um, I don’t know. I haven’t thought through that part yet.”

  “Well, you better.”

  I was relieved Ryan didn’t tell me I was crazy. But he wasn’t saying it was a brilliant idea either. He was pointing out how my plan was flawed and needed further consideration.

  “Do you think Dad’ll go for it?” I asked.

  “No,” he said plainly.

  “Why not? He dropped out of college. I’d just be taking a semester off.”

  “He dropped out of college to start a business that made him millions. Right now it sounds like you want to take a semester off to be with your boyfriend.”

  “And Logan.”

  “I’m sorry, your boyfriend and your horse. Sounds like an old Tom Petty song to me. I’m sorry to be harsh but you know I don’t sugar-coat.”

  I was silent for a few moments. Then, I admitted, “You’re right.”

  “So what are you going to do about it?” Ryan said. “If you really want to go, you have to make it sound better. You have to make it something Dad will understand.”

  “You mean I have to get a job. A real, paying job.”

  There was nothing our dad liked more than kids having real jobs and responsibilities. It was why he loved Ryan, who had been holding jobs and starting companies since he was nine and founded his own sneaker customization business. He hired two kids who were amazing artists but were basically dorks to decorate sneakers and took a fee for arranging their bookings. Dad’s feeling that kids needed to strive and claw their way through childhood was why I drove him crazy. It was why he’d sent me to Vermont last summer on my own. He had this whole theory on how America was killing its future generations by setting them up in cushy dorm rooms complete with PlayStations and cable TV, too many choices at the dining halls, and abstract think-tank classes that introduced no practical skills. I had to appeal to that line of thinking.

  “Thanks, Ryan,” I told him. “I’ll let you get back to running the world.”

  “Haha,” he said. “Catch ya later.”

  I clicked off with Ryan and looked around my dorm room. Maybe my dad was right. We college students were too spoiled for our own good. Our lives were too comfortable. Look at Chris. He had chosen a profession where if you didn’t have gobs of money you had to work hard, really hard. He was up at the crack of dawn every day, riding and teaching, all so he could perhaps get back to having a top horse again. He was willing to pay his dues and climb the ladder if it got him to the top. If he got knocked down again, he’d just start back up. How many people did I go to school with that I could say that of?

  So I needed a job. And it was late in the season to be finding one. I was certain most everyone had their Florida plans all buttoned up. Grooms, exercise riders. What could I possibly do for work? Could I work in a mobile tack store? Could I get a job in the office at the horse show? But who wanted to be stuck inside when I could be working with horses somehow? I wasn’t a good enough rider to get a job riding—that was for sure. But I had proven myself to be a pretty good groom. And I had come to love taking care of Logan. But that was one horse. Would I really cut it if I had four horses to take care of?

  I didn’t have a ton of contacts in the horse show world and I didn’t want to ask Chris for help. If I pulled this off, I would surprise him with the amazing news that I was coming for circuit. Jed was enjoying college life at NYU and he’d said a few weeks ago he didn’t think he was going to show at all this winter. Zoe and I weren’t talking, of course. Jamie hated me. So that pretty much left Mike. Mike was Jamie’s head groom. He and I had become unlikely friends in Vermont. He’d taught me all about taking care of a horse and was always there to bail me out of trouble.

  I texted him right away. Hi Mike! I’m thinking of coming to WEF for the winter. Catc
h is, I need a job!! I know it’s late to find one but I thought you might know of someone looking for a groom?

  A few minutes after I had pressed send, my phone rang. Mike’s voice was deep and grainy when I picked up, “Hannah! What the hell happened to college?”

  I laughed. Classic Mike. Mike was one of the only white grooms left on the circuit anymore, having been replaced first by Mexicans and then by Brazilians. Mike was burley and brusque but underneath that exterior he was a sweetheart.

  “Nothing. I’m still in college. But I miss the show world. I miss Logan.”

  “You miss Chris,” Mike said.

  “That too.”

  “So what are you going to do about college?”

  “Take a semester off. Like a work-program thing. Maybe I can even get partial credit.”

  That last part was a total fib. There was no way I’d get credit for working in Florida but Mike might not know that and it sounded good.

  “You don’t want to groom,” Mike announced.

  “Why not? I loved taking care of Logan and I got pretty good at it, right? Didn’t I?”

  “You did,” Mike said. “But you’re not a groom. Grooming’s tough and circuit is like the worst. The longest days. So much pressure. Trust me when I say you don’t want to groom.”

  Part of me wanted to rise to the challenge, to prove I could do it. But selfishly I didn’t want to be so physically exhausted each night that I couldn’t spend time with Chris. I also didn’t want to be so busy during the days that I could never watch Chris ride.

  “Okay, I believe you,” I told Mike. “So is there anything else I can do, something with the horses in some way? Like a barn manager maybe, even though I don’t know the first thing about that?” I hoped Mike wasn’t offended that I thought I could be a barn manager when I had only weeks of experience taking care of one horse, my own, to his years caring for multiple horses at a time.

  “Hmmm,” Mike said, seemingly unoffended. “Let me make a call or two. I heard about something—I’m not sure the position’s still open. Let me see.”

  “Okay, that would be great,” I said. “Thank you so much, Mike!”

  “It’s good to hear from you, kiddo.”

  Mike wasn’t that much older than me but to him I guess I was a kiddo. He was a horse show groom by trade, working endlessly for little pay. I was a spoiled college girl who could play horse show when she wanted.

  “Hey,” I said. “One more thing. How’s Zoe?”

  I couldn’t believe I was asking about her after the way she’d burned me. But I knew that she was troubled and I still worried about her sometimes. She hadn’t done nearly as well at the eq finals as she’d hoped to. She’d only finished fifth in the Medal Finals, and didn’t place in the Maclay, Washington, or Talent Search, when she’d been thought of as a contender to win at least one of the finals. It was her last chance at the finals and the win or a top ribbon would have helped as she moved into the professional ranks. I had no idea what she was doing now.

  “Haven’t seen her in a few weeks. After the National, she went back home to Virginia. I’m trying to keep my distance, if you know what I mean.”

  In Vermont it had been clear to anyone with eyes that Mike was in love with Zoe. He would be good for her too. But Zoe thought he was beneath her and spent the summer flirting with him only when she needed to feel good about herself and then sleeping with a dirt-bag Irish grand prix rider.

  “Is she going to work for Jamie this winter?”

  “I don’t think so. She said she had some job offers but I don’t know if any of those were real or just her talking,” Mike said.

  Mike and I finished up our conversation. He said he’d call me back when he knew more. I just hoped there was a job out there with my name written all over it. A job that would bring me three glorious months with Chris.

  Chapter 7

  Chris and I had resumed our “everything’s-fine” long distance relationship but I think he now knew everything wasn’t fine. I blamed my picking a fight, overall moodiness, and crying jag on the stress of my classes and upcoming finals, and maybe he believed me.

  Mike got back to me a few days later. He had only dug up one job and he said he had to warn me that, although it sounded good, it was working for a difficult family. The job description wasn’t exactly concrete—more like a smattering of responsibilities. One part babysitter, one part extra set of hands around the barn, one part exercise rider. The job was with a family whose daughter had just moved out of the ponies. They had a private trainer, whom I’d never heard of, but that didn’t mean much since I didn’t know that many trainers. Mike said the trainer was in her early thirties and nice. She hadn’t been working for the family for that long, just over a year. The parents were okay, Mike said, but they weren’t around much. It was the girl who had a reputation as spoiled and difficult, a regular pony princess.

  “They have a farm off the show grounds, totally gorgeous, with housing there. They want someone to live with the girl when the parents aren’t there—make sure she gets to the ring on time, gets to tutoring, maybe even help her with her homework. I thought you’d be good at that part. You also will probably help the trainer flat the horses, and pitch in around the barn. You get free housing and a salary.”

  “It sounds perfect!” I told Mike. Somehow I tuned out the part about the girl being difficult. I mean how bad could a thirteen-year-old be, anyway? I was perfect for this job and it was perfect for me. I’d get to be at the ring, at the barn, even ride a little. And I would be good at homework help.

  Mike gave me the contact info of the trainer, Linda Maro, and said to tell her he sent me. I called her immediately and was hired after she asked a few simple questions, one of which was, when can you start? I told her I would have to get back to her because of course there was the minor detail of getting my parents to say yes and getting whatever paperwork filed for school.

  I texted my dad asking if we could talk. This was a conversation I thought would be best conducted with a little advance warning. He told me he’d call me that afternoon. I had to say one thing about my dad—he always had time for me, or made time for me. There was never a time that I could remember when I’d needed to talk to him and he’d said he couldn’t that day. No matter what was going on in his business life—and there were certainly always big things going on with him—I was important to him.

  “What’s up?” he said when he called me.

  “Um, well, I wanted to talk to you about school… and life.”

  I was sitting in my sadly decorated dorm room. Van was out. Again. Through the thin walls I could hear the girls in the room next door, in the perfectly decorated dorm room. Their names were Jenny and Jen, or Kate and Katie, something like that. Becoming roommates seemed like their dream-come-true and I always saw them together in the halls and in the cafeteria. They seemed in love with college, in love with their friendship, in love with life. And it practically killed me. Now they were playing music and singing along and then bursting into peals of laughter.

  “That sounds ominous,” Dad said.

  “I’m not having a good time here,” I said. “I don’t know what I thought college would be like but it’s like I’m not getting what I’m supposed to out of it. You know how once you said that you thought college might be wasted on the young?” It was always a good idea in my opinion to try to quote my dad to my dad when setting up for an argument. “That you probably would have gotten a lot out of college if you’d worked for a few years first?”

  “Oh God,” Dad said. “Just lay it on me. You want to drop out? You want to join the circus? I thought you were my kid that was going to do everything by the book. Ryan was the one who was going to turn the world on its head, break all the rules. What happened to you?”

  “What happened was you sent me away to a horse show and made me take care of my own horse,” I said.

  “That was supposed to prepare you for college life.”

  We were both qu
iet for a moment. Then Dad said, “So what do you want? What are you asking for here?”

  What was the ask? What terms was I looking for? Dad always saw things through a business lens. Most people who approached him wanted him to invest in their business. They had a strategic plan, a profit-sharing idea. He wanted to know what mine was.

  “I don’t want to drop out. I want to take the semester off. I’ve got a job offer in Florida. It’s working for a family whose thirteen-year-old daughter rides. It would be taking care of the daughter, helping with the horses, exercise riding. I’d also be able to watch Logan. I miss him so much and I want to be a part of his development.”

  “And you’d be with Chris,” Dad said. Everyone I’d pitched my idea to—Ryan, Mike, Dad—had been quick to point that out.

  “Okay, yeah, that’s true but this isn’t all about him,” I fibbed.

  “I don’t care if it’s all about him or not,” Dad said. “Your mom’s going to flip out and say she doesn’t want you making decisions based on a man. But I’m not like that. I’m a realist. If this is what you want to do, I’m not going to come up with all the reasons why you can’t. I’m certainly not going to support you as you do it but if you want to pay your own way by having a job and you can make this work with the university, fill out whatever needs to be filled out, etc. then fine. You have my go-ahead.”

  I swallowed. So my salary would have to pay for everything I needed down there. Dad didn’t need to say as much but if I was hurting for money or anything, I couldn’t come to him.

  “Ask all the right questions when you do the paperwork,” Dad said. “If you lose your spot at school, I’m not going to step in and get it back for you. You’ll have to reapply or take some time off.”

  “Okay, I get it,” I said.

  “You’re old enough to make decisions like this for yourself but you need to make them in the stark light of day,” Dad said. “You need to realize what you’re getting yourself into and if you do, then that’s great.”

  “Okay.” I breathed a sigh of relief. I had gotten what I wanted. So why didn’t it feel like more of a victory? “Will you talk to Mom for me? You said it yourself, she’s going to flip.”