I needed a distraction before my head combusted from the thought of what I was feeling, what Riley made me want to feel. I didn’t want to feel.
“Right,” he said, like he realized we weren’t in a club, but in his father’s stable.
I led him to the tack room with our polish and cleaning supplies, teaching him what to use on what and the proper way to polish it. It was two hours later when we had the tack that needed the polishing done. I had calmed my thoughts and tucked away my feelings to a far forgotten corner of my mind, where they belonged.
“Well, that’s all I have for you today,” I told him.
“Are you sure? I’m serious. I want to take this seriously. I want to know all the things I should have known. I took advantage that I had your parents, Rodrigo, and you to help me.”
Whoa, while I was trying to suppress my feelings, he was openly expressing them now. He actually looked like he meant it. For once, Riley Reys was sincere, and I approved.
“That’s all I have for today. I know you mean well, but I didn’t learn everything I know overnight. Keep that enthusiasm. It will keep you going, even when you don’t have a dance party at work.”
He smiled in reference to the fun we had earlier.
“See you later,” I said, walking toward the trailer.
“Emma?”
“Yes, Riley?”
“I’m going out tonight. Would you want to come?” he asked.
His chest stopped moving. Was he holding his breath?
I sighed. He wouldn’t change if he kept up with his party boy lifestyle. But I wasn’t his mother, and I didn’t get to control his nightlife. I also didn’t want to put myself directly in his destructive path. Right now, I was the coach on the sidelines telling him how to play. I had no desire to join him on the field, where I could take a ball to the face or catch more feelings. Riley would break my heart as easily as I broke my arm when I was five.
“Riley, I don’t mean to sound like a bitch, but I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why the hell not?” he asked, getting offended. He puffed his chest out.
“Because, whatever this is,” I said, motioning between us, “is very delicate. Today was the first day in fifteen years that you haven’t insulted me. Fifteen years, Riley. It takes more than a little dancing to make me forget the lies, the insults, the games. It stopped because your father gave you an ultimatum. It took an ultimatum for you to treat me like a human being. I’m not interested in hanging out with someone who could treat me that way. I will gladly go to vet school once this is all over, and you can live your life, without me.”
I didn’t mean to say all of that, especially like that. But once I opened my mouth, the words just left on their own accord. It was true, one day of flirting couldn’t change our past, and I wasn’t ready to pretend it didn’t happen. I needed to hang onto the past to protect myself from what he had the power to make me feel. I’d thrown up these words as walls.
He hung his head.
“I really am a prick?” he asked.
He was looking for reassurance, that what he was was no longer good enough.
“You don’t have to be,” I told him as I walked away.
Riley walked away, too, but he didn’t stomp off in a rage or hissy fit. He walked away like he had more to prove, to himself. Let him try; he would only be a better man for it. It didn’t mean that we had to be friends or anything else. Especially anything else. It just meant we couldn’t be enemies.
Eight
Riley
Two things were made crystal clear today. The first was that I was a total prick. Usually, I could rely on my good looks, my devilish charm, and my father’s money to get me out of or into any situation of my choosing. I had avoided two DUIs and gotten into many girls’ panties that way. This time, that didn’t work.
The second thing that became clear was that Emma was hot, and a firecracker, and so far out of my league. I wanted her. I was brought back to the younger me, who chased away a boyfriend so I wouldn’t have to see them together. She was the quiet girl who was too good for the asshole jock. It’s the subplot to every romantic comedy under the sun, and what was ironic was that I was living it.
Don’t get me wrong, I still had strong resentment toward Emma. I knew as an adult some of that was misguided. I had told myself the same lies over and over until they became my truth. I hate Emma. She deserves to be alone, to have no friends, no family.They were lies. Resentment and anger could be their own drugs. Easier to hold onto the habits of the past than to admit you were wrong and change. Now I had to change if I wanted to keep this farm in the family and if I ever wanted my father to stop treating me as a child.
Emma had challenged me to be a better man. I always rose to a challenge. I was too competitive not to try; it’s part of my self-absorbed personality.
Hey, at least I knew what I was, right?
