Wasn’t that obvious?
“Well, silly mare, not everything is hay, sugar cubes, and rainbows,” I told her.
Riley shot me a glance like I had developed a third eye.
“Give it time, and you will be talking to the horses, too,” I told him.
We grabbed Skully and the other two horses and brought them inside.
“Now what?” Kennan asked me.
“Trail maintenance,” I said flatly.
I usually did this after storms to make sure trails weren’t blocked.
“That sounds exciting,” he teased.
Why was he teasing me? We insulted; that’s our thing.
I wasn’t in the mood for a witty back and forth exchange. I wasn’t in the mood for anything, except for a bowl of my favorite Ben & Jerry’s flavor.
“Very,” I said flatly.
I threw some buckets in the back of the gator along with a chainsaw, safety glasses, and gloves. When I said threw, I meant it. Well, maybe not the chainsaw, but everything else.
He climbed into the passenger seat of the utility vehicle and waited for me. I grabbed my hat hanging from the hook by the barn door. Some of the horses didn’t like hats, so I only wore them when I was not handling them. The hat was actually Mom’s, and it was hanging next to that door the night she died.
I got in the vehicle; I tossed my hair back into a ponytail and pulled on the hat. The ponytail came through the back. I turned us to the entrance of the trails that were becoming overgrown.
It was silent the whole ride there and especially awkward. Riley’s body language suggested he wouldn’t have minded conversation. His knees were angled toward me in the passenger seat. He had his right hand raised, holding onto a handle. His left shoulder dug into the seat behind him, and he sent signals with his body.I’m here if you want to talk.
At least the bastard didn’t say anything. I could barely take his pity. He knew that years had passed and nothing had changed. I was just grief filled and miserable. I hung out in a barn full of horses to grieve during a storm so that I wouldn’t have to be alone in my parents’ home. I wouldn’t be able to handle it if he voiced his pity or concern out loud.
When we got to the overgrown areas, Riley asked if he could use the chainsaw. Absolutely not, the boy was a liability at best. He could bring down a tree and kill one of us or destroy the gator. If I had to walk all the way back because he destroyed our ride, only one of us would be walking back. The other would meet the same fate as the tree or the gator.
The answer was no, but because I was still hurting from yesterday, and I needed some semblance of normal, I retorted with an insult.
“No, pretty boy, adults only.”
He looked at me for a moment, wondering what had happened between us for me to act like this, but he let it roll off his shoulders.
The answer was a lot. A lot of things had happened to cause this behavior, and he knew them all. I pulled on the safety glasses and gloves and tossed him a pair.
“I’m going to cut this shit up; you break it up and toss it in the buckets.”
He nodded his head, and I fired up the chainsaw.
I made quick work of the branches that had been catching horses, rider’s legs, and our tack. It was broken up quickly and in the buckets. The sun was out full force today, and between the two of us, we looked like we went to a water park with our clothes on. Neither of us smelled clean like the chemicals, though. We smelled like the sidelines of a marathon.
“Do you want to go on a ride?”I asked.
I didn’t want to speak, but I wouldn’t have minded silent company. It’s something I’d never had before. I wouldn’t have minded him sitting quietly next to me last night in the barn, but he wasn’t content with silence. I wasn’t used to the chatter, to having others around, aside from Rodrigo and William. Again, that was Riley’s fault.
“Better yet, do you want to run the course?” he asked me, referring to the barrels sitting in the dirt arena.
“You know what, why not?”
I would prove I was the better rider. Riley needed to learn how to lose, gracefully. He needed to learn how to be humble, and maybe I could turn it into a lesson.
