“Lucas? Nope.” Austin shook his head and kept typing. “Lucas tried to bet that he could hook up with Esra, and we all told him that was fucked up. He still whined about being friend-zoned, and Adriana ripped him a new one about the concept of the friend zone. Here.” He turned his phone around for me to see the chat. I only skimmed Lucas’s message on screen, sent the day he stumbled from Esra’s room. Well, I’d been wrong about them.
I clicked on the chat menu and brought up the list of contacts. “What the fuck? Even Renee is in this pool.”
“She put two hundred on having to reassign Esra to a different house because of you.”
“You need a life.”
“Oh come on. This is the most entertainment we’ve had since that year it took Sanny six months to ask Zuri out.”
I tossed the phone back into his lap and headed upstairs myself. I probably owed Esra an apology. The fact that she hadn’t slept with Lucas didn’t even ease the weight off my chest. It didn’t matter. She could have fucked the whole damn world for all I cared.
I placed the black Ace Ryder hat on my coat rack, right next to my own brown one. From the corner of my eye, I caught my reflection in the mirror, leather holster around my hips and the black bandana slung around my neck.
I’d lashed out, hurling the first best insult at her, because Esra was only into the fantasy. She wasn’t actually attracted to me.
It shouldn’t have bothered me.
I was in so much trouble.
Chapter Eighteen
CANCELLATION POLICY
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ESRA
I hadn’t been sure whether he’d show up at the stables. I wasn’t even going to come myself. What kind of masochist decided to spend her day off sitting uncomfortably on a wobbly saddle, riding next to the man who had insulted her for wanting to sleep with him? The stubborn kind.
Lucas had sent me an excited late-night message about the thousands of views our first video was racking up. That had made the decision for me. I didn’t check the post or the comments to see if people were just hate-watching it. It didn’t matter. I just knew that I couldn’t let another thing slip away from me. I liked being Annie Lou. I liked doing the shows. I liked meeting the kids and making their gooddays even better. And even if it was only until October, I wanted to keep doing it. If I had to jump on to a galloping horse to stay Annie Lou, I’d just have to learn how to.
Noah greeted me with a perfectly fine “good morning”, but I glared at him hard enough to shut him up. He only spoke to introduce me to Crumble, a caramel-colored horse that was at least a foot shorter than Tornado, and to give me instructions on getting in the saddle. He wordlessly handed me a pale beige cowboy hat made from thick straw, not even looking me in the eye. Since he was already wearing a hat, I doubted this was some sort of commentary on our fight last night. I chose to believe that he was just giving me the hat because the sun was already high in the sky, making the air flicker above the rooftops, and he didn’t want me to fall off the horse from sun stroke.
I thought he’d lead the horse around on a leash for a bit to give me a quickHorseback Riding for Dummieslesson. Instead, Noah swung himself into Tornado’s saddle and Crumble dutifully followed the other horse down a small path and away from the paddock.
I’d sat on Tornado often enough not to panic, but I was acutely aware of the drop to either side of the saddle, and the lack of harness around my waist.
“Where are we going?” I asked, when Noah opened a gate that led out of Bravetown’s perfectly enclosed microcosm and on to a signless dirt road. The kind of road an ambulance couldn’t get to if you were thrown off a horse.
“It’s a beginner’s trail,” Noah said. “We’re basically circling Wild Fields and coming back here.”
Okay, circling the town wasn’t going to kill me. That was fairly safe. “Shouldn’t we do some basics first?”
“No,” Noah chuckled. Tornado fell into step beside Crumble, walking slower to make up for his longer legs. “You already know how to move with a horse. You just don’t trust yourself to stay in the saddle. So you’re going to stay in the saddle for a few hours.”
“A few hours?” I echoed, ignoring that he’d seen right through me.
“Don’t worry, I brought snacks.”
“Oh yeah, because my primary worry about staying on horseback for a few hours is whether or not I will starve to death.”
He reached behind himself into the saddle bag and pulled out a beautiful bright-orange bag of mini peanut butter cups. My traitorous stomach rumbled in response as if I hadn’t had breakfast. Noah chuckled and opened the bag for me, holding it out. My kryptonite.
I glanced down at where my fists clenched around the reins, and the chasm between our horses that I’d have to reach across to get my hands on the chocolate.
“God, you’re annoying,” I huffed and straightened out, eyes back on the road.
“They’re right here when you’re ready,” he said and packed them away again. At least he had the decency not to eat any in front of me.
