Edgewater (19 page)

I brushed Orion's face, his mane, his tail. I lifted each of his legs to clean out any dirt from the grooves of his hooves. His front hooves needed new shoes, which shouldn't have been a surprise; it had been over a month. I'd have to call the farrier.

And just like that, I was pulled out of the moment, worrying
about the future all over again. The farrier would be a hundred bucks. I couldn't afford that right now.

“Things have changed, boy,” I told Orion softly, reaching for the soft patch of white fur on his neck, my favorite spot. “I don't even understand why, but they have. Gigi moved our money, and she won't tell me where. I've been looking—believe me. I made a list of every bank in the east end of Long Island, and I'm going to check them all. I started cleaning the house out, too. The answer is buried in there somewhere. I'm just taking it room by room, cleaning through the night because I can't sleep anyway. Last night I did the drawing room. Well, half of it, anyway. It's so big. And it's so . . . so suffocating. But if you squint when you're looking around, you can see a glimmer of what it once was. It's really hard, though. It's hard to see anything in Edgewater the way it's supposed to be.”

When I paused, Orion nuzzled against me and snorted, as if answering me.

“And something else changed, too,” I told him. “I think I met someone. Someone I really like. All this time, I told Lennox I didn't mind being alone, and it was the truth. I really didn't. It was so much easier not having someone I needed to explain things to.”

Orion pawed at the floor, the signal that I'd been in there a while and he was wondering where his treat was. I'd found a box of sugar cubes at Edgewater. Gigi added a half dozen cubes to her tea each morning. But since I was sure they'd been purchased with money from my trust, and since she was the reason I didn't have cash to buy my own, I'd taken the box with
me so I'd have treats on hand. Now I produced a cube from my pocket, and Orion's lips smacked against my palm.

“I wasn't lonely
until
I met this guy—his name is Charlie. Now I want to be with him so much. But the thing is, he's a Copeland, so that's a fairly impossible order.”

Orion pawed the floor again, and I gave him another cube.

“Everything I want seems so impossible right now, boy. Meeting a guy you like and thinking maybe he likes you back—it's supposed to be such a great thing. If I were any other girl in Idlewild, my big worry would be figuring out some long-distance thing at the end of the summer when I had to go back to school. But I don't know if we'll get back to Hillyer in the fall. I haven't even told Lennox. I can only tell you. God, Orion. I
missed
you.”

The love of an animal is an amazing thing, because it's in the moment and unconditional. Orion didn't question me or resent me for the long drive he'd just had to take, nor judge me for the fact that our summer plans had changed abruptly. To him I was the same person I always was. I didn't need to try to be anything else to impress him—just give him another treat. He lowered his head toward mine. I could hear his breaths coming in short, even bursts, more calming than my mantra. In and out. In and out. This moment, as far as Orion knew, was just another good one between us. Maybe I should forget about the rest and be in it, too, the same way he was.

I heard footsteps coming down the corridor, and I stood and grabbed a brush back off the shelf to look busy. I didn't want to be seen as taking advantage of Naomi's kindness, slacking off
and staring at a horse instead of doing the work she'd prepaid me to do.

“She's down at the end,” I heard Altana say, her voice an octave higher than usual.

And then a voice—
that
voice—in reply: “Thank you so much.”

Excitement rose up inside me, lighter than air. But just as quickly I was filled with dread, because I was so unprepared. My hair was pulled back in the same ponytail it'd been in since eight o'clock that morning and could only generously be called a ponytail now, with so many strands loosened up and falling around my face and with the hay and dirt stuck to it in different places like ornaments on a Christmas tree. You'd think I'd been rolling around in Orion's stall. I was never the girl to care about whether my hair was out of place or if my jeans were smudged with mud, particularly when I was at the barn. But all of that changed right then, with Charlie's footsteps echoing in the corridor. Closer, closer. I yanked the hairband out and ran Orion's mane comb through my own hair quickly—an act of pure desperation.

I ducked out of the stall and met Charlie in the corridor. “Hey,” I said. “You didn't tell me you'd be coming by today.”

“This is why I couldn't get a haircut,” Charlie said. “I needed to see
you
.”

My cheeks warmed, and I didn't know if it was because Charlie Copeland—
Charlie Copeland
—had just said the most romantic thing a guy had ever said to me, or if it was because he'd come here, just to see me, and I was such a mess. I dusted a patch of dirt off my jeans as surreptitiously as I could. “Really?”

“Really.” His fingers reached for the collar of my shirt, and he pulled me to him. I hung on and breathed him in. There was something fresh and salty about him, as if he'd just bathed in the ocean.

Orion nickered from the stall door. “Hey, boy,” I said.

“So, this is your guy,” Charlie said.

“This is my guy. Charlie Copeland, I'd like you to meet Hunting Achievement.”

“I thought he was Orion.”

“His registered name is Hunting Achievement,” I said. “Orion is what his friends call him.”

“What do I have to do to get friend status?” Charlie asked.

“Give him one of these,” I said, producing a sugar cube. “Just keep your palm open and flat. Don't worry. He won't bite.”

“Of course he won't,” Charlie said. He held his hand out, letting Orion lick whatever infinitesimal bits of sugar remained. “We're friends already.”

“I wish I hadn't promised Naomi I'd stick around,” I said. “She's coming back from a show, and I said I'd help her unload and get all the horses settled in. It may go pretty late.”

Which meant I would get a nice wad of overtime pay—money I would've given up in retrospect to be able to have dinner with Charlie, foolish as that may have been.

“I didn't come here to invite you out,” Charlie said.

“Oh, sorry.” Why had I been so presumptuous? “I just . . . never mind.”

“I came here to see what the Dynamic Duo can do.”

“You want to watch me ride?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Well, okay,” I said. “I have to get him ready first.”

“Tack him, you mean? I know the lingo. I can even help.”

I led Orion down the corridor to an empty set of crossties to get him ready. Altana, along with Jen, ducked into a nearby stall, carrying supplies to clean it out. They were taking much longer than what the task called for, especially since there were two of them. And anyway, mucking a stall was neither of their jobs; it was mine. Their conversation was muffled, but occasionally the word
Copeland
escaped. My cheeks blazed, and I wasn't sure why I was embarrassed, especially because Charlie seemed impervious. I grabbed Orion's lead line and walked him to an empty ring outside, where a small jumps course was already set up. The ground hadn't been raked since the last ride, so there were spots of dirt kicked up. But I'd paced these jumps on foot a hundred times and ridden them a hundred more. And so had Orion.

Charlie sat on the small set of bleachers outside the ring, and I mounted my horse. “That's him,” I whispered to Orion. “That's the guy I was telling you about. Let's put on a good show.” We cantered in a wide circle, and I pointed Orion toward the first jump, an ascending oxer. For a split second Beth-Ann Bracelee was in my head, but then Orion was in the air and hurdling over. “Good boy, good boy,” I said.

I felt Charlie's eyes on me, but I made myself stay focused. When you're competing, you know you're being watched. But you can't look at the judges. You need to keep your vision trained on the space between your horse's ears.

Orion jumped a couple of small verticals—easy-peasy, as natural as breathing. I turned him toward a parallel oxer. He
tucked his legs neatly under his body, and we soared over. I eased him into a trot, and only then did I let myself look up at Charlie, who was standing at his seat, shielding his eyes with one hand. A part of me wanted to impress him further, take Orion over to the advanced course and really show off his skills. Unlike Beth-Ann's horse, my Orion could practically jump the moon. But he'd been traveling all day, and even with Charlie Copeland in the audience, my horse's well-being came first.

Orion walked around the outer ring, nodding his head. I patted the back of his neck. “Good boy, good boy.”

We slowed to a stop in front of Charlie. “Well done, team!” he said.

“Thanks,” I said. I dismounted on the left; you always mount and dismount on the left—part tradition and part safety measure. Then I came around to face Charlie. “I have to untack and shower him now,” I said somewhat apologetically.

A lot of girls I knew would pass their horses off the instant they dismounted, but I never minded the follow-up tasks. Until now, when suddenly my love for Orion had to compete with my desire to stay longer with Charlie. And just when I no longer had a choice; it was my job to do those things not only for Orion, but for other people's horses, too.

“I'll help you,” Charlie said.

“You want to help shower my horse?”

“Is that all right with you?”

“Do you always answer a question with a question?”

“Do you like if I do?”

“That depends,” I said.

“On what?”

“On what the question is.”

“What if the question is, are you glad I'm here?”

I blushed. “Yeah.”

“What question are you answering right now?”

“Either,” I said. “Both.”

I was so happy, in a way I would've thought impossible when I came back to Idlewild for the summer. We headed back to the barn, Orion between Charlie and me. I clipped him into cross-ties in the shower stall and removed his sweaty tack. Charlie put it aside for me, and I turned on the hose. Per usual, Orion tried to kick me away when the spray hit.

“Easy,” Charlie said uneasily.

“He's okay,” I said. I turned the water pressure down slightly. “This just isn't his favorite activity.”

“Has he ever hurt you?”

“Not in the shower,” I said. “But yeah, I've gotten pretty banged up over the years. The worst was when I first got him. It was the third or fourth time I was riding him, and this huge horsefly went right for his backside. Orion took off, and I was like a hood ornament, just along for the ride. I fell off and broke my arm.”

“You could've been killed.”

I shrugged. “It's the risk you take,” I told him.

“You say that so casually, like it's no big deal if you live or die. Death is a big deal, you know.”

I hesitated. Orion whinnied and stamped his foot. I patted his rump, right where the fly had gotten him all those years ago. “You're almost done,” I said, and then I turned back to Charlie. “I just meant, you know what you're getting into when you
ride. At some point you're going to fall off, and you know in advance how dangerous it is. But there are lots of precautions to take. My arm healed, and I got back on the horse.”

“Literally.”

I was pretty sure he said
literally
because of what I'd told him about Nathan, so now we had an inside joke between us. I grinned. “Literally,” I repeated.

After the shower, we walked Orion out to pasture. Knowing him, there was a fifty percent chance he'd roll around in the dirt. But I'd groom him before our next ride, and we'd begin again. The cycle of life as a horse owner. Charlie came with me to the tack room to put the supplies away. When I stood up from the trunk, he was right behind me, and he pulled me in for a kiss.

“Wait, Charlie,” I said.

“What?”

I shook my head. I knew that the further I let myself go, the more it was going to hurt down the line when he left—which he inevitably would. I could feel the warmth of him all through my body, even though we weren't touching. Every part of me trembled, from the top of my head to the tips of my fingers and toes. Even though I couldn't understand why Charlie wanted anything to do with me, even though I wanted to protect myself, I wanted him more. I tipped my head up, and my eyes met his gaze.

He leaned in and kissed me, closing the gap between us. I felt his face on my face, his chest against mine. He held me tightly against him. I'd never wanted to be so close to another person.

And then there were voices in the corridor. I heard my name, and Charlie's name, and I broke away.

“It's okay,” Charlie said.

“They're talking about us,” I told him.

“I know,” he said softly, so that his words seemed part of his breaths. “When I was little, I called them the Copeland birds. For the noises they make. They think they're being so discreet that you can't hear them, but of course you can. Chirp, chirp, chirp, like little birds.”

“Doesn't it bother you?” I asked. “Or distract you?”

“I've never known it to be any other way.” Which, of course, didn't answer the question.

“Excuse me?” Altana called. “Lorrie? Are you in there?”

I moved toward the stall door, but Charlie gripped my hand. “I'm here,” I called back.

“Oh.” There was a pause, as if she hadn't thought through what to ask me when I answered. “Did Galaxy get her Farrier's Formula today?”

“She did,” I said. Charlie raised an eyebrow. “It's for hoof growth,” I told him.