Never Let You Go (7 page)

Megan caught up with them at the barn. Jordan rolled back the big double doors, and the fragrance of sawdust and horses wafted out. Minuscule bits of hay floated everywhere, and overhead, swallows swooped in and out of the hayloft. One of the horses—Darryl, Megan thought—whinnied at them as they came in, and the donkey did a couple of excited little turns in his stall.

“Why is he dancing around like that?” Megan asked Anna.

Anna opened a door near the front of the barn. Inside was a tiny room lined with metal trash cans, each clearly labeled. She cast Megan an impatient look. “He wants his breakfast.” She didn’t say “idiot,” but she might as well have.

Megan flushed and glanced at Jordan, but he was studying the hose in the corner and then starting to unravel the green loops.

“Hey, you girls want to start feeding and I’ll do the buckets?”

Anna smiled at him. “Great idea.”

Megan peered into the garbage cans. Each held a different kind of grain.

“Okay, show me what these guys get for breakfast,” she said. “Anna? Anna!” Her friend was still watching Jordan uncoil the hose.

“It’s really sexy watching guys work, don’t you think, Megan?” she said loud enough for Jordan to hear.

Megan grabbed a big steel scoop from the wall. “Focus, Anna. Here, do we use this to measure it out?”

Anna dragged her attention away from Jordan. “Hmm? Uh, yeah. It’s this feed here, the sticky stuff. Half scoop for each horse. Cisco just gets a handful.”

“Okay.” Megan dumped the grain into a smaller bucket nearby and carried it out to the stalls. Both horses pricked their ears eagerly at the sight of the bucket.

“Hi,” Megan said softly as she approached. Rosie bobbed her head up and down as if responding. Her belly looked even bigger this morning than it had yesterday. Megan carefully reached over each horse’s half door and emptied their grain into their feed bins.

“Here, Meg,” she heard Anna call. She turned, and her friend pitched her a currycomb. “Brush Rosie while she’s eating. I’ll do Darryl. Then we can turn them out and do their stalls. You just rub in circles from neck to tail.”

Megan slid back the bolt and slipped into the dimness of Rosie’s stall. The mare seemed huge up close, but Rosie ignored
Megan, keeping her head sunken in her feed bin as she eagerly snuffled up her grain.

Jordan appeared at the door to unclip the heavy water bucket, then moved on to Darryl’s stall. Gently, Megan started currying the mare’s neck, moving the currycomb against the short chestnut fur. The skin was warmer under the horse’s heavy blond mane. Rosie continued eating, and Megan rubbed in steady circles, feeling the firm muscles under the horse’s skin and watching the dust puff under her comb as she worked. She felt like she was cleaning her mind as well. Rubbing out all Anna’s little jabs from yesterday and today. Rubbing out the sight of Anna’s face in the dark cabin last night. A memory floated up of a time a few summers ago when Anna had been in one of her moods. She’d come over to Megan’s house to tell Megan exactly why she found her so annoying. She’d sat in Megan’s room, calm, complacent, spelling out the reasons while Megan cried tears of impotent rage.

Finally, Megan had screamed, picked up a wooden-soled clog from the floor, and thrown it at Anna’s head as hard as she could. It had missed and broken the window instead. Megan licked her lips. She hadn’t thought of that for some time.

“Are you excited for your baby?” she murmured to Rosie to distract herself. “You’re going to be a mama.”

The horse flicked an ear at the sound of her voice. Megan worked her way along the horse’s back, and Rosie leaned against her hand as if appreciating the massage. Megan scratched her around the base of the tail, which her dog always used to like, and then started brushing her flanks.

Her reverie was broken by a splash and Anna’s squeal from the next stall.

“Jesus, I’m sorry,” Jordan said.

Megan stuck her head over the half door. Anna and Jordan stood just outside Darryl’s stall. Anna was holding the water bucket, and the front of her T-shirt was soaked with water.

“I’m so sorry,” Jordan repeated. “I didn’t realize you were trying to take it from me and—”

“No, it’s my fault,” Anna interrupted. “It doesn’t matter anyway. I have another shirt on underneath.”

She set down the water bucket and slowly, as if she were in a movie, peeled off her T-shirt, revealing a strappy pink camisole that barely concealed her lacy cream bra. Jordan watched, mesmerized, his mouth open a little, while Anna shook out her hair.

From Anna’s triumphant look, Megan knew that the water spill had been no accident. She felt a surge of jealousy, knowing that she herself would never have the nerve to try a move like that, but she quickly squashed the feeling. It didn’t matter what Anna did around Jordan, Megan told herself fiercely. She was
Anna’s friend
and that was all. She
owed
it to Anna to help her get Jordan.

Jordan swallowed hard then and glanced at Megan as if suddenly aware of her presence. “Um, hey, should we clean the stalls now?” He addressed the wall between the two of them.

“Sure,” Anna replied, still smiling. “I’ll just take these guys out to the pasture.”

Megan and Jordan watched in silence as Anna walked the
horses down the wide barn aisle, one lead rope in each hand. The donkey trotted closely behind.

Megan looked at Jordan, wondering if he liked watching Anna walk away in her damp camisole. She caught him glancing at her at the same moment. He rolled his eyes a little as if to say,
What was that?

Megan smiled. Jordan grabbed a pitchfork leaning against the wall and handed it to her, then took one for himself. Together, they started lifting out piles of manure and wet bedding from Darryl’s stall. It was weird, Megan thought, how she’d barely talked to Jordan since meeting him yesterday, but she felt like she’d known him for years. Like he was an old friend, someone you knew so well, you didn’t have to talk all the time when you were together. She watched him work quickly, efficiently, hurling forkfuls of dirty bedding into the wheelbarrow with a quick flick of his wrist. Suddenly, she laughed in spite of herself. He looked up.

“What?”

“It’s just that you look like you’ve done that before. Did you grow up on a farm or what?”

Jordan laughed a little. “Sort of. My parents have some land near a little town by the Michigan border.”

“Which one?” Megan worked her fork under a particularly intimidating pile of manure.

“Lodi? It’s this little place—”

Megan straightened up. “I totally know Lodi! My mom used to go up to the outlet malls there all the time on our way to Detroit.”

“Oh, yeah, I forgot about those.” Jordan scraped at some wet bedding stuck to the stall floor. “We’re even farther off the highway. Most people who go up to the outlets don’t make it into Lodi itself. I mean, I don’t know why you would if you didn’t live there.” He sent her a sideways look. “How about you? You’re from Cleveland, right?”

“Yeah, unfortunately.” Megan tried to keep the loaded fork steady.

“Why unfortunately?”

“Oh . . .” Megan laughed a little. “My area is all ugly subdivisions, very suburban, very plastic. You know the kind of place. The Lakes of Crystal Pointe, that sort of thing.”

“Cool.” He sounded like he was thinking about something else. He cleared his throat. “Do—um, so did you leave your boyfriend behind back there?” The words got a little strangled in his throat.

Megan shot him a startled look. He was spreading the manure in the barrow with great concentration.

“Um, no,” she said slowly. “I don’t have a boyfriend right now.”
Or ever.
“How about you?” She felt like she was taking a step toward some unknown precipice. Trespassing on dangerous ground.

“No.” He looked at her, his face open and his eyes clear. “With any luck, I thought I might meet someone this summer.” The words fell between them, like pebbles scattered from a bucket.

“With any luck . . . ,” Megan repeated. Unconsciously, she moved toward him an inch.

Then she jerked herself back.
Stop. Stop. Stop.
She grabbed
the shovel and started scraping Rosie’s stall with unnecessary vigor. “So how come you’re not working on your family’s farm this summer?” Her voice came out louder than she intended.

“Aww, that’s so cute, your parents are farmers?” Anna came up beside Jordan. She was pushing another wheelbarrow, this one filled with fresh pine shavings.

Jordan closed his eyes briefly, as if gathering himself, then opened them. “No, they’re not. Not really. I’ll tell you guys about it some other time. It’s kind of a long story.” He concentrated on scraping out the corner of Darryl’s stall. “So, how long have you guys been friends?” he asked, changing topics.

The moment is gone
, Megan thought,
as if it never existed
.

“Too many years to count,” Anna said, going into Rosie’s stall. “Since we were in first grade.”

“Yeah, Blair Haymont wouldn’t let me jump rope with her, and Anna came to my rescue. I was sitting out with the recess monitor, and Anna came up and hugged me.” It was the first of many, many times that Anna had saved her from social ruin. Megan brushed at some shavings that clung to her sweaty cheek. It was getting hot in the barn. “Did Thomas say we had to hose the stalls?”

“Yeah, he told me earlier.” Jordan lifted a rubber mat at the bottom of Darryl’s stall and shook it out in the barn aisle.

“I’m always rescuing her!” Anna called from behind the partition. A second later, she appeared, dragging Rosie’s rubber mat, which she flopped next to Darryl’s. “Just yesterday, I had to save her from getting trampled by Samson.” She grinned at Megan.

“That might be a
slight
exaggeration.” Megan kept her voice
light. It was true that Anna was always rescuing her, but she didn’t have to make her look stupid in front of Jordan.

“But, Jordan, the worst, the absolute worst, was when I
tried
to stop her from going to the winter formal last year with this complete nerd. She wouldn’t listen to me.” Anna giggled, looking from Megan to Jordan and back again.

Megan stopped shoveling. She stared at Anna standing there in her skimpy shirt with her silly expression.
How dare she bring up that fight and those memories like it’s just another funny anecdote.

“Oh, yeah?” Jordan’s back was turned as he screwed a nozzle onto the green hose. “What happened?”

“Well, it was around last Christmas,” Anna began. Her voice was bubbly and intimate, full of the promise of a good story. “And Megan had been going out with this guy, Laurence, who was just so icky. I
told
her he was icky. He had pimples all over the back of his neck, and his face was always red and scraped up with razor burn.” Anna gave a pretend shudder.

Anger rose up strong and thick in Megan’s throat. How dare Anna pick at old scabs like this? Laurence had always been a sensitive topic and Anna knew it. She’d been really good about not bringing it up before, as if she sensed Megan didn’t want to be reminded of it.
She
would never do this to Anna, Megan thought furiously as she grabbed the handles of the full wheelbarrow. Well . . . except for Mike. But that was a mistake, and she’d apologized a thousand times already.

“This really needs to be dumped,” Megan said, and pushed the wheelbarrow off without looking at either of them. If Anna was
really going to dredge up that story, Megan would rather not be around to hear it. She remembered it perfectly well on her own.

Megan had gone out with this guy Laurence for just a few weeks, and he
was
a giant nerd. He had a long neck and a little head kind of like a dinosaur, and wore T-shirts with
BAMA
on them all the time, which he never failed to inform people was for the University of Alabama, where he was from. Megan had kind of liked him and was kind of ashamed of him too, which she knew was wrong, but she couldn’t help it.

Anna, on the other hand, had had no such conflict. She thought Laurence was a complete dork and would not let up about him. The remarks had been nonstop, especially after Megan had told her that Laurence had asked her to the winter formal and she was thinking of saying yes.

Anna had made some comment about his lips, which
were
kind of thick, like a girl’s, and Megan had finally snapped, telling Anna to shut up—shouted at her, actually—which she’d never, ever done before.

Megan would never forget the look on Anna’s face. Anna had gone utterly blank, then started sobbing. Her hair had been hanging in her eyes, snot running down her face, saying she thought Megan was the only person who loved her, but she must have been wrong, and now she had no one. Then she’d yanked at her own hair so hard that Megan thought she was going to rip fistfuls right out of her scalp.

Megan had apologized immediately, hugging Anna and reassuring her that she was there for her, always. Laurence had
sprained his knee a week before the dance, and after that, he hadn’t really seemed worth all the fuss.

Megan gritted her teeth at the memory. The sun was high in the sky now, and its glare beat down on her head as she struggled to tip the last of the manure from the wheelbarrow. The horses had wandered to the far side of the pasture and stood together, heads to the ground, tails switching. Megan wished she had a tail. There were flies buzzing everywhere. She was sweaty, her hair was falling out of its ponytail, and she really wanted a Diet Coke. With a grunt, she flipped the wheelbarrow upright and wiped her forehead with her arm.

Anna’s voice greeted Megan as soon as she reentered the barn. Anna was leaning over the half door of Cisco’s stall, resting her arms on the edge while Jordan scrubbed the floor with a huge brush.

“—and my dad left when I was ten,” Anna was saying.

She must have finished the Laurence story. Megan wondered if Jordan thought she was as big of an idiot as Anna was making her out to be.

Jordan got to his feet as soon as Megan set down the empty wheelbarrow. He took a clean, folded bandanna out of his pocket and wet it with some water from the hose, offering it over the stall door to Megan.