4. Nick
Chapter 4
Nick
M elanie arrives in my driveway at five in the morning the day of her first qualifier. The competition’s two hours north, in Cheyenne, Wyoming, but the way she’s packed, you’d think we were going on a journey ten times as long. We’ve been getting along decently the past few days though, so I keep my comments to myself as we load my truck with both her suitcases, her helmet case, her boot bag, and my half-empty duffle bag. I’ve already got the horse trailer hitched up, so once all our gear’s situated, I lead GT onto the trailer and get him secured, too.
“Ready for this?” I ask Melanie once she’s strapped into the passenger seat.
“Ready as I can be,” is her steely reply.
The first few minutes of the drive are uncomfortably quiet. I’m not sure what she needs to prepare—silence? A pump-up playlist? Talk-radio? Conversation?—so I don’t touch the stereo, leaving it to her. She sips her coffee, the slurps a hair too loud in the stillness of the truck cab. It’s almost a relief when my phone rings.
Figuring it’s Edwin since no one else I know is up this early, I answer it with a curt, “What’s up?” Since the phone’s connected to my truck’s Bluetooth, Melanie and I find out at the same time that I’ve made a mistake.
“Hello, is this Mr. Korbel? It’s Annette, calling from Rockies Bank I’ve heard it all before. We’re not solving this today, so I’m going to hang up now. When I’m back in town, I’ll give you a call,” I say.
It’s complete bullshit. I’ve never once called the bank first, and I don’t plan on it, ever. If they want their money, they can track down the right Nicholas Korbel. Annette sighs, like she knows I’m feeding her crap. When she doesn’t say anything for a beat, I disconnect the call .
Melanie gives me all of six seconds to collect myself before she asks, “What was that about?”
“Don’t want to discuss it. I’d rather talk the game plan for when we get to the venue. It’s been a while since you competed, so—”
“Not so fast,” she says sharply.
The ice in her tone that startles me more than the interruption itself. I’m used to her whining when she argues with me. Usually, there’s no real traction in her complaints.
“It’s none of your business, which is why—”
“It is too my business,” she interrupts. Again. “You’re clearly in some kind of financial trouble, and yet we’re making an expensive trip for an expensive sport, on the off-chance that I win us a significant amount of prize money. What’s really going on? What’s this about for you?”
There’s no simple, neat answer to those questions. She doesn’t wait for me to wrestle the details into something manageable, though.
“I can’t believe this!” she says, voice shrill. “I should have trusted my gut the night I met you, instead of letting you seduce me with all that garbage about how much I have left to accomplish, and how talented I am. You just want the prize money.”
That’s exactly the conclusion I’d draw in her shoes, but it pisses me off to hear it anyway.
“You don’t have the full picture,” I say.
“Then lay it out for me.”
A sports car zips by us and the trailer rattles, making the familiar “whoomph” sound I’ve come to associate with prepping for horse shows. I think of GT, strapped into the metal box behind us, disoriented and buffeted by wind. There’s only so much his travel blanket and blinders can do to keep him calm. Melanie and I should be talking about how we’re going to get him steadied and centered when we arrive, not bickering about the state of my finances, and what my motives are for hunting her down.
“I’m waiting, Nicholas.”
“Don’t call me that.” Spit flies out of my mouth and hits the dash.
“Don’t trick me into being your cash cow,” she counters. “I’m not livestock. You can’t look at my pedigree and select for competitive traits. I’m not an investment for you. I’m a person.”
Traffic isn’t great. There are semi-trucks in the lane to my left and a minivan riding the bumper of the horse trailer, and somewhere in the distance there’s a motorcycle I can hear but not see. I don’t have the mental energy to have a pointless argument with Melanie about shit she doesn’t understand, and I certainly don’t have the bandwidth to explain it to her, so I opt for a derisive snort and a muttered, “The fuck are you talking about?”
“You bet on the wrong horse!” she snaps. “I’m going to fail, and you will have dragged me through this humiliation for nothing.”
A paltry one syllable word shouldn’t set me off, but it does. Bet . She couldn’t have picked a more inflammatory sentence if she’d tried. I don’t look at her. I don’t speak. I don’t acknowledge she said anything at all. Instead, I slam the volume button on the truck’s stereo and flood the cab with noise. Couldn’t say if it’s music or a radio ad. Don’t care, as long as it drowns out my thoughts. Melanie makes her first good decision of the day and shuts her mouth.
It takes me twenty-five miles to calm down. By that point, Melanie’s absorbed in something on her phone, resolutely ignoring me. Suits me fine.
An hour later, I pull into a gas station to refuel, and I wonder if she’s going to leave. Her shoulders have been angled away from me defensively since my temper tantrum, so it’s not hard to imagine a friend or an Uber pulling up to whisk her away. Who that would be is a mystery, though. It occurs to me I don’t know anything about her personal life that you can’t learn from the internet. All we’ve talked about is horses, horses, and more horses. All I ever do is yell at her and around her; she’s got no reason to believe I’m doing this as much for her as I’m doing it for me.
She gets out of the truck to check on GT while I pump the gas. He’s fine in the trailer, oblivious to the mess I’m making of our lives, lucky bastard. I owe it to him to make nice with Melanie. Between Melanie, the damn horse, and the bank, I owe a hell of a lot of apologies.
“Look, I’m an asshole,” I say when she steps out of the trailer. “I’ve got my own shit going on, but it’s got nothing to do with you, or this trip. I meant what I said the night we met. You’re good at this, and you can be great if you give yourself half a chance. So can we ignore my shit for now, and focus on the competition?”
She makes eye contact with me, then walks past me and gets into the truck. I hurriedly check to make sure GT is secure to travel, then get back behind the wheel.
“Are you going to answer me, Miss Manners? It’s impolite to ignore people.”
She sniffs delicately while she examines her pristine fingernails. “If I can’t say something nice, I’m not going to say anything at all. You might want to try it, too. ”
The prim adage peels back my guilt and lets my anger push through. I throw the truck into gear and pull onto the highway, more annoyed with her than ever. She might as well be the fourteen-year-old brat who walked away from her promising career all those years ago. We get back on the highway, and I wait for her to grow up and get over herself. And I wait. And I keep waiting. The silent treatment lasts all damn day. Through check-in at the hotel and registration at the show arena, she speaks only when spoken to, and never to me. I’m ready to tear out my hair.
When we unload GT and take him to his designated stable for the duration of the event, she only breaks the silence to tell the horse how happy she is to see him, and how she’s going to take good care of him today. There’s more affection in her eyes when she smoothes out his mane than I’ve ever seen from her and it makes my shoulders itch, like my shirt’s too tight. She’s nicer to GT than she is to people. Then again, so am I.
“You’re in the first group, so you’ve got half an hour until your walk-through on the course,” I say to her, hoping she’s listening even if she won’t talk to me. “Warm up, get GT ready, and trust your instincts. You need a top-twenty finish today to move on to tomorrow’s final.”
She nods, but still doesn’t talk. I’m halfway to losing my mind. We don’t have a cushion. I need her to excel this weekend, not squeak by. I take a quick walk around the perimeter of the stables to clear my head and give her some space. For the first time, I consider the possibility that this isn’t going to work. No idea what I’m going to do if she backs out, or chokes. If she tries to win, I know she can do this. But I haven’t given her a good reason to try.
There’s a strand of spectators lined up already at the entrance to the arena, and everywhere I look there are coaches, riders, and horses gearing up for a serious competition. It’s a lot of noise and chaos—noise I’ve been tuning out since I was a kid. Melanie used to be around it all the time, too, but I’m not sure how she’s handling today. I might not be her biggest problem, even though I’ve been a pretty massive tool all day. I’ve fucked up.
On the face of it, her task is simple. Walk the course on her own two feet to get a sense of what’s coming, then guide GT through it. Jump cleanly over every obstacle, in the right order, without clipping any of the jumps with his hooves. Do it all before the timer runs out. But that’s like saying basketball is simple: just put the ball through the hoop more times than the other guys. It misses the nuance.
So much could go wrong today. GT could freak out, either in response to her energy or because he doesn’t like the crowd. Melanie could get in her head about Diana’s accident and pull back. They could fall. I swore up and down to her they wouldn’t, but I can’t promise that. No one can. The more distracted and upset she is, the more likely an accident is. I’ve got to fix things before she goes out onto that course.
I walk back into the stable ten minutes before Melanie’s walk-through. To my horror—but not my surprise—she’s gone. So’s GT.
“Fuck,” I hiss.
Why would she take the horse? Where the hell is she going to go with him? Did she take my truck, too? Why would she do that?
A woman in one of the event-branded polo shirts walks by and notices my distress. “Your rider’s in the warm-up ring,” she says.
Right. Shit. Of course. Melanie would need to get dressed in the ridiculous little outfit show jumpers wear, get GT’s tack on, and then warm up before her walk-through. That’s basic shit and I should have remembered it. Between the mess my dad’s landed me in with the bank and the hours of Melanie’s silent treatment, I’m not thinking clearly. If I’m this distracted, I can only imagine what a mess Melanie’s head is, so I high-tail it to the warm-up ring to find her.
We’re fucked. Doesn’t matter that she’s wearing gloves; I can tell she’s white-knuckling the reins. Her posture’s too stiff. She looks like this is the first time she’s ever sat on a horse. She takes GT from a walk up to a canter and back down again, but her helmet bobs with every step like a tourist on a trail ride. Between her posture, the tight white breeches, and the spandex-and-jersey-knit blazer, she looks absurd. Melanie never looks absurd; it’s unsettling to see her so uncomfortable in the saddle.
I’d offer her some kind of encouragement, but what the hell could I say? That I’m here for her? That I believe in her? Pretty sure those facts are exactly her problem. I don’t know what I’m doing with her anymore, either. I used to study her when Mom trained Diana. It was my job to know her strengths and weaknesses like the back of my hand, and I was really good at my job. Was . I’m crap at it now.
My athlete is panicked and angry, I can’t even remember the basics of how this all works. I’ve fucked up somewhere along the line, and I have to find the mistake before it’s too late to turn things around. When she was a teenager, Melanie excelled when she had an adversary. When there was no clear front-runner, she got lost in the shuffle. But when Diana pulled out ahead, or specifically goaded Melanie, that’s when Melanie shone. Mom spent a colossal amount of time begging Diana to keep her mouth shut in the days leading up to a competition because the right combination of insults could give Melanie an edge.
All week, I’ve been trying to prod at Melanie the same way. It was working, at first. Her times were getting shorter, her jumps cleaner, and with the exception of a few inconsequential tiffs, we were on the right track. But Melanie’s not a fourteen-year-old hot-head anymore. She’s not trading insults with her peers ring-side. I can’t even get her to curse at me properly. I need to stop trying to unearth the teenager I thought she was, and start dealing with the woman in front of me.
Another polo-clad official rings a bell to get everyone’s attention, then calls the first group to the course to do their walk-through. One by one, riders dismount and lead their horses over to coaches and trainers. Melanie manages to bring GT over without making eye contact with me, and we fall into line side by side. It’s not until we’re in the waiting zone and an official is herding the riders into a separate line that I realize I have no idea why Melanie is doing this.
I can’t motivate her properly because I have no idea what she wants. Teenage Mel wanted to beat Diana, and she wanted to win. Winning might not be enough this go-round. It’s too late to ask about this today, since she’s already walking the course, counting out her paces and calculating distances between obstacles. In less than five minutes, she’ll be running the course with GT.
I scan the course to see if there’s anything helpful I can offer her, since I’ve failed miserably as a coach so far. The beginning of the course is deceptively easy; overly confident riders run the risk of building up too much speed for the middle jumps, then killing their momentum for the final stretch. There’s a triple-bar oxer at the end which wouldn’t be an issue for GT if it weren’t for the Liverpool underneath it. He hates water, so Melanie will have to push him hard to get close enough to make the jump cleanly. If she hesitates, chances are good he’ll balk and kick a rail.
Melanie steps off the course and comes to stand next to me while she waits her turn to ride. The monitors hanging over the course list the riding order, and she’s up third. She listens attentively as the official at the gate gives instructions. I’ve got about thirty seconds before Melanie mounts GT and gets in line to compete, and she still hasn’t looked at me.
“Watch the final jump,” I whisper. “Don’t let him pull you too far left. Keep your speed up after the last parallel oxer, and make sure GT’s not looking at the water. Don’t hesit—”
“Don’t hesitate. Yeah, really helpful,” she grumbles.
She swings herself up into the saddle without so much as a glance in my direction. I’m too relieved that she spoke to me to care.
“Atta girl. See you at the end of the course,” I say, giving her calf a quick squeeze before I head over to the designated viewing area for coaches, set back a few paces from the jury table.
I might hurl. Just in case, I put a hand over my mouth while I watch the first two riders. They’re clearly human beings on the backs of horses, jumping over obstacles. Beyond that, I don’t process a scrap of information about what I’m seeing.
Someone says Melanie’s rider number over the loudspeaker and she rides into the arena, up to the gate. GT looks incredible, the sun hitting his coat just right. If Melanie didn’t look as nauseous as I feel, it would be a picture-perfect moment. Then the bell dings, the gate opens, and it’s happening. She’s riding the course.
I don’t breathe once during the run. Cold sweat rolls down my spine. My stomach twists every time GT’s hooves leave the ground, and by the time they reach that final parallel oxer before the water jump, my insides are so mangled I’m not sure how I’ll ever eat again.
Melanie’s thighs tense. Her gaze is fixed on the triple bars, determination carved into the shape of her mouth. She’s low in the saddle, her center of gravity balanced perfectly over GT’s back. They go deep, as close to the jump as possible, and then he pushes up into the air, more glide than jump. It’s beautiful, how effortlessly they float above the ground. Then all four hooves sail neatly over the obstacle and come down onto the sand beyond it. My whole body buzzes with relief. She did it.
It was a clean run. No points. Not a single flaw. Then I realize the buzz I’m hearing isn’t in my head. It’s the time clock. She’s got a penalty. White numbers glare out from a red background: seventy-one point one. One and one tenth seconds longer than the course allows.
Fuck.