11. Melanie
Chapter 11
Melanie
I t is the longest night of my life. After we claim our beds—mine by the window, Nick’s by the door—I hide out in the hotel’s restaurant until I’m reasonably sure he’ll be in bed. He must have had the same idea, because the room is empty when I get back.
I change into pajamas at the speed of light, wishing I’d packed something cute instead of the threadbare Girl Scout camp t-shirt and flannel pants combo I stuffed in my suitcase. I do not touch the silky bathrobe I brought, which has now been rendered useless because there’s not a chance in hell I’d risk Nick seeing me in such a nipple-forward garment. Instead, I pull the covers up to my chin and will myself to sleep quietly—no snoring or weird sleep farts or drooling. Unsurprisingly, this doesn’t help me fall asleep.
When Nick comes back to the room around midnight, I’m still wide awake. After taking the longest shower any human being has ever taken, he moves quietly around the room, staying on his side of the privacy screen while he gets ready for bed. And then we both lay there, close enough that if the flimsy wood-and-paper screen weren’t there I could look him in the eye. The room smells like him, the steam from the shower spreading the warm, cedar-y scent that usually clings to his clothes through the air. Sleep is impossible in these conditions, so I don’t.
Nick doesn’t much sleep either, unless he turns like a rotisserie chicken on the spit during REM cycles. He gets out of bed before my alarm goes off in the morning, his silhouette moving around on the other side of the screen, and then disappears into the hall, the door snicking shut behind him. I take my first deep breath in hours.
I count to ten, to make sure he doesn’t double back for anything, then race to the shower. Wherever he’s gone, I hope he stays there long enough for me to be dressed and out to the arena before he gets back. I’m itching to get in the warm-up ring today. My body is stiff from all the hours in the truck, not to mention the restless, nervous energy I’ve been holding in since I walked into the hotel room. I need to syphon some of that energy off before the competition or I’m going to blow it.
The universe pays me back for the agony of the previous day. I get a (regular length) hot shower without interruption. I rush to get dressed so there’s no possibility of Nick walking into the room while I’m naked—even behind the security of the closed bathroom door—and manage to get all the pieces of my riding gear gathered up and ready to go in total solitude. Not willing to push my luck, I head down to the dining room where the hotel breakfast is served without even a nanosecond of dawdling.
Nick isn’t at breakfast, either, which bumps my spirits even higher. I eat blissfully alone, and even the fact that there’s no almond milk doesn’t bum me out too much. Without milk, the hotel coffee is undrinkable garbage, but I’ll have to get by without it. The food is decent, and that’s more important for competition anyway.
My Nick-free morning ends when I leave breakfast to prep GT. Nick is in the lobby, armed with two coffee cups. He scans the people gathered by the elevator banks, and then squints at the doorway where I’m standing. Recognition catches in his face and he makes a beeline for me. Even though my brain screams, Run! my feet don’t move.
Nick stops in front of me and clears his throat a few times, like he’s forgotten how to speak. His under-eye bags are worse than yesterday. Guilt trickles into my stomach at the memory of how much glee I derived from his suffering yesterday. I might not understand what happened between us on Wednesday, but I doubt he’d be so miserable if he hurt me on purpose.
“How’d you sleep?” I ask.
“Fine,” he lies. “You?”
“Like a baby,” I lie right back.
It’s nice we can both be so mature about this.
“I brought you a peace offering,” he says, holding out one of the coffees. “The hotel doesn’t have almond milk. I asked.”
I take the coffee with a massive pout. “It’s hard to be mad at you when you’re bringing me caffeine.” Especially if that caffeine includes the right milk, and—apparently—a quest to find said milk.
His mouth twitches. “That’s the idea, Miss Manners. Some people might even go so far as to say, ‘thank you.’”
“Don’ t push it, Nick.”
Relief sweeps over his face as I take the first sip of my coffee without further fuss. I feel it, too. This is almost normal. Other than the constant low-frequency hum of yearning that kicks up a notch every time I look at his mouth, I’m feeling great. Okay, fine, his shoulders, chest, thighs, and hands have a similar effect. Any part of him that was recently pressed against me while we stood on my porch frantically kissing, really. I strenuously avoid looking at the front of his jeans.
“Can I apologize for Wednesday without you interrupting?” he asks.
I shrug. “Depends on whether or not you say something dumb. You hurt my feelings, which sounds so…juvenile, but it’s true.”
“It’s not juvenile. If anything’s juvenile, it’s the way I behaved,” he says. “I handled things poorly from the moment I walked through your parents’ front door. It’s not an excuse, but I was going through some personal stuff and it got the best of me. I’m sorry, Melanie. I won’t let it happen again.”
“Won’t hurt my feelings, or won’t kiss me?” I ask, aiming for and just missing a light, teasing tone.
“Either,” Nick says firmly. “It’s strictly coaching from here on out, I promise.”
Disappointment thrums in my chest like a plucked harp string. His eyes flick down to my lips and linger a moment too long. There’s an unfamiliar expression on his face. On anyone else, I’d call it regret. But on Nick, whose Resting Irritation Face colors all of his emoting, it might be discomfort at having a vulnerable conversation with another human being without using any curse words. Noticing he hasn’t cursed at me today unlocks a little more guilt.
Nick is trying really hard to be nice. He tried on Wednesday, too. He showed up for me, and it’s not his fault everything went sideways at my parents’ house. Or mine. Yes, he kissed me. But I hugged him first and I was an extremely enthusiastic participant in the inappropriate kissing. We’ve both been pushing at the boundaries of our partnership, so he shouldn’t have to shoulder all the responsibility for the fall out after things went wrong.
“I should probably apologize, too,” I say to my feet. “I’ve obviously got some stuff going on with my parents. It wasn’t my finest hour.”
“Plus, we were hungry,” he says, as if that excuses everything.
“Definitely a factor. Low blood sugar, et cetera.”
I look up to find him already staring at me.
“Did you just say et cetera? Instead of finding even one additional thing to list?” he asks.
I shrug. “Not enough coffee for words yet.”
“Ah. So. Friends again?”
I’m not sure we’ve ever been friends, or if we can be. But he opens his arms out to me, and who am I to refuse a hug? Those are rare commodities for me nowadays. If he’s offering, I’m taking.
Of course, right about the time I close my arms around his ribs, I notice one of his hands is trapped between our bodies, because he was going for a handshake, not a hug. If ever a giant bird were to swoop through a hotel lobby and snatch up the most embarrassed woman in the room in order to swiftly remove her from polite society, this would be the perfect time. Alas, no such bird appears.
Nick knows how to interact socially with others, so he pulls his hand out from between us and hugs me normally. Sure, we’ve got coffees in our hands so it’s not quite the full-contact sport from Wednesday night. But the gentle squeeze of his arms around me is comfortable enough to melt away some of my embarrassment. I’d love to linger here for a few minutes—or years—but Nick pulls away.
“See? Back to normal,” he says tightly.
“Look at us go,” I say, oddly breathless. “Speaking of going, I have to go get a horse ready to jump over a bunch of stuff. See ya.”
I wheel around and head directly to the stables before I can ruin the progress we made. Bolstered by one too-short hug, and one very delicious almond milk latte, I’m ready to ride.
I would never admit it aloud, but my dad was right about Cheyenne being smaller than the competitions I used to crush. Salt Lake is the big leagues. It’s not just show jumping; there are steeple chases, dressage rounds, eventing, mounted archery, vaulting—basically anything you can do on the back of a horse is happening here this weekend. The schedule is crowded with various levels and divisions, and the venue is even more crowded with people and horses. It’s noisier than Cheyenne, and there are ten times as many people in competition-branded shirts racing around with clipboards and walkie-talkies.
GT doesn’t like it any more than I do. He snorts the whole time I’m grooming him, and barely holds still long enough for me to get his saddle on. I have to lure him out with apple slices. Our event is all in one day this time. There’s a single qualifying round, and then the top twenty riders compete in the final one hour later. I have to pace GT in the first round so he’s got enough energy left for the final, but work him hard enough to make the final. We need to be connected and focused.
GT is my dream horse. He’s built for speed and by some miracle doesn’t have the uneven temperament which usually accompanies the skill. He’s as smart as he is gorgeous, and I get him. An ear flick, a tail swish, a shudder across his skin—I only need a tiny sign to know what he’s thinking. He’s the same with me. Most of the time, all I need to do is shift my weight to communicate what I want him to do. He’s never spit out his bit, or decided the direction I’ve chosen is a direction he’s got no interest in going. We’re a perfect team. If we make an effort, we can do well today despite the stress. But knowing that isn’t calming me down.
The warm-up ring is crowded, so neither of us can run the way we want. It forces us to stay present—I can’t scan the faces along the fences to look for Nick when I’ve got to pick my way through other competitors—even if it doesn’t let me purge my jitters how I’d like. There’s still no sign of Nick when my group gets called to the show arena to walk the course, and my nerves get worse. For a split second, I worry he’s not here. Then his signature scowl and flannel shirt emerge from the melee of polar fleece jacket clad coaches.
“You’ve got this,” Nick says as he takes GT’s lead from me.
That’s a terrible sign. I haven’t seen the course yet, so there’s nothing for me to freak out about, yet he’s already reassuring me. All I do in response is nod, because the group is headed in to walk the course, so there’s no time for questions.
In the show ring, I immediately see what’s wrong: there are four water jumps. Water is GT’s only enemy. He’s fine if he clears it, but if the giant baby gets any water above his hooves, he throws a tantrum. One splash could make the 18-hour round trip for this competition useless in under thirty seconds. That makes this run very simple, because there’s only one objective now: no splashes.
“Alright, my love. Are you ready?” I ask GT when I get back to the holding area.
I see Nick’s shoulders go rigid in my peripheral vision and my cheeks heat. I was definitely talking to the horse. He knows that. We don’t have to address it. There’s no way he thought I was calling him “my love.” This is the last thing I need to be thinking about right now, when my stomach is already in knots.
I swing into the saddle and avoid eye contact with everyone, especially Nick. The announcer calls my name, Nick squeezes my calf, and we’re off. Time to think about avoiding water, not Nick. I wish he’d said something. Anything. No, that’s a lie; I wish he’d said, Let it rip, baby . But it’s too late.
The race itself is the blink of an eye and a lifetime, all at once. My mind shifts into a narrow, animal thing where it’s just me and the horse, moving on instinct more than conscious thought. The scent of mud is overwhelming, and the thud of GT’s hooves on the ground is the only sound I hear clearly. I look six feet ahead, and right over the end of GT’s nose at the same time, my brain processing information and conveying it to my body faster than I can form words about it.
GT is lightning. He hits every jump with a dazzling burst of power, then runs off like he didn’t just hurl a thousand pounds of horse-and-woman nearly six feet in the air then land on toothpick-thin ankles. When we cross the finish line—all four of his hooves dry, all four of our lungs heaving—the applause is deafening. That means we probably did well.
What blows me away, though, is the grin on Nick’s face. Not a twitch. A full-on, teeth-out grin. I want to make him smile like that all the time, and not only when I’m on a horse. The thought hits me so hard I nearly roll out of the saddle. Has Nick ever smiled at me when I wasn’t competing? It bothers me that I can’t come up with a single instance off the top of my head.
“Yes, Melanie! Yes, you killed it,” he says when I dismount beside him. “I’m not going to jinx you, but don’t bother taking off that helmet.”
Thank God I was a weird, nervous mess at the last race. Nick’s expecting it, so he’s not alarmed by my labored breathing and panicked grimace. He must assume it’s about the race and not about what shapes he makes with his mouth.
“Do you want to watch the rest of the round with me?” he asks.
Yes. I want to clutch his hand and lean against his shoulder and sneakily inhale the spicy, warm scent of him. I want to bite his shoulder through the flannel, and straddle him instead of his horse, then kiss him until he’s as breathless as I am. Then I want to lock him in our hotel room and spend the rest of the weekend naked, wrapped around him. Seeing as I’m in the middle of a show jumping competition, none of those things are a viable option. Even if he wanted all those thing, too—which he’s made perfectly clear that he doesn’t—I need to focus, so I can’t be near him.
“No. I’ll be in the stable,” I say.
His face falls, which does nothing to stop the runaway fantasies.
“Too nervous,” I squeak out. “Bye.”
Why aren’t there any giant embarrassed-woman-snatching birds in this state?
The next two hours are a dissociated blur. I pace between GT’s stall, the warm-up ring, and the holding area where I catch glimpses of the scoreboard. I’m in fifth place going into the finals, which is a lot better than nineteenth, but I’m not nearly as confident as I was last weekend. I need Nick, but I can’t be near him because I can’t risk the distraction. The pacing keeps me as calm as I’m going to be, but it agitates GT. By the time I pull him back into the holding area to get ready for our final run, he’s in a state—a nostrils flared, skin twitching, freaked out state.
“Please, buddy, it’s just sixty more seconds,” I whisper to him, patting his withers. “If I can hold it together, so can you.”
GT cannot hold it together. There aren’t as many water jumps in the final course, but the ground is muddy from the qualifying round. He’s tired, and I know he’d give anything to be rid of his saddle. We run fast, but we don’t run clean. He knocks the last pole on the last oxer with the tip of his back hoof, and we get a penalty point.
We’re not the only team struggling; the scoreboard is littered with points today. But I know the mistake cost us the podium. There are only a few riders to go after us, and even if they all fall off their horses, the highest I can hope for is fifth place. Nick knows it, too. This time, he’s not smiling at me when he helps me dismount.
“Are you okay?” he asks, which is the worst possible thing he could say.
I’m on the brink of tears, and one word out of my mouth is going to push me over the edge, so I shake my head instead. Am I okay that I’m proving my parents right? Is it okay that I’ve been undisciplined and scatterbrained today because of a boy? No! None of this is okay! I am as far from okay as I could be at this particular point in time.
“Melanie, it’s—”
He’s cut off by his phone ringing. If it’s Paul on the other end of the line, I can’t hear it. It’ll fry my last nerve. I don’t know if Nick answers the call, but he’s distracted by the phone long enough for me to slip by with his horse, and he doesn’t follow me.
The finals are over by the time I’ve gotten GT’s saddle off. We got fifth place. I got fifth place. All things considered, it’s amazing. After a hiatus like mine, and a night like the one I had, it’s a massive achievement. I only need four really good scores to earn a shot at the national team, and I have three competitions left. This can be my scratch. But none of the logic in the world takes away the bitter disappointment on my tongue.
Nick joins me in the stables as I’m finishing up with GT’s rub down. His brow is pinched and his shoulders are bunched up, his hands shoved in his pockets. I’m dreading tonight and the drive home tomorrow more than ever.
“Please don’t yell at me,” I say, eyes on GT. “I’m exhausted, and this has been a crap week. I’ll pull it together before the next competition.”
“I’m not here to bust your chops,” Nick says. “I’m here to check on you. You seemed…upset…when you finished your run. GT doesn’t look injured. Are you? Or sick? What’s going on?”
I shake my head. “No injuries. No illnesses. Just crappy riding.”
“Bullshit. That was solid riding, especially given the drive and our sleeping situation, and…Wednesday,” he says. “Fifth place is nothing to be ashamed of.”
“It’s a step backward.”
I leave the stall and shut the door. GT pops his head over the top and swings his nose against my shoulder. I pat his neck a few times, then focus on winding his lead so I can hang it up and get out of here. I need a shower-cry before facing our sleeping situation again.
“That was Edwin on the phone just now,” Nick says. “They’re live-streaming this whole shebang online, and in the first half hour after your qualifying run, we got more inquiries about riding lessons than we had in the entire last quarter. Traffic still hasn’t slowed down.”
“That’s great,” I say, re-winding GT’s lead for what’s got to be the seventeenth time.
I should hang it up. It’s wound fine. But my hands can’t be empty, or I’m going to touch Nick. He’s standing there, trying to cheer me up, and I’m all out of self-control. I want him to cheer me up the way he did on Wednesday, but as discussed, that’s not supposed to happen anymore.
“It’s because of you, Melanie. Because of what you can do,” Nick says. “You’re impressive, and people are noticing.”
“I think you’re forgetting someone,” I say, leaning my face against the side of GT’s neck. He needs to pay attention to the horse, or I’m going to do something stupid with my mouth. And his mouth .
Nick runs a hand through his hair and shuffles his feet against the hay-strewn floor. “I’m not…what I’m trying to say is, you’re still making progress. Making a difference. It’s not ‘playing pony,’ or some way to fritter away time while waiting for your real life to start. You’re accomplishing a lot, and it should be celebrated, whether you place or not.”
He should have yelled at me. He should have been the growly, mean version of himself that tells me to stop crying and get back on the horse. He shouldn’t have given me a comforting pep talk or looked at me with all that sincerity in his face. Not when I’m worn this thin. This tired.
I go for a hug. Truly, it’s my intention. My aim when I drop GT’s lead and dive into Nick’s personal space is to give him a big ol’ friendly squeeze around the middle, then step back. But somewhere between the first and second step, the instructions get muddled and my brain sends my arms up around his neck, and my lips wind up flush with his. Nick must be experiencing a similar disconnect between logic and impulse because he doesn’t push me away. He clutches me tighter against his body and kisses me like it’s the only thing he’s been thinking about since the last time we found ourselves in this position.
There’s nothing slow or sweet about this kiss. It’s a cannonball into the deep end of a pool, provided the pool is made of searching hands and white-hot desperation. I press myself against the hard plane of his chest and suck on his lower lip while he kneads my ass over my riding breeches. His other hand slides up the back of my neck, his fingers resting at my nape. My mind is beautifully blank, wiped clean of everything but this. I have every intention of spending the rest of my natural life kissing Nick exactly like this, in this spot.
Then GT snorts. His breath ruffling my hair startles me as much as the sound, and given how close Nick and I are, he must feel it, too. Like the stupid buzz of his stupid cell phone on Wednesday, the momentary interruption acts like a spring. Nick’s on the other side of the stable aisle before GT’s inhaled again.
A few loaded seconds pass. We stare at each other, chests heaving. Half a dozen people walk by, darting curious looks at us as they pass. Oh my God. There are other people in this stable. Who just watched us maul each other. What is the matter with me?
Nick breaks the silence, nothing but panic in his eyes.
“Melanie we…we can’t keep doing this. I…fuck.”
He practically runs out of the stable. I watch his perfectly broken-in Levi’s disappear through the open doors, my heart pounding. He’s right—again. We can’t keep coming together and springing apart. I can’t make out with him in front of an audience of our peers, or sit through anymore strained road trips by his side while we pretend we don’t want to rip each other’s clothes off. I’m not dancing around the tension anymore. It’s ruining my focus and jeopardizing our plans.
Fifth place isn’t good enough. Friendship isn’t good enough. Kissing me once might be a mistake, but twice is a dead giveaway. He wants me. I want him. When he gets back to our hotel room, we’re dealing with that reality, head-on.