Chapter Thirteen #2
“If only you’d forgotten that haunting little anecdote.”
“You were hard to forget, generally,” I blurted out, and immediately regretted it.
“So were you, Goldy Golds.”
CHANGE THE SUBJECT, YOU UTTER MORON went my inner monologue.
Because the only thing I wanted to follow up with was: But you did forget all about me!
That is our whole issue! I felt gaslit by his pleasant smiling face, like, was I crazy?
Did I remember it all wrong? I am an adult who has moved on, I thought, as I gathered my things up from the table.
“I’ll go change into some jeans for the horse riding, right? Better for when I’m thrown to the ground, like motorcyclists
wear leather?”
“Good idea. And some closed-toe shoes if you got ’em.”
A thing you should probably know about me before we go any further is that when I got Covid and had to take two full weeks
off from filming Fa-la-la-la LOVE! I watched four seasons of the TV show Yellowstone, most of it while very feverish. Yellowstone is basically a Shakesperean soap opera set in Montana about a ranch owned by John Dutton, played by Kevin Costner, and his
many hot sons and very bitchy alpha daughter. I would crawl to my door periodically for the hot and sour soup from Friendly
Thai that I could barely taste or the green smoothies and broth that Marlon made for me every day. (I can’t drink green smoothies
to this day because I remember when they tasted like tires and my throat felt like my mouth was harbouring twenty tiny knives.)
I would sip the liquids while pretending I was as sexy and bitchy as the alpha daughter character, Beth Dutton. Yellowstone is a very popular yet also very ridiculous show. It is what happens if a TV network gives too much power to one person who
only has three to five ideas for narrative. And I loved it. But ever since, I’ve sort of had a thing for cowboys. Being totally
alone for fourteen days with only the company of fictional cowboys was surreal. In the worst of my fever I’m pretty sure my
dreams were all about being saved by the blond brother and his many horses.
So when I get to the corral behind the barn and Dave had changed into a plaid cowboy-looking shirt and classic Levi’s with leather boots—not cowboy but may as well be—well, the odds of me behaving like a normal person were low.
I wanted Dave to throw me (gently) over the back of a horse while riding me to safety, with fields burning or bad guys shooting at us with rifles, or something like that, as we retreated at a fast gallop.
Then he’d kiss me by a roaring campfire.
I’d be wearing a fantastic old-timey dress and cowgirl boots, and I’d be able to drink whiskey without wincing.
He’d say maybe three words the whole time and then rip the dress off me. It would be hot.
But instead, five minutes later, I was trying to put my left foot in a stirrup as high as my waist, and somehow haul my other
leg over an entire horse’s back, without falling or scaring the horse. Core strength isn’t my jam. I was failing.
“Maybe you better get someone else over here to help with this.”
“You can totally do it.”
I put my hand against Snow’s grey fur. She was impossibly tall.
“But seriously, do you have a backup?”
I was sweating the kind of sweat you only get when you’re mortally terrified. My careful application of the industrial-strength
antiperspirant I purchased merely to deal with Jason wasn’t touching it. But Snow was a calm beauty and her eyes said she’d
handled more than a few city idiots on her back. I was still scared to be the worst. No one could possible look sexy getting
on a horse for the first time like this. I wished so hard to be graceful for even one minute. No such luck.
“Honestly, I don’t really need a second person. It’s just helpful. And I thought it could be one of your county experiences, right? The trail is beautiful.”
“So you basically tricked me into hanging out with you is what you’re saying?” I was pathologically incapable of not flirting
with this man. Despite every logical part of my brain yelling at me to stop.
“Maybe,” he said, eyes positively twinkling.
It was possible that every cliché I’d written into a script was now happening to me.
Was there a glitch in the universe? Was I in a movie?
These were the kinds of thoughts I had naturally, so you can understand why I don’t normally consume pot gummies.
Even Dave’s eyebrows were sexy, bushy and dark.
His whole upper face was a real masterpiece.
Eventually I was up there on top of the horse, sitting in the leather saddle in a position I knew would hurt a lot the next
day. Dave was holding the reigns, smiling up at me. I petted Snow’s mane softly, hoping she would feel that I was a kind human,
if a bit dumb, and be gentle with my soft writer’s spine and precious brain carriage.
“I’m going to walk you around the corral a few times in a circle so you guys get a feel for each other. It’s important that
she feels you being calm and in charge. She knows me, so first I’ll lead you. It’s like a little interspecies blind date.
Just hold onto the horn there.”
“OK, sure,” I said, gripping the little leather knob that felt like the video game controller of the whole endeavour, “But
isn’t she in charge in this scenario? I feel like the one who can buck the other into the air is the top.”
He laughed. “Horses do not want to hurt anyone. But they also know their worth, so to speak. So try to concentrate on breathing
slowly. Be calm in your body,” he said softly and touched my leg in a reassuring gesture that backfired by making me even
more attracted to him.
“Do I look freaked out?”
“I’ve seen less anxious people ride a horse, that’s for sure.”
“Well, think of it as good intuition. If someone mounted a large quadruped for the first time with no fear, that would just
be a sign they weren’t smart, right?”
He laughed again. Making Dave laugh was one of my favourite sounds on earth. No bigger high. “Definitely.”
A half an hour later, Snow and I were like Kate & Allie, Starsky & Hutch, Thelma & Louise.
You get it. A team of ladies just trying to be pretty and fearless while following the hotties in front of us.
Dave rode Sable, a lovely palomino, through a pasture.
It’s difficult to talk while riding horses when you’re not side by side, so we were mostly silent.
The sun warmed my arms as they finally relaxed from the deathlike gripping of the saddle horn.
I breathed deep. The bright green pasture was peppered with bundles of yellow and white flowers.
I was really doing it! I felt triumphant, fearless.
When we reached a line of trees, Dave slowed.
He turned to look back at me. I wanted to take a photo of him that the way.
It reminded me of the way he’d turn to look at me in a canoe, but it had also shifted into the present day.
This wasn’t just nostalgia. This was real. This was now.
“How are you doing back there?”
I was getting carried away. I snapped back to reality.
“This is infinitely better than walking a dog.”
“Is it going to make a highlights list in your diary of county experiences?” he asked.
“Remains to be seen, I suppose,” I answered, though he knew I was lying. I was having a fairly magical afternoon, feeling
high up in the sky and moving in a way that I’d never experienced before.
“I thought riding horses might be old hat for you—after all, it was a major part of Christmas in the Canyon.”
“You have not seen Christmas in the Canyon.”
“I have too! It was your first movie. Nancy told me about it. I made sure to watch. I looked for your name in the credits
and everything.”
“I can’t see enough of your face to know if you’re being sarcastic.”
He turned to look straight at me. “Are you kidding? I was so proud.”
“It’s not like it was at Sundance or something.”
“Look, I haven’t even made an Instagram reel since camp. You’re really making movies. The only people who make their own movies
right away are nepo babies, right? Or like, extremely lucky people.”
“True. But I just googled enough horse-riding facts to write that scene. And in the end I wasn’t on set, and they had to change
a bunch of stuff because trying to show a romantic moment while two actors are on horses is actually a fair amount of choreography.”
I was talking too much. “Did you end up going to film school like you wanted to after college?”
He looked down, then off to the distance. Snow started drinking from a mud puddle.
“No, I never had the money to go. And my dad needed me here. I did get in, though. To NYU.”
“You got into NYU!? That’s amazing. Do you ever think about applying again?”
“No, no. I’m happy where I’m at. I’d never want to leave my kid for that long. We both know what that does to a kid.”
“Right, right.” I’d almost forgotten—Dave’s mom was also away at the same time that mine was. She went to prison for most
of his teenaged years. A white-collar fraud crime of some sort. We had bonded over not having mothers around.
“Is your mom out now?”
“You have a good memory.”
“It was a really monumental summer for me, I remember everything,” I said. As soon as the words left my mouth, I felt trapped
on the horse. The best I could do was look down at the saddle and close my eyes briefly, to shield from the shame of all that
remembered longing.
“Me too. It was one of the best and worst years of my whole life.”
“Why worst?”
“A lot of hard family stuff. But meeting you was definitely the highlight.”
“It was?”
“Of course.”
I looked out across the field. I could see the back of a cute little blue house.
“That’s a sweet little house. Imagine living there all the time? Surrounded by this?”
“I’m obsessed with that house. It’s a real fixer-upper, and it’s been on the market forever. Every time I see it, I picture