Chapter 1-4
413 Words
“Your John Wayne is showing again,” she was always putting down his attempts to sound more Western.
“What’s a Long Island boy to do?”
“Embrace your inner Billy Joel?”
She’d teased him before with the song line about a boy from Long Island with a six-pack in his hand. And that’s about how naive he’d been when he first arrived here. He was a good rider now, but he still couldn’t get the Western accent down.
He’d wanted to be a film writer and director, not actor, but here he was, stage center in his own life. Weird. No mood lighting. No perfect romance on the horizon. Just a bunch of beginning riders and sun so bright he wondered what had happened to his shades—they’d been perched on top of his hat before, well, before he’d nosedived into a mud puddle. They were either in the mud puddle or at the bottom of the horse trough now.
He looked around, but it was definitely himself playing himself in this surprising role. Too bad. He’d much rather be Sam Shepard in The Right Stuff, about to race his horse through the desert after the laughing Barbara Hershey the night before breaking the sound barrier.
Chelsea waved the closer riders toward the gate.
He nudged Minotaur back a few steps and pointed the way so that the first of the riders would lead the way westward. A spunky thirteen-year-old black girl looked at him like she was going to be definite trouble. They still always seemed to like him and it often took some tactful work to keep the teen girls at bay without upsetting them.
“Watch yourself out there, cowboy.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“That’s Chelsea to you, you goofball.”
“Yes, ma’am, Chelsea, ma’am.”
She slapped Minotaur hard on the rump. “Get along, Minnie.”
The horse knew exactly who doled out the hay and oats in the barn—and who to listen to. His horse once more went from standstill to canter in a single motion and only the saddlebags of lunch fixings—now slightly flatter—kept him in the saddle. Several of the other horses tried to follow and, for an instant, the entire beginner’s trail ride hung in a fragile balance. He immediately reined in and talked down the other horses before they tossed their riders in the hopes of a good run.
He ended up having to catch the reins for a woman who must be the thirteen-year-old’s seriously hot mom. If the girl grew up like her mother, she was gonna be even more of a man-killer. Mom’s smile declared that she had man-killer down cold already. No ring. Single mom.
It was going to be a very long ride.
- Writer
