The Heartbreak Horse

Because She Hates the Beatles.

When I get back home, Kate has already finished working and left, and it’s late enough that I know no one else will come by, so I just sit in my chair and watch Heartbreak for another hour or two. He isn’t quite as crazed anymore. He still runs, but sometimes all he does is trot, and he’s taking more walk breaks than before. He’s getting skinnier. He was one of the heaviest horses on the track, but now he’s skinny. He hasn’t eaten real food in two weeks, and thanks to his running, his paddock’s grass has been almost entirely torn up. He isn’t in danger of death; he has a water trough, and we throw him hay. But it isn’t much of a life, and I’m so tired of waiting for him to come around.

I wish I could ride him. I’m not sure if he’d enjoy jumping, but we do have a trail, too. I could probably take him on that and let him tear it to shreds. But I’m not suicidal. If I so much as came near him, he’d probably trample me to death.

It’s with that depressing thought that I go inside and put in my headphones and listen to the Beatles as I stare at my ceiling. That’s how I spend the rest of the day. By that night, I’m done thinking about Heartbreak entirely and just thinking about Riley and praying that I got to her. I miss her—I really do. I’m tired of Val’s push/pull games, tired of Cyan’s brutal honesty, and tired of Christina just being Christina. 

Unfortunately, the next morning is Tuesday, and Tuesday is lesson day, which means everybody will be there.

It wasn’t always like that, with a set lesson day. Before the Ruckers (Christina and Val), it was totally random. If Zoe and Cyan were there and Oliver wasn’t busy, he’d give them a lesson. Riley was there pretty much every day, and whenever she wanted a lesson, she got one. If he neglected her for any extended period of time, Jesse would call him and act all tough and demand that his daughter get a lesson, and Oliver would have no choice but to come out and give her one. Later on, they would all laugh about it. 

Jesse and Oliver got along well. I asked Oliver about Jesse a couple of times after Riley left, and he sometimes he answered me, “Yeah, he’s hanging in there,” and all, but eventually he stopped answering. I was naive enough to think maybe he just didn’t know, but now I know.

Jesse is dead.

I wonder if that was enough to drive her to be who she is now. I suppose there isn’t any way for me to know. I wouldn’t change that much if Oliver died. I love him and all, but we don’t have the kind of relationship that Riley and Jesse had. I mean, they were inseparable. He was her best friend. Sometimes he joked around with me that he had to compete with me for her attention, but really he liked me a lot. He even took me aside one time and told me I should tell her how I felt. I told him I was pretty sure she knew how I felt, and he said not to be so sure. He said I’d be a good influence on her, and I said she didn’t need a good influence—that she was already perfect.

These thoughts start really hammering into my head as I have breakfast that morning, and they keep on hammering as I feed the horses. Oliver doesn’t get up, and I’m not all that surprised; with me feeding and working the barn, he doesn’t have any real reason to. I haven’t told him about my conversation with Riley, but I know that if she shows up, he’ll be nothing but supportive.

I go through the usual routine of chores and then sitting in front of my horse’s paddock, but someone pulls up to the barn before I’ve sat for even five minutes. I glance at my watch and see that it’s only nine thirty. Lessons don’t start until eleven, which means people should arrive at ten. Not that weird, I guess, but still. My heart sort of drums a bit, and I glance through the trees, praying for the Porsche.

It isn’t the Porsche, though; it’s the Avalanche.

The Avalanche means either just Christina or Christina and Val. I don’t really know which is worse. At least Val I can stand. I mean, when Val is there, I talk to her and all, even if I don’t really want to. But when Christina is around, I want to just throw up, shoot myself, or run and hide.

It’s just Christina.

When she steps out of the truck, she looks around as if trying to decide whether to go straight to my house or to go to the barn and ask me if Oliver is awake. She must decide on the latter, because she comes down the hill toward me. I don’t blame her for making that decision. She’s tried waking Oliver up before, and it wasn’t fun for anyone.

“Hello, Joey,” she says all regally when she reaches me. Christina is always trying to sound regal. She thinks very highly of herself; I don’t really know why. Most of her is fake, and what isn’t fake is still not very natural. She and Val are both natural blondes, but her hair still looks fake just because everything else about her is. There’s nothing regal about her. The few times Matt ever came to the barn, he called her a MILF, but I just about punched him for saying that, it was so disgusting.

“Hey, Chris,” I say grimly. “Here to see Ol?”

“Yes—I thought I might sneak in an hour with him before the lessons start. Is he awake?”

I sort of enjoy being able to tell her “no.”

The sad expression on her face doesn’t make me feel at all the way Val’s face does when it’s sad. I actually enjoy seeing Christina sad, if you want to know the truth. Maybe that makes me a bad person, but I don’t think a good person would mind seeing her sad, either.

“Okay, then,” she says, because even Christina is smart enough not to wake up Oliver. “I suppose I’ll just ride Mat and Marx now.”

One of the things Christina hates the most about having her horses at Bray is that Oliver won’t give her three lessons for the price of one. I think it’s stupid of her to assume otherwise. He’s already giving her a discount, not making her pay full price for each of her three horses. And still, she expects him to give her three lessons in a row. 

I know for a fact that Christina would pass out if she had to jump three horses in one day. She claims to be strong and youthful, but she’s well into her forties and not exactly an Olympian.

“So that means lesson on Minuet,” I deduce with mild amusement. I’m not surprised. Like Belle, despite being gorgeous and well-trained, Minuet is a mare and therefore a handful. 

“Well, you know how she is. Even a rider as experienced as me needs help with a horse like that.”

She’s so blatantly prideful, and it’s not even justified. First of all, Christina didn’t even know what a hunter/jumper was until she came to Oliver. She’d never even ridden before. She got an alimony check and spent it on four gorgeous European horses, one for her daughter and three for herself, and she saw seen Oliver, a semi-well-off, attractive single father, and jumped at the opportunity. She’s a halfway decent rider now, but very stiff on a horse (like Val) and very exaggerated in her movements. 

Anyway, Christina and I don’t like each other, so we don’t really struggle to be civil to each other. She turns on her heel and goes to get her horse, and I turn back to mine, and we don’t speak for the next half hour. I watch out of the corner of my eye as she rides Marx because he’s really something to behold –not too big or glamorous, but a fantastic mover. Marx is Christina’s least favorite. The guy who helped her horse shop insisted that he’d do well in the shows; that was the only reason she’d gotten him. He’s chestnut-colored and in her opinion not attractive at all. Minuet, the dainty little white mare who looks more like a Lipizzaner than a Dutch Warmblood, is her favorite. 

About when she finishes riding Marx, Cyan and Zoe show up. I find myself disappointed once again that it isn’t Riley, but I don’t tell them that. 

Kate pulls up a second later in her ninety-something Toyota Corolla, and I brighten a bit, not only because I like Kate, but also because she’s the first student of the day, which means finally the lessons are underway. Sure enough, Oliver comes down a few minutes later.

Christina finishes riding just as Kate and Mirage enter the arena. Christina gives Oliver the cold shoulder, but he doesn’t seem to notice, and I know that within the hour she’ll be all over him again.

Val shows up about five minutes into Kate’s lesson, which gives us a full boat. The routine is pretty much the same every Tuesday and Saturday--everyone not having a lesson sits at the picnic table and watches the lesson, chatting amiably while secretly criticizing the lesson in their heads.

I’m no exception. Watching Kate’s lesson is always a little painful because Mirage is so hard to handle. It isn’t Kate’s inexperience, exactly, though she isn’t as experienced as the rest of us. Mirage is simply… a lot, as off-the-tracks tend to be.

Anyway, despite the fact that none of us get along very well and there’s too much drama to keep up with, I still enjoy the sociality of lesson days, and I’m pretty sure they do, too. The Florida weather is always accommodating, and everyone is typically in good spirits.

That day, for example, Cyan hears what I’m listening to in my single earbud and immediately sparks up a conversation.

“I love that song,” she announces. “Strawberry Fields. You know, most Beatles stuff is too lovey-dovey and hand-holdy for me, but I could listen to Strawberry Fields forever. No pun intended.”

It’s Cyan; of course there’s a pun intended.

“I like that song,” Val says, surprising all of us, even Christina. “No, really. It’s good. I like it, but it seems to me they’re trying too hard to sound weird—you know, tripped out.”

It’s moments like this that I feel justified in falling for a girl like Val Rucker. I agree with her completely.

“Mitch feels the same way,” she explains cheerfully.

All justification evaporates immediately, and I want to drown myself for having agreed with Mitch West about anything.

We sit in silence for a moment. I notice Christina looking annoyed and wonder how much she knows about Mitch; it comforts me to think she might not approve—that she has some shred of motherly instinct in her, after all.

Our silence is interrupted by two consecutive things.

First, Matt Herrington, brother of Cyan and son of Zoe, pulls up to the top of the hill on his roaring Harley bike and screeches to a stop with the stick-thin, raven-haired Riley Rhodes on the back of his bike.

Second, Mirage spooks so badly at the screech that he does a 360 spin and rear combination that sends Kate flying—hard.

We’re all up in seconds, of course, but none of us seem to know what to do. Oliver chases after Mirage so he can’t jump the fence and get to the street. He probably expects one of us to make sure Kate is alright, yet we all seem frozen.

“Matt!” Cyan shouts up the hill to her brother, “you i***t, how could you—”

But she shuts up when Riley throws her helmet to the ground, jumps the fence, and sprints over to Kate so fast, even Oliver probably can’t tell who she is. Zoe and Cyan certainly can’t, but they probably wouldn’t, anyway. Judging from Cyan’s expression, though, she isn’t pleased that her brother had anyone but Fiona on his bike.

Kate’s still on the ground. Riley kneels beside her, saying something, and Oliver is still trying to get hold of Mirage. Everyone but Zoe still seems too shocked to move, and Zoe is busy speed-walking up to her son, no doubt to yell at him, so I decide to join Riley with Kate.

I start to speak, but stop when I see Riley pull out her phone. Instead, I kneel beside Kate and take her hand. For a second, Riley’s eyes flutter to our hands, but a second later, they’re back on Kate.

“Patrick,” she says urgently into the phone. I’m shocked by how desperate she sounds. “It’s Riley... no, I’m fine, I told you—this isn’t about me.”

That catches my attention. I’m not sure who she’d called, but if she called for medical advice and had to reassure him she was okay, that means... well, I don’t want to think about what that means.

“...fell off a horse,” she’s saying. “He’s not that big, but it was a nasty fall... I mean her, breathing’s uneven, and she doesn’t want to get up...” She frowns. “I’m not going to make her, Patrick!” She waits and sighs. “Fine.” She puts the phone to her chest and says to Kate, “He says you need to try if only so we can see where it hurts. If you need to, you can sit right back down.”

Poor Kate nods weakly. “Help?” she asks us frailly. We each take a hand to help her. She relies on us too much for my comfort. Once she’s on her feet, she let out a yelp and shrinks back to the ground.

“Patrick!” Riley shouts into the phone. “She... but.. oh, fine!” She shoves the phone at Kate, who tiredly rattles off her symptoms.

That’s when it happens—in that split second of rest that Riley gets, she looks around, taking in everything she once called home. In that instant, she sees him: Heartbreak. He isn’t running. His chest is still heaving, and his eyes are still ablaze, but he’s watching us—watching the commotion—and he isn’t running.

Her breath catches in her throat—I actually hearit—and the look in her eyes is like was yesterday when I told her about him, but even more intense.

I can’t look away from her, and she can’t look away from him, but then Oliver approaches us with Mirage in hand, and she is forced to, and so I am forced to.

“Go ahead and call an ambulance,” Riley says to him. “I’ll tell Patrick to talk to the EMT’s when they get here.”

Oliver nods and pulls out his phone. It’s the first time I’ve seen him call 911; really, it’s the first time I’ve seen anyone call 911. I don’t like it, and what I dislike even like more is that Riley has probably witnessed and done it more times than she can remember.

If I could give her all my good fortune, I would, just to see some of the weight lifted off her tiny shoulders.

Kate finishes with Patrick and lies back down, and time finally seems to start again. Zoe comes over to take Mirage back to the barn; Riley and I sit on the ground next to Kate as Riley keeps Patrick on the line to await the paramedics; Oliver crosses his arms and lets himself breathe again. 

I have faith. Everything will be fine.

“You came back,” Oliver says quietly to Riley. “I’m glad.”

She doesn’t say anything. She’s shaking.

“It’s okay, Riley,” I tell her, for once not calling her Riles because she doesn’t need to deal with anything else right then. “It’s not your fault. Matt should have known.”

“He wouldn’t have come here if not for me.”

“These things happen. And you dealt with it better than any of us could have. It’s fine, Riley. Let it be.”

She shakes her head, standing up and crossing her arms just as Oliver did. “Don’t quote the Beatles at me,” she says darkly. “I hate the Beatles.”