I nudged Rory up to ride alongside Rusty, even though the sheep track we were following was narrow, and I was making her walk on the uneven edge of the hill. She laid her ears back in displeasure at my decision-making, but did as she was told.
Bay didn’t say anything in response to that. I sighed and let Rory fall back in behind Rusty again, where she felt that she belonged. She shook her mane triumphantly and shoved her nose up against his scruffy tail, making it clear to me that she was a born follower.
Bayard raised his eyebrows at me as he brought Rusty to a halt at the top of the hill. The ponies puffed heavily, trying to get their breath back after their steep hike.
“You think I do?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Guess not.” I tried to picture him with Mia instead, but I couldn’t. I was finding it hard to imagine him with any girl, really, although I wasn’t sure why.
I kicked my feet free of the stirrups and listened to Rory’s heavy breathing as Bayard swung down off Rusty’s back and started pulling fencing tools out of his saddle bags. We’d come up onto the ridge to fix the Taranaki gate, a colloquial name for a gate made out of a section of moveable wire fence. Everyone hated it, because it was so difficult to open and close, but one of the newer farmhands had taken a mob of sheep through it this morning, then cut his hand badly when he tried to get it wired shut again, and had to go to hospital for stitches. So Dad had sent Bayard up to take a look at it, which I’d assumed would only take a few minutes. But the whole section of fence was decidedly saggy, and when Bayard pulled out the wire strainers, I groaned and flopped forward on Rory’s sweaty neck.
“This is going to take hours,” I complained.
“Nobody made you come with me,” he pointed out calmly.
Rory lowered her head towards her knees, her heavy breathing proving that she was way less fit than she should be at this point in the show season. I leaned down and tried to pick a dandelion flower from the hillside next to me, but it was just beyond my reach.
“You still haven’t told me what to do about my problems,” I reminded Bay as he started tightening the fence wires.
“Well, you’ll always have one friend,” he told me, tightening the strainer and making the wire creak.
Bay shot me a hurt look, and I felt bad, because he was trying to be nice, and his friendship did mean a lot to me. But sometimes talking to him was like talking to a brick wall, and although I was infinitely grateful – especially right now – for the complete lack of drama he brought into my life, I couldn’t imagine us ever having an especially riveting or meaningful conversation. Despite the fact that I still considered him to be my best friend, there was something missing. He listened to me, but my words rolled off him like water off a duck’s back, barely touching his consciousness. Bay was so self-contained that the world seemed to be happening around him, and he was just an idle observer, rather than a participant in the swirling madness. I used to find that reassuring, because I’d felt the same way. But lately I felt as though I was being pulled into the vortex against my will, and instead of helping me find solid ground, he was just standing on the edge, watching me be sucked down into the seething abyss.
Stop being so dramatic, I told myself, wondering where those thoughts were even coming from. In an effort to distract myself, I made one more concerted effort to pick the bobbing yellow dandelion that lurked just beyond my reach. Dangling off the side of my pony, I managed to hook my fingers underneath the flower head, and pull it free of its stem. But right at my moment of victory, Rory objected to my acrobatics by sidestepping away, and I lost my precarious balance, slipping ungracefully onto the ground beneath her feet. My pony turned her head and looked at me as though I’d gone mad.
“You’re right, you know,” Bayard said, and I pushed myself into a sitting position and looked at him.
I’m reading book #3 now! Just realised too that book one has ‘first’, book two ‘double’ and so on in the titles – took me awhile! 😉 Love it, by the way!
You’re ahead of the curve…it took a few people until book 6 to figure that one out!
But I like it that way!!