The Fifth Stage Part 26

She raised her head and glared at me. "They also say, 'Out of sight, out of mind.'"

"When I get Bob trained, we'll have all kinds of time. I promise, we'll go anywhere you want."

Lora's thigh muscles tensed. "Jesus, Claire, when are you going to stop wasting today worrying about tomorrow? Anything could happen.

We could die on the way to work Monday morning, and then what?

Then how important would the business be?"

"Come on, don't be dramatic. Let's not get into this again, okay?

We've had a good day, right? Let's enjoy the rest of it." I ran my hand up her leg and squeezed that ticklish spot behind her knee.

"Stop it." She giggled as she sat up and poked my ribs. "Don't make me feel bad for wanting to spend some time with your tired old a.s.s."

"I'll show you how tired and old my a.s.s is." I lunged forward and fell on top of her. "Kiss me, you hateful hag."

She relaxed and planted her hands on my hips. When she kissed me, I forgot about everythingmoney, business proposals, hiring new sales reps. All I wanted was Lora, and for the moment, I had her.

CHAPTER 32.

"The key to horseback riding is not to be intimidated." Rebecca glances over her shoulder as she cinches the girth on a chestnut mare.

The mare eyes me but is more interested in the carrot in Rebecca's pocket.

"I'll remember that." I lean against a stall door and watch her drop the stirrup into place and pat the mare's muscular chest.

When Rebecca told me that her father kept two horses boarded at Morningside Stables, she seemed excited about introducing me to riding.

I didn't have the heart to tell her that I'd grown up around horses and had once entertained the notion of becoming a professional rider. But she has to find out some time.

I nod toward the mare. "She's holding her breath."

Rebecca smacks the horse's rump. "What are you trying to do to me you old nag, make me break my neck?" She tosses the stirrup back over the seat and gives the mare a quick knee to the midsection. The horse exhales, and Rebecca tightens the girth again. She pauses and turns to me, looking fl.u.s.tered. "You've been holding out on me, haven't you?"

"Not really. I honestly haven't been on a horse in at least fifteen years. It's almost like starting over."

Rebecca gives me a dirty look and holds up a shiny metal instrument with a crooked end. "Okay, missy, know what this is?"

"Hoof pick."

She tosses it to me. "Then make yourself useful." She s.n.a.t.c.hes a halter off the tack hook and saunters down the hall. "Just let me stand there and make a fool of myself. I don't care. I'm used to looking stupid." She glances over her shoulder and tries to hide the smile spreading across her lips.

Rebecca's the kind of person who can take a joke with the best of them. I like that. I also like the way her faded Levis and flannel shirt accent her curves. She's one of those women who can look good 167.

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wearing anything and seems comfortable in everything, and I like that, too.

Smiling, I go to the mare and run my hand along the back of her foreleg. As she raises her hoof, I watch Rebecca unlatch the last stall on the left. This barn isn't so different from the stables I knew as a teenager. Sixteen stalls, eight on each side, facing a wide hallway. It has a tack room with lockers and a wash stall with hot and cold running water, and rubber matting covering the concrete floor. The aromas of hay, sweet feed, and manure create a pungent, sugary smell that sends me back to a time when I didn't know about women and s.e.x and how you could go crazy trying to get one or the other. Back then, it was all about mountain trails and the solid thud of my gelding's hooves as we rode across fields of b.u.t.tercups and knee-high alfalfa. Back then, it was me and a bay quarter horse named Busterthe world before us, the opportunities endless.

But time limits us. Each choice narrows the field and gives us fewer options, and before we know it, we've furrowed out a considerable rut with little opportunity to alter our path. I'm at one of those rare intersections now, and the choices are bewildering. Should I take the high road and tell Rebecca that we'll never have a serious relationship, that I just can't do it, or should I hang back and get what I can while I can? Would she care either way?

"How are you doing?" Rebecca asks before disappearing into the stall.

I'm sc.r.a.ping manure and sawdust from inside the mare's hoof and don't look up. "Marvelous, simply fantastic," I reply in a phony British accent. "Are the hounds ready?"

"Not quite." She exits the stall, leading a huge bay gelding. He has a strong jaw, and a white blaze running from his forelock to his muzzle.

If it weren't for one white stocking on his rear leg, he'd look just like Buster. I love him immediately.

"Here you go, Dale Evans." Rebecca hands me the lead line and points toward the tack stand. "Know how to saddle him up?"

"I think I can fake it."

After I groom and saddle the gelding, we lead our horses into the bright March sun. The air is so clear. It's like your first look through a freshly-cleaned windshield when all the bugs and road sc.u.m are gone.

Rebecca steps into the left stirrup and swings into the saddle. She sits like she was born there, heels down and toes barely touching the stirrups. Rusty as I am, I have a little trouble hiking my leg up high 169 enough to heave myself into the saddle, but with a groan and a few curses, I manage it, and thread the reins through my left hand.

"You'll have to work on those thigh muscles if you want to ride."

Rebecca nudges her heel into the mare's ribs and guides her through the paddock gate.

"My thigh muscles might surprise you," I call out, still trying to remember how to sit back in the saddle while keeping my weight in my heels. Perhaps I was a bit too c.o.c.ky in the barn.

Heading off side by side toward a wooded hill at the end of the pasture, we pa.s.s a pond where dozens of geese barely notice our intrusion. The warm breeze caresses my face, and I settle into the gelding's rhythm, rocking with him as he navigates the worn path.

Closer to the tree line, a lone sycamore stands, its naked white branches splayed like gnarled witch's fingers. There's an almost rebellious air about the tree, as if it's saying, "I will live again."

Rebecca points toward the tree and tells me that's where the trails begin. We pause, and as our horses nip at each other's muzzles, Rebecca says, "I know a path that leads to Thatcher's Creek. It's a little rougher than the others, but it's very private. Think you're up to it?"

"I was born up to it, kiddo. Lead the way."

She nudges the mare with her heels and makes a clicking sound with her tongue. Pure cowgirl.

The gelding seems to know the way. He picks though a briar patch, unconcerned with me or the creaking of the western style saddle on his back. I keep thinking his name is Buster, but when I call him that, Rebecca reminds me his name is Nick.

We follow a worn path into the woods. The trees are still naked, waiting with solemn patience for their sap to rise, but the beginnings of spring are obvious. Tiny wildflowers of purple and crimson weave between fern groves where the foliage is beginning to ripen, and orange-breasted robins dart among the trees carrying twigs and brown gra.s.ses in their beaks. It won't be long before hatchlings warble from the nests their parents are building today.

Rebecca and I talk about things we've never discussed. She admits that she does sweat the small stuff, doesn't much care if all men are from Mars, and is pretty sure Dr. Phil is from a planet she calls Hateful. She's allergic to sh.e.l.lfish and almost died once when she ate a shrimp egg roll.

She wet the bed until she was eleven, but the problem stopped as soon as her parents divorced and she moved with her mother to Hickory, North Carolina. It takes a lot of guts to tell me stuff that personal. I wish I could hold her hand, but the path is too narrow for me to ride next to her.

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In a low voice, she describes her first relationship with a woman who loved her like heaven but hated her like h.e.l.l. Rebecca has been hurt, too, left to lick her wounds and piece together the ruins that once were her life. But she's done something I haven't. She's moved on.

Her candor rubs off on me, and despite my need to keep her at arm's length, I find myself spewing stories of my own childhood and early teenage years. I tell her about the time I was six and Mom caught me trying to shoplift a pack of Dentyne gum because she'd refused to buy it, and the day my brother talked me into peeing on an electric fence at our grandfather's farm. I describe straddling the wire and pulling my shorts leg aside, and she laughs till her eyes fill with tears.

I tell her about my horseback riding days, and how I'd once wanted to tour the rodeo circuit and make my living barrel racing. She seems impressed and challenges me to a race next week. Next week? Will we still be speaking then?

A brick wall separates my childhood from the rest of my life. I'm unable to tell her anything after I turned seventeen, after that rainy day in my best friend's bedroom. There are no stories about how our bas.e.m.e.nt flooded and we didn't have sense enough to uncover the floor drain, opting instead to rent a pump and drain the water right back into the wet-weather spring that caused the flood in the first place. I don't tell her about the time I kindled a fire with the fireplace damper closed and the neighbors called 911 because of all the smoke.

We've talked nonstop for two hours by the time we reach the clearing along the bank of Thatcher's Creek. At the creek's center, deep murky water lazes along in no particular hurry, but closer to sh.o.r.e, jagged rocks and fallen logs create miniature rapids full of whitecaps and gurgling foam.

Evergreens, elms, and weeping willows line both sides of the water, their branches spanning the narrows to create a canopy of knotty boughs.

There's a gra.s.sy plot to our left, where we dismount and let our horses drink from the stream.

Rebecca squints toward the afternoon sun. "We can't stay long. Sun will be down in about three hours."

"It's nice here." I take her hand in mine. She leans in and gives me a quick kiss before she lets go and tugs the mare away from the stream.

I drape Nick's lead across a nearby blackberry bush and sit down on a low rock near the water. My muscles twitch. The sun is warm, the breeze gentle as it tosses my hair first one way, then the other.

Rebecca wanders along the water's edge and stops to skip a flat stone across the surface. The rock makes three distinct hops before 171.

sinking. She turns to me. "No worries, no ha.s.sles. Doesn't get much better than this, huh?"

"Sit with me." I extend my hand, and she sits between my legs with her back to me. I wrap my arms around her middle and rest my chin on her shoulder. Her hair blows across my face. It smells of earth and apples. I don't brush it away.

"I remember the first time I saw you," she says. "Never dreamed we'd end up here."

Grinning as I recall the day I ambled into Choppy's and she approached me, I say, "Who would've guessed? Must've been fate that I came in on the day you were doing that promotional survey."

Rebecca shakes her head. "That wasn't the first time."

"Sure it was."

"The first time was about a month before. You came in and picked up baked potato soup and a chef salad. The order was under the name Kingsley."

"What? I never saw you before you came up to my table that day and asked if I'd like a complimentary gift certificate. You said all I had to do was answer a few questions and sign up for future promotions."

A single powder-puff cloud drifts across the sun and briefly shades us before moving on toward the eastern sky.

"I can't believe you fell for that c.r.a.p." She laughs and settles back against me.

"Do I sense a confession coming on?"

"I saw you come in that day for the pickup order and flipped. You had on a navy pantsuit with a silk blouse. But the way you smiled at the hostessI knew right then I wanted to meet you."

She takes my hand. "Every day after that, I'd watch for you to come back, but you didn't for almost a month. So when I saw you in the booth that day, I went back to my office and found some old gift certificates. I figured it was the best way to introduce myself and, you know, see if you were on my team."

I'd thought it was my imagination or wishful thinking, but Rebecca hadn't been scanning the crowd, she'd been checking me out. When she stopped by to say h.e.l.lo and turned on the charm, she wasn't being a good manager, she was flirting with me. With me, Claire Blevins, who was too dense to know a come-on if it bit her on the a.s.s.

My face goes bright pink. I'm glad she can't see. "Did you peg me from the start?"

"Kind of. My gaydar is about ninety percent accurate, and I noticed the way you looked at me. But there was something I couldn't put my 172.

finger on, something that kept you distant. I thought you were probably in a relationship, so I decided to play it cool. Wouldn't do me any good to get too close if you had someone waiting at home, would it?"

I nod, and even though she's looking at something across the water, she seems to sense my agreement. A small ba.s.s jumps from the shallows, breaks the surface with a splash, then disappears beneath the creek's cloudy surface.

Rebecca goes on. "But after a while, you kind of started flirting with me."

"I'm not much of a flirt. Never had any practice. Like I told you before, I met my lover in high school."

Rebecca wiggles around to half-face me. "This is all new to you isn't it? Dating, I mean, getting to know someone?"

"Yeah. Most of the time I feel like I'm twelve going on ninety."

"That's what I like about you, Claire. You're experienced, but you're almost naive when it comes to some things."

"Like what?"

"Like when a woman is trying to hit on you." She pokes a finger into my ribs. "I swear to G.o.d, I thought I'd never get you alone long enough to find out if you were interested."

"Okay, hold the phone. Didn't it tell you something when I started coming in for lunch almost every day? h.e.l.l, I've already told you that I hadn't been in Choppy's more than four or five times over the last five years. No offense, but it wasn't the salad dressing that kept me coming back."

Rebecca sighs, I sigh, then we sit quietly for a long time. Water thrashes against the rocks, and blue jays caw in the distance. It's peaceful here, close to this woman, far from my routine, my prison. For a minute, I forget the gloom and the self-hate. All I feel is Rebecca, and it seems natural when I bury my face in the slope of her neck. She doesn't speak, but leans into me.

Her flesh tightens at my touch, and she whispers, "What are you doing?"

"Want me to stop?"

She puts her hands on my knees. "When I told you I'd be patient, I wasn't giving you license to tease me."

"Who says I'm teasing?" I trace her neck with my lips and nibble her earlobe. An easy breeze blows in from across the water.

She shivers and glances toward the sun. "We'd better head back now, but if you're in the same mood later, we'll talk about it."

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Uh-oh. I could be in serious trouble, here. But on the other hand, maybe it wouldn't kill me. I trust Rebecca not to take advantage of me, or force something I don't want to do. So maybe later, when the lights are low and the mood is right, we'll move on with this thing.

CHAPTER 33.