Finally, I bring Sonny to a stop. The horse had gone wild. Me tensing up and panicking stirred him onto something crazy. It was my fault entirely, and I know that. Whatever he was feeling was because of me. I come to a full stop in front of the ranch house and my aunt and uncle are upset because they see me crying. I get off the horse, and Ledger jumps off Cher, rushing toward me.
"Liv," he says, "What's going on? What are you doing? You rode Sonny like a pro."
My uncle yells at Ledger, "What were you doing with her? Where did you take Livingston?"
"I taught her how to ride a horse. She just wanted to go on the trail and..."
"You taught Livingston how to ride a horse?” He scoffs. “What the hell do you think you're doing, son? She knows more than you’ll ever know."
My aunt wraps an arm around me and I'm wiping my eyes, but I'm shaking, terrified, a wreck, panicked still. I brush her away, not because I don't want her comfort, but because I'm so shook up.
I move to the ranch house, embarrassed. I can't stand here. I need to be alone. I tell her, "I'm sorry. I..."
Ledger calls after me. "Liv, I didn't know you could ride. You told me you couldn't. But what I just saw..."
"I'm sorry," I tell him. "I have to... I need a moment. I need to be alone, I'm sorry. I..." I don't finish my sentence, and I know what that makes me: a jerk, a fool, an ass.
But I need to take a shower, and I'll find him after dinner. I just need a minute to calm down, to breathe.
Is this what grief is like? Does it bubble up to the surface at the most unexpected moments? Am I too fragile to fall for someone like Ledger? Am I too breakable to ever be held in someone's hands?
I hear my uncle chewing Ledger out and I feel bad about it. I'll explain it to them both soon enough. But right now, my head pounds, and my whole body feels wracked and raw.
My aunt knocks on the bathroom door. “Honey, you need to get in the shower. You look like you've seen a ghost." When I don’t answer she exhales slowly. "This about Chestnut?" she asks.
I nod, so thankful she knew my pain wasn’t about Ledger. It tells me she knows deep down he is a good, true man. "I shouldn't have gotten on the horse," I tell her. "Everything about the day was perfect. Everything. And Ledger's so good to me. He's so kind, and we were having so much fun. But then I got freaked out. I had this memory of Ches and I got tense and scared, and I had these flashbacks, and it was all too much."
"Sweetheart," she says, "it's okay. Let's just get you in the shower. Calm down, and then you can go talk to the boys. All right?"
I nod. "He probably thinks I'm a freak. And I lied to him, you know?"
"He'll understand."
"You think?" I ask. "Because I told him I didn't know how to ride a horse. I wanted him to think he could teach me."
My aunt smiles, turning on the hot water to the shower, reaching for a towel in the bathroom closet. "I think he'll understand. He probably liked showing you how to get up on a horse."
I close my eyes. As she steps out of the bathroom, I undress. As I step into the shower, letting the hot water run over me, I think about Ledger, wondering what he must think of me right now. Whether he sees me as nothing but a weak, fragile, breakable girl who lied to him.
I sink to the floor of the shower, wishing I were a stronger kind of woman, wishing I were anyone but me.
9
Ledger
Oh, I'm pissed all right.
I'm pissed a thousand ways to Sunday and back again.
Her uncle John is chewing me out for something I didn't do. I took a girl I'm falling hard for on a picnic. I didn't do anything wrong, and I didn't break any damn rules. She's a grown-ass woman and I'm a grown-ass man, so I didn't do anything that I should apologize for.
Hell, I didn't even take her virginity and she sure as hell didn’t take mine. I kissed that girl nice and good, and I'd do it all over again. Hell, I'd do plenty all over again, and I'm not going to apologize for that either.
"What do you have to say for yourself?" he asks me.
"I'm not going to listen to you yell at me for something I didn't do. I didn't hurt her. I didn't freak her out. The horse spooked and it ran, and Liv seems to know exactly what she was doing on Sonny and she took care of it, didn't she? She went exactly where she was supposed to go, which was back home to you. Right? And she rode Sonny mighty fine." I shake my head, still in shock over how well Livingston rode that quarter horse from the trail to the ranch house. She is no novice. That girl, she can ride like she’s been doing it her whole life.