Riding on Air Read Free Page B

I’d rather be with Jinx than with her. I deny it, but there’s enough truth in it to make me all hot and guilty. Jinx has never bailed out on me. It makes no difference to him that I’ve got a crappy disease. If Mum got me to the city I’d be lucky if I saw Jinx for the next month, let alone managed to ride him. I could hardly train him for the upcoming dressage competitions and forget selection for an elite squad. If anyone found out how bad my hands had been lately, that I fell off because I couldn’t hold Jinx not because I misjudged the jump, then my riding was over for the rest of the year at least. Maybe forever.
    â€œMelissa, bloody hell, are you OK?”
    I lifted my face out of Jinx’s mane and turned around to see my two best friends. They were coming across the trampled grass to lean on the top rail of Jinx’s yard—the scuffing sound of their boots on the hard ground had been blotted out by Jinx’s grinding teeth. He flicked his ears at their presence, but didn’t bother to remove his nose from his hay net. They were no threat to him or his hay, but he kept one ear cocked towards them, just in case they had any sneaky hay-stealing ideas.
    â€œYeah,” I said. “I’m good.”
    Tash, with her strawberry blonde ponytail spilling over her shoulder like a golden waterfall, delivered a sceptical glance from sea green eyes. I sighed and gave Jinx’s neck a final squeeze with my forearms before reluctantly removing myself. I squashed a surge of unworthy gloom at Tash’s knock-you-dead beauty and glanced at Eleni, smaller, darker and rounder, but almost as pretty, hanging over the rail beside our super-model mutual friend. She was giving me a hopeful look from her big brown eyes, as though she was willing to believe me, but couldn’t quite get there either.
    â€œGuys, I’m fine. I fell off, whatever. We all fall off.”
    â€œWe haven’t all got joints like you,” Tash retorted. Blunt as well as beautiful, that’s Tash. I looked again from one to the other, almost giggly with relief that I had friends like them who accept both my condition and my need to not talk about it.
    They even accept my obsession with proving myself and Jinx, though I know they don’t really get it. They don’t think it’s normal to be more interested in reading dressage magazines than Cleo or Girlfriend . Sometimes all the eye-rolling gets annoying, like they don’t trust me to know what’s best for me, but today was not one of those times.
    â€œI thought you might need help with Jinx,” Tash offered. She looked past my shoulder and frowned. When she looked back at me her face cleared. “Guess you must really be OK if you’ve already got him sorted.”
    I opened my mouth, then hesitated. The advantages of not pointing out that I hadn’t in fact put Jinx away myself were obvious. Tash could be relentless once she had the bit in her teeth and I’d have a hard time convincing her I was fine if she made up her mind I wasn’t. With a mental apology for depriving William of the humungous points he would have scored in the eyes of my friends for looking after my horse, I shut my mouth, dredged up a smile and tried not to look guilty.
    â€œSo what happened? Susanna Trapper said Jinx bolted and you fell off,” Eleni said.
    â€œBolted! Susanna’s such a drama queen,” I said indignantly and hid a wince as an echo of my headache rattled through my skull. I thought longingly of a hot bath and some paracetamol, but one, there weren’t any hot tubs conveniently supplied at camp and two, I was going to have to tough it out if I wanted to have the good stuff if I needed it tomorrow.
    â€œHe didn’t take off,” I said carefully. “I let him come in a bit too quick and just stuffed it up.”
    â€œTypical. Bloody dressage riders, amateurs the lot of you,” Tash replied.
    â€œYeah,