Winter Circuit (The Show Circuit -- Book 2) Read Free Page B

be able to do it in person if I didn’t pull myself together. And if I didn’t pull myself together for his visit, then he’d most certainly be running straight back to Mary Beth.
     
    I spent the next few days getting myself back together. I realized that I hadn’t done much personal upkeep since I’d arrived at school. I walked into Davis Square and got my hair trimmed. Just an inch or so to snip off the split ends. It felt great to have the woman wash my hair and give me a mini head massage. I thought about getting a cool, new haircut. Maybe something short like Van. But I decided it was best not to change anything too much from the me Chris had inexplicably fallen in love with during the summer.
    There was a small nail salon, Kim’s Nails, next to the hair place and I decided to have my nails done too. Picking out my color I couldn’t help but think of Zoe. For the first few weeks of the summer circuit, we’d been best friends and she’d taken me along with her to get her nails done. The wild child that she was, she’d picked Come-to-Bed-Red. Being the naïve, inexperienced virgin that I’d been, I’d picked a light pink color with some sickly sweet name that I couldn’t remember now. I felt a small stab of pain thinking about Zoe because by the end of the summer, she had betrayed Chris and me. I knew that it wasn’t all about me, or Chris. That she had heaps of problems, stemming from growing up on the circuit. An orphan rider, Chris had called her at one point. She drank way too much—she was probably an alcoholic. She was a sad case, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt me that I had lost one of the only close friends I’d ever had. It did.
    Now, here I was, getting my nails done alone. The only friend I’d made at school was Van and that wasn’t really a true friendship. What few friends I’d had in high school, I’d pretty much lost touch with. We’d never been close anyway. I hearted their posts on Instagram and occasionally mustered a comment or two, but it was clear they were doing what we all were supposed to do at college—grow, bloom, achieve. While I was shrinking, freezing, floundering.
    I picked a purple hue—it wasn’t Come-to-Bed-Red, but it wasn’t sickly sweet pink. Maybe the purple would help me channel someone else.
    My last stop was a small boutique clothing store with an eco bent—Gentle Goods—where I bought a really cute sweater. Maybe spa and retail therapy actually worked because I felt better than I’d felt in weeks as I walked back to campus.
    Tomorrow I would see Chris.

 
    Chapter 4
    Chris came to pick me up at campus in the mid afternoon. He had driven all the way from Pennsylvania. He probably should have flown but like many horse people he was used to logging lots of miles in a day. He had told me his cars lasted only a few years since he often put fifty thousand miles on them in a given year between driving to horse shows and going to look at horses. He listened to audio books in the car and said he liked the time to just think.
    He called from downstairs. Van had gone to New York for the weekend in search of some secret show so Chris could have stayed in my dorm room. But as I glanced around it before I went to meet him, I knew we’d made the right decision.
    I came around the bend by the rows of mailboxes, a few always strangely flung open, and saw him out the window of the door before he saw me.
    Yes, he was still as amazingly good-looking. He was still Chris. He had on jeans and a black North Face puffy down jacket. The perpetual tan he had from working outdoors had faded somewhat in these late fall months but he still had a healthy color, unlike my skin which had quickly turned pale.
    I took a deep breath. It didn’t seem possible. Chris Kern, who had competed and won at some of the country’s top shows, was standing outside my college dorm. Chris Kern, who was probably one of the most desirable straight men in the sport of show jumping, had traveled