The Project Horse by Natalie Keller Reinert

Author:Natalie Keller Reinert
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Natalie Keller Reinert

“And what is for lunch today?” I ask as I fall into step alongside Adam after our last horse of the morning, tack piled in our arms.

He shoots me a suspicious glance. “Are you being nice to me just because I’m feeding you lunch for free?”

“Is there any other reason?”

“It could be because you genuinely like my company?”

I make a face. “Sounds fake.”

“They taught you to be mean in New York.”

“They taught me to survive.”

“On the mean streets of Manhattan, right?”

“I did live in Queens,” I remind him. “In a very exciting neighborhood. There was once a robbery at my corner bodega, but it was a mistake and it turned out the robber just wanted a breakfast sandwich.”

Adam laughs, shaking his head. “Right. So, lunch, that’s what you want?”

“I mean, it is ten o’clock in the morning,” I point out, dumping my saddle on the sawhorse in the middle of the tack room. “Reasonable time for lunch in this bizarre world, I think, right?”

“You think this is the bizarre world, Miss New York?” Adam picks up a bucket and heads over to the tap to fill it with warm water so we can get busy cleaning. My eyes are drawn to him as he walks, admiring the shape of him in his snug blue jeans. I hear hooves clatter outside as Anthony brings back his last set of older horses, and suddenly I imagine Adam as a stooped, middle-aged man with a limp and a scowl, aged prematurely by decades in an exercise saddle.

The thought makes me sad; he’s perfect right now, just as he is. I wish I could bottle up this moment, this pause in my life, and stop worrying about the future, stop obsessing about the past, and just focus on what is good about right now.

This. This is good, right now. Adam and me, in this preliminary space—or maybe it’s a post-space, maybe that moment last night in the truck was just a moment between friends. And that would be fine, too.

Seriously, it would be fine.

I study the back of his head, and when he turns around and sees me staring at him, he asks, “What?”

He puts the bucket on the floor between us.

I eye his suddenly free hands, wondering what they’d feel like. Warm and hard, maybe, like they were last night, or cold and dry, from riding out in the wintry air this morning.

“Posey?” he asks, my name as soft as a sip of cool water in his mouth, and I shrug it all away, past and future baggage, and grab his hands in mine. I squeeze them, somehow trying to convey all my confusion and guilt and want in one ineffectual gesture.

But I’ve known Adam for a long, long time. And so it’s enough.

Just like that, his lips slide into a smile, and without a backward glance, without checking who might see us, Adam Salazar leans forward and gives me a slow, searching kiss.

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