Sidesaddle (6 page)

“How’s that?” Lisa asked.

“Oh, I know about that,” said Tiffani.

“Well, tell us,” Phil said. “I’m interested.”

“Just imagine you’re a soldier,” said Tiffani. “I mean, not that that’s so hard to imagine, you being so big and all that.”

Stevie gagged. Nobody noticed.

“Since you’re going to use your right hand to hold your sword, you have to wear it on your left side, or else you would never get it out of the scabbard. So, there it is, hanging down your left leg, and it would be the biggest ole nuisance in the world to get it up and over the horse if you were mounting from the right, so the soldiers mounted from the left.”

“Why, I never would have thought of that,” said Phil. “You certainly know an awful lot about horses and riding!”

Stevie gagged again.

“Are you okay, Stevie?” Tiffani asked.

“I’m fine,” Stevie muttered, holding Belle’s reins a little tighter to slow the mare down. She didn’t really need to be so close to Tiffani, and if her friends, most especially her boyfriend, were going to be so gushy over Miss Pink Jodhpurs, Stevie wasn’t at all sure she needed to be anywhere close to any of them.

It didn’t work, however. Tiffani turned to her as they approached the woods. “Now, tell me, Stevie, which one of these trails should we try first?”

Stevie sighed. She was stuck and she knew it. Just as she was too polite to ignore a compliment, she was too nice to upset an afternoon for her friends. They seemed to be having an easier time than she was at being nice to Tiffani, but in spite of the frilly pink, fuzzy-sweatered, lace-ornamented newcomer, Stevie was on a
trail ride, and when it came to trail rides, she always had definite ideas.

“To the creek, of course,” she said. Carole, Lisa, and Phil nodded in agreement, and the horses all walked along jauntily.

Most of the trail was narrow, and the riders had to go in single file and at a walk. Carole took the lead. Lisa was behind her, followed by Tiffani and then Phil. Stevie was at the rear. That suited her just fine. Nobody would expect to hear from her, and she could almost be by herself.

Words and phrases drifted back to her.

Lisa asked for help and advice on her sidesaddle. Tiffani was only too happy to provide it. Carole asked her for information about breeds for their all-important report, due the following week.

Then, to Lisa’s delight, Phil began asking Tiffani more questions about military riding. It turned out that this was another one of those areas where Tiffani knew a great deal. Lisa’s report was well under way.

“Hey, Stevie, you okay back there?” Tiffani asked, looking over her shoulder.

“Fit as a fiddle,” said Stevie, wondering vaguely where she had ever come up with such a fatuous phrase.

“Oh, Stevie, you’re so funny!” Tiffani responded.

Stevie rolled her eyes.

“Say, Phil, do you have any idea how lucky you are to have a wonderful girlfriend like Stevie?” Tiffani
asked. “I just don’t know how I would have made it through my first day at Pine Hollow without her. I mean, not that Pine Hollow is a hard place to be or anything, but Stevie just made me feel so welcome from the very first minute I saw her that I knew I was right at home?”

“Oh, she’s a great girl, all right,” Phil agreed.

“Better than great,” said Tiffani.

“Yes, better,” said Phil

“And then for her to agree to show me the trails in the woods! Why, it was a whole ’nother nice thing for sweet Stevie to do.”

“Definitely sweet,” said Phil. “And speaking of sweet, I’m really curious about how you got to riding sidesaddle in the first place and what it’s like and how you trained Diamond there?”

Did Stevie’s ears deceive her or was her very normal Phil beginning to talk like Tiffani? Had he actually just ended a sentence that wasn’t a question with a question mark?

“Oh, yes, do tell,” Carole said eagerly. “I’ve been meaning to ask you.”

It turned out to be a long story, something involving one of Tiffani’s first instructors who’d had a sore right foot. Stevie wasn’t very interested in the question, and she was certainly not interested in the answer. She turned her attention inward, because she was afraid if she didn’t, she would either blow up or throw up, and
neither seemed likely to please her companions at this point.

Who did Phil think he was, talking with Tiffani about Stevie as if she weren’t there? And having to be reminded that Stevie was more than great! As long as she’d known him, he’d never told her she was “sweet,” as in “sweet li’l ole Stevie.” Why did he have to be discussing that now, with someone who was almost a stranger? Tiffani was flirting—with Phil!

Now that they’d been on the trail for twenty minutes, it wasn’t as hard to be disagreeable as it had been when they’d first started out. Stevie found that she was no longer seeing pink—she was starting to see red.

Every time Tiffani opened her mouth, she batted her eyes, smiling, flattering, and flirting—with Stevie’s boyfriend.

And the worst part was that Phil didn’t seem to mind a bit.

Stevie rode in silence, unwilling to make a scene, uncertain what mattered and what didn’t. She barely noticed the trees, the plants, the birds, the soft forest floor. She almost didn’t even notice when Belle started to nibble at some weeds—the kind that would make her very sick.

“Stevie!” Lisa called back.

Stevie tugged at her reins. Belle lifted her head and continued walking.

When they got to the creek, everybody dismounted. It was too cool to go wading, but it wasn’t too cool to sit on the rock and chat. Stevie sat with her friends, but if someone had asked her later what they had talked about, she wouldn’t have had the vaguest idea. It was a blur. All she saw was Tiffani, smiling at Phil, blinking sweetly, teasing, putting her hand on his arm. “Oh, Phil!” Tiffani exclaimed. And Stevie saw Phil smiling back, blinking back, and never once moving his arm out of Tiffani’s reach.

He likes it, he likes it, he likes it.
The words coursed through Stevie’s mind like a poison.

“We ought to be heading back about now,” Carole said in her usual businesslike manner. “After all, the horses have been working for a while, what with all the games and then the lesson and now the trail ride. They must be as ready for some rest as we are—not that I’m really tired.”

“You’re never tired,” said Lisa. “But I’m getting that way now. I think it must be the sidesaddle. Do you get more tired sidesaddle than astride?” she asked Tiffani.

“Oh no, but I’m used to it. It’s like my muscles just know?”

“I guess mine haven’t graduated from school yet,” said Lisa. Tiffani must have thought that was awfully funny, because it made her laugh very hard, almost as hard as she laughed when she realized how much trouble
she and Lisa were going to have remounting without a mounting block.

Fortunately Phil was there to help them. It was almost more than Stevie could bear, watching her boyfriend lift Tiffani Thomas into the saddle.

Stevie led the way back to the stable at the fastest safe speed she and Belle could manage.

S
TEVIE
’
S HEAD WAS SPINNING
. She couldn’t believe how totally unhappy she was. She was angry with her friends, furious at Phil, and inconsolable about Tiffani.

Stevie knew herself pretty well, and she knew that although she was more than capable of being annoyed by annoying people, this went well beyond that. She even understood that it wasn’t totally rational. There was something about Tiffani that irked her more than she could say, and every time someone she liked didn’t feel the same way, she got irked at them, too. When that included the three people she cared the most about in the world, she was in trouble.

She had to find a way out, a solution, a resolution. She thought about all these things as she groomed Belle, totally ignoring, insofar as she could, the buzz of
activity across the hall. Riders stopped by to admire Diamond and to ask Tiffani about sidesaddle riding.

Was that what bothered her? Stevie asked herself. Was it because Tiffani was getting a lot of attention? Stevie liked attention, but she never begrudged it to anyone else who deserved it, and she could genuinely understand that people were curious about Tiffani and Diamond. Also, there was no question that Tiffani was someone who genuinely cared about other people. She’d learned absolutely everyone’s name in a day and had a knack for recalling horses’ names and details—“Why, I never saw anyone jump so smoothly as you did on Comanche. Was that really the first time you’d ridden him, Amy?”

And the pink and frills? Stevie shrugged. What a rider wore was no more important than the color of the horse she rode. It meant nothing.

So why did these things irk her? It was sort of like she’d been taken over by some kind of demon, and when it came to how Tiffani and Phil got along, the demon had a specific name: jealousy. But how on earth could Stevie be jealous? Phil was way too smart to fall for pink and frills, and she knew Phil too well to think his flirting with Tiffani meant anything. What mattered was how Stevie and Phil felt about one another, not about how Tiffani flirted or how Phil flirted back.

The only way to rout out a demon like jealousy was to bring it out in the open, talk about it, understand it.
Once it was understood, it couldn’t possibly have any meaning. That was the answer. The one thing that would really make Stevie feel better was to spend some time with Phil.

It turned out to be easy to arrange that. There had been a lot of talk about TD’s as their trail ride had come to an end. Carole and Lisa were eager to spend more time talking with Tiffani—the repository of all horse information in the world, Stevie grumbled to herself, momentarily forgetting her resolve—about their research projects. This would not be good for Stevie and she knew it. She was saved from disaster by her own white knight. While she was stammering and trying to come up with a reasonable excuse, Phil supplied her with one.

“I just can’t today,” he said. “Much as I would like a sundae and some good horse talk, my mother is picking me up at Stevie’s place at four o’clock. That doesn’t give us time to eat a sundae, even in a hurry.” Then he turned to Stevie. “You can go with them if you’d like—” he began.

“No thanks,” she said hastily. “I’ll walk back to my place with you.”

“Okay,” he said. And the deal was made.

When Stevie finished tending to Belle, she put her tack away and went to look for Phil, expecting to find him in the locker area or chatting with Max or Red as
he usually did. No such luck. He was among the group in the hallway watching Tiffani groom Diamond as if they’d never witnessed a grooming before. Tiffani was willingly answering questions about her Tennessee walking horse and about sidesaddle riding.

“It’s a real American breed,” she said. “Just as much as the Saddlebred, like Belle there, though Belle is a Saddlebred mix and Diamond is a purebred walker.”

Phil nodded.

What Tiffani had said was absolutely, one hundred percent true, but it irked Stevie the same way that everything the girl said, especially when Phil agreed with it, irked her. It was definitely time to go.

She tugged on Phil’s sleeve. “I’m ready,” she told him.

“Me too,” he said, taking her hand.

They left the stable together and began the walk home. It wasn’t a long walk, but Stevie was hopeful it would be long enough for them to really enjoy one another’s company in a pleasant, Tiffani-free atmosphere that would set her mind at ease.

“I’m glad the weather was nice for the trail ride,” Stevie said, knowing that weather was considered the most neutral topic of all.

“Oh, yes,” said Phil. “It would have been a shame if Tiffani’s introduction to the Pine Hollow trails had been marred by rain or worse.”

That was not the response Stevie was hoping for.

“Not that rain is all that bad,” Stevie said.

“Oh, but it would have damaged that pretty sweater she was wearing,” said Phil.

Definitely not the response Stevie was hoping for.

“Sort of an odd outfit for a day of horses, didn’t you think—all that pink?”

Phil shrugged. “I don’t know. It just seems to suit some girls, you know. I mean, that girl was born to wear lace.” Phil seemed to sense that he’d crossed a line. “Not all girls, of course. I mean, I have trouble seeing you in pink and lace. It’s like it’s too girly for you, you know?”

Things were not going the way Stevie had hoped. What was wrong with pink? What made Phil think she couldn’t wear pink things? And lace? And an angora sweater? She could do that. She knew she could.
Why would he think I couldn’t?
she wondered.
Tiffani doesn’t have a patent on pink! Anyone is allowed to wear it—even me.

“The sidesaddle riding is really interesting,” said Phil. “Not that I want to do it, but frankly I’d be interested in trying it because it’s so different. You know, there’s something lovely and graceful about the lines of a sidesaddle rider.”

“Lines?”

“Sure, the way she looks in the saddle. It’s elegant
and charming and, in an old-fashioned way, very feminine, I can see Scarlett O’Hara riding around Tara.…”