He braces his hand against the tack room wall behind me and breathes like a man who just ran a mile, and the heat off his body is still all over the front of mine, and I wait.
I wait the way he taught me to wait at the round pen. I wait the way I wait on a horse who's deciding.
But I can’t wait for him to decide anymore. I'm out of patience.
"Then stop looking at me like that, Spur," I say. "Because I’m done pretending I don't see you looking."
I duck under his arm.
I walk out of the tack room, across the barn, out into the noon sun, and I don't look back.
My mouth is still warm where his mouth was, and my hand is still warm where his cut was, and my whole body is shaking from the adrenaline rush he gave me.
I go to Jaeger's stall.
Spur put him in there ten minutes ago, and he's drinking water from his bucket the way he drinks water after a long haul—two long swallows, lift the head, breathe, two more long swallows.
He clocks me in the doorway and his ears come forward.
I let myself in, shut the gate behind me, and lean my forehead against his neck.
He doesn't ask anything.
"He kissed me, buddy."
Jaeger snorts.
"I know."
I stand there with my forehead in his mane and I let myself shake.
Not crying. Just shaking. The way a body shakes after it puts down something it's been carrying for too long.
After a while I straighten up, pat his neck twice, and tell him I'll bring him an apple later.
I walk out of the barn.
Spur is on my cabin porch when I round the corner of the bunkhouse.
Sitting on the top step. Hat in his hand. Hair still flat from the band.
He doesn't look up when I come up the path. "I have to watch you," he says.
"I know."
"I'm not coming inside."
"I know that too."
I walk past him and I don't slow down.
I don't slam the door behind me but I don't leave it open either.
I go to my kitchen, pour myself a glass of water from the tap, and drink it standing at the sink looking out the window at the back pasture where the mustang is grazing in the round pen. Six weeks of work and one paperback in the dirt, and the horse is finally a horse again.
I drink the whole glass. Pour another. Drink half of it.
Look at my hands. Still shaking.
