Barn Excursion - Perry, GA - 5/3/07 - Closed « Thread Started on Jul 28, 2007, 9:12pm »
Though the hotel room had two beds, it was exceptionally tiny; something that Blaise thought was probably reflective of the dirt cheap price they’d paid to spend a night in it. He sat on the end of his bed that morning, bent over a local phone book and scrolling through stable listings as he waited for Sara Beth to emerge from the shower. There were a couple that looked like prospective targets to find a good lesson, though Blaise had to be super careful about how they went about doing this. Stables with any ties to the ES were automatically out, as were most stables with any ties to intercollegiate teams and international competition lest Blaise risk getting found out and pinned as the big fat liar that he assuredly was.
However, in the center of the yellow pages was a tidy ad for a stable by the name of “Parker Performance Horses”, advertising expertise in ‘A’ circuit hunters and AQHA hunters. While Blaise could have done without the Quarter Horses, the ‘A’ circuit was promising, and judging from the services listed on the advert, the place seemed to be professional but small. In other words, perfect.
The bathroom door opened with a squeak, and Blaise looked up from the yellow pages as Sara Beth eased out of the bathroom and gave him a tiny grin. She’d dressed in older clothes and sneakers, her make-up applied much lighter than he was used to seeing it, but she was fresh from the shower, her hair still wet, still beautiful. “Hey, how does this place look?” he asked, trying to fain ignorance as far as the horses went. She came over to sit next to him on the bed and peer at the ad, pulling her hair back into a bun.
“Yeah, as good a place as any to try, I suppose,” she said, patting him on the shoulder as she stood. “You about ready? We’ll stop and get breakfast on our way out.”
“Oh yes, I just need to put my shoes on,” he said, closing the phone book a laying it back down in the drawer under the television before slipping on his flip flops, the only pair of shoes he had with him. Sara giggled.
“You’re going to have to wear flip flops in a barn,” she said when he raised his eyebrows at her. He rolled his eyes, turning his attention away to do a double check around the room. He grabbed his bag up from the floor before facing her again.
“Nothing wrong with flip flops in a barn,” he said, three seconds away from elaborating on how many times he’d worn already flip flops in the barn before Sara cut in.
“Yes, until you develop ringworm. That’ll be nice, I’m sure,” she said. He crossed his eyes, mentally balking over his almost slip up, and took Sara’s bag from her as she passed him on her way out of the hotel door.
If they were not even an hour into the start of the barn excursion and he was already having a hard time keeping his two identities straight, he was sure that this was going to be a very, very long day indeed.
Re: Barn Excursion - Perry, GA - 5/3/07 - Closed « Reply #1 on Aug 29, 2007, 8:02pm »
They’d ended up taking her little Honda back when they’d left the bar a couple of days ago, content in the fact that whenever they split up in the end, Blaise could simply hail a taxi and get back to his beat up Chevy that way. After all, there was no need for the two of them to be trailing each other in two cars for the entirety of the week, especially not when Blaise’s truck looked as though it was on its last legs. And so, after grabbing a quick and free breakfast in the lobby, they threw their bags into the trunk of her car and got inside. They were headed down the road shortly, Sara Beth driving while Blaise read directions off of a small printout.
The more she thought about it, though, the more she just wanted to turn the car around and head back to the hotel. They could find something else to do for the day, surely. Blaise just didn’t understand how the horse business worked. You couldn’t just waltz into someone’s barn and ask for a one-time only lesson unannounced and actually expect to get anything out of it. She understood that Blaise was simply trying to encourage her to follow her passions and her dreams, but one did have to be realistic.
She had had a moment where she’d ceased to be realistic earlier, and as a result, she was currently cruising the Eastern seaboard with a Frenchman that she didn’t really, truly know. She was telling herself that she knew him, yes, and he was delightful to be around, but did she really know anything important about him compared to the pieces of her soul she’d bared to him in the past few days? No. And while she continued to be happy and comfortable and safe, the realistic part of her kept wondering if that was valid or simply a false sense of security.
“You’re making a right on Martin Street, and I think this is Martin… Yeah, this is Martin Street,” Blaise was saying, and Sara responded in turn, breaking her away from her thoughts. Martin Street was a two lane road turning off of the busier four lane main road. They cruised along for quite a bit, rural countryside unfolding before them. Barns began to spring up beside the road once they’d gotten a mile or so out, and sure enough, about three miles out, a tidy little sign marked the establishment “Parker Performance Horses.”
“Here we are,” Sara said, cutting the wheel to the side and pulling down the drive. She had had the odd sensation upon looking at the sign that she’d been here before at some point and time, though that was highly unlikely. While she’d accompanied her mother to many of the horse shows and assisted her there in massage therapy activities, she very rarely traveled out to farms when her mother went. The barn calls were always much less exciting than the bustling horse shows. However, every once and a while, if the equine case was interesting enough and Sara had the time and the inclination, Sara would follow her mother up on some of the barn calls.
As Sara exited the car and laid eyes on a strikingly familiar woman dismounting a horse on the other side of the barn, she realized that this had been one of those times.
“I’ve been here before. I know these people,” she said, half to herself and half to Blaise, trying to adjust to this information. Blaise, pulling his shirt down in the front and looking around himself, seemed to make a noncommittal “hmming” noise. “I have. I do,” Sara insisted, heading off down the gravel path toward the arena. Blaise’s clunking footsteps followed her moments later. He seemed to be having a hard time keeping up with the information.
She’d been nineteen when her mom had been making weekly trips out to Parker Performance Horses. A new assistant trainer, Michele Sampson, was working with a young mare that was recovering from sweeney shoulder, and she was willing to pay for the travel and the services the have the mare worked on. After her mother had come home with tales of a mare with some muscle development issues in her shoulder but an incredible amount of potential with two of the nicest, most down-to-earth trainers she’d ever met helping the mare along, Sara Beth had decided she’d needed to go check the situation out herself. Sure enough, the little mare had been absolutely beautiful, and Mike Parker and Michele Sampson were, as her mother put it, just good people. Her mother had worked on the mare for about four months, and Sara had went along as regularly as she could. Now, two years later, she found herself smiling to see Michele’s bobbing head of curls in the arena.
“Michele?” she called once she was in speaking distance. Michele squinted her eyes against the sun while leading her horse out of the arena and seemed to take the two of them in.
“Is there something I can help you with?” she began, sounding a bit worried that there was possibly something wrong, but then her tone changed and her eyes widened dramatically. “Holy… Sara Beth? Oh, I didn’t even recognize you! You look stunning! You always were gorgeous, but holy cow, girl… Come here, hug.”
Grinning sheepishly, Sara scuttled off toward Michele and enveloped her in a huge hug.
Re: Barn Excursion - Perry, GA - 5/3/07 - Closed « Reply #2 on Sept 3, 2007, 11:34am »
Still standing a few yards out of the way, Blaise watched in quiet confusion as Sara and who was apparently Michele embraced like long lost sisters, grinning from ear to ear. Frowning a bit, he approached cautiously, hoping that this was actually a good thing.
“How are you, how are you?” Michele asked, looking over Sara as this let each other go. Sara shrugged, pasting on a fake smile, and Blaise mentally rolled his eyes.
“Oh, I’m hanging in there. Good as it gets,” Sara responded, and Blaise sort of wanted to cut in and say, “Actually, no, she has cancer. Give her another hug and tell her you love her.” But he wouldn’t do that to her.
Michele smiled in return, motioning to the barn. “Come on, let’s get inside. I’ve got to put this horse up, and we’ll talk some…” But as she raised her hand to point at the barn, Sara reached out and grabbed it, straightening out the diamond on her ring finger with a significant glance at Michele. Blaise watched, lost for a moment, until he realized it was her left hand and most likely an engagement ring.
“Nuh uh,” Sara Beth said, though her face had split into the hugest smile Blaise had seen on her yet. It made his stomach flip over sideways and made him smile subconsciously himself. Michele herself smiled stupidly and her eyes drifted up to the barn she’d been pointing to some few seconds previously. Sara followed this gaze, though brought it back to Michele almost immediately with a small, happy squeak. “Oh, that’s amazing!” she exclaimed before pulling Michele into yet another hug. Blaise grinned.
“Yes, I rather though so,” Michele said. Her eyes drifted to Blaise once Sara released her, and Blaise could tell she was a bit uncertain about his presence. He smiled reassuringly, and of course, Sara quickly jumped to his rescue before he could even formulate a sentence.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I’m so rude,” Sara said, stepping over to Blaise’s side. “Michele, this is my friend, Blaise Corelle. Blaise, this is Michele Sampson. Soon to be Parker.”
Michele chuckled a bit at Sara’s introduction, reaching out to take Blaise’s already outstretched hand.
“It’s a pleasure,” Blaise said, for lack of anything else to say, and then watched in amusement as the woman balked at his accent.
“French,” she eventually said, laughing a bit at her own silliness. He grinned, following her lead as they headed off in a group toward the barn.
“Why else would I have this outrageous accent?” he asked, going for honestly perplexed. Both Sara and Michele lapsed into fits of giggles.
Once Sara had recovered, she explained the situation to Blaise, how she used to come here with her mother to help her with the horses. For the second time, he hoped that this was a good thing.
“Yo, Mike,” Michele called as they rounded the corner of the barn. A horse stood in cross-ties in the center aisle, and at the call, a blond-haired man covered in tattoos appeared from the tack room with a bridle slung over his shoulder and a lunge line and a lunge whip in his hands. He raised his eyebrows at Michele. “I found vagrants in the arena,” she explained, motioning to Sara and Blaise.
“You guys are getting married?” Sara exclaimed, streaking over to the man to give him the same bone-crushing hug that she’d given Michele some few minutes earlier. He looked confused at first, until he pried Sara off of him and got a good look at her face. Then, his eyes lit up.
“Sara? What are you doing here? Oh, it’s good to see you! Is everything okay?” he said, pulling her back into a half hug before pushing her away to really look at her again.
“Yeah, yeah,” she said, quickly breezing over his questions as she turned to Blaise. “And this is my friend Blaise. From France. Blaise, this is Mike.”
Blaise smiled, reaching forward to take Mike’s hand, but his smile fell immediately as Mike said, “You look so familiar…”
“Really? I can’t imagine why?” he said, shaking his head. “You must just be mistaken.”
“Yeah, he’s here on business from France,” Sara chimed in, which Blaise sort of wished she hadn’t, because if they did know him, he’d just been caught red handed in a lie.
“No, I was thinking the same thing when I looked at him,” Michele said, and Blaise’s heart felt like it stopped right then, right there. “I just couldn’t really place it. Do you ride, by any chance?”
“I…” Blaise started.
“Oh, do you know what?” Mike said, setting his lunging equipment down on a tack trunk. “I recognize him now. You’re Jim’s kid, aren’t you? Blaise, right? Blaise Corentin, or something like that? Your pictures are all over that advert we got for the ES. We thought about joining but, I don’t know. Kentucky is just such a drive to compete. You changed your hair, though, I guess that’s what threw me.” He chuckled, directing his attention over to Michele. “I told you, girl. Blonds have more fun.”
Michele rolled her eyes. “You looked better when it was brown, but whatever floats your boat.”
Mike scoffed. “I think I just looked better when I was younger.”
She grinned. “Didn’t we all? Come on, we can all go and sit in the office and talk for a bit. I’ll get some coffee started, why don’t you put the horse up in his stall for now? You can get him back out afterwards.”
However, Blaise and Sara stood oblivious to the others’ light banter. They stared at each other transfixed, Sara quite shocked, Blaise quite cornered.
Re: Barn Excursion - Perry, GA - 5/3/07 - Closed « Reply #3 on Sept 9, 2007, 4:05pm »
It took Sara a moment to even process what Mike had said about Blaise, because everything that had been revealed had been revealed in such a roundabout way that it was hard to keep up. Sara knew vaguely about the ES, at least she knew that it was a horse-riding competition circuit, and if Blaise was associated with it, that meant that he rode, meant that he was not strictly here on business, and Corentin? Close to Corelle, but…
There was quite a bit of lying going on, regardless of how you looked at it.
As Mike turned to the cross-tied animal, Sara latched onto the one unfamiliar name that had been mentioned. “J-Jim?” she asked, eyes still trained on Blaise. She was aware, however, that she was not going to get the answer from him.
“Yeah, Jim Rice,” Mike said absently, still oblivious to any sort of disruption to the calm. He pulled the saddle off of the horse, continuing on with his dialogue. “He’s a big wheel in the circuits, but for good reason. The guy’s an incredible rider. Privilege to watch him show a horse, for sure.” He paused, disappearing into the tackroom with the saddle and equipment, before emerging and continuing. “I worked out of his stable for about a couple of years back when he was working in Orlando. His demeanor’s a little – unsavory – but he takes care of his students. He’s a good guy once you get to know him.”
Sara just stared at Blaise, unsure what to do or say. Mike was still unaware, but Michele, with a woman’s intuition, was beginning to recognize that something was wrong. “Is everything okay?” she asked, looking worriedly as Sara.
And it was then that Sara realized that she did not want to do this here. She was not going to have this conversation with him here, not now, not in front of this people. She turned her gaze away from Blaise, smiled at Michele, and replied, “Oh yes, everything is quite all right. We were actually just wondering if there was any way that I might be able to have a lesson on one of the horses.”
“Oh,” Michele said, sounding surprised. “Oh, well, I don’t see why that would be a problem. Have you been thinking about competing, or…?”
“Something like that,” Sara replied. She nodded, eyes darting from Michele to Mike as an awkward silence began to stretch. “I mean, I don’t want to intrude on your business.”
“No, no,” Mike said, seeming now to understand that all was not as it appeared. “We’ve got a couple older hunters down the aisle, here. Nice schooled horses. We’ll put you on one of them. It’ll be fun.” He unhooked his own horse from the crossties at that, walking it into its stall. Sara could tell both he and Michele were avoiding the issue at hand – Blaise – but she was momentarily thankful for that.
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