My Seoul Man

Chapter 30

I slowed down and pulled over to the side of the road by AJ's place.

Cause the man was out riding a horse like he really knew how to ride a horse. I'm telling you both manes flying. AJ leaning into it hard—shirt off, too. Happy birthday to me...

I trotted up to the fence and climbed up on the bottom rung to get a better look at both wild thangs comin' at me. And then I ran back to the Benz and beeped as they got closer.

He slowed down a little bit to make that approach. Danged horse was as pretty as AJ. No cap. Sort of...mahogany. With a cool diamond on his "forehead." I don't know dick about horse anatomy...

But this bad boy kept nodding like he was pissed that he'd had to stop running on account of some woman. AJ patted his neck and said, "Chillax, Butch..."

And I shaded my eyes to gaze up at AJ looking all buff. "When did you learn how to do all that?"

"Drama I did. Period piece, so there was lots of horseback stuff. I had to learn to fall off, even, because—wait, you take an early lunch or...?"

The sudden segue jerked me right back to the reason I'd done, like, 90 mph to get to him a few minutes before.

And the pain was so sharp I just started babbling all crazy and disjointed, like: "I just--I couldn't—ok, see..."

And then I barked out, "Dammit, I quit my job!"

He stared down at me for a few seconds like he was waiting for his mind to put all the little sentence fragments together. And then this big grin spread across his face.

So I frowned all up and said, "What kinda face is that?"

"Lemme take my boy back to the stables and I'll meet you at the house, okay?"

He'd blindsided me so bad that my needy soul sputtered out, "No wait—hang on! I mean, I like him. Butch."

Don't know where that came from. Cause I told you I don't know dick about horses. Even though I live in a part of the country where people ride them to Starbucks and the Walgreens drive-through sometimes.

But he was just so...majestic, this Butch. Looking down at me like he could feel all the turmoil I couldn't put into the right words.

AJ gave him a pat on the neck and asked, "You ride?"

"In my dreams, maybe."

So he got down, walked over to the fence and raised his arms to me. "Climb up some more."

"What—"

"Just come on up! I gotcha."

Dude lifted me up and over that fence like I weighed about two pounds. And then he helped me hop up on Butch's back pretty much the same way.

And Butch shook his mane a little bit but it didn't feel like he was threatening me or anything like that. In fact, it felt like a little, "Hello."

"He's a real good boy," AJ said. "They got him for some of the grandkids who got into the whole 4H thing at school. Remember that?"

My heart felt like a lead weight in my chest--yes, I remembered. There were stables and stuff out back of Whitman High. Where kids could learn to raise stock and do all kinds of rodeo stuff. "Cowboy School," we called it.

And I knew damned well they wouldn't be taking that to their new "campus."

A thought that set me to bawling my eyes out up there on Butch's back.