Free Another Kind of Cowboy by Susan Juby Page A

to his white-haired, glue-smelling girlfriend since he was eleven.
    Cleo considered this for a moment, her face pensive. Then she said, “Well, that’s okay.”
    Alex couldn’t believe it. Was she a sociopath? How dare she bulldoze her way past the Secret Imaginary Girlfriend! The nerve! He searched his mind for more excuses.
    â€œI’ve got this family thing, too. So I’m pretty booked,” he added.
    Cleo looked disappointed again, but not disappointed enough. Alex could tell from her expressionthat she wasn’t going to be deterred by a fictional family thing or by a Secret Imaginary Girlfriend. There had to be something he could do to get her to back off. The barn was his refuge and he planned to keep it that way.

SEPTEMBER 28
7
Alex
    CHRIS AND SOFIA arrived just as the lesson was ending. Alex hoped that he’d be doing something impressive when they showed up, maybe an extended trot or at least cantering, but no. He was at the end of a lunge line, like a little kid just learning to ride.
    When Alex saw Cleo being lunged, he’d approved of the idea. For her. He was certain he wouldn’t need any help with his seat and balance. Fergus informed him otherwise at his second lesson.
    â€œYou have a good seat, dear boy, but we need to challenge it. You don’t mind being lunged?”
    Alex shook his head no. He figured it would take Fergus about three seconds to see he didn’t need remedial help and they could head right into theadvanced stuff: piaffe, passage, pirouettes, and the other grand prix movements.
    It was not to be. At each lesson Alex was lunged both on Princess and Turnip. He was lunged until his spine compressed and he developed a bobble head. He was lunged until the insides of his legs bled. Still, Alex couldn’t decide whether to be embarrassed or excited about the process. He’d read somewhere that riders at the Spanish Riding School in Vienna spent three years at the end of a lunge line before they were ever allowed to take up the reins. He felt thrilled to be part of such a demanding tradition. The other part of him felt that even though he was new to dressage anyone who loved it as much as he did should be a natural, especially if that person had been riding seriously since he was twelve.
    â€œYes, but you rode Western,” Fergus said when Alex mentioned his concerns. “Now you have to learn a dressage seat. I’m not saying you don’t have a good seat. You do. We’re just fine-tuning it.”
    The other way Alex knew he wasn’t a dressage prodigy was because Ivan hadn’t come out to give him a lesson yet. Fergus had told them that Ivan would only teach him and Cleo when Ivan thought they were ready.
    Part of the challenge for Alex was the difference in horses. He was used to riding horses that had been trained to be as comfortable as possible. Riding Turnip was a little bit like being aboard a nicely upholstered couch. Riding Princess, however, was like standing on the deck of a small boat in choppy water. Every stride threatened to send Alex flying. The more tired he got, the worse his balance became. By the end of his lessons he felt like he was bouncing around like a first-time rider at a dude ranch. That’s what was happening when Chris and Sofia showed up.
    After Fergus told him he was welcome to invite people to watch his lessons, he’d invited his friends out. His hope was that Cleo would mistake Sofia for his girlfriend. He hadn’t told Sofia the plan, however, and he couldn’t invite her and not invite Chris. So now they were both here and he was left wondering how his nicely compartmentalized life had gotten so messy.
    From the corner of his eye he saw Chris and Sofia walk over to the ring. Like many unhorsey people in an equine environment, they looked worried that someone would suddenly ask them to hold a rearing stallion or put on a rubber glove so they could help a mare give birth.
    Alex