I easily mounted mine, the white, demonstrating to Mac how to step into the stirrup and swing the other leg over.
He nodded and tried his best. It was actually quite funny to see — Mac, the tough guy with the whiskey and cigars and brooding eyes, trying to clamber his bulky frame onto a horse.
“Remember,” I said as he grabbed the saddle horn and heaved himself up, “they can smell fear.”
He turned to look up at me, squinting his eyes in the sunlight. “Thanks for that,” he said.
“No problem.”
To his credit, it only took him one try, though it could have been a hell of a lot smoother. He sat up on the dapple gray’s back, looking down at the ground and grabbing the reigns tightly. He was nervous, but he didn’t show it on his face. It was all in the way he clenched the reigns like a lifeline.
It was almost hilarious. The big tough guy who’d stared down the gang last night without a tremor in his voice, freaked out by something I’d done since I was five.
“You’re holding them too tightly,” I called after him as his horse started ahead at a fast clip. “Pull back gently and say ‘whoa’.”
“Whoa. Whoa!” Mac barked, pulling at the reigns. As luck would have it, he seemed to have gotten the more spirited of the two. Mine was lazily tossing his mane and watching his friend dance up and down the beach.
“Gentler,” I called, trying not to laugh at the sight. A cowboy, Mac was not. But there was potential. Even though he looked far from comfortable, there was something unbelievably sexy about the man on a horse.
Finally, Mac was able to get his mount a bit under control. I instructed him on steering, how to sit properly, and how to treat the horse so as to not stress him out.
“You’re not doing half bad for a city boy,” I said as we walked them down the white beach. To our left, the waves crashed and rolled away, pulling the water out to the ocean where the sun was just starting to dip beyond the horizon.
“I catch on quick,” he said. “And I have driven horses before. Once.”
“Driven?” I repeated the odd word choice.
He nodded. “One of my boys didn’t think I’d boost one of those carriages they carry the tourists around in. They thought wrong.”
“Boost? Wait,” I said, eyes wide. “You’re not saying you stole a horse and carriage?”
He nodded. “Sure did. Drove it straight across Phoenix Park.”
“And got away with it?”
He chuckled. “Nah, I wouldn’t say that. Turns out horses are a hell of a lot harder to steal than cars. Only got hit with a fine and probation though. I was a kid so it could have been a lot worse.”
I thought about what he said, considered letting it pass, and then let my curiosity get the better of me. “Did you just say you used to steal cars?” I asked.
He looked at me quickly and sobered. “Ah, yeah, did I just say that?”
“Yeah,” I said.
He sighed and looked down at his horse. “There weren’t a lot of opportunities in Dublin,” he explained. “Not for me anyway. My friends and I got into some shit, but after I moved to the States I stayed on the straight and narrow.”
“And what about your friends?” I asked. He gave me a look. “Too far? Okay,” I said, not pushing.
“And what about you?” he asked as we trotted along.
I laughed. “What about me?”
“Well,” he said, “I know you apparently date assholes and you work in design and that you went to Kentucky State and you like fruity cocktails and busting my balls, but is that all there is to Alice Rhodes?”
“Of course not,” I said. “I, um…” Huh, this was harder than it seemed. How do you summarize your own life so casually? The moments that made me who I was seemed, by all logic, too personal to share with this man. But for some reason I felt the urge to spill them all, present my secrets to him like an offering, an olive branch extended with the hope of an honest exchange.
“I grew up in a small town,” I said finally. “Not a farm, but a farming community. Parents divorced when I was young. I wanted to move to New York from the moment I saw that Home Alone sequel.”
“Must have missed that one.”
“You missed out. It made New York look awesome. Big and bustling and exciting. So different from where I grew up. It definitely didn’t do the nightlife justice, but I’ll give ‘em a pass. So that was the dream for a long time.”
He gave a low laugh. “So you made it, got to the city, have an apartment and a job. Now what?”
“What do you mean?”
“What’s the dream now?”
I looked out across the water, turning over the question that I’d spent so long trying to push from my mind. What was next? After this wedding, after I didn’t have Beck and Sam to fret over, what was I going to do? I was in a good spot at work, liked my friends, enjoyed my hobbies. I would be pretty content to continue at this equilibrium for a while, if there wasn’t that gapping loneliness that refused to address itself.
“I guess I want to get married,” I said.
Whatever he was expecting me to say, I got the impression that wasn’t it. That window into him, the openness that took so long to come out but shined like the North Star when it did, closed with a snap.
“Why is it that every woman wants to get married?” he asked sullenly.
“We don’t all want to,” I said.
Mac was closing off, but I felt compelled to spill my thoughts. Who cared if he didn’t want to listen or couldn’t understand? He asked me and this was what I had to offer.
“But I do,” I continued. “Not right this minute obviously. Not even within the year. But I’d like to meet someone. Someone who’s right for me for once. You’re telling me that you’ve never had any desire to form a relationship with someone?”
Mac considered my words and then shook his head. “Never. Never met a girl I didn’t just want to sleep with. Because loving, wanting a relationship, implies that I think it’s going to last forever. And it’s not. And by the time you realize that, you’ve already lost everything that will last.”
“And what will last?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Friendships,” he said. “The people that have already shown you that they’d stick by you no matter what.”
“But how is that any different from a relationship?” I asked. “Non-sexual, sure. But if you can decide you’ve outgrown your spouse, can’t you do the same for your friends?”
“Sure. But at least your friends don’t ask you to pick them over everything else. At least, your good ones don’t. And they don’t live with you and share your bank account.”
He had a point, but I didn’t say so. Mac obviously was dealing with issues over this wedding that went beyond childish jealousy. He’d been burned before, in his past, and wasn’t over it.
“All I’m saying,” I said finally, “is that I don’t want to end up alone.”
He glanced at me and I caught his eye. “Neither do I,” he admitted.
The confession surprised me. It was the first truly personal thing I’d heard him say. And from the look on his face, he was just as surprised he said it as I was. Then the shock closed off again and he nudged his horse ahead.