Cowboy Summer - 10. Sobering Heartaches

“Is he up yet?” Caleb drew Boy-Latte to a halt out the back of the house. It had been a long morning, what with getting up tired and having to see to the next round of guests. The pony-club girls were getting along fine, but now there were another six people in three couples all in for nine days. Caleb had matched them up with their horses, done the introductions, and taken them all for a ride. He had hoped that Rhydian would have been his second for the job, but he’d been immoveable at breakfast time.

He had been little better at midnight. Sam had needed to bodily scoop up Rhydian, weaving and unable to stand unaided, and put him in the pick-up. Before that he’d been alternately drunk and laughing, or silent and practically tearful. When Caleb had tried to talk to him, Rhydian had been angry, snappish and irritable. He had not been particularly useful as to explaining what had happened or why he was so irrationally all over the place.

Moreta looked up at her son and shook her head.

“No. I checked on him an hour or so ago, and he was still asleep then. I don’t think he’s still passed out though. He had moved.” She placed a hand on Boy-Latte’s flank and patted him gently. “You want me to go wake him?”

“No.” Caleb’s voice was hard and angry. This had gone on too long, “I’ll go. Can you walk Boy back to the stable for me?”

“Sure.”

Caleb dismounted smoothly, handed the reins off to his mother and strode into the house, not even bothering to kick off his boots. He practically marched up the two flights of stairs to Rhydian’s attic room, threw the door open with a bang and strode to the bed. Rhydian had stopped being passed-out-drunk and was now simply trying to be asleep and sulking like a melodramatic teenager. The native man grabbed the quilt and threw it across the small room before Rhydian had a chance to grab onto it.

“Leavemealone…” Came the sleepy, gargled grumble.

“GET UP!” Caleb grabbed Rhydian’s ankle and tugged the boy. He kicked. Caleb huffed, walked back to the bathroom, filled the vase that sometimes held flowers with water, and dumped out the whole lot on Rhydian’s head.

“GAH! What the...?” Rhydian made an aborted effort to stand, but slipped in the water and his own unreliable legs, and ended up in an undignified, mostly naked heap on the floor.

“Jesus boy, you smell like the inside of a brewery. Shower time.”

Rhydian tried to say something, batted away his hands, but Caleb was bigger and stronger. He hauled the resisting boy upright, and frog marched him down to the bathroom, and tossed him into the bath. Rhydian gasped and snarled when the water was turned on, then just settled down to merely shivering. Caleb turned on the hot tap and let the stream heat up until it was comfortable. Rhydian looked anything but.

“Come on buddy. Get scrubbing, you’ll feel better.” Rhydian grumbled, but complied, and five minutes later he was clean and dripping on the bathmat. Caleb draped a towel over his shoulders and dropped another over his head, rubbing the boy’s hair gently. “Day’s getting late Rhyder. Your boy misses you.”

“Jase?” Rhydian head snapped up, his whole body suddenly full of energy and fire, “Jase is here?”

“No.” Caleb could feel the heartbreak starting in the boy, “I meant Shura. You know the one who actually cares about you.”

After that, Rhydian was a bit like a puppet with cut strings. Caleb managed to get him dressed by handing him his clothes, all of them in need of some sort of laundering, dried his hair, found his boots and got him downstairs. The sight of food had made the boy look a bit sick, so Caleb filled him up with glasses of water, and then walked him out into the no-longer-new day. He followed Caleb, unresisting, in the direction of the stables. It was another bright, hot day, the wind cooling everyone enough to make the sun bearable. At the entrance to the yard, Caleb turned and fixed Rhydian with a hard stare.

“So, are you going to tell me what happened?”

Rhydian snivelled.

“Fine. Shura’s in his box. Go on.” Caleb hung back, and watched the boy vanish into the apparent gloom of the stables. Rhydian was not in a good way, and that wasn’t just to do with the amount of alcohol he’d drunk.

Caleb had tried to keep an eye on the boy, been slightly worried by the speed at which he downed his first three drinks, all of them different. He knew that Rhydian wasn’t used to alcohol, and certainly wasn’t used to the strength of the corn liquor that Kenny’s father made in his little tin shed. The boy had been all giggly and giddy when Jase had dragged him up to dance, and it was obvious that he hadn’t cared who’d seen the two of them grinding together in the firelight. The next time Caleb had looked for him, he pair of them had vanished. Sam had told him not to worry, but when Rhydian and Jase had returned, Jase had looked like a smug bastard, and Rhydian had set about trying to drink himself to into oblivion, which he’d managed rather successfully.

Caleb trod softly. It wasn’t necessarily his intention to spy on the boy, but Rhydian sounded like he needed someone to talk to, and the boy was plenty resistant to the actual logic that talking to someone who could talk back might actually help. Rhydian was in the stall with Shura, dragging through the horse’s mane with comb and fingers, and he looked utterly dejected.

“I just thought it would be special,” Caleb knew that the boy was talking to him, even though he was looking at Shura. Rhydian fisted his fingers in the horse’s thick mane, and the beast turned and pressed at his ribs with a velvet soft nose. “I wanted to know what it was like. I wanted…” He was crying now, hot angry tears mixed with the sad ones, “I just wanted someone to- to- to…”

Rhydian threw his arms around Shura’s big neck and sobbed into the horse’s dapple coat. For his part, the quarter horse turned his head to give Rhydian the assurance he needed. And there they stayed. Shura didn’t move, didn’t stamp his feet or swish his tail and Rhydian just shook and bawled until there was nothing left in him. Caleb felt the anger and sorrow and grief as though they were actual blows, fists of colour slamming into his chest one after another as Rhydian cried. The hurt echoed his own old pain back at him, injury reflected down the passage of several years. He knew what it was like to feel the way that Rhyder was feeling now. But the boy had been blind-sided by the pain, whereas Caleb had been able to see it coming.

Jase was one of those men who could make you feel like the centre of the universe. He could make you feel warm and loved, sexy and beautiful. And he would do that, but only for about two days, five at the outside. Once Jase got what he wanted, he got bored quickly. He was the type of guy who knew he was pretty enough to get what he wanted, and after he got it, he didn’t put in any more effort. A guy like Jase didn’t see the point in chasing after something he knew he could have. And he knew he could have Rhydian, whenever he wanted.

Caleb sat on a hay bale at the end of the row of loose boxes and waited. It had taken him days to get over Jase and his particular brand of unthinking, unintentional pain. Rhydian hadn’t taken the warning, and no wonder, because when someone like Jase smiled at a boy like that… Rhydian hadn’t had a snowflake’s chance. Caleb could’ve kicked himself for letting it happen. But as Sam had said, Rhydian was old enough to make his own decisions, and therefore, his own mistakes.

When Caleb heard the clopping of hooves, he looked up to see Rhyder standing in front of him with Shura all tacked up and ready to go. He coughed gently, and his eyes were red rimmed from crying.

“Can you come for a hack with me?”

“Sure.”

Boy-Latte was waiting for them in the shade of the big island oak and it took Caleb no time at all to re-set his bit, adjust the straps of his bridle and re-position the saddle and girth. He jumped up from the ground, helped Rhydian take a foot hold off the tree, holding the saddle in place as the boy swung up. He was getting nearly as practiced as his hosts now. Caleb should have insisted that the boy took a hard hat, but he didn’t. Rhyder was pretty good at falling off now, so the native man simply clicked to his horse, and together they walked out towards the trails.

It was quiet on the trails in the early afternoon, and the horses snickered to each other as they trod the paths, thick with hoof prints, under the dappled shade of the sparse woodland. Boy-Latte would walk side by side with any horse and not have the urge to turn it into a race, and Rhydian and Caleb’s stirrups chinked together whenever they got very close. It took about twenty minutes for Rhydian’s knuckles to loosen on his reins before his tongue followed suit.

“I’m sorry about this morning.”

Caleb nodded. He wasn’t going to try and prop up the boy with platitudes. It wasn’t OK and Rhyder knew that. Lying wouldn’t make either of them feel better.

“I know it’s my fault that I’m upset. Same as it’s my own fault that I drank so much. I should have known better…”

“Hindsight is a horrible thing Rhydian,” Caleb smiled at the boy, “You can look back and see all the other choices you should have made.”

Rhydian pushed his fingers across his forehead, as though trying to clear his mind.

“I just thought it would be like it is in movies… I know that I sound pathetic OK?” He took a shaky breath, directed Shura to take the left hand path with his legs like he wasn’t actually thinking about it, “I had this idea in my head that it would be special and romantic and amazing. And it was g-good, I just didn’t think I’d feel so, so…” Rhydian’s voice trailed off into the sound of hooves.

“Numb?” Caleb remembered the feeling well, “Rhyder, I hate to tell you, but you built this whole thing up in your head. What day is it today?”

“Sunday.”

“And what day was it when you met Jase?”

“Friday.”

“So how long have you known the guy you gave your virginity to?” Caleb knew the words were harsh, a slap in the face to Rhyder and his pain. He felt the boy’s sob before the noise even made it out of his throat.

“Oh g-g-god! I’m a slu-”

“No you aren’t.” Caleb clashed their stirrups together intentionally, distracting Rhyder and the horses from what he’d tried to say. “You are not. You got tricked into Jase’s smile like many other innocent guys before you.”

“He’s not to look at me again is he?” Rhydian sounded crushed at the thought.

“Sure he will.” Caleb sighed at Rhyder’s noise of surprise, “It’s all fun and games to him. He’ll probably even kiss you again. Get you alone and do… whatever, again. But you’ll be the one putting in all the effort and he won’t put the time in to make you feel special anymore.” Caleb remembered the first time he’d come to that realisation, the clarity of knowledge that this wasn’t a relationship, and that there was no point chasing after Jase, because he didn’t understand why you wanted to catch him, “He’ll move onto the next new thing Rhyder. You were a new thing, and you gave him everything he wanted.”

“In the world I’m from, that makes me a slut.” Rhydian hung his head.

“Hell, you held him off longer than I managed to. That’s pretty commendable really.” When Rhyder stared at him Caleb flashed him the sort of smile that Sam wore when he knew he was winning the game, “Race you up the slope?”

And that was all the coercing Rhyder needed to connect with his horse and launch into a full canter up the path.

Rhydian let out a whoop of success when he got to the top of the hill and Shura braked so fast his front hooves lifted off the ground and Rhydian gripped the reins and the saddle horn, stood in his stirrups as though he’d done it a hundred times before, cheering and hollering with joy. When Caleb caught up to him, Rhydian turned to the older man and asked the question that had been burning in his mind.

“What do you mean when you say you fell for Jase faster than I did? You’re in love with Sam.”

“I love Sam now,” Caleb clarified, “There was life before he turned up you know.”

Rhydian shifted his weight in the saddle, one eyebrow raised, and Caleb knew that he was going to have to tell the boy.

“Jase is only three years older than I am. I’ve known him pretty much all my life. I was seventeen, same as you.” Caleb sighed. Jase had been able to make him feel like the centre of the universe too, “I spent a few weeks chasing down Jase after he’d lost interest. It was pointless.” Caleb clicked to his horse, asking Boy-Latte to turn in a tight circle on his own hoof prints, “I’ve been where you are Rhyder. I know it sucks.”

They started back down the path that would loop them back around the way they had come, and the going was easy, the tension gone, and Caleb and Rhydian arrived at the lake laughing and enjoying the sunlight. Caleb clicked to Rhyder, then turned Boy-Latte towards the water, and both horses splashed in up to their knees. Rhyder laughed, drawing up his feet, and Caleb chuckled.

“You wanna go swimming bud?”

They waded back out of the lake, and Caleb showed Rhydian to take off the saddles before both young men stripped to their boxer’s. They left their boots and clothes with the saddles and rugs on the ground by the lake, and mounted up again from one of the bigger red boulders on the shore’s edge. Rhydian gripped automatically with his knees, and the horses were calm and sedate as they walked into the cooler water.

“When he starts to swim make sure to hang on alright?”

“Shura can swim?” The horses were belly deep in the water, and Rhydian’s voice was more surprised than worried. He was leaning over the horse’s neck, a hand in his mane, the other keeping the reins drawn back to his withers.

Caleb gripped Boy-Latte with his bare thighs, urging the horse in and then they were swimming, the water lapping at the boy’s hips, the horses keeping their heads high, treading the clear blue of the lake, tossing their mane’s in the sunlight and showering their riders with water. It was so easy, the boys laughed and splashed at each other, the horses were happy to be in the cool of the water, and when Caleb’s splash sent Rhyder sliding off into the water, Caleb followed. The horses swam back to where they could stand easily in the water, and stamped their feet, trotting and playing with each other as happily as any wild mustangs would.

Rhydian came up beside him, water beading instantly in his short hair, and then ducked Caleb below the surface. Caleb splashed him back as soon as he’d finished swallowing water, and they swam about and played in the water like a pair of overgrown otters until Shura whinnied for his boy to come and give him attention. Caleb knew that he was no match for the draw of the horse, and watching Rhydian standing glistening in the lake, stroking the great head and letting the horse drink form his cupped palms, he doubted if Jase could beat out Shura for the boy’s attention either.

Caleb wondered as he swam back if he should have been honoured that he was the only thing Jase had ever tried to come back for. The day he’d accepted the idea of loving Sam into his heart and his head had been the same day Jase had decided to put effort into making him feel like the middle of the universe again. Jase had wanted him back, tried hard to pull him away from the big blond Texan for whom he’d fallen. It hadn’t worked, and Sam had settled the matter by literally breaking Jase’s face. Caleb had been happy to never speak to the man ever again, but somehow he and Sam had ended up becoming pretty good friends.

Boy-Latte called for him at the water’s edge, Rhydian was back on his horse, trotting in the shallow water wearing practically nothing, and Caleb realised that everything was alright with the world after all. Rhydian would get over it, just like he had.

One day, the thought passed through his mind, Jase is gonna fall head over heels in love, and that’ll be fun to watch. I’ll tease him mercilessly about it from here ‘til kingdom come.