A Jump Over the Water

It had been a week since my exploration of the suburbs, and my meeting with Bridget and Cameron. I hadn’t really left my house after that, I had so much riding practice to fit in before my riding class started in a couple of days time. I literally had been waking up, getting any muck up out the field, grabbing breakfast, riding for three hours in the ménage, grab a quick bite for lunch, do an hour bonding work with biscuit, clean all my tack, sort my brushes out, clean my riding boots, have my dinner, put biscuit into the stable, then finally, have an hour with my mom and then bed, to make sure I had enough sleep, so I had energy to do the same thing over again tomorrow. It was very hard work, I didn’t have time for anyone or anything. I was only going to be at the riding school for four weeks, and after that, I had a month and a half of spare time, my holiday time.
I had just ate lunch and was on my way out to do a technique called join-up with biscuit, when I heard the doorbell ring.
‘I got it’ I heard my mother call softly to me.
I walked towards the front door anyway to collect my gloves from the cupboard in the hallway. Standing there in the doorway was Bridget and another girl around her age.
‘CHAICEE!’ screamed Bridget as she ran towards me, and tackled me with a hug. My mom let out a small laugh as I caught her eyes. I grinned back at her in surprise.
‘oh my god, this is where you live? I always dreamed of living in this house, but instead my parents bought the one just next door. How weird is that? By the way, this is my very bestestest friend, Vanessa, ‘cept everyone calls her nessa’ Bridget exclaimed excitedly.
I smiled and raised my hand at ‘Nessa’ as she broke into a shy grin and waved back. ‘What are you doing here anyway Bridget?’ I asked, still curious as to why she was standing on my doorstep.
‘Well, we were trying to sell our homemade cookies, we are trying to save up to have horse riding lessons at the stables about half an hour away. You kind of inspired me to ride, and it’s always been a dream of nessa’s to ride.’ Bridget mumbled, her cheeks turning a slight shade of pink.
‘Awwwww guys that’s awesome! I’m so glad I inspired you both to do something like this! Sure I’l buy some cookies, let me just go get my purse’ I said back to them both.
‘Yeah, I want some to, let me go fetch my purse too’ said my mom, with a thoughtful look on her face.
We walked to the kitchen together and as soon as the door swung shut behind us, my mom turned to look at me.
‘What about if we pay for both of their first riding lesson? Bridget is such a lovely girl, she was the one I was telling you about, the one I met on my ride the other day, she was with her older brother’ I said to my mom.
‘Oh yes, older brother eh?’ she said back to me with a playful glint in her eye.
‘No mother, no, we exchanged about 10 words with each other, so get that idea out of your head, and plus, I have not got time in my life for a boyfriend at the moment’ I said back to her, exasperated. Every single time I bought up a boy I’d met, she always jumped to the conclusion that I was head over heels in love with them.
‘We’ll see about that’ she whispered whilst winking at me ‘and by the way, the riding lessons idea is a great idea, but I have a better idea…’
I grabbed my purse from my bag on the table and walked back out to the two girls with my mom following closely behind. When I got into the hallway, I couldn’t help but let out a laugh at the look on the two young girls faces. They were both staring at the picture hanging on the wall or me jumping the puissance wall back at the beginning of the year. At the sound of my laugh, the two girls quickly spun around and stared at me with the look of shock still adamant on their faces. I walked over and took the picture off the wall.
‘The puissance jump is the biggest jump in all of the Olympics, it does depend on the size of your horses jump, but it mainly requires your horse to fully give its rider the trust as the wall is that tall, the horse can’t even see over it. It has to trust its rider completely to jump over it, without hesitation, as it doesn’t have a clue what will be waiting behind it.’ I explained softly. I looked down at the girls to see them still with their mouths both wide open still. I gently placed my finger under Bridget’s chin and pushed her mouth closed, just like Cameron had done when we first met.
‘woah’ Nessa breathed out. My mom put her hand on my shoulder and looked both girls in the eye.
‘Chaice wouldn’t be where she is today unless she had had her first few riding lessons with a professional. So we decided that if your sure you want to have riding lessons, you could come over here whenever you wish, and me or Chaice will give you lessons, in exchange for help around the yard, like mucking out stables and cleaning tack. What do you think?’ my mom said to them both smiling. I caught her eyes and gave her a nod and a smile. If they were both helping out around the yard, I’d have more time to prepare biscuit and more free time to do other things.
The next thing I knew, I was lying on the floor under two screaming ten year old girls. I had been tackled. I let out a huge laugh and started tickling them both, they squeeled and ran away. I chased them for a good ten minutes until we were all that out of breath, we could hardly breathe.
They stayed round at the house and helped out with some yard work and grooming Biscuit for a good few hours. I didn’t realise how long they had been there until yet again the doorbell rang.
I put my brush down on the floor and ran to answer it. I opened it up and was dazzled by the sight of a dark haired boy and a dazzling smile.
‘Hey, is Bridget here?’ he asked.
‘She sure is, come on in Cameron’ I answered whilst holding the door open. I caught the smell of his cologne as he walked past and my knees went weak. How could I already be falling for someone I had only met twice and knew nothing about apart from his love for blackberries and his adorable younger sister? This was so complicated and it had only just begun…