“How do you feel at peace here? Is it the pee or the hay, because I thought you didn’t like horses?” I wiggle my eyebrows, even if she can’t see them. Something about her brings out a part of me I haven’t seen in a long time.
I feel alive.
The more time I spend with Riley, the more I can predict her needs or wants. I’ve never been as comfortable with someone as I am with her. I may complain about her being here for hours, notdoing much, but it’s mostly because I don’t want her to feel like she has to. I’ve got this.
“I didn’t say that. I have a weird relationship with them because my dad loved them. It was our thing. So after he passed, it’s been bittersweet to be around them, but something Saylor said the other day reminded me that life’s too short, particularly after I thought I almost lost her. We were both too stubborn, dealing with our own grief, to reach out to one another. Shitty life circumstances will do that. If I could, I would take it all back, and it got me thinking about my future, about life as a whole.”
Her wisdom pours out of her, every word leaving me stunned.
“Life’s hard. We all go through things, but if we don’t stop to smell the flowers, are we wasting it in fear?”
I told her she was breathtaking the other day, but it’s more than that. She’s awe-inspiring, and in a time and age when awe has disappeared, she so freely gives hers, as if it’s as simple as the air she breathes. I meant it when I said we all have so much to learn about her. I should start now.
“Oh my gosh!” she shouts, pulling my attention back to her. She's walking out of the stall, journal in hand, a smile on her face.
“What?”
“I’ll tell you later. I have an idea!” she shouts, running out towards the door but then stopping suddenly and running back to me. She throws herself into my arms, dropping a kiss on my lips. She wipes hers with the back of her hand and says, “Ew, your beard is so sweaty.”
A laugh escapes me, one I can’t contain, like the ones I used to let out as a kid riding horses for the first time at this same ranch. That’s how Riley makes me feel—like new, like joy is worth exploring when she’s around.
33ART & GROWTH
Riley
It clicked so fastonce I started thinking about it. It’s not what I can do with the supplies, but how I can bring in more people to use the supplies that’s the problem. And it all comes down to fear.
Fear is such an universal feeling that drives all actions—or most of them, I guess—and we all feel it. I do, often. Like the minute I realized my issue with being around horses was fear too.
Fear of remembering too much about my parents and my life before it changed completely. Of getting that flip in my stomach feeling at missing barrel racing, something that used to be so dear to me, and not being able to do anything about it because trying to get back to it would be too painful.
The barn smells like Dad and memories, yes, but it didn’t cause the visceral reaction I was bracing myself for. It felt lighter somehow. Talking to Saylor about everything that went down and mending our relationship, then watching Juniper heal, confirmed it for me.
Even more when I was painting with her. Every time I feel less alone, less anxious, less fearful, it’s when I’m creating.
Then, the idea popped up, and I think I can pull it off. And if I do, this is the perfect way to get both worlds: pay for the supplies and hopefully even more towards the campanduse my degree for something useful alongside my art.
Or Lilly will kill me.
One or the other.
“So where are we going?” Saylor asks from the front seat as I pull my Jeep into a parking spot in front of the market.
“The fact that you asked zero questions until now should be studied.”
“As long as I’m not robbing a bank, we should be fine,” she adds. I hand her the box with the flyers as I grab the stapler, and we step out of the Jeep.
“No banks. We’re just going to drop these off around town and staple the rest everywhere else.”
She opens the box, pulling out a flyer and inspecting it more closely than a prescription. A smile spreads over her face, and when her blue eyes meet mine, I see something I’ve been searching for for a while—pride.
“Riley, this is genius.”
“Right?” Art & Feelings Nights at Camp came to me while talking to Dom and looking at Juniper. She was showing what could’ve been perceived as anger when, in reality, she was just hurt. Lilly acts all tough when, deep down, she’s just overwhelmed. Dom looks and acts as if the world is his enemy when he’s just been hurt before. Saylor seemed cold when she was just trying to protect herself after the misunderstanding of the century. And it got me thinking—how much of what we show on the outside is actually what we’re feeling?
If I can mask as well as I do, how many people are in the same boat? How many kids never learn how to talk about their feelings because no one ever taught their parents?
And where do I let my feelings free? Where I feel safe and where my brain has a different outlet—when I’m creating.