Winter Circuit (The Show Circuit -- Book 2) by Kim Ablon Whitney

here at school.”
    “Okay, but I can’t help but think that if you’d never met me this wouldn’t have happened. You’d have gone off to college and been a regular, happy college student. Maybe we should have broken up at the end of the summer. Because I feel like you’re not living life there because of me.”
    “You wish you’d broken up with me?” I said.
    “No, I didn’t say that.”
    “That sounded like what you were saying.”
    “I just don’t want all this to be because of me,” Chris said.
    “It’s not, I promise.”
    “Your dad’s really going to be happy with me now. I wouldn’t be surprised if he wants to find a new rider for Logan.”
    “No, he’s fine with it. He is, I swear.”
    Chris was quiet. I could hear the fabric of his jacket as it moved while Logan walked. I could picture him on Logan, his reins in one hand, the other hand holding the phone to his ear. I couldn’t wait to be there with Chris and Logan—to see them myself.
    “Give Logan a mint for me,” I said. “I can’t wait to see him. This is going to be good. Trust me.”
    Chris still didn’t speak.
    “Be happy,” I pleaded.
    “I’m happy,” he said, his voice sounding loud coming out of the silence.
    “I love you,” I told him.
    “I love you too,” he said.
    He might have been a little shocked, or not sure about the idea, but I knew he would change his mind once I was down there and he saw how great it was to be together all the time again.

 
    Chapter 8
    The days passed achingly slowly as I finished out the semester and went home for Christmas. It was weird to pack up my stuff from my dorm room. I didn’t have all that much to bring home, but it felt—and
was
—premature. This wasn’t May when Kate and Katie, or Jen and Jenny, would be lovingly packing their cute dry-erase boards and shoe-racks, exchanging hugs and shedding the occasional tears. This was me, alone, packing up like I had been kicked out or cracked up. Van was packing too, but just for winter break. She stuffed a few things into a nondescript gray backpack and that was it. She was getting a ride to the airport. She wasn’t thrilled that I was leaving her with what would probably be a new roommate. If she got really lucky, she’d have a single for the rest of the year but it was more likely she would get someone who couldn’t get along with her first semester roommate and had requested a room change.
    Christmas day was quiet. We watched a movie in the afternoon and ordered take-out. Ryan had decided to stay in California—he had a lot of work to do on the next round of venture funding for one of his businesses. Mom and I got along fine. My plan wasn’t what she would have chosen for me but she seemed to have gotten comfortable with the idea. She turned any anxiety she had into helping me online shop for clothes I’d need for Florida, which I wasn’t complaining about since, as Dad had made clear, I was going to be paying my own way down there. In fact, I’d gotten a letter in the mail while I was home saying my credit card that Dad paid for had been canceled. Yup, financially this one was on me.
    If my mom were a normal mom we would have gone to an actual store to shop. But my mom was different and had been since I could remember. She suffered from serious anxiety, which limited everything about her life: where she went (hardly anywhere), what she did (only bird-watching and blogging about it), and whom she did it with (basically no one). But you wouldn’t be able to tell she had so much anxiety from looking at her. She didn’t have any of the telltale signs you’d associate with anxiety. She didn’t look like she hadn’t showered in days; she didn’t wear sweatpants; her nails weren’t bitten to the quick. No, she looked good. Even though she didn’t go out much, or ever, during the day, she wore nice clothes that she bought online. She had become a champion of online shopping. The UPS guy knew her by first name and she knew