Sidesaddle by Bonnie Bryant

another.
    Stevie reached for a tissue, but of course there weren’t any in the rec room. Phil usually carried a handkerchief, one of his endearing qualities. She looked at him to provide it, but he was preoccupied. His shoulders were shaking in a familiar manner. His eyes were cast down at his lap, surely to avoid meeting hers. Then Stevie realized what was going on. He was laughing—in his own very Phil Marsten way.
    “Are you laughing at my cooking?” she demanded, now a little angry.
    Phil shook his head. “No, not at all,” he said.
    “Then exactly what is amusing you so?”
    “It’s relief,” he said, pointing to the plate of cookies. “I’m laughing from relief.”
    “What are you talking about?” Stevie asked, truly confused by his bizarre behavior.
    “It really
is
Stevie in there,” he said, looking at her now.
    “Of course it’s Stevie,” she said.
    “Well, you could have fooled me,” he said. “Until you got to baking. There are some things you can’t hide.”
    “What are you talking about?” Stevie asked.
    Before he could answer, Alex came clumping down the cellar steps. “Phil, your ma
ma
’s here,” he said.
    “And she’s in a hurry. My ma
ma
said not to come back upstairs without you.”
    Phil stood up then and, saying good night to Stevie, carried the plate of cookies over to the stairs.
    “Here you go, sport,” he said to Alex. “I think Stevie would like you to have these. Good night, Stevie. If it’s okay with you, I’m coming to Horse Wise on Saturday, and I’ll see you then. And maybe afterward we can have a Saddle Club trail ride—you, me, Carole, and Lisa. Okay?”
    “Sure,” Stevie said, though at that moment she was completely unsure about everything, and nothing seemed okay.
    She heard Phil reach the first floor and was aware of his speedy exit, but as he left, she wondered exactly who had left and what had gone on while he’d been there.
    This was Phil, her longtime boyfriend. They knew one another very well. At least she thought they did. Stevie had anticipated every single reaction that her dear Phil was going to have to her new look and her new self, and she’d been wrong every time. The only thing she’d done that seemed to please him was nearly poison him with salt.
    What in the world was going on?

I T WASN ’ T USUAL for Phil to come to Horse Wise. He belonged to Cross County, the Pony Club in his own town, and, like Horse Wise, they had their meetings on Saturday mornings. The fact that he was coming to Horse Wise meant he was missing Cross County—twice in two weeks. Stevie wondered why he was doing that.
    Everything seemed normal at first. He greeted Stevie with his usual smile, informed her that he was still alive after the cookie fiasco (Stevie cringed a little, but he still didn’t seem at all upset about her total failure in the kitchen), and settled down on the floor of Max’s office next to her. Stevie was wearing clean jodhpurs, neatly polished boots, and a pink sweater. She had also curled her hair that morning, even though it meantgetting up a half hour earlier than she was used to. Phil didn’t say anything about the way she looked. Stevie wondered if she ought to get to the drugstore to buy some new makeup or perfume. She’d read about something called Magnolia Nights that sounded very alluring.
    “Horse Wise, come to order!” Max called out in his usual manner. The room was quickly quiet. He welcomed everybody, especially Phil, and then made the usual bunch of announcements about horse events in the near future, impending competitions, and the next round of tests that would be administered for Pony Club ratings. When he was done with his announcements, he turned the floor over to Carole and Tiffani.
    Carole opened up an easel, and Tiffani loaded a bunch of charts onto it.
    “Horses have been around for a very long time,” Carole began. “They are found on all the continents—except Antarctica.”
    “As soon as humans began