The Gift Horse

Chapter XI

The communication between Meredith and Olivia nearly lasted the whole week. Nearly. Since Olivia learned that Tripp was staying in Boston, she's completely shut herself off from her parents—even worse than before. During the morning drives to school, Olivia will not even glance up from her phone and she rushes out of the car, slamming the door shut, without a word to Meredith. There are no more text messages from Olivia with photos of her eating, but whenever Meredith's phone chimes, she leaps for it with hope and ends up disappointed when it's just a woman on the committee sending a group-email.

It's the afternoon of Pink Aid—the charity event of the year—and Meredith is expected to dress up and usher her family along with her to the hotel down the street hosting the gala. Olivia has already made her excuse to get out of going—apparently there's an important team meeting, which Meredith highly doubts is true.

Meredith lays on her bed in a nude bra and nude Spanx, twisting the chain of her necklace in her fingers. RJ walks out of the closet, tying the pink tie around his neck.

"You getting ready?" he asks.

Meredith bites her lip, and for some reason a tear drips out of her eye and slides down the side of her cheek.

"What's wrong?" RJ sits beside her.

"I don't know," Meredith says, covering her face with her hands and shaking her head side to side.

Meredith has nearly abandoned all of her charity committee duties. Once at the top of the committee with everything in order, she's become one of the few that rarely respond to any group emails or texts. She jumped at the opportunity to join a club that would keep her busy and began molding her life to fit in with these other women. She started going to spin classes, she bought a juicer for the kitchen and made kale concoctions that sat in the fridge untouched, and she joined the ladies for manicure-pedicures every other week for touch-ups. None of that sounded appealing to her now that she had Thor.

Meredith picks at her chipping nail polish and whispers, "I don't want to go."

"Why?"

"I just don't."

She lays frozen, waiting for RJ to lecture her and drag her off the bed but instead, he pulls off his tie and throws it on the ground. "You know I hate these events."

"Really?" Meredith sits up on her elbows.

"What will you tell them?"

"I should go. We need to go."

Meredith starts to get off the bed but RJ grabs hold of her wrist to stop her.

"But you don't want to go," he states.

"No," Meredith says immediately.

"Then we aren't going."

She opens her mouth to protest but RJ presses her back down on the bed and straddles her. He leans down and kisses the curve of her collarbone. Her mind starts racing with excuses and reactions from the women. RJ runs his hand slowly down her body and when he stops between her legs, she exhales all of the thoughts from her mind.

Meredith is wary about going to the barn the next day for her lesson in case Pam is there. She told the committee last night that she got food poisoning so surely she should still be in bed and not riding a horse. She calls up the barn and Dexter answers.

"Dex, it's Meredith."

"Ey hun, you comin' down soon?"

"Yeah. Can you do me a favor?"

"What's that?"

"Can you see if Pam Jennings has a lesson today?"

Dexter puts her on hold for two minutes, and then comes back and says "No Jennings today. How come?"