This could have been ugly

Me, the Marine, his sister (the non-Muslim one), and her boyfriend spent the day at the park. We were all off from work and she called and invited me. Nice of her, don't you think? Anyway, this particular park has a riding trail which we were able to take full advantage of thanks to her boyfriend. His family owns a ranch. We pair off into couples and before long, the sister and her boyfriend have gotten kind of far ahead of us. I am not what you would call an accomplished rider so we hung back. It was nice........until the horse threw me. Yep, I was thrown to the ground by a stupid animal. Something must have startled her because one minute the Marine and I were chatting/flirting and the next, the horse was rearing back. He's an excellent rider so he grabbed the reins and tried to stop the horse but it was too late. I'm not that good of a rider and I couldn't hold on. I hit the ground hard. In like two seconds he was off of his horse, containing mine, and checking on me. He made sure nothing was broken and fussed over me while I sniffled and tried not to cry (it hurt). Y'all know he carries a handkerchief. Naturally, it's of the crisp, white variety.

Anyway, there was no help to be had so he had to maneuver poor bruised and battered me and both horses. He did really well. He asked me if I thought I could sit my horse alone and I was like, "I don't know." Climbing onto the horse was definitely out of the question so he lifted me onto his, gathered my horse’s reins, swung up behind me and led us out of there.

I'm pretty bruised and sore but other than that, I'm good to go. The Marine was really sweet, he even called tonight to see how I was feeling. His sister called too, she told me that her boyfriend felt bad because it was his horse. Apparently she's usually very tame but she's never left the ranch before. Great.