The scene opens with a full moon in the nighttime sky. Violins play a bittersweet musical theme.
We are in the Llanview Country Club Stables. Blair, bold, proud, and all in red, stands face to face with her ex-husband, Todd, dressed as black as the beautiful Arabian stallion he has just given her as a present.
"What are you afraid of?" she asks him, almost in a challenge.
He looks at her, trying to read her thoughts, fighting himself as to whether or not he should withold his own. He knows where his fears lie. Hadn't he agonized over them with Marty the night before? To care. He was afraid to care. He was afraid of letting himself feel something for someone, and then getting kicked in the teeth. Exactly what happened to him with Blair the last time he allowed himself to love her. He stares into those defiant green eyes, daring him to tell her the truth. As he looks into those eyes, he sees what he loves about her, he sees how he needs her, he sees how he has to have her, even if it means rejection once again.
He takes the chance. He grabs and kisses her, as if through the warmth of his lips alone, he could reveal of the secrets clenched within his soul.
They both pull back a little. He stares at her again, this time with fear in his heart. Will she turn away? Had he taken a chance, and once again been played the fool?
She looks at him and knows that she too must take a chance. She tilts up her head, and returns his kiss, with more passion than every before.
All the love held back for all these months comes rushing through, and yet they pause again.
"Is this what you really want?" he asks desperately wanting to make certain.
"Yes! Yes it is! And you?" she says breathlessly. Rather than answer her with words, Todd feverishly presses his mouth against hers.
"No!" she cries out. "Say it! Tell me that you want me!"
Todd looks at her and slowly, with deliberation, and more sincerity than he had ever shown in his life, gives her his response. "I do. I . . . want . . . you."
They whirl in a dizzying embrace, losing track of everything around them, but their kisses.
They fall in the hay, frantically pulling of their clothing. Blair tells Todd how grateful she is for his present, not just because he gave it to her, but because he knew to give it. She likes that he thinks of her like the stallion, wild, beautiful and free.
"You make me happy Todd Manning!" she almost shouts. "Can you stand that? Can you stand that you make me happy?"
He presses her down with kisses and the weight of his body, into the soft gold straw to, uh, reconcile.
We see them later, beneath a couple of horse blankets, no doubt lying loose around the stables. Todd wears only apprehension in his eyes. He is naked not just in the lack of dress, but in his unguarded feelings for Blair. Blair is exhuberant and content to lie against his bare chest, and be held within the warmth of her lover's arm. She babbles on how this will be one of her finest memories, when she's old and gray.
"Not planning on having many memories?" Todd cynically retorts. She teases him, but she finally gets him to reluctantly admit the truth.
"You make me . . . feel," he admits. Todd's voice drifts off into his own thoughts.
Blair rises and puts on Todd's black shirt over her body. Todd is still thinking, still unsure of himself, and his situation.
Blair goes over to the horse. "Careful Blair," Todd jumps up (apparently slipping on his slacks in record time) "you'll get hurt! That horse is wild!"
But Blair only laughs, "just like me!" But the horse is more than just like Blair. The horse is just like Todd as well. And Blair is not afraid of either, because she knows with her love, she can tame them both.
She mounts the horse, and Todd approaches, with both concern for his former wife, and admiration for her reckless bravery. He strokes the horse as well.
Blair bends over to kiss him, and as she does she tells him, "I don't know what Marty Saybrooke said to you the other day, but if it helped to get us back together, God bless her!"
Our final view of the pair is on the stable floor. Blair, pants ecstically (or is that us?). Todd kisses her groaning face, her hair, her neck, gently, but impassioned. "Only you, Todd!" she gasps out, "only you let me be who I am!" and with a small final squeal of delight, we leave them to resume their, uh, reconciliation.
"THE REUNION IN THE STABLES" appears on the Manning Building site courtesy of its author, Eve.
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