"Fany-ah, that's old hay."
"H-huh?"
Yuri's voice snaps her out of her daydreaming only to realize that instead of getting rid of the old dirty hay, she's forking them back inside the stable.
"Oh crap," she mutters under her breath as she quickly fixes her mistake.
"What has gotten into you?" asks Yuri, leaning on her own hay fork. "I have never seen you like this since JJ asked you to the prom. Yesterday you dropped the bucket and spilled water all over a clean stall, then the day before you misplaced Ice Cream's saddle. A saddle, Fany. Not a small thing like your phone or a key... a freakin' huge horse saddle."
Tiffany ignores the playful jabs. "I can't believe you still call him that," she says, shifting the focus to the person Yuri mentioned. JJ stands for Jerk Jock, a nickname Yuri gave the cutest guy in their high school who was captain of the soccer team but also a jerk. Tiffany had a huge crush on him back then and when he asked her to go with him to the prom, she was out of it for days.
"It suits him better than his real name," Yuri says. "Gerard," she pronounces the two syllables with an exaggerated fake accent, a hair flip and a rolling of her eyes. "It's a butler's name. He shouldn't be proud of it."
Tiffany chuckles. "He has three kids now and a very unattractive beer belly."
"I know. I'm just glad the mother of those three kids isn't you." Yuri puts her hay fork away and goes to change the water in the buckets.
"After that traumatic prom night? Never." Tiffany exhales and checks her work again to make sure she hasn't made any other mistakes.
"So Taeyeon, huh?" remarks Yuri when she returns with a clean bucket of water, smirking at her blushing friend who's trying to remain cool.
"What about Taeyeon?"
"Oh come on. I know you. You practically ran to that chopper and that's so unlike you," Yuri says, referring to Taeyeon's last visit.
"You ran too."
"Only to make sure that you're safe and to show the boss that we're happy to see her. So are you two together now?"
"No. There is nothing going on between us," Tiffany sternly says.
"I beg to differ. You've been different since her last visit," argues Yuri. "In a good way though. It's nice to see the old cheerful and slightly clumsy Fany again," she adds with a smile. "And Taeyeon seems like a nice person so go for it."
Tiffany can feel her cheeks blushing so she turns around, away from her friend, and goes to check on the stalls at the far end of the stables.
Her phone suddenly vibrates in her pocket and she readily takes it out, smiling when she sees the name flashing on the screen. "Hello," she answers the incoming call.
"Good morning," comes Taeyeon's voice. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything."
"No no. I'm just finishing up at the stables."
"How's Whip Cream?"
"He's happily grazing and playing with the others. Sunny told me you wanted to enlarge the pen?"
