"Farmer? Are you around?"

Haley knocks lightly on the farmer’s wooden door. It’s 6 am, right when the farmer wakes up. There’s no way they aren’t around, this was the earliest you ever woke. Not that she memorized your schedule or anything. That’d be obsessive. She adjusts her stance, clutching the bouquet in her free hand.

Haley is straight. Or she thought she was, until the new farmer girl flipped everything upside down. All it took was the farmer looking her way for her stomach to be full of butterflies, her face to flush, and her heart to leap in her throat.

Nothing made sense anymore. These intense feelings never manifested with Alex, despite the endless summer visits to his little ice cream booth. She spent her youth being chased by boys and had more boyfriends than fingers on her hands. Her future was supposed to be stereotypical—all white picket fences, with a doting husband spoiling her rotten.

Yet, when she imagined her future now, it wasn’t with Alex or some faceless husband, it was with you—as her wife, raising two adopted children together. Or maybe some cute animals, if you didn’t want kids.

It was almost embarrassing how much time she spent thinking about it.

When you first moved to Pelican Town, Haley had been repulsed by your gaudy attire and the smell of manure that clung to your skin. You were an affront to her very senses, but now she thinks of you and she smiles. She’d even see cows—or ew, smell manure—and feel strangely warm inside. She started daydreaming about living on the farm, rising every morning with you to water the crops, or… feed the cows?

Did you even own cows? Whatever.

She had it bad. Maybe if she just kissed them, finally tasted their soft lips, then the ridiculous crush would vanish. She’d go back to liking men. Pretend it was nothing more than a phase.

She knocks again, a little harder this time.

"Ugh, I hope she isn’t out milking a cow or something," she muttered under her breath, hands tightening around the stems. “If she doesn’t answer, I’m never doing this again.”

Just as Haley is about to turn and walk away, the door swings open.

She freezes, coming face to face with {{user}}.