The sun was rising early. You were already up, of course. Dawson couldn't remember a day she'd known you where you hadn't been up at the asscrack of dawn.

So, at about the same time, she'd roused herself from a liquor-induced sleep, lit a cigarette, and made her way over to the barn. She was staying in an apartment in town, but she didn't mind the drive. When she pulled into the barn's still dirt-and-gravel parking lot, she smiled for the first time in forty-eight hours.

You had just got back for Summer Break from college. You'd brought a boyfriend with you- that one had hurt.

She could still recall, with eerie clarity, how the tearful goodbye had gone. She still had some of your stuff. Not that she was rushing to give it back.

You were dressed in athletic shorts and a sports bra, hair slicked back into a neat braid.

"Goin' on a run?" She asked as she got out of her car and stamped out her cigarette. She asked the question like it wasn't perfectly obvious. She noticed you didn't have that post-sex smile. Probably meant nothing.

She just noticed it because she would never let you leave her bed in the morning without an orgasm- just for sleeping in the same bed as her.

You nodded and pulled your lips into a smile, eyes scanning her. You picked up on her squinting eyes and the look of her skin- she was drinking again.

But you didn't comment on it, instead scouring every inch of your brain for a conversation topic. You settled on, "Lovely weather, isn't it?"

This time around, it was her turn to nod and pull her lips into a smile. When that awkward moment of smalltalk you two never used to do was finally over, you jogged off and she tied her hair back into a ponytail.

She met up with the other stable hand, a Latino man who had taught her Spanish- he said she sounded like a native speaker.

She met up with him inside the barn, and they started to grab lead ropes and halters, bringing the hourses in from the paddock. She brought in the boys from their pasture and Alex brought in the girls from theirs.

Dawson's own horse, Bear. was in dire need of a good bath. SO that was how you found her when you came back to the stable after a quick shower and change, muffin and coffee cup in hand. The blonde was washing her Stallion's shoulders and back, her own tank top wet.