Missed Me, Missed Me, Now You Gotta Kiss Me

Will You Never Learn?

   I stared at the gray-no, sorry, blue Rhone-colt as he trotted around his mama. Liam was keeping them in the round pen for the time being. While the mama just ate the hay I'd thrown out to them, the colt was trot trotting along, whinnying at the other horses. At first, they'd been really curious about the new pair of horses, but they lost interest quicker than I'd expected.

  "What're you gonna name him?"

  "GAH!" I literally fell off the fence-I'd been sitting on the round pen. Not smart, turns out. From where I sat outside the round pen, I glared up at Liam, who looked like he could start laughing. "Dumbass! You scared the hell outta me!"

  Liam raised a brow, offering a hand to me. "Someone's lucked out on chipper this morning."

  I glared up at him, getting up by myself. "I haven't had coffee yet," I mumbled, brushing off my dirty jeans.

  "Mmm, what luck I have," he said with a smirk, lifting a McDonald's coffee cup to his lips.

  It was pretty much all I could do not to leap at the coffee cup. I wasn't exactly the nicest person in the morning-top that, it being Sunday, the last day of my freedom before school-and it was only worse if I didn't have coffee. Once I tried detoxing myself from coffee....it was the worst three hours of my whole life.

  "You're a jerk," I muttered, standing up and pointedly ignoring him.

  "Am I, now?"

  I nodded mutely.

  A separate McDonalds coffee cup was handed out in front of me. "Am I still a jerk?"

  Trying not to smile-Liam bought me coffee!-I took the coffee cup and shrugged. "Less of one, anyway."

  "Oh, well," he said leaning against the round pen and watching the colt. "As long as I'm no a complete jerk."

  This time, I did smile.

  "What're you gonna name him?" Liam asked again after a minute.

  I looked at him.

  "What?"

  "Why should I name him?"

  Liam shrugged. "Why not?"

  I snorted. "There's a lotta 'why's' in that sentence."

  After a minute, Liam said, "There's only one why....."

  I rolled my eyes. "What I mean is, you're just training him so you can sell him. Why should we name him?"

  "I like how you said we just then," he said with a grin, gesturing between us.

  "Liam," I said seriously.

  "Piper," he said, less seriously.

  I sighed irritably. "Mystery."

  Liam blinked. "What?"

  I pointed to the colt. "His name's Mystery." I'd named him that morning.

  The corners of Liam's mouth lifted up. "Mystery, huh......? You do realize that's a boy, right?"

  "The beauty of being named Mystery-gender neutral, dumbass."

  "Ya keep callin' me dumbass. I'm startin' to think you mean it...."

  "Maybe you're not such a dumbass after all," I teased, reaching up to knock off his hat.

  "Nice," he muttered, not even bothering to retrieve it. "Okay, seriously. Why Mystery?"