After a thirty-minute drive to the horse stables, we arrived. I followed Alani into the front building and watched as she took a seat with a smirk on her face, leaving me to handle the money at the front desk.

"Hello," I said to an older-looking woman that was working. The woman had little round glasses, similar to those that Harry Potter wore, and dark grey hair.

"Hi," She replied with a smile.

"We would like to go on a trail ride as soon as possible, please."

"Okay, we have a sunset trail ride leaving in thirty minutes with four spots available," She said after clicking away at her computer.

"Thank you. We'll join that one," I said, happy that they had spots open. 

After paying for the ride and signing our waivers, The woman led us through the building and into the stables, where they kept all the horses.

"Are you nervous?" I asked Alani as we waited for the rest of the group to arrive.

"Absolutely not," She lied. I knew she was nervous because I could see her hands fidgeting beneath her sweater.

"Liar. It's okay to be nervous, you know."

"Fine. I'm a little bit nervous," She admitted.

"I knew it."

"Whatever," She said.

We waited a little longer, and once everyone was there, a middle-aged man guided us to an open area with the five other people that signed up. Two girls our age holding hands and a three-person family with two kids and a dad made up the rest of our tour.

"We will need to begin with some stretching and lessons before we get on the horses," The instructor said. "Let's begin with some quad stretching."

He led us in a stretch where we had to stand up straight and hold our ankle behind us while balancing on one foot. Alani was struggling to stay in one spot. She couldn't stop hopping around. The girl had terrible balance.

I burst out laughing as the other people around us tried to contain their own giggles.

"Stop it!" She whispered, hitting me in the shoulder.

I didn't stop. Her balance became even worse as we moved to the other leg.

"Would you stop?" She asked, wobbling all over the place.

Once again, I didn't stop laughing.

We moved on to a hamstring stretch where we had to touch our toes. I had always been weirdly flexible, so I did it with ease, but no matter how hard Alani tried, she couldn't go all the way down. She grunted and groaned, but she never got all the way there.

We also did a butterfly stretch, a lower back stretch, and a neck stretch. I crushed every single one of the stretches, but Alani struggled.

"Would you shut up?" She whispered to me once we finished.

"I'm sorry. I didn't know a person could be so bad at stretching," I laughed.

"Shut it. I swear, I'm trying my best!"

"Okay," I said, throwing my hands up in surrender.

As the instructor examined the saddles on the horses to make sure everything was working correctly, the rest of us stood to the side.

"Is this safe?" Alani asked me.

"What about it would be unsafe?"

"The horses could fling us off of them, and we could die."

"The chances of that happening are one in a million. The horses are trained. They wouldn't let us on the horses if that were a big risk. You have nothing to worry about."

"Okay," She said, taking a deep breath.

When they were finished reviewing the saddles and safety precautions, they introduced us to all of the horses.

"This is Chip and Moose. They are best friends," The instructor, whose name I already forgot, said.

"Who do you like better?" Alani whispered to me as the instructor explained some stuff about the horses.

"What do you mean?"

"Chip or Moose? Which do you think is prettier?"

The two horses were a stark contrast to each other. Moose had long white fur while Chip had dark black locks.

"Chip," I said, answering her question.

"Really? I bet you like dark chocolate better than regular chocolate, too," She returned.

"I do."

"Dark chocolate is gross. White chocolate is the only chocolate that I like. I'll sometimes eat milk chocolate but never dark."

"You're weird," I laughed.

"This is Red," The instructor said as we moved on to the next horse.

"Red looks like she needs her mane brushed," I whispered as Alani grinned.

"These two are Cow and Piglet," The instructor said. "And finally, these two are Roxy and Peaches."

Once we finished our introduction tour, we were assigned horses based on our skill level. I got Roxy since she was in the middle, and Alani got Peaches since he was the easiest horse to ride.

I stood on a stepstool and got onto Roxy. She moved a little bit but mostly stayed still. Alani struggled to get onto Peaches since she was so short.

"You good?" I said once she steadied herself.

"Peachy."

"That was good," I said, impressed at her joke.

Another instructor came out to help with the trail ride as we all prepared to start. The male instructor was in the back of the line of horses while the female would be leading us.

When we finally started, I gave my horse a light kick, which told her that we should go.

It had been a while since I had been on a horse, so it took me a minute to get used to it. It was bumpy and hard to stay on at first, but I got the hang of it. I glanced back to see how Alani was doing, only to find that her horse hadn't even taken a single step.

She kicked the horse and pulled on the reigns, but Peaches wouldn't budge. The middle-aged instructor tried to help her, but Peaches was one stubborn horse, just like Alani.

 They were a perfect match.

When Alani's horse started moving, she moved at the pace of a snail. I laughed to myself as I watched her struggle to get the horse to move faster.

I continued on the trail, but my horse felt the need to stop to munch on some leaves every ten seconds.

"No!" I said, pulling Roxy away from her bedtime snack.

"Having fun?" Alani said, bringing her horse next to mine.

"Wow, look at you. You finally got your horse to move."

"Wow, look at you. You finally got your horse to stop eating everything in sight," Alani returned.

"I guess both of our horses suck," I said.

"Shh. They can hear you," She said, attempting to cover her horse's ears.

"They don't understand anything."

"Maybe they do."

"What do you mean?"

"I had a conversation with my roommate about this. She thinks that the government is hiding that animals really do understand us. She thinks that animals are government spies sent out to get information."

"Your roommate sounds like a fun girl. I want to meet her," I said, curious about this girl.

"She can join us for one of our activities on the bucket list."

We rode some more before the sun started to set. It was a gorgeous display of pinks, oranges, and purples throughout the sky. The clouds looked like floating cotton candy as we rode through the forest.

When we got back to the stables, it was starting to get pretty dark. After dismounting off our horses, we said goodbye to our furry friends and walked out to the parking lot.

"Did you have fun?" I asked Alani as we got into the car.

"Once I got my horse to walk normally, yes. It was quite enjoyable. Plus, the sunset was stunning."

"Well, now you can cross that off your list."

"How many things have we done? Two?" She asked.

"Three."

"Three?"

"Yeah."

"What was the third?"

"The one about making friends."

"Aw, do you consider us friends?" She teased.

"Of course I do," I said. I enjoyed spending time with Alani, so of course, I considered us friends.

"So, do you agree that I am the better horse rider?"

"No way. You could barely get Peaches to move."

"And you could barely get Roxy to stop eating the entire forest."

"I think we're both pretty bad," I said.

"Yeah, I guess. Can we get dinner?" She said after her stomach's rumbles filled the car.

"Sure. What do you want?"

"Canes."

"I've never had Canes?"

"What?" She yelled.

"Yep. Never had it."

"We are definitely going there," She said. I didn't object since I was always open to trying new things.

We drove to Canes and got our chicken combos. I parked in the parking lot so that we could eat our food.

"Are you going to finish that?" Alani asked, pointing toward the food in my lap.

"I was planning on it. Why? Do you want it?"

"Maybe."

"Here, you can have it. I wasn't that hungry anyway," I said as she grabbed my fries and chicken and ate them. The girl must really love Canes.

For the rest of the night, we sang along to music and bickered some more about who was the better horse rider.

I couldn't have asked for a better night.