“I’ve had this riff stuck in my head all day, and I can’t figure out for the life of me where I’ve heard it.”
Sunset sat in front of me, contentedly licking chocolate ice cream in an oversize waffle cone, darkness melting down the sides of the cone and her cheeks. I couldn’t tell you if she knew and chose to rock the look, or if she was simply oblivious.
If it were me, I’d be simply oblivious.
But I think the chocolate stains suited her, a sweet dark overlay to her radiance.
Radiance. “Like, an earworm?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Sunset nodded, the periphery of the ice cream sinking further into her as she lay down her head and sticking on as she raised it up. “But at least when I get a song stuck in my head, I can remember the lyrics.” She clenched her teeth, perhaps to look furious though how furious can you look covered in chocolate? At worst, you just look like you’re angry your Mom wouldn’t give you another helping of desert. Clomping teeth between words, she groaned, “These – are – just – notes!”
I spooned in a small wad of my own ice cream, a small French vanilla with rainbow sprinkles in a cup. “Do you ever keep a music journal?”
Sunset shrugged. “Yeah, when I write songs I have a journal to keep all my compositions before I scan them for upload on my Crystal Radio account. Why?”
“Well, sometimes I find just writing down a problem can help me work through it.” I curled a lock of hair behind my ear reflexively, the warmth of friendship triumphing within me over the creeping tide of brain-freeze. “Sometimes the physical writing can help jog my memory, or remind me of something I read in a textbook years ago. If nothing else, just putting something in writing can clear my head back to silence.”
“Sounds zen,” she laughed.
“Yeah?” I laughed along. It was easy to laugh while sharing sugary sweets with someone like Sunset. Or just sharing a conversation with her, for that matter.
“Yeah! Hey, I don’t suppose you have a notebook on you?”
I blinked. “What?” I deadpanned. “I always have a notebook on me in case I get an idea on the go.”
Sunset hung down her head in mock shame, a giggle escaping her lips. “Of course you do. You’re such a nerd, Sparkle.”
“Thank you!” I exclaimed, my smile unwavering. “You are too, Ms. Shimmer!”
“Pff, just Sunset’s fine.” she swatted a hand in the air at me, a cool gust of wind bouncing off me and the summer heat, its coldness sending shivers down my spine and into my stomach.
“Likewise,” I rolled my eyes playfully.
“Oh?” she cocked her head, her posture inquisitive but her curled lips betraying her. “Well, okay, Sunset!”
I shook my head, stifling a chortle myself. “Anyway, you were asking if I had a notebook?”
“Oh, yeah! I wanted to try your technique.” She licked around the rim, where the cone met the ice cream, catching escaping drips before landed on the sugar-stained wooden picnic table. Who needs the napkin dispenser in between us, when you have a perfectly good tongue, I guess? I might have found it gross, if I wasn’t enjoying seeing Sunset Shimmer, the most mature of the group, in her most childish happy-go-lucky state. Here was a girl who was barely nineteen and has saved the dimension, what, six times now? Granted one of those times was my fault, but hey, if I had a nickel for every time I accidentally tore a hole in spacetime.
She stared.
“Hmm?” I mumbled.
“Your notebook?”
“Oh! Sorry, I was lost in thought!” Setting my spoon carefully into my cup, letting it dig slightly into the most solid part of the ice cream as it sunk to ensure it would approach an equilibrium state, I reached down beside the table and unzipped my backpack. Keeping my head above the table, my friendly eye contact unbroken, I fudged around with my hand until I felt the familiar spiral-bound paper of my mathematics notebook.
Well. Mathematics and other subjects. Not that there were other subjects, next to the beauty of mathematics itself, but I was taking a physics class this semester, and those differential equations weren’t about to solve themselves!
I produced the open notebook and a sharpened pencil, placing it on the table in front of Sunset. “There you are!”
Sunset stared between the messy pages and the leaking cone in her hand, ice cream all but gone but several bites of waffle-y bottom remaining. “Uhm..” she mumbled, shrugging and biting twice the socially acceptable distance into the cone, chomping down and sucking in the remnants until it fit half into her mouth, the other half sticking out partially as the loud sounds of chewing filled in the air. “Tnk yu,” she mumbled.
If I were Rarity, I might have stood up and given her a lecture on proper etiquette then and there, and I would have thrown in French words like “comportement”, “état”, or “pamplemousse”. I’m fairly sure the last one’s a grapefruit, but I’ve definitely heard her say it to Rainbow Dash in the locker room, so it must mean something in the fashion world.
Then again, I’m not Rarity, so I just stared fondly at the wide smile on the girl’s lips, clearly enjoying the snack (and, I suppose, my company?).
I don’t think I could pull off chocolate mustache – no, chocolate beard is more accurate – but somehow Sunset did, so hey.
The rest of the cone swallowed in a gulp, a gulp I noticed across the table in the bouncing of her larynx. She reached for a napkin, dabbing her lips idly and drying off her hands. A good one-third of the stains remained flooding her features, though I didn’t mind and I suppose neither would she, so I didn’t tell.
Semi-dried off, she picked up the pen and flipped through the pages of the notebook. “I have no idea what language this is in, and I don’t know if I want to know,” she mumbled, her eyes wide.
“That’s from my multivar class, I think.”
“–Like I said, I won’t ask.” She scanned through the pages, skipping over the deeply nested integrals. “Hey, what’s this?” She pointed at the margin of the homework, where I had doodled a fine cursive S with little black hearts surrounding it, the curvy outline of a cloud enclosing the letter and hearts, and the trace of a rainbow shooting from the cloud off the page.
That may or may not have been the only such S in that notebook.
A fact I had not considered when I lent Sunset the notebook.
A fact indeed.
I believe the Spanish word I’m looking for is “joder”. I don’t believe I have license to write the English translation here, lest some future historian discovers my journal years from now.
Actually, on second thought, you know what? Dire circumstances call for dire action.
I believe the English word I’m looking for is, well:
Fuck.
“That little drawing?” I giggled, wheezing a bit, the faintest traces of blood pulsing through my veins and through my stomach, the sensation of spicy food clogging my intestines.
The whiteness of the clouds of my sky rushing ’round my tiny pupils.
The redness of her hair rushing through my cheeks.
“That old thing?” I waved my hand dismissively, darting her eyes lest she catches a glimpse of mine. “Pff, I think that was… Something!”
“Something?” Sunset raised an eyebrow, snorting. “Wow, amazing, that’s very specific! I especially love the part of your answer where you mention that thing that you had to do the stuff with. You know, for the doing. Of the stuff. With the something!” She squinted her eyes, grinning innocently.
“Umm.” I muttered helplessly. “Hey, didn’t you have that song stuck in your head? You know, the one that was all” – I hummed – “Mm-hmm-mm-hmm-hmmm!”
Sunset grimaced. “I do now.” She turned the pages, probably looking for the first empty page. Phew. Subject changed.
Well. Subject changed for all of approximately thirty-eight seconds, when on the dot…
“Ooo!” She giggled triumphantly. “Look at thaaaat! Twilight has a cruuuush!”
I sputtered. “What? No, I don’t, that’s ridiculous!”
She smirked. “Yeah-huh you don’t!” She pointed at the page, in which I had the doodled the word “Sunset”, beside her redden golden sun and a dozen tiny hearts.
Okay, yeah.
Yeah, this is fine.
¡Joder!
More news at eleven.
This is fine.
“I have no idea what that is.” I lied transparently, prompting a snort from the subject of my affections that definitely don’t exist. My cheeks felt rather hot. I think it was the weather. I stared meekly at my melting pile of ice cream, quickly scooping in the last bit of solid mass to cool.
It didn’t help, but it was sweet.
Not that anyone else about that picturesque afternoon was sweet. Anything else, I mean.
“Yuh-huh”, Sunset laughed, clearly enjoying the moment far more than I was. “I don’t suppose there is anyone else named Sunset who you know who happens to have my exact cutie mark?”
“Exact cutie mark modulo the colouring, I was drawing in pen,” I corrected.
“Ah-hah!”
“…Yes?”
“So you do admit you were the one who drew it!” she exclaimed, clearly proud of herself for her successful interrogation. She folded her arms together, bobbing her head to an invisible beat of pride.
“Oh, quiet you.” I snapped, trying to make it sound aggressively, but unable to stifle a contagious smile and giggle washing away my fear.
“Well, case closed! Twilight’s in love with me.” Sunset tried on a patronizing nod. “I must say, you do have an exceptional taste in girls.”
“I don’t have a crush on you, Sunset!” I blurted out. “Or in love with you or whatever!”
“This” – she reached out and touched my cheek, casting a dancing cold spell within me, and dropped to a whisper – “begs to differ.”
Retracting her hand, I closed my eyes and inhaled, attempting to stabilize my breathing and therefore my heart rate in an effort to regain composure. Opening my eyes after a moment, I confessed, “Friendship with blushing fits.” I bit my lip, quickly tacking on, “If that’s a thing?”
Sunset dropped her excited posture and smiled warmly. “Of course it’s a thing, probably. You know I’m just messing with you, Twi.”
“You are?” I blinked. “Oh. Of course. You. You are.” I twirled the end of my hair idly. “You’re not uncomfortable or anything?”
“Pff,” Sunset beamed. “You’re hardly the first guy to fall for me. Or, girl, as it were.”
“Uh, I’m the second. After Flash, right?”
Sunset drooped. “–Okay, fine, just the second, but that’s not the point! I’m older than you! Do you or do you not agree I’m pretty fabulous?” she flipped her hair and flipped my heart.
“…I do.”
“Thank you!” she huffed. “Ahem.”
Silence fell between us, our eyes interlocked.
“Hey, Sunset?”
“Yes?”
“Could I ask you a question?” I felt a knot, and not on my shoes.
“Anything.”
I broke off eye contact to stare at the crevices in the table, then stared off into the distance beside Sunset, keeping her glow in my periphery but avoiding direct contact. “Do you… do you feel the same about me? Even a little?”
Unreadable in my periphery, I looked back to see her meet my eyes, soft, warm, somewhat glassy, over an illegible face with a small, strained smile. Our eyes connected, and she looked down at the notebook.
Silently she flipped the page and scratched away.
