The chime on the door of the bakery rang, and Sugar Belle put down the sack of flour she was grabbing from the shelf in order to turn to face it.
“I’m sorry, we’re actually closed today—” she began, before realizing who the earthpony standing in her doorway was.
It was funny, how her first thought was that she had changed her manestyle once again. Despite being a magenta only a few shades lighter than Sugar Belle’s own, that artfully slicked-back cut could not be any more different from the long, frizzy mane Sugar Belle now wore.
Her second thought was how once, all those years ago, they had worn their manes in identical buns. Identical smiles on their faces.
“Hey,” Rosemary said, an easily familiarity in her eyes.
Sugar Belle tried not to look into them.
“You’re back in town?”
“Just passing through,” Rosemary said matter-of-factly. “Heard about the new job. The one in Ponyville.”
“From Night Glider?”
Rosemary nodded, and Sugar Belle grimaced. “Ugh, I don’t know why she thinks she can just tell you—”
Rosemary cut her off. “You know why.”
Sugar Belle glared in return. “And yeah, the new job. What do you think I’m doing now?” She held up the sack of flour in her aura. “I just stepped inside to get the last of what I needed before closing up. So if you’ll excuse me.”
She took a step forward and to the side, and Rosemary took a step in that direction as well. Sugar Belle glared at her again.
“Are you really doing this?”
“I’m sorry, look.” Rosemary frowned. “I just want to talk.”
“Talk about what? What could you possibly have to talk about with me, and why today of all days?“
“Exactly. It’s Hearts and Hooves Day, and you’re about to spend half the day getting yourself all the way across Equestria, to do what? A baking apprenticeship?“ Her mouth tightened. “Like you even need it! And even if you did, why not someplace closer, like Whinnyapolis? Why some small town bakery in Ponyville?”
“Isn’t it obvious why?”
“It is, but I want to hear you say it.” Her voice faltered. “Say that you’re going to spend half of Hearts and Hooves Day tied to a cart just to get closer to a stallion.“
Sugar Belle closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again, her tone was icy. “I’m going to spend half of Hearts and Hooves Day tied to a cart in order to see my coltfriend. There. Are you happy now?”
Rosemary only frowned in response.
“Seriously?” Sugar Belle snarled.
“I… I just wanted to have a conversation about it.”
“What conversation could there possibly be?”
“I just want to know why,” Rosemary pleaded. “Why him. I mean, I know you don’t owe me that. I just thought that with everything we’ve been through—”
“You’re right. I don’t owe you that. I don’t owe you anything. Not a single word. I should just walk past you right now.”
But Sugar Belle made no attempt to do so. She just looked at the mare looking back at her with that frightened, familiar desperation. She closed her eyes, and sighed.
“What do you think is going to happen today? That you’ll suddenly convince me that I don’t love him?”
“No, I don’t think that.” Rosemary’s voice was low, almost a whisper. “I don’t think anything will change. I just want one more chance to try to understand.”
“Understand what?”
Rosemary winced, then narrowed her eyes. “What you see in a stallion that tried to kiss you when you were sleeping!”
Sugar Belle groaned in familiar frustration. “We’ve already talked about that! That was because of his younger sister, and those two little friends of hers!”
“How does that make it any better? What could you possibly see in a stallion that takes advice from fillies?”
Sugar Belle rolled her eyes, anticipating the exact sentence Rosemary was going to say next. Word for word.
“He didn’t even know the color of your eyes, Sugar Belle! He called them blue!”
Her reply was the same it had been the last time.
“Okay, so he’s not the most attentive! But he doesn’t need to be.” Then, something new. “He pays attention to the things that really matter.”
Rosemary shrank away from that, as if cut by the words. But then Sugar Belle glanced at the display case, and she could see Rosemary’s eyes flicker there as well.
“That?” Rosemary said, with barely contained disgust. “That’s what you mean? A single, obvious gesture to win your heart like it was some kind of prize at a fair?”
“It’s more than that! You’ve only seen him once, and never really met him! You don’t know what he’s really like. You don’t see how kind he can be—”
“Yes, that makes sense!” Rosemary’s sarcasm was biting. “Kind ponies make fun of their cousins by dressing up as a parody of them in front of the whole town and cruelly mocking how they act. That was really messed up! And you’re the one that told that story to me, so I know you know it too—“
“This is what you always do!” Sugar Belle cried. “Why it doesn’t matter if we talk about this again or not. You’re not really trying to understand! You don’t listen!“
“You don’t listen to yourself! It’s Hearts and Hooves Day, and he didn’t even get you anything, did he?”
Sugar Belle frowned in surprise. “How did you—”
“Because he didn’t get you anything for Mare’s Day. And if he had gotten you something for Hearts and Hooves Day, you would have told Night Glider just to prove her wrong.”
Sugar Belle stepped back, suddenly timid. “Maybe it’s in the mail, and it’s late.”
“So he, what, left it to the last minute? How is that any better? And you know how seriously the postal service takes getting Hearts and Hooves Day presents to who they’re meant for by Hearts and Hooves Day!”
Sugar Belle couldn’t meet her gaze. Rosemary pressed on.
“And you’re still going to load up your wagon and drag it halfway across Equestria. You’re going to overlook this. Ignore it, pretend it’s no big deal. Just like you do with everything else with this guy. Until one day, you get frustrated, and show that you do care. That it does matter. By complaining about it. To Night Glider.” Rosemary frowned. “Or to me.”
Sugar Belle sighed, eyes still averted. “I’m sorry for those times. For using you like that. I really am. I just…”
“I know.” Rosemary smiled softly. “I never said no. I…” She chuckled sadly. “I liked it when you talked about him that way.”
Sugar Belle gave a sad chuckle of her own, then caught herself. She gave Rosemary a serious look.
“But he’s more than all of the things I complain about. And yes, he’s not perfect. But he doesn’t have to be. He just has to be enough.” She sighed. “And I do love him. You have to understand that. Do you?”
Roesmary frowned. "I don't."
"You don't believe me?"
"No, I"—she bit her lip and closed her eyes, wincing as each word came out—"I believe you. I just don't understand." She opened her eyes again. "I really don't. He doesn't know you, Sugar Belle. Not like I do."
Sugar Belle tried to look at her without quite looking into her eyes. Her voice was quiet, apologetic.
“It’s kinda nice that he doesn’t.”
Rosemary had no response to that, her face still. A silence stretched between them.
Sugar Belle continued. “When I’m with him, I don’t have to think. It’s not the worst thing in the world that he doesn’t think much, either. When I’m with him, I can believe that life can be simple.”
In a small voice. “Do you really think that life can ever actually be simple?”
“No," Sugar Belle admitted. "I just want to believe it. As something to believe in. That’s all I ever wanted.”
A silence stretched on between them again.
In a small, hollow voice. “And it could never have been that simple between us, could it?”
Sugar Belle’s reply was quiet, soft. “It could have been. If you had stayed.”
“No, it couldn’t.” Rosemary frowned, her voice filling back out in an instant. “Even if I stayed. I could have never—” She paused, swallowing her words. “I could never have moved on like you all did, pretending like nothing ever happened.”
“That’s not what we did. We didn’t pretend that nothing ever happened. We just tried to make the best of what we had. That’s how we moved on. By taking what she left us and making something better—“
“You had the option!” Rosemary snarled. “Night Glider, Party Favor, Double Diamond, all of you!“ She spat those names like venom from her mouth, her voice breaking into sobs. “She convinced you all! But she broke me!”
Sugar Belle saw that all-too-familiar sight in her eyes. That twisted stew of resentment and love. She resisted her own instinctual urge to rush forward and comfort her, using all of her might to keep her four hooves planted firmly onto the ground.
She watched as Rosemary sobbed in place, until her sobs subsided as the expected comfort never came. She kept her own hooves steady, her own face expressionless, as close to gray as her cerise coat could get. She spoke, as if reciting rehearsed lines.
“I meant what I said last time. I can’t do this anymore. Not after I agreed to be his marefriend.“
She saw realization dawn in Rosemary’s eyes. Unsteady, flickering, but it did land.
“You really have changed." Rosemary paused, hesitant. "Maybe I’m the one that doesn’t know the real you now.”
“You once did.” After a moment’s hesitation, Sugar Belle let herself smile, and let her voice soften. “And you will always know that me. But that’s not all that I will ever be. And I hope that’s not all you will ever be, either.”
She saw something fade from Rosemary’s eyes, in the silence before her reply. They looked at her differently now. The air between them was different now.
“I hope so, too.” Then, the same words, but said in a way she had never heard before. “So I guess this really is the last time we’ll see each other?”
“Yes. It is.” Sugar Belle’s voice was firm. “In a year, I’ll probably be married to him.”
“Yeah, if he doesn’t break up with you first!”
Rosemary’s usual laugh at that instinctual joke never sounded so hollow. Sugar Belle did not react.
“Ah, I’m just kidding. Even I don’t think he’d be that stupid.“ Rosemary smiled, though it did not reach her eyes, which were brimmed with tears. “So I guess I won’t be getting an invite to that wedding?”
“No, that wouldn’t be a good idea,” Sugar Belle confirmed. But the finality of those words moved something in her. She tried to think of something to say. “It was…” She bit her lip. “I really did mean everything I said back then. Even the—”
“I know. You don’t have to say it.” Rosemary glanced at the door. “I understand. Some meeting has to be the last one. This one’s as good as any. I should get out of your way. Out of your life.”
Sugar Belle heard a bit of hollowness in those words, and noticed that Rosemary did not move. She could see her eyes darting to her own bag, hesitant.
“I just...” Rosemary sighed. “I just have one more thing to do before I go. And I really will this time. Forever.”
Sugar Belle frowned in trepidation as Rosemary reached a hoof into her bag and took something out to offer to her.
“I’ve had these just sitting in my drawer for years. They were supposed to be your Hearts and Hooves Day present, the last one we had— that we were supposed to have together.“
Sugar Belle lifted them in her aura. Earrings set with oval-cut violet sapphires, the color of her eyes.
“Rosemary, I can’t take these, you know that.”
“Well, I can’t keep them. And I’m not about to throw them away. Please, just take them.” Tears were welling up in Rosemary’s eyes again, despite her effort at a smile. “It doesn’t have to mean anything. It can just be for being pretty for your… For your coltfriend.”
Still frowning, Sugar Belle floated them over and put them on the counter. “Th-thanks,” she said, not quite sure what to say. She looked at Rosemary. “So that’s it, right? This is goodbye?”
“No.”
Sugar Belle frowned. “Rosemary…”
“I’m sorry, there’s just one more thing.” A half-chuckle, half-sob broke through Rosemary. “One more thing I want to hear, for one last time.”
She looked into Sugar Belle’s eyes. “Remember those late nights when we were cuddled up in that musty basement, whispering every word we said to each other, afraid that any moment someone would barge in and find us out? Remember what we used to say to each other?“
Sugar Belle winced, and closed her eyes. “Rosemary…”
“That she could take away our cutie marks, but she could never take away how your laugh is the sound of flowers blooming in the spring.”
“Rosemary,” Sugar Belle said. “Of course I remember. But I can’t—”
“I just want to hear it one more time!” Rosemary begged, that old light returning to her eyes for one last deliberate extinction burst. “Please. And I’ll be out of your life forever. I promise.”
Sugar Belle saw the desperation in them. The very same desperation that had drawn her in all those years ago. She knew what she should do. Not say a single word. Push past her in silence and out the door. Hitch that wagon to herself and head south to her future.
But she could not help but show a kindness at the end. She looked into those deep pools that had once been a refuge. That had once meant so much to her. She could feel a glimmer of that calm and peace again. She let herself feel it just enough to say the last words Rosemary would ever hear from her.
“She could take away our cutie marks. But she could never take away how your eyes are the color of the sky.”