“I didn’t think I said anything all that bad,” Strawberry lied.
Redheart didn’t reply, merely raised her eyebrows.
“What?”
“All that bad?” Redheart repeated. “I mean, I guess it could have been worse, but… you were pretty rude.”
“She strapped a child to a rocket,” Strawberry reminded her. “Is no one hearing this?”
“I’m hearing it.”
“And you think I was rude?”
Redheart heaved a great sigh. “Strawbs, I love you. I do. But you definitely have a tendency to, um…” She trailed off, eyes rolling up at the sky, as she searched for the right word. “Exaggerate.”
Strawberry scoffed, folded her forelegs over her chest, and flopped back in her folding chair.
“Or… maybe overreact?”
“Overreact? Really?” Strawberry snapped back.
Redheart made a face. “Am I the only one who remembers the Applejack incident?”
Strawberry rolled her eyes. “No.” She flopped back in her folding chair and heaved a sigh. “I don’t know what she was so upset about. It was just banter.”
“I mean…” Redheart trailed off.
It was the sort of trailing off that said perhaps more than it intended to. Or perhaps it said exactly as much as it intended to, and Redheart simply couldn’t bring herself to actually say it out loud. Or perhaps it was the sort of trailing off that begged for Strawberry to leap in and fill the silence with the truth which Redheart could not perceive on her own.
Strawberry did not take the bait, juicy as it was.
“Do you think those flowers were for Fiddlesticks?”
Redheart shot Strawberry a stern glare. “Really?”
“What? I can’t talk about them at all now?” Strawberry groaned. “They kind of deserve each other, honestly. Fiddlesticks seems to be the only pony capable of forgiving her for all the stupid crap she did.”
Redheart said nothing.
Strawberry laughed. “The silent treatment? You can’t be serious.”
Redheart rolled her eyes.
“Is this how you deal with all conflict? Because I feel like I kinda get why your flings don’t tend to progress to relationship status,” Strawberry quipped, laughter in her words.
Redheart shuddered.
It was a subtle thing. A stiffening, as if she’d been hit. Not only hit—struck through. Electrocuted. Something right in the center of her chest.
Strawberry almost didn’t see it, but something about the way the bristle came to rest disrupted the conversation entirely.
“Uh.” Strawberry looked over at her. “I just mean, like—let’s talk like adults, y’know?”
Redheart’s bristle was still coming down. Something was off balance, slowly finding its way home, but Strawberry didn’t see what it was or how it moved.
“Red?” Strawberry gave her friend a nudge. “You okay?”
Redheart shooed her hoof off. Not an outright violent smack, but the closest thing to it.
“What’s the matter?”
“Strawberry, you don’t know how to talk like an adult.”
Redheart stood up. She gathered her bags quickly, jamming her book roughly into an open pocket.
Strawberry watched with her mouth hanging open. “You’re leaving?”
“I’m going to spend time with my marefriend,” Redheart said, pointedly. “And you might have known I’m calling her that now if you’d thought to ask.”
“But I—”
“I’ll see you later, Strawberry.”
And she was gone.
Fragments of words still tumbled to the tip of Strawberry’s tongue, and all she could do was stutter half-thoughts as she watched her friend trot briskly down the street and disappear around a corner. Even then, she stayed frozen, staring at the spot where the last flash of Redheart’s tail had vanished.
Later.
Redheart would see her later.
That was good, right?
It wasn’t totally over. That wasn’t the end of a friendship, even though it felt like one. Strawberry remembered that feeling vacuum when the last words had been exchanged—this wasn’t that, because Redheart would see her later. After her shift. After she’d cooled down. After she’d forgiven her.
Strawberry wasn’t totally certain who she wanted to do the forgiving, actually.
And that made her angry.
Which made her feel guilty.
Which made her feel like maybe Redheart ought to do the right thing and just not come back.