No sex beyond slightly dirty jokes.

Cheerilee knew well the perils of an empty barstool.

Getting a seat at the bar at Berry’s on a Freeday night was nothing short of a miracle, and she wasn’t giving this seat up for anything. But when the pony on her left paid her tab and headed home, Cheerilee understood the vulnerability this created. She was going to be offered free drinks. Accepting these drinks might or might not come with strings attached. Implied promises of favors later in the evening, which she might or might not follow through on.

She could move to a more secure position, but it had been a hard week in the one-room schoolhouse, climaxing this afternoon with an incident that left her supervising five foals—those five foals—scraping vinegar-soaked baking soda off the ceiling, delaying her overdue grading of the week’s quizzes until after dark.

She loved being a teacher. She really did. But oh, Harmony, some days were a death march.

She needed a cider. She needed several ciders, and maybe a bit of something harder. And if the pony who sat on that barstool and offered her drinks was a stallion, reasonably handsome, and didn’t seem to be a serial killer, she was going home with them.

She finished her cider and waved to Berry for another. Berry nodded back to her, and pulled down the tap for the Groundhog cider she knew was Cheerilee’s favorite. She bumped the bowl with her hoof and sent it scooting across the bartop without spilling a drop. Cheerliee caught it and bent down to take a lick. She closed her eyes and savored the sharp, crisp apple flavor with cinnamon and caramel notes.

The barstool next to her creaked. Her alert equine ears poked up. A different, muskier apple scent than the cider drifted into her nostrils. A delectable, crotch-moistening smell of physical near-perfection mixed with extreme emotional immaturity. The smell of a stallion who seemed placid and reliable on the outside, but whose mix of severe mommy and daddy issues made him almost intolerable once you got to know him. The smell of the stallion who was the unmentioned exception to her ‘screw anything male, handsome, and probably not going to murder her’ plan.

Her head snapped up. “You!”

“Eyup.”

Cheerilee narrowed her eyes. “You’ve got a lot of nerve.”

“Eyup.”

She curved a hoof protectively around her cider bowl. “Well, if you want to buy me a drink, you’re too late.”

He shrugged.

“So is there something I can help you with? Or did you just come by because you think you can convince me that we should get back together?”

“Eyup.”

Cheerilee narrowed her eyes and leaned toward him. She drew a hoof tip along the edge of her bowl, eliciting a soft musical tone. “I asked you two questions, honey. You need to specify which one you’re ‘eyup’ing.”

He leaned away from her. “The second one. I miss you.”

“Ah.” She straightened up. “Macintosh, do you know one of the hardest lessons I have to teach my students?”

“Nope.”

“Well,” she said. “Let me try to teach it to you. The lesson is that actions have consequences. Like if, for example, if you ignore the clear pedagogic intent of a science lesson on chemical reactions and weaponize it as part of a pissing contest with your best frenemies, you’re going to have to stay after school to clean up the disaster you created. And if you do it on a Freeday afternoon, your favorite teacher is going to be royally pissed at you.”

Macintosh nodded slowly, watching her with his particular look of intense concentration that she’d dated him long enough to know meant he was only pretending to listen.

“Are you picking up what I’m laying down?”

She could hear his brain rattling in his skull when he nodded. He shifted his facial features into the sad half-frown half-pout which meant he was doing his best to look repentant.

Cheerilee held his gaze. “My mom says I should take you back. ‘Cheery,’ she’ll say—she calls me Cheery for some reason, don’t ever do that—’ Cheery, he’s healthy, he’s good looking, he’s successful, he’s soft-spoken but strong. And he really loves you! Sure, he’s free spirited’—that’s what she calls what you do, being free spirited— ‘but a lot of stallions are like that. Everypony makes mistakes! And you’re not getting any younger. You need to be more forgiving or you’re going to wind up alone.”

Macintosh nodded again, a little faster. His slight smile showed he was only hearing the parts he wanted to hear.

“My mother is desperate for grandfoals. But you know what I’m desperate for?”

Macintosh nodded vigorously, and then, when she gave him a quelling look, changed that to a shake.

“I’m desperate to be happy. And it makes me very unhappy when my special somepony cheats on me.”

Macintosh cringed away from her like she’d popped him on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper. “I can change.”

“No. You can’t. And do you know how I know that?”

“Nope?”

“Because you’re coming up to me right now, acting repentant and wanting to rebuild burned bridges, but you smell like Caramel’s ass.”

His ears flattened against his head. “Oh.”

Cheerilee shrugged. “Some ponies can’t be monogamous. There’s no shame in that. But I want to be. And I’m not going to compromise on that. I’d rather be alone than unhappy.”

“Oh.”

“So I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

Macintosh didn’t budge from his barstool. “I love you.”

“I know, honey. I love you too. But love alone isn’t enough to build a relationship on. Go to your friends. Have fun.”

Macintosh’s face sagged like a kicked puppy’s.

Cheerilee flicked her hoof at him. “Go. Go on. Get.”

He melted off the stool and slunk away.

“Well. That was unpleasant,” she said to herself. She lowered her snout into her cider and took a nice long drink.

The barstool next to her creaked again. She sighed internally.

“Garçon!” said the stallion next to her. “I need baking soda and vinegar! Immediately!”

“You need what?” said Berry.

Cheerilee turned her eyes sideways. The stallion next to her was slim and brown, wearing a bow tie. His shaggy mane called out to be straightened with a gentle hoof. “Vinegar and baking soda.” He placed a papier-mâché model of a volcano on the bartop. “Allons-y! The fate of an entire city may depend on it!”

Berry squinted at him. “Allons what?”

“Quickly! Quickly!”

“Go ahead, Berry,” said Cheerilee. “Put it on my tab.”

Eyes intent with the passion of scientific inquiry, the bow-tie pony poured a bit of baking soda into the toy volcano, then tipped the shot glass of vinegar over the crater. White foam bubbled forth in the kind of volumes she would normally only have seen if she’d gone home with Macintosh.

Bow Tie’s eyes widened. “Fantastic! The rumors are true!”

“You’re cleaning that,” said Berry.

“I could have told you,” said Cheerilee, leaning her chin on her hoof and batting her eyelashes at him.

Bow Tie seemed to become aware of her for the first time since he’d taken the stool. “Really? And what is your scientific specialty?”

“I’m an elementary school teacher.”

Bow Tie tapped his hoof against his forehead. “Of course! Of course! I could have saved hours and an entire newspaper if I’d come to one of your sisterhood, to begin with!” He kicked the post of his bar stool and rotated to face her. “The critical question is: How well does the effect scale?”

Cheerilee batted her eyelashes at him. “You came to the right mare but it’s a long story. Can I buy you a drink?”