Sunflowers and Lillies

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I throw a popcorn at his head and it lands in his black waves, getting stuck beneath the tangles of hair. "My little pony was and still is iconic, ok? You would have been an uncultured twat if we hadn't forced you to watch it."

He snorted and stuffed a handful of popcorn from his own bowl, sitting on the opposite end of the couch from me, my legs stretched out in the space between us. "It was a show about ponies. And for some reason one of them had a pet dragon."

"Don't think I forgot," I teased him. "You had a crush on Rarity that could have rivaled Spike's."

This time it was his turn to through popcorn at my face. "And you had one on shining armor, bitch."

"He was cute!"

"He was a horse!"

"I was a kid! And you also had a crush on a horse!"

"I was also a kid!"

We both pause and glance at each other before bursting out into laughter, my bowl of popcorn tilting forward and making a mess on the floor. "We were weird kids," he shakes his head as I snort and try to pick up the popcorn that fell.

"Whoever made the series was weird. And probably drunk. It is still, however, iconic and ingenious."

"Sure," he rolled his eyes even as we both turned back to the show on the TV.

It was My Little Pony.

After the episode finished we both stayed sat down on the couch and exchanged talks about how life was now. I learned that the reason for Brandon's apparent bulk-up was that he had joined an Ice Hokey team and played competitively with other teams. He seemed to really love the sport, and his eyes lit up while he talked about it—telling me that he planned to get a scholarship with the sport and that his next game was getting scouted. He even invited me. He told me about his teammates, his job at a hippie-style dine-in, and about a bitch teacher who everyone hated.

In return, I told him about meeting Alex and Lilah, how Alex was hopelessly in love with her and that he reminded me of Brandon a lot. I told him about Uncle Bob (who he had met multiple times over family reunions when we were younger) and about how he kept getting admitted into hospitals for doing dumb shit. I told him that I didn't know what I was going to do in college or where I wanted to go and that I probably wouldn't graduate from the number of times I'd been absent the past two years.

When he asked me about the last bit, I covered it up with a lie that said I slept in too much. I think he knew it was a lie but he left me be.

We talked for four hours until both our voices were hoarse from laughter and a quiet silence settled over us.

That is until a jingle of keys and the turning of a lock announced Brandon's mother's arrival.

I had known Aunt Lory my entire life, as my mom had changed Brandon's diapers, Aunt Lory had changed mine and hers. My mom and she were best friends who met in high school and kept up all the way to college and after. They got married at about the same time and then got pregnant around the same time as well.

Brandon's dad wasn't anywhere in the picture, he had apparently taken off before Brandon was born and before Aunt Lory even knew she was pregnant.

So I'd say my nausea overwhelmed reaction was sufficient enough as the door started to open and I prepared myself to meet the woman who had cared for me like a second mother after not having seen her for three years.

Brandon stood up and greeted her first, hiding me away from view. I looked at her dark black hair, the same crystal blue eyes as Brandon, but that was where their similarities ended. Brandon was all sharp jaws and straight cut noses whereas Aunt Lory had the delicate softness of a cream puff. Wrinkles shaded her face more than they used to, the familiar ones next to her eyes and the chargin grins of her lips.