We made it to Northampton, Massachusetts some time in the middle of the night. I knew because I'd been awake, staring up at the ceiling of my little cubby when I felt the bus come to a stop and make that hissing noise that buses made when they parked.

I'd heard Devon get into bed too, hours after I'd left him out there. I wondered if what he'd scribbled in that notebook had kept him up too.

For some reason, writing things down felt less vulnerable than speaking them aloud. I wondered if this was what it felt like to pass notes in class, before everyone had cell phones, and you'd thread a note through a chain of classmates to your crush, hoping the more people touched it, the less personal it felt.

Instead, I told myself it was probably just the sugar rush from the Oreos (I'd read somewhere once that eating a sleeve of Oreos had the same effect on your brain as doing a line of cocaine).

We'd stopped at another hotel for the day since we had no show tonight, and it was still annoying me that our rooms were being paid for no questions asked by some mysterious benefactor nobody but Devon seemed to know - like some awkward modern Great Expectations retelling, except I was Pip and he was Estella.

It only added to the lurching feeling in my stomach that made me keep going back, as if I could actually get through to him. Yes, I knew my job would be much less frustrating if he and I had arrived at some sort of mutual understanding, but it was more than that.

The more he stepped back into the dark, the more compelled I was to follow, and every so often he'd leave me a little trail, like the way his eyes sang a different tune when he performed, or when he wrote YES in big black letters in my notebook. It was just one word, but it was enough for me to see that behind his bad attitude and angry vocals was someone who seemed to be deeply insecure about something they were supposed to be good at, and in an annoyingly dramatic twist of events, I understood how he felt.

So I naively followed that trail he left me, like a mouse following bits of cheese right into a trap. Because I was finally starting to see him, and the more he led me along, the more I wanted to follow. The chase was almost addicting.

Devon had stayed on the bus after we'd parked and de-boarded (no doubt to get some peace and quiet without the heathens), and I used the opportunity to try and inconspicuously dig a little deeper.

"He's gonna be okay, right? Devon, I mean," I asked Evie while we all lingered in the lobby, waiting for Raf to check in and get our rooms from the front desk.

"He just needs some rest, don't worry." Evie offered me a faint but assured smile.

"I wasn't," I blurted out, and felt my whole body lurch again. Inconspicuous was obviously not my middle name. "I just...I gotta know these things, ya know?"

She arched an eyebrow at me, and I realized almost immediately that my yapping had only made it worse (as it did more often than not, lately). My foot did not taste good jammed in my mouth like that.

"That's not what I mean," I tried to recover with a breathy sigh. "I do feel bad. But...can I ask you something? And just know I'm not trying to sound as insensitive as I just did, I promise."

Evie snickered as she twisted the little beaded E charm on the gold chain around her neck. "Go ahead."

"Why would he do that knowing that this would probably happen?"

Evie pursed her lips and allowed herself a brief glance out the automatic double doors toward the bus in the parking lot. "Well...Devon's a perfectionist, which..." she slid me another faint smirk. "I'm sure you knew that part already."

"Yeah, I had an inkling," I replied with a wry grin.

Evie paused and blew out a tight breath, as if she was torn on whether or not to actually let me behind the curtain to see that the Wizard of Oz (or Prince of Darkness) was just a man, and suddenly I regretted asking at all. I wouldn't have let me in if I was her.

"The direct answer to your question is, I don't know," Evie shrugged, and I felt a sense of relief trickle through me. "I guess maybe he thought that if the risk paid off, it would have been great, and it would satisfy that itch he always has to be perfect."

She'd thrown more bait at me without even realizing it, and I tried not to froth at the mouth. Metaphorically, of course.

"Oh shit, this place has free breakfast," Gareth's voice carried through the lobby as he bopped around restlessly.

Evie and I glanced at each other one more time, and it almost seemed like there was relief in her eyes too. Maybe she wanted to let me in, after all.

Even though it was late in the afternoon, this Hilton seemed almost abandoned compared to the one we'd checked into that first night, and the squeaking of everyone's shoes echoed in the silence. I glanced back over at Raf as he thanked the woman at the desk, and I wondered if that same Kato name had been given at reception this time.

Raf motioned for us to follow him towards the elevators, waving our room key cards around.

Evie looped her arm around my elbow. "Don't worry, we're gonna put all the boys in one room this time."

"Oh thank god," I sighed out, remembering all too well the last time I was exposed to Devon while sharing a room (in the way you can be exposed to radiation), before immediately wanting to strangle myself again. Reminder: feet do not taste good when you jam them in your mouth like that.

All Evie did was laugh, even though I was sure my face was bright freakin' red.

⋆ ★

"So how is the Prince of Darkness doing?"

Lyanna snickered on the other end of our Facetime as she settled into her plush white leather couch with a glass of wine clutched in her freshly manicured fingers.

"Oh my god, shush," I whispered harshly as I meandered around the swirling geometric patterned carpeting of the hotel hallway. I'd stepped out of our room not long after Evie and I had settled in (and the heathens had descended to "give the old man his space") to answer Lyanna's call, and I had to tip-toe further away from our room if she was going to keep loudly giving me away.

"I so regret telling you that that's what they call him," I added with a grumble as I made it to the window at the very end of the hall, looking down into the empty parking lot, where street lamps began to flicker on.

"Well, I think it's endearing." Lyanna flipped her braids over her shoulder. "Better than Polly Pocket."

I groaned as I propped myself on the windowsill, looking down the hallway for him to emerge as if saying his name three times conjured his vengeful spirit. "Don't remind me."

The pause that followed lingered loudly. The problem with being the resident yapper is that when you had nothing to say, it was noticed.

"Uh oh. What's wrong?"

I rolled the confession around in my mouth before deciding to release it slowly with an exhale. "I don't know if I can really do this."

Lyanna scoffed. "What? Of course you can. Why do you think that?"

Because I'd developed this rather unwanted fascination with the aforementioned Prince of Darkness...in the way that I supposed you developed an ulcer. It was just there seemingly out of nowhere, and it burned in my stomach.

But instead, I said to Lyanna, "I just don't know how I'm supposed to do my job when it seems like he gets some twisted satisfaction out of purposefully making it difficult for me."

We were now lying by omission, which didn't feel as bad as lying outright. While what I said was technically the truth, I'd conveniently left out the look in his eyes last night, like he might have actually been human.

Lyanna took a sip of wine as she nodded, slowly and contemplatively. "Listen babe, this is not going to be the first or the last time you work with difficult clients. You need to find some common ground with him. I know you're more than capable of that because the people-pleaser in you has done it before."

That was exactly what I was afraid she'd say - and yet somehow was completely unsurprised by it. Maybe that was where the issue was. Maybe I just wasn't nearly as keen on proving I could work with difficult clients as I thought I was.

But once again, I pivoted with another frustrated sigh. "How am I supposed to find common ground with someone whose mood swings could induce whiplash?"

At least that part was true.

"You'll figure it out," Lyanna assured me, even though I wasn't very convinced of that myself. "Now go play nice with the other kids. Vanderpump is about to be on."

"Okay, but wait-"

"Love you, bye!"

She hung up, leaving me to scowl at my reflection in my darkened phone screen. I was on my own for this one.

I purposefully took my time walking back to the room, playing a game with myself where I only stepped on the blue-colored octagons in the carpet pattern and not the red ones. When I finally made it back, I nearly tripped over my own feet at the sight of seeing Devon, sitting cross-legged on my bed hunched over his laptop. Maybe we really had conjured him.

"What about Jennifer's Body? It's funny," he said to Evie, who'd been messing with the settings on the television mounted to the other side of the wall. His voice was still hoarse, but it no longer sounded like he was swallowing glass.

Evie looked back at him and smirked. "As much as my crush on Megan Fox will be eternal, I think we should avoid any more psychological damage to Sienna by tricking her into watching more gory horror movies."

"I didn't trick her," he replied plainly with a shrug. Then glanced over at me, as if he knew I'd been standing there the whole time. "Speak of Polly Pocket and she doth appear."

"I like Megan Fox," I offered with a chagrined smile. If finding common ground at the moment meant watching more horror films for their movie nights, I would need to quickly figure out how to swallow my whole stomach back down at the sight of blood - even if it was fake.

"Guys, guys, guys." Gareth came barreling into the room, clutching his chest like he'd just run a 5k. "The bar across the street does trivia night. Like, tonight. Like, right now."

As if there'd suddenly been some unspoken telepathy between the bandmates, Evie immediately hopped off her bed, grabbed her neon green jelly Telfar bag, and tilted her head for me to come along. Devon followed soon after.

I obviously was not tuned into this particular mindwave channel.

"Oh...oh, okay, we're going." I frantically glanced around to see where I'd left my own bag among the carnage of personal belongings we'd unloaded from the bus. I'd buried my mini nylon Prada purse somewhere in my overnight duffle, but of course now that we were suddenly in a hurry to leave, I couldn't find it.

"Let's go Polly," I heard Devon call from the doorway.

"Stop talking," Evie shushed him.

I finally found my bag tucked underneath a scarf, grabbing it and bolting out of the hotel room to meet them in the hallway.

"Sorry," Gareth gave me a guilty grin as I hurried to fall into step with them. "We're just trivia people. Can't miss a trivia night when we stumble upon one."

"Movie people, trivia people, what other kinds of people are you?" I furrowed my brows at him.

Gareth gave me a shrug. "I think we all get bored pretty easily. We need stuff to do in our down time, and I guess these things just happen when you spend as much time together as we do."

His delivery of that kind of information was innocent enough, but it nicked something inside me, like some kind of internal paper cut. I glanced forward at Evie and Devon, walking in stride and carrying on a conversation I couldn't really hear, but whatever they said prompted Devon to drape his arm around Evie's shoulder and give her a quick sideways hug. I almost thought I heard a laugh. When I looked back at Gareth, he gave me an unprompted toothy grin.

"You'll like trivia night," he assured me.

I smiled in response, and my heart lifted in my chest. Whatever sense of belonging they gave to each other, I wanted too.

The crisp autumn air hit us the moment we stepped outside, and a shiver ripped through me. In the manic fumbling of trying to find my bag, I hadn't grabbed any kind of jacket, leaving just my thin white long-sleeve shirt between me and the nighttime chill.

"Cold?"

Devon had fallen into step beside me, and the subtle smirk he wore told me he already knew the answer. So obviously, I had to respond with the opposite.

"No." I grit my teeth. "I'm from North Dakota, I can handle it."

"Oh good, then you won't need my sweatshirt."

It must have shown on my face that his response caught me out, and so his smirk stretched a little wider. I forced myself to look away as an unwanted warmth spread through my cheeks. Would it have felt somewhat nice to feel a little bit of his body heat and see if his hoodie smelled like that fresh cologne of his? Yes. Did it feel better to continue engaging in petty warfare? Also yes.

Thankfully, the bar was only a short trek across the street. The N in the bar's light up sign above the door was out, so it read "The atural" instead of "The Natural."

For a dive bar off of a random central Massachusetts freeway, the place was packed. It reminded me a lot of the one bar on Main Street back home in Casselton, with year-long Christmas Lights hanging from the wood paneled ceiling, and a colorful assortment of random stickers dotting the bar that stretched from the front of the room to the back.

There was a young kid with a laptop and a microphone who I had to assume was trivia night's emcee, and when Gareth clocked him across the bar, he went jogging up to him to sign us up while the rest of us were led to a predictably sticky table by a forlorn hostess.

As Devon and I slid across the wooden booth across from one another, his legs entrapped mine, and I thought I might have spontaneously combusted from the sudden spike in my body temperature.

"Sorry," he grumbled as he tried to shift in a way that we wouldn't touch. But in such an enclosed space, his long Slenderman legs simply did not fit. So I was forced to settle with the feeling of his knees pressed against mine, wishing I was back in the cold.

"It's fine," I croaked out, shaking my head dismissively at him.

But he'd already had his head down in one of the plastic menus, as if it didn't bother him nearly as much as it bothered me. Because of course.

Gareth had returned with our trivia sheet and a glittery purple pen, where he'd already scribbled THE GREEN INFERNO at the top next to "team name."

"Can I get you guys any drinks to start?"

I hadn't even noticed a waitress had come to our table. She looked to be about our age, curiously eyeing our table of deviants as she chewed on her gum and twirled her pen in her fingers.

"Water, please," Evie perked up. "For all of us."

I smirked to myself. She totally seemed like the type to be the table's designated spokesperson.

"It's not happy hour anymore, is it?" Gareth moaned, like a child being told there was no dessert.

"House margaritas are half off on trivia night," the waitress chimed in, and that seemed to reinvigorate Gareth.

"Oh oh, I want one of those."

"Same," Clark added.

"Me too," from Evie.

"Me three," I held my hand up with a guilty grin.

"What about you babe?" the waitress had zeroed-in on Devon, who'd shed his hoodie and managed to angle himself into the corner of the booth with his arms folded over his chest. She was making no attempt to hide the way she respectfully stared at those arms of his, and I had to resist the urge to roll my eyes.

He shook his head. "Nothing."

"Okay then." She nodded curtly. "I'll be right back with those."

"No New York sour for you?" I chided Devon with a grin.

He pressed his knee intently against the inside of my thigh, and I had to swallow my heart down as it leapt into my throat. "Could say the same to you."

I shrugged, refusing to be deterred by the deep void of his eyes. "I like margaritas too."

"Copycat." He wouldn't move his knee.

I stuck my tongue out at him just as the emcee began his intro (and relieved Devon and I from whatever was just going on).

"Alright, welcome to trivia night at The Natural." His voice was about two octaves deeper than I expected it to be, since he couldn't have been older than 18 or 19. "You'll see four blocks of sections with five blank spots each. We do four categories, and you'll turn in your responses to be checked at the end of each category, and then a bonus round if our competition gets a little spicy. So, without further ado, our first category is geography."

Feeling somewhat relieved, I took a much needed exhale. I got an A in world geography freshman year of high school - I could only hope that information was stored somewhere easily accessible in my brain. The last thing I wanted was to be dragged to trivia night (by a group of friends that practically prides themselves on being "trivia people") and end up as nothing more than a liability.

"That's you, Clarky," Gareth nudged Clark, who was sitting on the other side of him on our side of the booth. Devon had leaned over to Evie to point at something on the menu.

"First question: who did the U.S. buy Florida from?"

Gareth scoffed. "That's not geography, that's history."

"It's Spain." Clark had already begun writing it down. I glanced over at our trivia sheet, taking note of his exceptionally neat handwriting (unsurprising).

"Oh," Gareth sat back in the booth. "Yeah, that totally sounds right."

I snickered behind my hand.

"Hey we're gonna get onion rings," Evie interjected. "You guys will eat them, right?"

"I never say no to onion rings," Gareth shook his messy mop of hair.

Evie looked at me expectantly.

"Oh, sure," I replied, even though I'd never had an onion ring in my life. I was always a loyal shoestring french fry girl, but I wasn't about to be the one person who mucked up their group order. I clung to that hope that that sense of belonging they exuded with each other would spread to me somehow.

"Next question: which state has the longest freshwater shoreline?"

"Oh god, I know this one," Evie groaned as she clutched the sides of her head.

"It's either Michigan or Wisconsin," Clark added.

"It's gotta be Michigan," I concluded. "Pretty much the entire state is boarded by the great lakes."

Clark jerked his thumb in my direction and wrote our response down. "That's it."

This time I allowed myself a more self-satisfied smile. I was not going to be a liability.

We made it confidently through the first round just as our waitress brought our waters and margaritas. I was pretty sure I imagined the way her eyes lingered on Devon again as she put his water down in front of him. But I couldn't be totally sure.

"Wow, I feel dumb," Gareth said with a dopey chuckle. After a beat of silence, he threw his hands out in front of him. "This is when you guys chime in and say no Gareth, you're so smart."

Devon scoffed. "I was taught at a young age that lying was a sin."

Gareth flicked the paper from his straw at him, and Devon cracked a faint grin as it missed his head just to the right. Even the Prince of Darkness must have felt that sense of belonging.

We made it through the geography round with resounding confidence, but felt more shaky in round two, sports and leisure (also unsurprising). We'd ordered our food in between the second and third rounds, and Devon showed some signs of life when round three was revealed: music.

"First question: who was the first woman inducted into the rock and roll hall of fame?"

"Aretha Franklin," Devon responded without missing a beat. Clark nodded and wrote his answer down. Devon was uncontested (probably the least surprising thing of all the unsurprising things so far).

"Too easy for you," I shook my head at him, offering him the faintest smirk. He responded by pressing his knee against my thigh again, as if he just knew it sent a little spark of fire up the rest of my body.

"Next question: Which 1950's crooner sang the hit song Beyond the Sea?"

I leaned forward on my elbows, goading him even more. "Oh, tough one."

He arched a challenging eyebrow at me with that same knowing smirk he wore before - because he did know, and he gleaned an obnoxious level of satisfaction from it. I just wished it didn't turn my stomach into a washing machine.

"It's Bobby Darin." He sounded bored, that cocky son of a bitch.

Evie playfully smacked him on the shoulder. "You're such a know-it-all."

"Well, I do know it all," Devon deadpanned with an eye roll.

There was unfortunately some truth to that as there was almost zero collaboration for the music category. As always, they put implicit trust in Devon, because he just seemed to exist in a dimension higher when it came to all things music.

The waitress delivered our food, and as I glanced around at everyone's burgers, I regretted my chef salad. I liked to eat, and I didn't know why I felt like I had to pretend I was strictly a salad girlie.

"Fuck, I said no pickles," Devon moaned, curling up into himself like there were roaches crawling on his burger instead of a few wayward pickled vegetables.

Evie snickered. "Jenny over there was too busy oogling you, she probably didn't hear you."

So it wasn't just my imagination. I wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

"I don't think that's her name." Devon continued flicking the slivers of pickle off of his burger and onto the red and white paper lining the plastic basket the burgers were served in.

"It was a joke, my goodness," Evie rolled her eyes as she swirled an onion ring around in ketchup. "She just looks like Jenny from Forrest Gump."

"I'll eat them." I pushed my plate towards him. For the first time all night, it seemed I had finally caught him out, and I couldn't resist throwing that haughty smirk back at him.

"All you." He shuddered as he scraped them onto my plate with his fork.

"They're just pickles," I shrugged, making sure to keep eye contact with him as I slowly dropped one in my mouth.

He leered at me with one more disgusted shudder before digging into his burger. Petty points for me, thank you very much.

By the end of the four trivia rounds, we were tied with one more team for first place.

"We're gonna do one more sudden death question, and there is no category. Like Jeopardy but cooler." The emcee clutched his microphone, far too excited about a sudden death round at a dive bar trivia night. "Here's your question, and you have 30 seconds to turn it in. What blood type is considered a universal donor?"

We all glanced around the table at each other, but the only sound to be heard was Gareth sucking up the last of his margarita.

I snapped my fingers. "I know it. There's a nickname for it. It's called golden blood, but I don't remember the scientific name for it."

Devon chuckled from across the table, and I gave him a sickly smile. "Oh, feel like being a team player now?"

"No it's just...you're wrong?" he shrugged casually.

I scoffed. "How? I haven't even figured out the actual answer yet."

"You're overthinking it." He chewed on the end of the toothpick he'd taken from the little plastic container at the end of the table. "It's O-Negative."

"No it's not," I insisted, my pride driving me to the brink. "It's got a weird name. O-Negative is a regular blood type."

"Fine." He sat back in the booth and folded his arms tightly over his chest. "Then what's the weird name?"

"We could just cheat and google it," Gareth offered with a shrug.

"We're not cheating," Evie hissed at him. "We win with dignity or not at all."

I pressed two fingers to my temple and sighed, trying to clear my brain in hopes the real answer would emerge from the fog. Suddenly I was regretting that margarita.

I remembered reading an article my sister had sent me about unique genetic traits (because us Stuart girls were part of the 2% of people that had a little hole at the top of our ears, from a more primitive era), and one of the other "unique genetic traits" was the gift of golden blood. Less than 100 people in the world had it.

"It's Rh-null." I perked up. "That's it. Write it down."

Clark quickly scribbled it down and handed it to Gareth, who expertly maneuvered through a few tables to bring our sheet to the emcee.

"Alright, we've got answers in. And our winner tonight is..." he played a drum roll sound effect on his laptop for annoying dramatic emphasis. "The Itty Bitty Quiz-y Committee! The answer was O-Negative."

Cheers erupted from the other end of the bar, and I was so annoyed with myself that I hadn't even been able to appreciate how satisfyingly funny their team name was. I felt eyes shifting towards me, and somehow I could only bring myself to make eye contact with Devon.

I immediately regretted it as he settled back into the booth, this time his smirk growing into a full blown shit eating grin. I keep expecting fangs to pop out of his incisor teeth. "Oh, look at that. You were wrong."

"It's just trivia night," Evie said to him, but the reassurance in her voice was clearly directed at me.

"My margarita was good," Gareth added.

But it didn't work. His choice of words felt too intentional. It wasn't that he was right (which he was, unfortunately). It was that I was wrong. No matter how vulnerable our conversation had been last night or what kind of transient understanding we'd arrived at, he was still Devon, and I'd been around him long enough now to understand what that meant. The common ground I had to find was the playing field of this game of cat and mouse he'd dragged me into - willingly or not.

⋆ ★

my fave platonic soulmates, i literally cannot wait to get into their lore more! (soon, i promise)

& i, like the green inferno, very much love a trivia night, so between the actual trivia game and the game of cat and mouse going on between our stubborn kids, this chapter was super fun to write (although admittedly much longer than i wanted it to be, oh well)

i'm also super stoked for part ii so let me know any thoughts or predictions you may have! thanks for reading <3