"He hates me, doesn't he?" I asked Evie as we sat outside a coffee shop in downtown Newport - just the two of us, for a slew of obvious reasons.

Autumn in New England was really unlike autumn anywhere else, and being in a place like Newport only seemed to amplify that. Every picturesque colonial storefront downtown was outfitted with pumpkins at the doorstep where there were normally flower boxes filled with geraniums, and red fallen leaves skipped across cobblestoned streets and pathways. It was a little chilly despite the shining sun, but my North Dakota blood could handle it.

What I couldn't handle was the seething, brooding energy radiating off of Devon like heat waves coming off the pavement in the summer. Every time I got near him, it burned, and god if I didn't deserve it.

"Believe it or not, I don't think Devon's capable of hating anyone." Evie chuckled and shook her head. "He just tends to feel things deeply."

"I actually do find that a little hard to believe," I allowed myself a faint, amused grin before coming back to the reality of the situation. "I mean, not the feeling deeply part, because that much comes through in his songwriting, but..." I groaned in frustration. "It doesn't matter. I still feel like such an idiot. He told me he didn't speak to his parents, but I guess I thought...I don't know what I thought."

"You thought that maybe something good would come out of it?" Evie asked after she'd taken a sip of her flat white, leaving a deep-red lipstick stain on the rip of the cup.

I shrugged, rolling bits of ripped paper from my straw wrapper between my fingers. "Maybe." When Evie shot me a look, I conceded. "Okay, yes. I thought if I talked to his mom, I could mediate things between them somehow. Or at least figure out what was going on so I could find a way to help. That sounds so stupid saying it out loud now."

"No it doesn't." Evie heaved out a sigh. "Devon's relationship with his parents is shitty as fuck, and it's not like he's been exactly up front with that. So you not knowing that is not your fault. If anything, it's mine. I should have said something to you earlier."

With how distracted (crazy) Devon had been making me, sometimes it was easy to forget that Evie and Devon had as deep of a history as they did. They'd seen each other through so much, and here I was bitching to her about something stupid I did to her best friend. The guilty weed in me continued to grow, wrapping its vines tighter around my insides. As much as I had begun to feel comfortable around them, those thorns reminded me that I was still an outsider.

I scoffed. "Absolutely not. He's your best friend, and I'm just this girl that's been crashing your party for a month. It's not your place to tell me about him."

Nor was it my place to pry, as much as I wanted to know every god damn thing about him.

"Hey, you're my friend too." Evie reached over the wrought iron table, taking my hands in hers. They were warm from being wrapped around her coffee cup. "I know we haven't known each other all that long, but I know what kind of a person you are. A good one. I know you were only trying to help, and I should have helped you. God knows that I know how impossible he can be."

And there was Evie, plucking the thorns out. We shared a laugh, and it really sunk in how grateful I was to have her while I was out here metaphorically fighting for my life. I owed her my honesty...especially about her best friend.

"I just..." I took a steady breath as I tried to prepare the confession that was about to escape my lips. "Against my better judgement, I care about him."

Evie's soft expression twisted into something more coy. "I know you do."

Before my heart could hammer itself right out of my chest, Evie sat back and pivoted.

"Anyway, what did Queen Emma actually have to say?"

"Honestly, nothing that seemed worth calling three times for," I told her as I blew out a slightly more relieved sigh. "Just that she wanted to talk to him about making sure his suit was tailored, and that he needed to call her back. I mean, she didn't bother hiding the fact that she seemed extremely inconvenienced by not actually being able to talk to her son, but it all seemed so...trivial."

"Yeah, that's Emma." Evie let out a wry chuckle. "When you're that rich, your only problems are trivial ones. She's always been like that, even when we were in high school. It was always social events and keeping up appearances and not much of anything else."

"God, I can't imagine being raised like that." I put two fingers to my temple and shook my head.

Evie nodded slowly, folding her arms over her deep emerald leather jacket. She scrunched her forehead up as she hyper fixated on her coffee cup, like she wasn't entirely sure of the words she was about to say. "You know what I said before? About Devon not being capable of hating anyone? That's not entirely true. I just don't think he can hate you."

"I...oh." I swallowed my heart down. "Well, that's, uh...that's nice. I mean, I don't hate him either."

I felt my face burn, and I wanted to carry away in the breeze like all the fallen leaves. Evie, on the other hand, only seemed to find this more amusing.

"Well, since you are both my friends, I do feel compelled to tell you that you guys need to start figuring things out on your own. Not that this hasn't been fun for me, but it's time."

"You mean being the middle girl between us isn't your life's dream?" I said with a coy arch of my eyebrows as I took a sip of my coffee.

"Well you know what they say. You can lead a horse to water but you can't get them to make out." A smirk curled her lips.

I shot her a wary look. "I don't think that's the expression."

"I know what I said." Her smirk had grown into one of those wide and conniving ones, and it only seemed to make my heart race more as she leaned forward on her elbows, as if she was ready to share a dirty secret. I knew she knew things I didn't, but what those things were was what made sparks go off in my chest. "I mean...like, if you were presented an opportunity to hook up with Devon, would you?"

I nearly choked on my coffee. "Uh...I mean...well...no." I had to clear my throat and force some kind of rational sense out of me. "I mean, maybe, but there are certain factors that would have to be in play, and, well...why, what did he say?"

Evie scrunched her nose up. "I'm not telling you that. I'm done being the middle girl, remember?"

I made myself dizzy trying not to imagine the way his lips would taste - like chapstick and tea and the slightest hint of honey.

"You're thinking about it, aren't you?" She chided me, still smirking.

"No," I insisted, hearing my voice pitch up nearly a whole octave in denial.

"Uh huh. Whatever you say, babe." Evie rolled her eyes, and when she returned her gaze to me, she softened in a way I'd only seen a small handful of times from her. "I just want Devon to be happy. I know he's not, but I also know he's not exactly going to go out of his way to try. It's like there's part of him that thinks he doesn't deserve it or something. He's an emotional masochist."

"But he does deserve it." The words escaped me softly, almost carrying away in the breeze.

"Well, he needs a shove in the right direction, if you get what I mean."

"I do." I nodded in understanding. "I know I've told you before, but you're a good friend. To both of us."

"I know." Evie flipped her glossy dark hair over her shoulder and beamed at me. "So just do me and the rest of us a favor and shove him."

We shared another laugh, but I knew what the implications were. It meant I had to go to him, because if I waited for him to come to me, we both might have been waiting forever, like the emotional masochists we were.

⋆ ★

evie is all of us right now!

so this was originally supposed to be MUCH longer but i decided to let this part stand on its own because i felt this convo was important to move ✨the plot✨ along. thanks for sticking with me for the slowest slow burn in eternity. i promise it'll be worth it!