We had one more day in Newport before the show, and I spent most of that morning manically pacing while Evie was out scheming with Polly fucking Pocket.

Evie was mad at me - she'd made that more than clear when she left that morning without so much as saying goodbye, then proceeded to ignore my texts.

Did I know that I'd been an asshole? Yes. Did I also know that if I'd just been more upfront and honest with Sienna that this could have been avoided? Well, maybe.

It didn't even matter what my mother said to Sienna, because whatever it was would undoubtedly only make everything worse. Who would want anything to do with someone with baggage like mine, with parents that didn't bother hiding their shame and embarrassment at the fact that I was their son? I sure wouldn't.

At some point we knew the girls weren't going to be back any time soon, so the rest of us decided to spend the afternoon galavanting around some entertainment complex downtown, which included a fucking arcade. I figured some old arcade games might have actually been a decent distraction, so I didn't object.

Raf had some calls to be on, so it was just me, Clark, and Gareth. On a weekday in the middle of the afternoon, the place was thankfully empty, save for what looked like a few college kids hovering around Tekken. They really leaned into the whole retro 80s theme of the place, making it look like something right out of Stranger Things with its dark, swirling patterned carpet and dimmed fluorescent lights. All the vintage arcade machines lined the left wall, and there were crane games and air hockey tables in the center. On the far right wall were projectors hooked up with old Nintendo consoles.

So fine, I could keep to myself and play fucking Duck Hunt while Gareth and Clark killed each other over air hockey. Shooting at things seemed appropriate.

I got a few bucks worth of quarters from one of the machines and put one in the machine to load the game up. The cheesy old arcade music came out of the speakers in crackly pops, probably from years of abuse from prepubescent teens. I cocked the plastic gun and shot at the little pixelated ducks as they flew out from the pixelated grass, but I missed them all.

And when you did miss, a pixelated hound dog would rise up from the grass and laugh at you. Today it felt extra personal. I gritted my teeth and put another quarter in.

Growing up, we had a live-in nanny named Isabella. I never knew how old she really was, because she was young-looking, but there were things about her that felt like an older soul lived inside her. She'd make me this old family recipe when I was sick (which was inexplicably a lot) that was mostly just little tiny pasta stars and chicken broth, but she called it "Italian Penicillin" - and it worked. She'd bring me piano sheet music I'd never seen and sing in another language when I played.

When we were in elementary school, Isabella would take us to this arcade all the way in Brooklyn on some weekends - usually when my parents were on extended trips to Japan for business.

Joelle liked playing Mario Kart, and even though she was older and far more cunning than my second-grade self was, I had the hand dexterity from playing all my stupid instruments. It would annoy the fuck out of her that I'd constantly beat her, and we'd spend hours just playing. It was probably one of the few times Joelle actually felt like my sister.

Looking back on it, I'm pretty sure my parents would have been pissed if they found out we were goofing off instead of studying or being upstanding members of society, but maybe Isabella just wanted us to be regular kids every so often. She stayed with us until we were old enough to be at home by ourselves (and make better judgments about how to spend our free time not goofing off). I never knew what happened to her.

This time I shot two of the ducks, but the dog still came up from the grass, laughing at me.

Just as I put another quarter in, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up as someone approached me from behind. I knew it was her from the cadence of her footsteps soft against the carpet, and my insides went into turbo spin-cycle mode.

"Nice shooting, Tex."

God, I couldn't even look at her.

"Great," I grumbled as I put the plastic shooter down. "I was almost having a good time."

I tried not to make eye contact with her as I turned to walk away. When I passed her, she grabbed the sleeve of my hoodie, and even though she didn't do it with much force, her touch alone glued me where I stood.

"Devon, can we just talk?" The softness of her voice wrapped around me like a warm blanket, and I wanted to bury myself in her.

"No." I swallowed the knot in my throat, but I couldn't bring myself to walk away.

Still holding the sleeve of my hoodie, she moved in front of me, looking up at me with those brilliant blue eyes of hers. I was burning up now.

"Please?" she pleaded. I'd never seen her like this - almost desperate. "Just one minute."

Honestly, with the way she was looking at me, I would have done anything. I might have actually killed someone if she asked. Thankfully, she took my silence as more hesitation.

She sighed and finally let go of my arm, extinguishing whatever it was that was burning in my core. "Okay look, we're in an arcade. What if we played a game? If I win, you hear me out."

I snorted. "What happens when I win?"

"If you win, you can ignore me for the rest of your life." She paused, and her voice softened again. "I mean, If you feel like it."

As much as I might have wanted to in that moment, I didn't know that I could really do that, but I gave her a quick nod. "Fine. But since this was your idea, I'm picking the game."

"Fine. Sure." She sounded more relieved than anything, but what she didn't know was that she'd played right into my hand.

As I led Sienna over towards the Nintendo consoles, I thought about Joelle, and I wondered if she missed playing Mario Kart the way I did sometimes. Maybe there was some merit to feeling nostalgic. It would at the very least buy me some more space from Sienna while I figured out how to kill this weed that was growing inside of me - weeds that would grow and shudder every single time she looked at me. I had to do something before they consumed me.

I loaded up the game into the console (not without blowing on it first, obviously) and switched it on, where the title screen music rang to life on the projector.

"Mario Kart?" she arched an eyebrow at me, dropping into one of the big black gaming chairs in front of the projector and picking up a grey controller.

"It's a classic," I pointedly informed her before taking the chair beside her. I wiped my clammy hands on my jeans before picking up the controller.

When she picked Princess Peach, I scoffed. "Shocker."

But when I picked Bowser, she had the same reaction, reaching over and playfully shoving my arm. "Oh, even more of a shocker."

"Bowser is underrated."

"Whatever you say, Devon." She turned slightly in her chair to face me and held up a finger. "One race. I don't wanna hear any of this best two out of three nonsense."

"Fine, fine," I waved her off. "You want one race? Rainbow Road."

"Sounds good to me," she nodded.

"Good."

"Great."

I felt uncharacteristically confident in my classic video game skills. I knew tricks like turbo starting and drifting and leaving those upside-down question mark boxes mixed in with the regular ones. Maybe that was my problem. Hubris kills.

Because she fucking beat me. She lingered in the middle of the pack for most of the race, somehow got graced with a blue spiny shell (because she's Princess Polly Peach Pocket), wrecked me, then sped right by like it was her plan all along.

I got fucking hustled, and the smug look on her pretty face said it all. "I'll take my minute now."

She had me. I could either choke on my pride or crucify myself for never opening my damn mouth in the first place. Both sounded painful, so might as well honor my word.

"Alright," I heaved out a sigh as I sat back in the gaming chair, rubbing my throbbing temple with my fingers. "You won. I'm listening."

"I'm sorry." Her apology lurched me and all my organs forward, because it definitely was not the first thing I expected her to say. She was just a much better person than I could hope to be.

She looked down into her lap, reaching up to tuck two ribbons of blonde hair behind her ears. "I was trying to help, but I know now that it doesn't mean what I did was right."

I swallowed my heart down and shook my head.

"No...no, you shouldn't have to be sorry. It's not like I've been entirely honest with you about my relationship with my family. I mean I was, but there is such a thing as lying by omission. I...I tend to do that."

She cracked a grin. "You? Omit things? This is news to me."

I groaned and ran my hand down the side of my face. I could still barely look at her, because I was slowly being ripped apart every time I fell into the whirlpool of her eyes. "It's not the easiest thing to talk about. Like, it sucks the life out of me, but..." I forced the admission past a thick knot in my throat. "Talking to you makes it a little easier."

I did mean it, and she knew it. She beamed like the sun, and knowing what I knew about her now, I'd just given her the best compliment she could have ever asked for. "Okay, well, we're here, so...let's talk."

I glanced over my shoulder towards the back of the arcade, where Evie had joined Gareth and Clark at the air hockey table, most likely to mitigate the war they'd turned it into. A few games blinked and chimed in the background, but when I turned back to her, we might as well have been out at sea. Just me and her.

"Okay. Fine." I pressed my still clammy hands down into the thighs of my jeans. "I don't speak to my father at all. That much is true. But my mother and I have an agreement. I have dinner with her and act like her son once a month, and then I get access to my trust fund. And trust me, if I didn't need the money for the tour bus, the hotels, the equipment and everything, plus studio time, and whatever the list goes on, this would all be a lot easier because I just wouldn't do it. I don't...I don't want people like them in my life."

Sienna inched forward in the chair so she could put a hand to my knee, and when I brought my hand down on hers, she spread her fingers so I could gently lace mine in between hers. "Good things are happening for you guys, Dev. You're not going to need them forever."

"I'm actually starting to believe that." I forced out a tired smile, and she gave my hand a squeeze, willing me to continue. "Anyway, after I had my vocal cord surgery, I got really sick. I got some kind of infection, and I was in the hospital for way longer than I was supposed to be. I was just really unhealthy, I'd lost a lot of weight, and I was fucking miserable. That's also when I cut all my hair off. I was just...I was falling apart. But she visited me, maybe a few times. Just her. That was when it all started, like maybe she actually felt bad and was trying to make up for it. And so sure, maybe obsessively calling me to talk about suits and dinner and whatever is her way of trying to reconnect with me."

Sienna nodded, slowly and contemplatively. She was really listening, and still holding my god damn hand. I felt like that meme of the dog sitting in the burning room. It's fine. This is fine.

"I'd say that's a fair guess," she said. "She's still your mom - you're allowed to want some kind of relationship with her, despite...things that have happened."

I cleared my throat, my feet fully back on solid ground now. That was enough truth vomiting for one night. "Well, I don't."

"Okay, Devon." She seemed content and willing to just let it go, but in doing so also finally let go of my hand. It took everything in me to not reach back out for it like the touch-starved demon creature I was.

Instead, I leaned forward in the chair and rubbed the back of my neck. "I guess now is the part where I should ask you what she actually wanted."

"Well, despite whatever your relationship is or isn't, you really do know your mom." She threw me a faint smirk. "Something about a suit, and that it was imperative that you called her back."

I chuckled and shook my head. "I haven't, in case you were wondering."

"Again, shocking." She rolled her eyes, but that same playful smirk of hers widened. "What's so important about this suit?"

"Well, my perfect older sister is now engaged to her perfect future husband, and there's this insane engagement party my parents are having for her at their house in the Hamptons. I mean, I know Joelle is fine with me being there, but it's not really up to her even though it's her party. But, I guess my mother has decided that me not being there is worse than me being there. So now she's hyper-focused on what I'm wearing, and she's been up my ass about getting this $3,000 Armani suit tailored for the last few weeks despite the fact that this party isn't until November."

And constantly reminding me that I am in fact going made me feel nauseous.

Sienna let out another sigh as she settled back into the chair, and this time the smile she wore was softer. "Well, thanks for telling me all of that."

"Thanks for letting me...yap?" I sputtered out a laugh. "Did I really just do that?"

"Yapping can be cathartic and very necessary sometimes. I'm proud of you." She beamed like the sun again, and the heat it gave off could have melted me into the floor. "I mean also, I could just listen to you talk for hours."

I groaned and put my hands over my face, knowing my cheeks went sired red. "Really? Why?"

"Oh my god please learn to take a compliment, Devon," she laughed into her hand.

I groaned, my face still in my hands. "Maybe one day, but not today."

"You could be talking about grass growing or paint drying and I would just sit there and listen. I mean it."

I knew I didn't know how to take a compliment, and I guess I could have thanked my parents for that one too. But god if she didn't make my heart want to explode out of my body when she said that, like the chestburster in Alien.

"Anyway, I know my time is up." Sienna fiddled with the Nintendo controller, pinching the joystick between her pink painted nails and wiggling it back and forth.

"I wasn't timing you," I told her, trying to keep my increasingly frantic heart rate calm.

She took it in stride and eagerly scooted forward in the chair again. "Okay, well, can I ask you one more thing?"

I slumped back into the chair, and in the background, I heard Evie scolding Gareth for something stupid. "You're going to ask me anyway, aren't you?"

"I'm not even going to pretend you're wrong." She brushed me off with a giggle, then rounded on me, sucking me back into the crystal blue whirlpool of her eyes. "The reason you never wanted to perform Just Pretend...that's what it's about, isn't it? Your family not accepting you?"

There was no point in hiding now. She'd cracked me open and was literally holding my guts in her hands, and smiling while she did it. "Maybe a little bit. It's more about being insecure. Not being good enough for anyone. Including them. It's like...a conversation I have with a better version of myself."

"Well, I think you're becoming that better version of yourself. I see it. We all do."

I dropped my head down, feeling my face burn again. The thing about Sienna paying me compliments wasn't even what she said - it was the fact that she said it just because she wanted to. She wanted to make me feel good. That was when the realization hit me, like slamming a mic into a speaker and getting blasted with thousands of dBs of feedback. My ears were ringing and the room was spinning. 

But god when she put her hands to my arms to lift me up out of the chair and into her arms, I was steady, and everything felt right.

⋆ ★

communication? compliments?? TOUCHING??? yes we are in fact getting *somewhere* and they are so fucking cute i could cry. i promise y'all it'll pay off very soon 😭