"Ro! Geth! Hurry the fuck up!" I used their nicknames to mitigate the fact that I was yelling like a shrew and swearing at them.

"Steady on," said Ronan as he passed me with his duffle bag. "We have a saying in my country: Don't get your knickers in a twist," he called over his shoulder as he continued down the hallway toward the elevator.

"The cute and cuddly fairy's got quite the mouth on her this morning," Gethin remarked with a smile as he, too, finally emerged from his room.

"Sorry." I sincerely apologized as I followed him toward the elevator. "It's just I gave Betsey my word I'd have you on the bus on time, and it's five 'til now."

Gethin leaned toward me as we got on the elevator. "I'll let you in on a little secret, Tink," he said in a stage whisper. "No way that bus is leaving if we're not on it. We're sort of the heart and soul of the show. They actually can't manage it without us. So don't worry your pretty little head."

"Sorry," I said again in a small voice.

Gethin shook his head in a "don't worry about it" manner, and he chivalrously took my rolling suitcase from me, as Ronan, flashing me that smile with those eyes, silently took my shoulder bag onto his own broad shoulder, leaving me with only my computer case and purse. My boys. I wondered how I'd lived these twenty-two years without them when, in the space of one week, I now found life without them unimaginable.

"Jesus! Finally! Did you sleep enough?" Theo asked with a friendly grin as we boarded the bus. Gethin gave him the finger in response as we sat down. I had expected Betsey, Nancy, or maybe even the scary but nice Melanie to be on the bus with us, but it was just the boys and me again. Fate seemed to want us to really really bond, though I didn't see how we could get any closer, short of actually becoming some sort of strange sexual quintet. I mentioned this to Gethin, and asked why no one else traveled with us, especially since there was so much room. Wouldn't it be more cost efficient to have fewer buses with more people on them?

"Ah, Tink, this outfit threw budget out the window long ago; can't you tell by now?" Gethin said with a grin. "We're shitting money on our way to the bank."

"Very elegantly put," I answered with a grin.

"I'm not feeling particularly elegant this morning, little one," he responded. "Too sleepy. But seriously, we've made everyone involved with this band so bloody rich, no one thinks twice about the expense of a bus. When we first started we had to have so many people travel with us—parents, other family members, handlers, managers, friends, even—the bus was really crowded. And we used to even sleep on the bus sometimes, so there had to be room for bunks. Over the years, the crowd has thinned out, and of course we don't sleep on the buses anymore, but we never got out of the habit of it being just us on the bus, so here we are. Kind of nice, actually, to have some peace and quiet, don't you think?"

I didn't bother to point out to him that nearly all of my time had been spent with them and only them, because it didn't bother me at all. So far, I hadn't been particularly impressed with the people I'd met on the tour outside the boys, and I didn't care if I met anyone else. I was happy to be with just them.

"Say, Tink?" Geth was looking at me inquisitively.

"Yeah?"

"We were wondering something? All of us?" He swiveled his head to include the entire bus, so I took it to mean all of the boys. I nodded encouragingly.

"You're such a classy girl, you know? I mean, you're a uni girl, you have such nice manners, you're always dressed, you know," and now he was getting embarrassed, blushing to the roots of his hair, "like the Duchess of Cambridge or whatever, you're so well read, um, you're so, so pretty..." He trailed off, looking everywhere but at me.

"Geth?" I put a hand on his arm. "You're saying the nicest, sweetest things to me, honestly, and I don't know why at all. You said you had a question?" At my words he looked at me again, finally reminded of what he'd been going to ask.

"Right!" he said, relieved. "Well, poppet, we were just wondering why. I mean, it seems so out of character that someone like you swears so much?" He looked at me out of his beautiful green eyes. "I mean, don't get me wrong, we don't mind it at all. At all! We actually find it rather charming. And we do it so much that it makes us feel much less self-conscious about it, you know? Like we don't have to be so careful, makes it rather nice." He grinned. "But you seem such a wee, shy little thing to be exploding F-bombs all round the place, you know?"

I laughed. "Well, Geth, you're not the first person to ask me this question, believe it or not. The truth is that I sometimes feel, um, kind of repressed, shall we say? In my current life, I'm expected to behave in a certain way, you know? Like you said, dress a certain way, read certain things, and talk a certain way. So sometimes I feel the need to bust loose, you know? So I do, by wearing certain kinds of shoes, or certain kinds of underwear." Geth's eyes widened at this piece of information, which, truth to tell, I hadn't exactly intended to impart. "Or by using certain words, get it?" I tilted my head at him. "If I'm going to look like the University of Southern California Virgin of the Year on the surface, I'm damned well going to wear fun shoes and say 'fuck you' once in a while, you see?" And I smiled at him. "Life's less stifling that way."

"A life less stifling," he mused. "Believe me, Tink, no one understands that more than us lot, honest." And he dropped a kiss on my head. Which didn't even feel weird to me anymore.

****************

It was close to noon, and traffic was at a near standstill. Even for Japan, this was pretty awful. Where were all these people going on a Tuesday in the middle of the day? And, as if I needed things to get worse, I was standing in the bathroom at the back of the bus, holding a tampon wrapper. It wasn't like it was a surprise. As a swimmer and pianist, I needed for my monthly schedule to be just that, and I'd been on birth control pills since I was fifteen, but the trip here had just screwed things up in my head, and I'd failed to notice the discreet little dot on my calendar that I put there specifically to remind myself that this was going to happen. The problem wasn't "supplies"; I always kept a few tampons and pads in my bag, but I always got staggering cramps on the first day, and the painkillers I took for them were in my rolling suitcase, which was in the storage area under the bus. In two or three hours I would be writhing with pain, with nothing to do but get through it.

"Fuck. Fuck! FUCK!" How could I be so stupid? It wasn't like it was my first time. I was twenty-two, an adult. "Dammit!" I could have cried with frustration. I splashed cold water on my face, opened the door, and headed back to my seat. Two rows up, a head of floppy brown hair and a pair of gray eyes popped up.

"Very impressive, Miss Foster." The eyebrows went up, and as I reached his seat, he turned back, sat down, and patted the seat next to him invitingly. "Come on, have a seat on Dr. Shelley's chair, maybe I can help you."

I sighed and sat down. "Look, I'm sorry, I didn't know you were this close. You weren't sitting here when I went in, were you?"

He shook his head. "Little cooler back here," he explained.

"Anyway, I wouldn't have been in there swearing like a sailor if I'd known you were right here. I mean, it's not very ladylike, is it?" I sighed again. The cramps were already starting, spreading like fire in my lower abdomen. I could feel the sweat starting to gather at my temples.

"Who says I think you're a lady anyway?" he said with a laugh, jostling my shoulder with his own. "I'm joking, I'm joking!" He held up his hands to defend himself as I turned to him with wide eyes. "You're actually very proper, very nicely spoken and everything," he said in a mollifying tone, patting my arm.

"So anyway, what's wrong? Maybe I can help. What kind of problems could a nice young girl like you have, anyway? No family to muck things up. You're obviously crazy smart, so school can't be a problem. You said no boyfriend, so that can't be it." His eyes widened as a new thought struck him. "But we never asked about a girlfriend! Oh my god, is that it? Are you gay?"

Jesus Christ, was this my life right now? "Teddy. No. No. I'm not gay. God no." I couldn't help laughing at the thought. If only he knew how I'd been feeling since I'd met them in general, and him in particular. Even now, after an exhausting evening and a morning spent on a stuffy bus, he was devastatingly handsome, with his hair in a complete bedhead-y mess, his features relaxed almost to the point of sleepiness, wearing sweatpants, tennis shoes and a Grateful Dead T-shirt.

"Well, you're definitely pissed off, not sad or upset, so what's got you so angry? Hmm? Come on," he cajoled as he scooped me into the curve of his arm, "you can tell me. I won't tell anyone, promise."

I took a moment to steady myself from being so close to him, took a deep breath of the Scent of Teddy (a combination of deodorant and toothpaste, maybe?), and said, "It's nothing, really, it's just me being a baby. I told you, I just get emotional. I cry at anything, I get pissed off, it's a deep character flaw, but I'm working on it every day.

"Let's change the subject. Tell me about your ring," I suggested. I'd noticed it before; it was a big, chunky thing, cut quite sharply, with some kind of emblem on it.

He smiled, looking embarrassed.

"Yes? Tell me?" I prodded.

"I was awarded it at my school the year I left. It's called the 'BMOC' ring. It stands for—"

"I know what 'BMOC' stands for," I laughed. "Big Man On Campus, right?"

"Well, yeah. They give it to the most popular guy in the year," he explained, the blush creeping up his neck. "I don't know why I keep wearing it, honestly." He looked out the window.

"Can we go back to talking about why you were swearing in the toilet, please?"

I just shook my head and retreated into silence, smiling.

"Okay, I'll give it up for now, but I'm going to find out, I'm a very tenacious person," Teddy grinned at me.

"With quite the extensive vocabulary, I see," I said. "Tenacious, no less."

"Are you impressed yet?" he laughed. "You're a uni girl, I have to pull out all the stops."

"Oh, are you trying to impress me?" I asked with feigned surprise. "I hadn't noticed. You know what impresses me? Humble, obedient people who do everything I say the moment I say it."

He looked me and laughed. "You can be a right stroppy bitch sometimes."

"Stroppy? Me? I believe that comes from the word 'obstreperous', and I don't think it applies to me right now," I replied, trying not to laugh.

Teddy stared at me. "Okay, you win. I don't even know what that word means."

"So, are you impressed? With me?" I teased.

"I already was impressed before," he said, nudging my shoulder. "I think you're amazing, making your way in the world, completely alone, the way you can speak fucking Japanese? I was wondering, I took a bit of French in school; Japanese must be way different, right? Like the grammar and all? You must understand the rules of grammar really, really well to have the knack of a completely different language like Japanese, right?"

"Well, that's a closely guarded secret of mine," I said with a smile.

"What is?" he asked me, returning my smile, only with dimples.

"I'm a kind of a language nerd. I love the rules of grammar, applying the rules correctly, knowing why words are spoken the way they are. It's actually one of the things I love about your songs."

"What?" he asked, fascinated. "Our grammar?"

"Well, yes. For one thing, you guys never screw up the verbs lie and lay."

"What?" He was incredulous. "Are you joking? We really don't?"

"No, you don't, and you don't know how rare that is. Very few people can do it, and very few songs use those verbs correctly. Also, you guys never mess up you and I with you and me."

He sat up and stared at me. "No fuckin' way!" he laughed. "You're serious! We really don't? And you know this for sure? And that's one of the reasons why you love our songs?"

He leaned back, tickled. "Fucking hilarious, that is." He looked at me and shook his head. "You are more entertaining than a flipping TV show, honestly."

"Are you making fun of me, Teddy?" I looked at him, laughing. "I'm not here for your entertainment, you don't really want to mess with me. I have a very serious job to do, you know."

He stared at me, trying unsuccessfully once again to stifle his laughter. "I'm sorry; did you just quote Pink at me?" He shook his head and looked out the window, shoulders shaking. He managed to get himself under control and turned back to me.

"I swear, Foster, I've never, ever, in my twenty-three years on this earth, met anyone like you." I heard admiration in his voice.

"I find that hard to believe," I responded. "You've met thousands of people in the last seven years, there must have been at least a little overlap in personalities..."

He shook his head. "No, truly, you are one of a kind." He saw my phone sitting on the table in front of us and picked it up. "Case in point, Miss Foster," he continued, scrolling through my music. "Hold on," he said, holding it up out of my reach as I tried to take it from him.

"Teddy, that's private," I gasped as I tried unsuccessfully to grab it back.

"You'll soon learn on tour nothing's private." He laughed as he continued to hold it out of reach. "Besides, it's just music, how can it be private?" He held it up over his head and scrolled through the songs. "I've never even heard of some of this stuff, and that's saying something. Can I have a listen?"

"What, now suddenly you've grown some manners?" I asked, laughing. "Go ahead. I've got some stuff to do on my iPad, so knock yourself out."

I opened up my iPad as he pulled out his earbuds and plugged them in. Soon he was engrossed in my playlists, which I'll admit were a bit eclectic. Every once in a while he'd nudge me to comment or ask a question about one of the songs. I settled back and tried to forget the ache that was settling on me.