After they were out of sight, Teddy made a gagging sound as Ronan simultaneously ran his hands through his hair and walked around in tight circles, groaning. Gethin and Matty rolled their eyes at each other.

I was astonished. This was the first time I'd seen them actively show a negative response to anyone, except for the joking toward Nancy. Before I could say anything, Gethin turned to me.

"Sorry for the whole licking your neck thing, Tink," he said with obvious embarrassment, kicking the floor. "I sort of got carried away." I forgave him with a smile before getting to what was really on my mind.

"Hold on, hold on, why do you guys not like Juliana?" I asked. "Did she just fly all the way here from California to see you guys? Are you friends or not? Did she do something to one of you?" The questions were piling up in my brain faster than I could get them out of my mouth.

"That girl," said Teddy succinctly, "is the biggest slag in the Western Hemisphere. Or Eastern Hemisphere. Whatever. She's slept with nearly any musician you could think of. Good riddance."

"What?" I asked, surprised. "You're not friends with her? Does she know you feel this way about her? That you don't want to, um, fuck her?"

"We have fucked her." Teddy said to me.

"What, all of you?" I asked, aghast.

"Not all at the same time, but yeah, all of us," Teddy responded, slightly defensively.

"Even Matty?" The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them, and no way to take them back.

Teddy rolled his eyes. "Yes. Even Saint Matthew, perfect Matthew, had a go at her. If I'm not mistaken, he shagged her first." He looked over at Matty. "New York, wasn't it, mate?"

Matty nodded, again, looking everywhere but at me.

"You can't really blame him, Tink," said Gethin, putting an arm around Matty's shoulder. "She's hot, you can see that, and Matty was a baby, just sixteen or seventeen, new to the business, flattered as anything that such a gorgeous creature would be interested in him. He couldn't defend himself against that. She pointed those things at him, wiggled her bum, and he was done for.

"He didn't know what she was. He really liked her, and he thought she liked him. He followed her around like a puppy for days while she spent his money and dragged him around to one crazy party after another.

"Then she moved on to someone else, and he was brokenhearted for months. She came back to us later that year and had a go at Ronan, and that lasted for a few days—"

"I didn't really care so much," Ronan continued the story. "She was pretty, she was fun, and Matty was over her, so why not? When it was over, it was over, no big deal." He shrugged.

I looked between Gethin and Teddy, fascinated. "Who was next?" I asked. I hadn't realized until now that groupies actually followed bands around uninvited. I'd always assumed that they were either a one time thing, or "with" the band, like in the movie Almost Famous. Teddy raised his hand. "We were at a party, it was a casual thing, no big deal. We were in the same place, it happens," he shrugged. But he wouldn't meet my eyes.

I looked at Gethin. "Then you?" He nodded.

"I'm not saying it wasn't my fault, because obviously I was there, but honestly, I was so drunk, I don't even remember how it happened. I was barely awake on a bed piled up with coats, feeling so pissed that the room was spinning. Next thing I know, someone's all over me, and drunk or not, I don't think there are many blokes who would've stopped. Then she was on top of me, going at it. It was so dark I couldn't even see who it was. I'm just grateful she thought to put a condom on me, honestly." He wiped a hand across his face. "I don't get that drunk any more," he said. "It's not worth the risk. Someone could've wound up pregnant, or I could've wound up with a disease. Jesus Christ, when I think of what could've happened.

"She's what you call a professional groupie," he continued. "She doesn't care who she fucks, as long as they're famous, and as long as they're a musician. Her dad's a famous producer, he gives her anything she wants, and she spends all his money flying from tour to tour, partying all over the world with her so-called friends, just trying to get guys like us into bed."

"Oh, I see, so you're the victims here," I said, crossing my arms. "Poor boys, forced to fuck her, then she just won't leave you alone, following you around, begging for more."

"Now wait a minute," Teddy said, a little edge to his voice. Craft services was forgotten, no one seemed to be hungry anymore. "We were only doing what everyone else was doing, what she wanted us to do. She follows our tour, she's there every time we turn around, coming on to us, rubbing up against us, following us to our rooms, asking for it. How many times should we say no before we say yes?"

"And what happens the next day?" I asked, honestly curious about the guys' side of the story. I'd heard the girls' side so many times, in the showers after swim practice, in the dorms in college, but I'd never understood the boys' end of things.

"What do you mean? There is no 'next day'. We never promised anything. There was never any relationship. We never knew her, for fuck's sake. We weren't ever friends with her, there was no dating, before or after the shagging, nor was there any promise of it." By now Teddy's voice was getting pretty loud, his eyes flinty gray, nothing soft about them any more, and Matty put a hand on his arm as a way of settling him down. Teddy noticed, and lowered his voice.

"So you just packed up and moved on, no goodbye, no thanks, no see you soon, no nothing?" I was amazed.

"Well, no, I'm sure there were goodbyes, and 'thanks for the lovely evenings' and all that,'" said Ronan, speaking up for the first time. "We're not rude. It's just she lured us into bed by promising sex, then after, she made it seem like we'd promised something more, when we never had."

I found it sad that the word "rude" should come up in this conversation. "Rude" was such a polite, distant, formal word, to be used between people who had been together in what to me was such an intimate situation. Ronan looked indignant that he should be accused of such a thing.

So they could all (I still found that hard to believe) sleep with her, pass her around like a sweater, and still somehow come out of it believing she was the tasteless one, the wrong one, the bad one.

"Boys, I have to ask, how would you feel if someone treated me like that? If a group of guys all slept with me and then refused to have anything to do with me after? Wouldn't it bother you a little?" I watched their faces as they tried to imagine this scenario.

"That's just stupid," Ronan said almost immediately. "It would never happen. You'd never just follow a bunch of blokes about, offering yourself to them over and over. You just wouldn't."

"Ronan's right," Teddy agreed. "For you, it would have to be all about flowers and romance and moonlight. You'd expect to be swept off your feet"—unexpectedly he swooped forward and picked me up in a cradle hold and proceeded to swing me around, "and taken to a ball in a pumpkin or whatever—"

"Teddy! Put me down right now! I'm trying to have a serious conversation with you guys! Asshole!" It was no use. I dissolved into laughter while threatening to throw up. He finally put me down, and I had to put a hand on the wall to steady myself until the world stopped tilting all over the place. Then we heard the call over the backstage loudspeaker that it was ten minutes to show. The boys had to find security and get to the stage entrance, and the moment was over.

We found a golf cart, and I climbed in and sat on Gethin's lap, and we went flying down the hallways to the stage entrance. After dropping the boys off, security took me to a room with a CCTV so I could watch in comfort with snacks and water at the ready. He said he'd come for me after the show and take me to the boys' dressing rooms, and I settled down to enjoy my first UK Crush concert.

I watched the monitors go dark, heard them announced, then heard the stadium erupt in screams and cheers, both on the monitor and from behind the walls of the room. The walls actually shook with the vibrations.

Then I saw my boys enter, one at a time, and give a wave as they took their places at their mics. I heard the opening chords of their first song, one I didn't know very well, and I settled in to watch them at work.

They were amazing. They were so charismatic, and they were on, all the way. Their smiles lit up the stage. In between numbers, even during the numbers, they were in constant motion, working the stage, running down the catwalk that snaked down the middle of the floor out into the audience. They were a well-oiled machine, and they knew each other so well that each was always aware of where the other three were, of what the others were doing. No wonder I'd fallen under their spell so easily. It was like having a thousand-watt lamp pointed directly at me. They probably didn't even know they were doing it. It was just that in order to reach all those fans, especially the ones all the way up in the seats at the top, they had to shine so brightly that when someone like me came into their close orbit, I just got pulled in and burned to a crisp.

And their music was absolutely beautiful. During their quiet songs, they would gather together, Gethin would strap on his acoustic guitar, and they'd sing, almost to each other, soulful harmonies echoing through the nearly silent stadium as the tears rolled down the girls' faces and they waved their lit up phones back and forth. During the more upbeat rock numbers, Geth would show off his virtuoso skills on an electric guitar. I had just assumed that they had another guitar player, and that he was "turned down in the mix", but it was really him, and he was extraordinary. He could have been a guitar player for any other going rock band around.

The Jumbotrons behind them showed the boys' faces in extreme close up, each gorgeous feature larger than life. You could even see the color of their eyes, powder gray, jade green, sapphire blue, chocolate brown. They radiated sincerity and pathos as only the young could. No wonder the world was in love with them. How could anyone experience this and not be? By the time the show was half over, all four of them were dripping with sweat, wiping themselves with towels, then throwing them into the crowd, who went wild trying to catch them. If I'd had a mind to, I could have made a fortune selling the boys' used napkins and dirty socks.

Teddy was mesmerizing. Though Matty was the tenor with the showy voice, Teddy was the soulful one, the one whose voice broke on the low notes, the one whose gyrations made the crowd the craziest. I felt like he was looking inside me during his close ups, like his lines were sung directly to me. Jesus.

There were breaks in the singing when the boys would banter with the crowd. Obviously this segment was limited by the fact that they were in Japan, but the basic things were understood. And I had spent some time the day before teaching the boys a few phrases, which were received with huge enthusiasm by the audience, particularly "minna aishiteru", "love you guys", and "Tokyo daisuki", "we love Tokyo".

Before I knew it, the show was over, and golf cart guy was knocking on my door. I climbed in and we navigated the maze of hallways to arrive back at their dressing rooms. He stopped in front of Teddy's, so that's the one I entered.

"Who's out there?" he called from his shower.

"Me," I answered.

"Out in a mo'," he responded.

"'Kay."

He came out of the shower wrapped in a towel and motioned for me to turn around so he could get dressed.

"So, what did you think of the show?" he asked in a muffled voice as he pulled his shirt on. "Was it what you expected?"

"Actually, I thought it was pretty spectacular," I admitted with a smile. "I can sort of understand what makes those girls so nutty about you guys." I turned back around.

"What, you couldn't before?" he teased with a smile, dimples on full display, and I realized something. He was acting different, almost like he was a little tipsy. I wouldn't go so far as to say drunk; maybe like he'd had a glass or two of champagne. It had to be from being onstage for two hours, feeling all that adulation. Of course it had to touch them in some way. I wondered if the others were similarly affected.

"I've never been to a pop concert before," I said, ignoring his previous comment. "The energy level is really intense. Like those religious ceremonies where the people lose their minds."

"Were you losing your mind?" he asked curiously, taking a step closer to me.

"I wasn't in the actual audience," I responded, embarrassed at my choice of words. "But even from the back room, I could feel it," I continued, gazing into his eyes. "Like being hypnotized by someone," I finished softly.

"Someone?" he repeated, and I realized that we were standing close, so close. I caught the fragrance of whatever he used in the shower, and it suddenly felt like we were leaning into each other, like we were standing on a slope or something and were being pulled toward each other by gravity.

I took a giant step back, nearly impaling myself on a garment rack. "The music, I meant," I stammered. "Like being hypnotized by the music." I shook my head. "Truly, you guys are incredible performers, I mean, wow, seriously."

He shook his head like a wet dog, grinning at me, taking a step back himself.

"Ready, Miss Foster?" He held out his arm.

"Are we going somewhere?" I asked him.

"No, I think we really should call it an early night. We need to pack and get a decent night's sleep," he replied as we entered Gethin's dressing room. "For some reason buses are exhausting, even though all you do is sit all day, and I think tomorrow's going to be a long drive anyway."

He yelled into the bathroom."Oi, Geth! Hurry up! I'm starving!"

"Coming, coming," he called as he came out in a cloud of steam. "Oh, hello," he said to me with a smile. "Good thing I thought to wear a towel." He kept it wrapped around him with one hand and grabbed me around the waist with the other, lifting me up for a warm embrace.

"Mm, you smell delightful, as usual, Tink." And he put me down with a swat to my bottom. Yes, he was different, too.

I discreetly turned so Gethin could get dressed, only turning back when I felt Teddy's hand on my shoulder. The door opened, and Matty and Ronan entered, higher than kites and bouncing around like tennis balls.

"Tink!" Matty grabbed me in a huge bear hug, the most spontaneous thing I'd seen him do since I'd met him. "What did you think of the show? Did you enjoy it? Did you see me nearly fall during the encore? Holy shit, it was close!"

Ronan grabbed me and waltzed me around like we were at an old timey dance. "It was a great show! Matty's high notes were amazing!" Only of course, when he said it, it came out 'amazin'. "What a great way to start the tour!"

The door opened again, and the film crew came in. I quickly disengaged from Ronan and stepped out of the room. He looked to see where I'd gone, noticed the cameras, and carried on, high-fiving the boys and carousing in general. There was a chair in the hallway, and I sat down to wait. I didn't know how long they'd be, so I pulled out my phone to check my messages, answer some emails and texts, and catch up on Trevor Noah, Rachel Maddow, and Ellen DeGeneres.

It was probably half an hour later that the film crew left, followed closely by the boys. Gethin held out his hand to me. I took it, and we headed out toward the waiting car.

"Is that the way it's to be the entire time?" Ronan asked plaintively as we made our way down the hallway. "The film crew comes in and Tink has to go out? I don't like that very much."

"Well, you're the one who said you don't want her in the movie," Teddy reminded him. "And you were right. All it will do is complicate things."

"Besides," Gethin continued, "most of the filming won't be like, what do you call it, spontaneous, unscripted stuff. Most of the time we'll be filming stuff that's been set up, staged, you know, and she won't be there. We won't have to send her out; she'll already be gone. Or she'll be with us as our translator."

As we entered the waiting car, I realized that it was already past midnight. I still had to pack, and I was exhausted. Never mind the boys, it would be a push to get myself on the bus in time.

I nodded off on Matty's shoulder, and as I was falling asleep, I felt his hand close around mine in a gentle grip and his cheek settle against my hair. It was so touching, and so sweet. I felt his sigh, which seemed to have such an element of happiness that it worried me. I was so tired that I pushed the thought aside, and by the time we got to the hotel, the thought had evaporated into the night.