It has a been a MINUTE since I last did a 5pm Sunday update. And like don't bet on it continuing but also my schedule this quarter is LIT I'm taking two different creative writing classes and only have 3 days of classes a week so I'll be writing lots!

The worrisome feeling I had around Thomas didn't go away in the morning. Seeing him asleep now gave me a stomachache, so I left the room early in the morning.

The famous Canalave Move Tutor was available for a walk-in with me and my team. Trust picked up blast burn easily (it's just a Big Fire Move when he already knew lots of Little Fire Moves). We also tried to get Faith to learn dark pulse, but she was more interested in drifting in and out of the furniture around the room than paying attention, so I decided we'd revisit that later.

The aim was actually for the Move Tutor to teach Coeur a variety of move types, but he wasn't convinced an umbreon could learn most of the things I proposed, even when she demonstrated ice fang to him. After a lot of trying to persuade-without-arguing-with-the-professional, he agreed to show her dig and iron tail, which expanded her typeset by a little.

"If you're looking to have a pokemon with a varied moveset, we can try your haunter," the Move Tutor suggested.

I glanced at Faith – or, more accurately, at the vaguely swinging chandelier. OoOooOoOoh, a ghost. "I think she's good."

Def, though, learned a variety of different slashy elemental moves. Since we'd decided he'd be fighting primarily with evasion, every hit mattered… and he could teach Coeur to use these types (take that, Move Tutor). He also learned something called "life dew," which was a water type move I'd never heard of which HEALS Def can finally HEAL like he's always wanted.

"Gallades typically can learn heal pulse when they're a little more advanced," said the Move Tutor. "The mechanics will be different from life dew, but it should come naturally."

"Okay," I said. "Um, there's one other thing – it's not really a move, but is there a way for my gallade to communicate with my umbreon? Like telepathy, but maybe not psychic?"

"Telepathy won't work," he said immediately. "She's a dark type; she's immune to psychic."

"I know," I said, "but maybe there's another way for them to connect?"

He gave me a positively infuriating look that asked me if I was an idiot.

"She's a dark type," he repeated. "Nothing a psychic type can do will work."

"What if it's not psychic?" I pushed.

"What, you mean if it's fighting? Telepathy, but fighting type?"

At this point it became clear through his tone that I'd lost him, so I paid him for the things he had done and tried not to be mad about the things he'd refused to think possible.

"'Telepathy, but fighting type,'" I grumbled. "Fuck you, Evelyn, and fuck thinking outside the box for your pokemon's sake."

I was still mad when I met up with Thomas for lunch on the wharf. He noticed, obviously. I explained.

"It makes sense," he said. "His job is knowing what pokemon can and can't do; I'm sure he gets unreasonable requests from people all the time and has to shut them down."

I stared exhaustedly at him. "So I'm just blowing this up for no reason and shouldn't be mad?"

"Oh, no, he was still a jerk about it," said Thomas. "Besides, every pokemon is different, even within a species. Courage is uniquely good at accessing different types. Asking to teach her bug or fire moves is different from asking him to teach a rattata spatial rend."

I leaned back in my chair. "Exactly," I said.

We looked out over the water – it was a demi-swanky touristy restaurant with a glass wall overlooking the sea. Just below the surface of the water glimmered a school of finneon. A ferryboat to Iron Island passed by, carrying a couple of west sea shellos on its underside.

"I think Courage will be fine," said Thomas. "She's super driven, and she's clearly capable of expanding beyond the average umbreon moveset. She'll be able to do it with or without a professional tutor."

I nodded, gazing at my napkin. "Yeah… I guess that's what matters in the end."

"To be clear, you're still allowed to be mad. That Move Tutor guy sounds like a dick."

I laughed. I was still mad, but I felt better about it.

He really– I started to think, but the thought made my stomach twist so I pushed it away.

We spent the rest of the day training on the seashore. Thomas was training specifically for Byron – Cassie, Swaine, and Esther were all out, doing power training (sorta flinging moves at each other in a push-of-war, dodging if the other move got too close).

I sent four of my pokemon out to play and focused on the other two. Def was trying to show Coeur his new moves, but she wasn't getting it and both of them were getting frustrated. I watched as they went from trying aerial ace to fury cutter, and then to psycho cut. Nothing worked.

Their verbal speech, although I didn't understand it, seemed inefficient and broken – Def wasn't used to talking out loud, and Coeur was still adjusting to umbreon sounds rather than eevee noises, and neither of those helped their cause. At some point Def stopped swinging his swords around and started talking faster, and then they both stopped talking altogether.

"What's happening?" I asked Def, worrying at the sudden change.

"Nous essayons d'apprendre psyko," he said. By now I understood what he was saying, which was that they were trying to learn psychic, even though Def didn't even know that move yet, and the fact that I understood him highlighted why it was so important to them both.

"You think it'll let you communicate?"

"It is worth a shot."

I stood back and watched. There wasn't much I could do – psychic was never something I had to learn about. As an espeon, Coeur had figured it out instinctively. Now that she was a dark type, it wasn't in her basic wheelhouse anymore, although it was still a known umbreon move.

They tried. I pulled Trust in and trained with him while they worked on it. From what I could tell, they were trying to talk it through, and Def was trying to figure out the difference between confusion and psychic, and Coeur was trying to figure out how to access any of it at all, and they were getting increasingly frustrated, and I didn't know how to help them–

"Evelyn!"

Someone yanked me back by the shirt; fire shot past. "Are you okay?" Thomas asked, letting go of my shirt.

"Yeah," I said. "Thanks, sorry, I wasn't paying… what happened?"

"Stray fire," Thomas said, gesturing at Esther and Cassie, both of whom looked horrified.

"Oh." I waved at them. "It's okay, guys!"

We separated and went back to training. The place on my back where he'd grabbed my shirt suddenly felt hyperaware of everything in contact with it. My stomach hurt. I felt my face get warm and hoped he couldn't see it.

At least he's not Megan, said a nasty voice inside me. At least risking his friendship would be risking less; at least falling for him means there's nothing more to question about myself.

That's not better, I thought, as if I believed that.

But I truly, thoroughly didn't want to fall for him. It may have had something to do with complicating our traveling situation, or my history of feeling like a freshly-rescued princess around him?

That's not it, I realized. Those also suck, but the biggest thing is that I don't want him to replace Lucas.

"Evelyn."

I realized the sky was growing dark, which scared me into thinking I'd skipped some time, but then I remembered it was December and sunset was closing in sooner. Thomas was pulling his pokemon back into their pokeballs, signaling that he was ready to leave.

"Yeah Def?"

"Nous n'avons pas appris psyko," Def said tiredly.

"What?"

"We failed."

As drained as I felt at the end of the day, I couldn't sleep. Not wanting to be awake in the same room where Thomas was sleeping, I took Trust with me and went up to the roof.

Canalave was freezing, but the sky was clear. A half moon scattered light over the water. Trust increased his headflame so I'd be warm.

"I don't know what to do, Trust," I said.

"Infernape?"

"I… I might be…" Saying out loud made it too real. "I might be falling… a little… for Thomas."

"Ape."

"I don't want this," I said to him. "I still like Lucas, and he's still getting over April. I don't want to fall for him. It would screw everything up. How do I not fall for him?"

Focus on Megan instead, I thought, but I didn't like that either. I wasn't even totally sure I liked her that way. To be fair, I wasn't sure I liked Thomas that way, either.

Trust and I gazed out at the sea. I remembered joining Lucas on the Veilstone Pokemon Center's rooftop, under a slight drizzle, looking down at the cobblestones glimmering on the city streets and breathing in the musty smell they breathed out. I forgot what we talked about, but we shared a moment – one of our last real moments of being friends.

I missed him. I missed messing around with him and Jonathan in class; I missed talking to him like a friend talking to a friend; I missed being able to look in his eyes and see his soul, rather than the wall between his soul and me. I missed the softness that arose in me when I was with him – now all that surfaced was bittersweet.

I'd had these feelings for Lucas for what felt like forever, and they always felt like they could go on for forever. If that just ended now…? I'd stopped really believing in forevers years ago, but as my teams shifted and my world shifted, my feelings for him had been a constant in this new reality. Falling for someone new felt like cheating somehow – betraying this guy I'd had such steadfast feelings for for so long.

And look, I get it! I do! I get that he never asked me to fall for him, and that there's no good reason I should be latching on like this, and that we aren't even hardly friends anymore, and that it's okay for him to have been a phase, and that I should logically get over him, but what about any of this seems logical to you? Nothing makes sense, much less love, which I'm going to keep calling whatever I have towards Lucas because nothing makes sense anyway.

"Maybe I just need to fix me and Lucas," I said. "What do you think?"

Trust shrugged.

"That's okay," I said. "Thanks anyways."

Thomas and I headed out to Iron Island the next morning. The idea was to train with the steel types there, at least the willing ones. Iron Island pokemon are known to be pretty rambunctious, so trainers go there all the time to face them.

We ran into one of these encounters pretty quickly – a kind of shockingly well-dressed man in navy blue and his lucario were engaged in battle with a gigantic steelix. The steelix attempted to wrap her body around the lucario, who nimbly jumped straight up and shoved a bone rush into the underside of her chin. Reeling backward, the steelix ignited flames in her maw and snapped forward at the lucario. But the lucario had taken advantage of her split-second recoil to charge an aura sphere, which he launched when she came down with fire fang.

The moves burst, sending the lucario flying backwards. The steelix fell into the rock wall behind her.

"That was kind of impressive, for a wild encounter," I commented. The steelix very much knew how to battle.

Thomas was frowning. "I think something's wrong."

We approached the trainer in blue, who was patching up his lucario with potions. "Is everything okay?" Thomas asked.

The trainer turned, revealing a expression of concern. "Mm. Not exactly."

"How so?"

He gestured at the steelix. "The steel types here have been acting up today. They're all much more aggressive than usual. Lucario and I are trying to figure out why, but their attacks have been slowing us down."

"Do you need help?" I asked. "We're training for the Canalave gym, anyways. It works out."

The man looked surprised, then smiled. "That might be best. Riley," he said, reaching out and shaking my hand.