“You sound like a therapist,” Ben muttered. His chest felt so tight, and he was, once again, ridiculously humiliated.
“You’d be surprised at how often the worlds of hairdressing and therapy overlap. Therapists just charge a lot more than I do.”
They were both quiet for a few moments. Then Dominic spoke again.
“You want a cup of tea?”
Ben really, really did.
“Yes, please. Milk and one sugar. Please.”
“I’ll be right back.”
He stayed where he was, head almost between his knees, and listened to the familiar routine of tea-making. By the time Dominic got back, Ben almost felt okay again.
Except the embarrassment. That had gotten worse.
“Here you go. You want to keep going?”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
“Sit up, then.”
Ben did as he was told, and reached over for his tea.
Dominic had made one for himself, too, and took sips in between working on Ben’s hair. The haircut took longer than Ben had expected, probably because his hair was in such a fucking state. He didn’t flinch when Dominic got the clippers out, though, and was proud of that.
By the time he was done with his tea, Dominic was about finished with Ben’s hair.
“You want to look?” Dominic asked.
“Not really,” Ben said wryly.
“No problem.”
Ben was taken aback again. He thought having to look was part of the transaction.
Instead Dominic brushed the hair off his shoulders and quickly fiddled some wax through the ends of what was left of Ben’s hair, almost like he couldn’t help himself.
Ben stood up, so grateful it hurt, and turned around to say thank you.
He watched the moment of startled recognition dawn in Dominic’s eyes.
“Oh,” he said softly.
Ben gave him a wry smile and a shrug. “Thanks.”
Dominic didn’t say anything else, just walked over to the counter.
“That’s twenty-five quid.”
Ben shook his head. “I made you close up.”
“Do you see anyone else in here?” Dominic said, opening his arms wide. “We’re not busy.”
“I can pay you. For your time. And for….”
“That was free,” Dominic said with a small smile. “As was the tea.”
He set up the card machine for the transaction, and Ben tapped his card again. He wanted to leave, to rush away and hide himself in the relative safety of his flat. But Dominic stopped him with a gentle hand on his arm.
“Look, mate. I’m really not a therapist. I’m just a guy who cuts hair for a living. I meant what I said, though. You get to say who you are, not anyone else. It’s all bullshit anyway, right?”
That was a line from one of Ben’s songs. From the first album.
For the first time in a long time, Ben laughed. “Yeah.”
“Someone wise said that.”
“Nah. Last I heard, he was a total arsehole.”
When Dominic pulled him into a hug, Ben went with it.
“Come back whenever you want.”
“I will,” Ben said, and in that moment, he meant it.
When he left the barbers, he had every intention of going straight back to the flat. The past hour had exhausted him beyond belief, and he was still unsure of what was happening to the food in his stomach. Chances were, it would explode out of his body one way or the other. He’d wait and see.
The problem was, right on the corner was an estate agent. Ben was almost certain they were the people who had sold him the flat in the first place. And he needed it gone. Just… gone. Behind him.
The haircut made him walk a little taller as he pushed the door open into the cold, passionless space. He’d definitely been in here before. Someone looked over and did a double take.
Fuck. Maybe he shouldn’t have gotten his hair cut. Now every dickhead in the West End was recognising him.
“Can I help?” a young girl asked.
“Yeah. I need you to sell my flat.”
Another thirty minutes, and Ben was finally back in the safety of a fancy apartment that soon wouldn’t belong to him anymore. For some reason, it felt like an enormous weight off his shoulders.
At one point he’d almost gotten into a shouting match with the girl in the estate agents, who was so fucking insistent that someone come over to take professional photos of the apartment. Literally nothing had been done to it in the years Ben had owned it—no new furniture, no new fixtures or fittings, no decorating… nothing. So the pictures that were used last time would be fine. And he didn’t want people traipsing in and out while he was still figuring out the whole drug addict situation.
It didn’t help that he still didn’t have a full set of keys. To the flat. That was another fucking thing he needed to fix.
Ben stuffed the leftover vegan food in the fridge, then lay down on the bed to sleep for an hour. Just an hour. Because the past couple of hours had left him physically and mentally exhausted.
One hour turned into four without him noticing, and Ben woke with a start.
Dusk was falling, and with the window slightly open, the rush of noise from the street outside seeped into the room. Ben rubbed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets and wondered what happened next.
He wanted to go back to Stan’s flat. He wasn’t sure if he’d be welcome.
Ben looked around the room, forcing him to accept the truth that circled him.
Tone had taken the phone—Stan’s phone—so Ben didn’t have any way of contacting them, of scoping out whether or not him going back was even a possibility. If that’s what he wanted, he was going to have to ask. In person.
Sometimes it was the little things that forced Ben to remember how sheltered he’d become from real life. The band’s management team had been really good at keeping them at arm’s length from the real world, and Ben was grateful for that. But in the process of keeping them away from the ugly side of their career—the bad reviews and the stalkers and the people who set up Twitter accounts with the sole purpose of tweeting them several times a day telling them how shit they were—Ben had turned into someone who couldn’t do anything for himself.
He wanted a phone, and his instinct was to contact Melissa and ask her to get someone to go and buy one for him.
He wanted drugs, and normally there was someone from his “team” who would go and get that for him too.
If Ben wanted to go home, someone booked the flights. He wanted to see a movie, and someone arranged for it to be sent to his laptop so he didn’t have to go to a movie theatre and interact with the public. He sneezed, and someone handed him a damn handkerchief, for fuck’s sake.
He was a thirty-one-year-old man who had almost had a breakdown over buying lunch for himself, going to get his hair cut, and asking an estate agent to sell his flat.
Ben hauled himself out of bed and stumbled for the wardrobe. A day—or was it two?—before he’d rummaged through the backpack he’d found in there, checking it for cash or pills and finding neither. Now he stuffed it with anything in the flat that definitely belonged to him. It all fit in the backpack, which said something.
He almost left the food in the fridge, willing to let it go, but at the last moment thought maybe Stan would like it. So he turned back, packed it back into the paper bag he’d brought it home in, and walked out of his drug den for the last time.