Ben stuck to his twice-a-week sessions with Dr Greg because routine was important and having something he was responsible for doing actually helped. He couldn’t get himself into a disgusting mess because he needed to go out and walk over to Dr Greg’s flat and sit in his conservatory to talk about his feelings.
He also listened to a lot of music.
Not Ares music, because he wasn’t ready for that yet. Ben dug through the hundreds of playlists he’d made up over the years and made a couple dozen more. His favourite, for now, was his divas list: Whitney, Mariah, Ella Fitzgerald, Diana Ross, Etta James, Dolly Parton, Adele, et al. It put him in a strange, girl power frame of mind that he wanted to do something with.
Ben set up his new phone carefully on the tripod he’d borrowed from Tone and hit Record.
“Not sure what I’m doing here,” he said, plucking at a few chords on his acoustic. “Let’s find out.”
He’d never heard a man cover I Will Always Love You before, and his style leaned more towards Dolly Parton’s country original than Whitney Houston’s powerhouse version. Strangely, though, his voice suited the song, and the lyrics felt appropriate.
It felt like a long time since he’d sang anything and actually meant it.
When he was done, Ben stopped recording and sat in silence for a while, letting himself feel whatever he was feeling and trying to identify those emotions. Dr Greg had taught him the exercise, and the point was trying to make Ben more comfortable with the more messy emotions instead of turning to drugs to suppress them.
He was feeling a lot these days.
Before he could change his mind, he quickly edited the first and last few seconds of the clip with an app on his phone, then uploaded it to his YouTube channel. Then he turned his notifications off and went back to writing his own music.
He was sleeping—napping—when Tone thundered into the room and yelled at him.
“Benjamin mother-wanking Easton!”
“What the fuck?”
“He’s alive,” Tone said to someone on the phone. “I’ll call you back.”
“What?”
“Jesus Christ, Ben, you fucking wanker.”
“What?” Ben repeated. “What did I do?” He shifted on the sofa to sit up properly and let the blanket fall to the floor.
Tone sat down too and poked Ben in the thigh, apparently to make sure he was still there. “People think you posted a fucking suicide note on YouTube.”
“What?”
Tone slapped his hand to his face. “You posted a fucking moody and dramatic Whitney Houston cover and people decided to interpret that as your goodbye, cruel world moment.”
“Wasn’t Whitney,” Ben grumbled. “It was Dolly.”
“Christ on a bike, you’re good at missing the point.”
“It wasn’t a suicide note. I’m not going to die.”
He liked repeating that to himself, from time to time. Ben strongly believed affirmations were bullshit. Instead he preferred to tell himself what a piece of shit he was to force himself to do better.
Each to his own.
“Stan saw something on Twitter and freaked out. You turned your phone off.”
“Oh, shit.” Ben scrambled for it.
“I just spoke to him. But you should call him back. And maybe post something on your Twitter to say you’re still in the land of the living.”
“I don’t have access to my Twitter. They took that off me ages ago.”
Tone rolled his eyes and left, muttering something to himself about melodramatic emo boys. Ben decided that was probably him. Oh well.
He picked up his phone and dialled Stan’s number.
“Is mother-wanking really your middle name?” Stan said as he answered.
Ben started laughing. “You know it isn’t. What time is it there?”
“Just after eleven. Can you video call me?”
“Sure.”
He flipped his phone and set it up on the tripod again, since that was easier than holding it.
“Hey, beautiful.”
Stan grinned at him. “Hey yourself.”
Stan was wearing makeup—pretty pink lipstick and blush and mascara. It looked like he was just wearing a T-shirt, but Ben couldn’t see properly from this angle.
“Sorry if I upset you.”
“You didn’t. But you’ve caused hell of a fuss on the Twittersphere.”
“I’ll let management deal with that,” Ben said, stretching his arms over his head until his back popped. “Did you listen to it?”
“Not yet. I thought I’d wait until after I’d spoken to you.”
“Well, we almost have a full house again. Summer and Geordie got back last night, and Jez will be back in the morning. He’s got a meeting with our management company about the new album.”
“Shouldn’t all of you be at those meetings?”
Ben shook his head. “Sometimes we are, but not for this. It’s about the album. I think he’s presenting to them what we’ve got so far so they can start deciding what songs are going to be put out as singles. Stuff like that.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“How’s New York?”
“Lovely, actually. There’s an Indian summer going on. I, uh, I actually met with someone yesterday.”
Ben frowned and sat up a little straighter. He didn’t like the expression on Stan’s face.
“A guy I used to date. I wanted to tell you before you saw anything about it on Instagram or whatever.”
“I don’t have Instagram,” Ben said. He didn’t like the squirmy, jealous feeling in his stomach, not one bit. “Why did you meet him?”
“To tell him I’m moving back to London. We stayed friends after we broke up. He’s a dancer, at Juilliard.”
“Okay,” Ben said slowly.
“Ben, I’m telling you because I want to be honest. You don’t need to worry.”
He was worrying, though. That was the problem. “You’re a really long way away,” he said instead.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Stan sighed. He rubbed his hand over his face. “Shit. I’m sorry.”
Ben made a face. “Should I be worried?”
“No,” Stan said emphatically. “Honestly. I’m just trying to be open with you.”
“Okay. What else is going on?”
Ben didn’t want to dwell on things he couldn’t change—it was hard enough that Stan was gone in the first place. Listening to him talk about New York was nice, though. It was something totally outside of Ben’s normal routine, so he could be invested in it without worrying that he was suddenly going to get triggered by some awful memory. Nothing terrible had ever happened in New York. As far as he was aware.
Listening to Stan talk about all of the running around he was doing actually helped. Ben, on the other hand, was loping around like a lost soul, not wanting to go out in case he got recognised, and not wanting to stay in this house because it was driving him fucking crazy.
When Summer and Geordie got home from visiting Sherrie later that afternoon, they ordered pizza, then went straight to bed. Ben knew from experience that the jet lag could last for days. So he didn’t take it personally.
Ben stayed up with Tone, smoking weed and eating pizza and playing Mario Kart. He appreciated that Tone was doing his best to keep Ben’s mind busy while Stan was away.