“I can do that.”
She stood and pulled Stan into a hug. Not a bro-hug—a proper, all limbs, little sister hug. Stan kissed the top of her head.
“You’re a silver-tongued charmer, Mr Novikov,” Summer said, her voice slightly muffled by his shirt. “I was supposed to convince you to go back to New York, not let you convince me to stay in London.”
“London is amazing. LA sucks. You’re much better here.”
“That,” she said, punching him on the arm, “we can agree on.”
He gave Summer another hug, holding her for longer than was probably socially acceptable. Then he walked her to the door and carefully shut it behind her, with a promise that he’d be over to see her soon.
When Stan turned around again, Ben was standing in the doorway to his bedroom.
“I need to go,” he croaked.
“No,” Stan said, realising that Ben must have heard if not everything, then a lot. “You don’t.”
Stan went to him and took his hand, then gently tugged him back to bed.
“Stan.”
“It’s okay.”
Stan kicked back the blankets and got in, lying on his back so Ben could curl up against his side. It took a lot of convincing to get Ben there. When he was finally settled, Stan brushed his fingers through Ben’s hair, carefully combing through the knots.
He held Ben as he shook, as he wept, as he ached from the aftermath of one mistake. One in a long line of mistakes.
“Tell me about the EP,” Stan said when Ben seemed more settled.
“It’s not much.”
“Tell me about it anyway.”
“I’ve only written two songs. I kind of have a concept for it, though.”
“Yeah?”
Ben fiddled with the hem of Stan’s T-shirt. “It’s about circles. Redemption. Forgiveness.” He whispered the last word. “Forgiving myself, asking for forgiveness from other people.”
“That’s very brave of you.”
“I want to go see my mum.”
Stan closed his eyes so he didn’t cry. “Okay.”
“Will you come with me?”
“If you want me to. I’m sure she’d come to London, though, if you asked her to.”
“I haven’t seen her in a long time. Not since last Christmas. I haven’t spoken to her since January.”
“How come?”
“Same reason I didn’t talk to anyone else. I didn’t want her to see what I was doing.”
“She’s your mum, Ben,” Stan said. He curled his arm around Ben’s shoulder to keep him close. “She loves you.”
“I know Summer thinks some horrible things about me, and fuck, most of them are right. Most of this shit is about trying to hide stuff from people, though. I ran away because I didn’t want them to see me when I was so fucked up. I never wanted them to have to clean me up and watch me fail over and over again.”
“I don’t think you failed, Ben.”
“I did,” he insisted. “Over and over again. I wanted the fucking therapy to work. I wanted the rehab to stick. It did, sometimes, and then something would happen, and….”
“Can I ask you something?” Stan asked.
“Yeah.”
“Have you ever been properly treated for your anxiety?”
“Sort of. I talk about it quite a lot with Greg.”
“Before him, though.”
“Not really. All my therapists wanted me to talk about my traumatic childhood, and I didn’t have a fucking traumatic childhood. We moved from Otara to Oxford and that sucked. I got through it, though. I was fine for a long time.”
“I’m no therapist, and you seem to be doing really well with Greg, so I definitely don’t want to take his job. It just seems to me that you’re clearly struggling with anxiety in certain situations, which makes you want to take drugs to stop the noise in your brain.” He hesitated before adding, “I’ve been there.”
“You never had social anxiety, though.”
“No.” Stan wondered if he was saying too much. Then again, Ben was talking, so it couldn’t be all bad. “I have a debilitating mental illness that means I have a very negative, very toxic voice in my head that drives me to behaviours that I know, logically, are bad for me.”
Ben pushed himself up to brace himself on his elbow and look Stan in the eye.
“You’re better now.”
Stan nodded slowly. “I am. That doesn’t mean I don’t still fight with my anorexia, Ben. It’s there. I’ve accepted that it’s always going to be there. I’ve just learned certain techniques to help me deal with it so I can go on living my life. Maybe that’s why I really believe that you can get help too.”
“I hadn’t thought of it like that. It’s not always bad, though.”
“Tell me.”
Ben huffed. “I like a lot of aspects of what we do. I like writing music with my friends. I like performing for an audience that appreciates us. I like playing big stages in incredible places around the world.”
“You can’t do that all the time, though.”
“No. I find press stuff hard. I don’t want to talk to people about my private life. It really fucking pisses me off when reporters are stalking my mum or my brothers and sister to try and get a story on me. I hate—”
“Go on.”
“It sounds really fucking ungrateful, but I hate some of the fans. They take things too far, you know? I love them, but when they show up with tattoos of our faces, that freaks me out. I don’t want to be a role model. I don’t know how to be a good role model, and I really don’t like that people look up to me. Especially now.”
“I understand.”
“And the more I hide away from them, the more they try and chase me down. That’s why other people run my social media now. Because if you don’t feed them with something, then they’ll go fucking nuts trying to get what they want. And when you break it down, there’s not that many fans who are like that. It’s a really small minority, but they make shit so fucking hard.”
“Did you ever get, like, a mentor?” Stan encouraged Ben to settle down again. They ended up lying on their sides, facing each other. “Or anyone to talk you through what was happening?”
“Not really. We had a different manager at the beginning, not Melissa.”
“Jordan?”
“Yeah. He was a fucking arsehole and all.”
Stan grinned. “I didn’t like him much.”
“I know you didn’t. He gave us the ‘don’t do drugs, kids’ talk, then sent us off on tour with a band who were fucking renowned for doing that stuff.” Ben shook his head. “I suppose it’s not really much of a surprise that we ended up where we are. Where I am.”
“I think there are things that can help you,” Stan said carefully. “I know we can’t turn the clock back and change the way things have gone so far, but there’s no time limit on getting help.”
“I didn’t want help for a long time. The drugs helped when nothing else did, so I wanted that.”
“I think that makes sense. But you don’t want to keep taking drugs every time you find yourself in an uncomfortable situation.”