“No,” Ben muttered. “I fucking don’t. It seemed like a good idea at the time, though.”
“Believe it or not, Ben, you’re not the first person to suffer from anxiety,” Stan said, gently teasing him. “I know you’re in a really unique situation, but that doesn’t mean you can’t change.”
“I know,” he grumbled.
“It’s hard. It’s so fucking hard, and it’s going to hurt. Well, it might not. The things that helped me might not work for you.”
“What worked for you?”
“Time,” Stan said honestly. “Giving myself permission to find a therapist who worked for me and not just struggling on with someone who wasn’t getting it. Being myself.”
“I don’t know if I can ever have that, though,” Ben said. “The band is too big. There’s too much pressure on us to get the next thing out, to do the tours and the promo and all the shit that comes with the music.”
“Ben.” Stan reached up and touched his face, hoping to calm down the panic in his eyes. “You don’t have to do something you don’t want to do. Not now, not ever.”
“But I—”
“I’m serious,” Stan said, interrupting him. “I’m going to arrange for someone to go to the recording studio and pick up your guitars. You can finish recording at the studio at the house.”
“We need the techs, though,” Ben said miserably. “We need someone who can do the mixing, and—”
“Then we can hire someone to come to the studio and do it. If we have to hire in the equipment, we can do that too. Look, I’m as invested as you are in getting this album finished now. I don’t care if it’s awkward or expensive or unusual. We’ll do what we need to do to make it happen in a way that doesn’t stress you out.”
That made Ben smile, at least. “I was talking to Tone yesterday. Fuck, was it only yesterday? Anyway. We need two more songs on the album. In his words, ‘a banger and an eleven o’clock number.’”
“Tone knows what an eleven o’clock number is?”
“I know; it surprised me too.”
Ben wrapped his hand around Stan’s waist and up under his T-shirt to stroke Stan’s lower back with his fingertips. It sent tingles up Stan’s spine. Ben probably knew it too.
“So you’re going to write a new song?”
Ben shook his head slowly. “No. I want to just go into the studio with the others and jam. Like we used to.”
“You don’t do that anymore?”
“Not for a while, no. Sometimes we do. But usually Jez and Geordie, or Geordie and Summer come up with a tune and hand it over to me to add lyrics. Then we go into the studio and put it all together, and Tone works out the drums on the fly.”
“That sounds very….”
“Disconnected?”
“Yeah.”
“It is,” Ben admitted. “But we got thrown out of so many recording studios for the crazy arguments we used to get into, it was easier to do it like that than to stoke the rumours that we were breaking up.”
Stan sighed and shuffled closer so he could tuck himself under Ben’s chin.
“I really don’t know what to do with you guys.”
“I think we need to make Therapist Stan a permanent member of the band,” Ben murmured against Stan’s hair.
Stan laughed. “I’ll start charging you,” he warned
“I’d be okay with that.”
Chapter Twenty
When Ben woke, he was alone in the flat. Stan had left a sticky note on the bedside table saying he’d gone out for a walk and would be back soon.
Ben rolled onto his back and let the vicious self-loathing envelop him.
One line of cocaine didn’t necessarily cause any physical hangover effects—not like the wreck he turned into when he was coming off an opioid high. This was almost worse, though. When his body was being ravaged by physical symptoms, he could concentrate on those and his brain didn’t have time to wander. When it was like this, he had plenty of time to contemplate all the ways he’d fucked up.
These days there was a new voice in his head, one that spoke in the calm, softly accented tones of Dr Greg. This voice told him that recovery isn’t linear and to make mistakes was human and he had to forgive himself for them.
It fought alongside the other voices that reminded him he was a worthless piece of shit who couldn’t keep control of his own fucked up impulses. Those voices had been around longer, so they tended to be louder.
To do something, anything, other than lying in bed fighting the effects of nightmare-laced dreams, Ben got up and took a shower.
His hair was getting longer, and he wanted to go back to Dominic to get him to fix it again. He also wanted Dominic to see that he was getting better. Compared to the wreck who’d walked into that barber shop the first time, Ben had made progress.
“I’ve made progress,” Ben mumbled to himself as he scrubbed shampoo through his hair. “I don’t want to die.”
He heard the front door close as he was brushing his teeth, and continued to vigorously scrub until he was spitting blood. The sudden need to feel clean wasn’t a new sensation, and logically Ben knew this was a side effect of spending so many mornings after lying in his own stench, unable to move.
“I’m back,” Stan called when Ben stepped out of the bathroom.
“Hi.”
He closed the bedroom door behind himself to get dressed.
Since they’d got back to London, Ben had been wearing the same half-dozen outfits on repeat because that was literally all he owned. He’d borrowed—and not given back, so technically he’d stolen—one of Tone’s plaid shirts that was definitely too big for him. Ben liked that, though. It hid how skinny and scrawny he’d become.
Once dressed, he went through to the kitchen where Stan was unpacking a few things into the fridge.
“I have some things I need to do today,” Ben said, grabbing a banana from the counter and peeling it.
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Do you—I mean, if you’re not doing anything—”
“I can come with you,” Stan said. “I’ll warn you, though. It’s already starting to get busy out there. Saturday crowds.”
Ben nodded. He usually hid away on the weekends, not wanting to throw himself into the melee of Camden market and its tourists.
“It’s not local.”
“Okay,” Stan said easily. He closed the fridge and offered Ben a smile.
It hit Ben like a punch in the chest.
Stan had brought all his clothes back from New York, and Ben was being treated with a whole new roster of outfits that made Stan look amazing. Today he’d dressed in a khaki green shirt dress, lots of gold jewellery, and strappy sandals. Ben decided those bare legs should come with a warning.
“I don’t need to do anything else. I’m ready when you are.”
“Let me find my wallet.”
“And your phone,” Stan called after him.
Shit. Yeah. His phone. He used it to book a car so they didn’t have to try and hail a cab.
“Okay, I’m good,” Ben said as he walked back to the kitchen. Stan was sitting on one of the barstools with his bare legs crossed at the knee while he texted someone. Ben fixed his eyes on Stan’s face.