Covering up old mistakes with Stan by his side felt oddly symbolic. He couldn’t change the past, the things that had happened were done and he was learning to live with them. But he could make amends, put things right, and move forward.
The tattoo didn’t hurt, not really. He’d had far more painful tattoos that had taken a lot longer to get done. By the time Joey was wiping it down forty minutes later, Ben had found himself in a sort of meditative daze.
“You want to look?” Joey asked.
“That’s so much better.” Stan leaned in to look. Ben took the opportunity to kiss his cheek.
“Thanks,” Joey said with a laugh, wiping the dots of blood off Ben’s skin again. “Can I take a picture?”
“Fuck yeah,” Ben said. He stretched, feeling himself come back online. It had been strangely more relaxing than a nap. “Blast it all over fucking Instagram. Drum up business.”
He took some pictures with Joey, tipped him well, and bought some lotion to keep the new tattoo healing nicely over the next few weeks. It was in an odd position, just above the waistband of his jeans, and Ben was worried about it rubbing. That hadn’t mattered with the old one, but this one he wanted to take care of.
“Are you alright?” Stan asked as they walked just up the high street to get back to his flat.
“Yeah. Good, actually.”
“I thought you didn’t like it when people took pictures of you.”
Ben shook his head slowly. “No, I get annoyed when people use me or the band to promote shit I don’t care about. It’s different with Joey. We’ve been friends for a long time. He’s really fucking talented too. If I can help him out, I want to.”
“Oh.” Stan smiled at him. “I get it now.”
“I’m hungry.”
That made Stan laugh. “Do you want to buy ingredients or go and buy something at the market?”
“Not the market.” They were in that weird period of time between the shops closing and the evening crowd coming out, but Camden was still busy. It was busy all the time on the weekend.
“Okay. Well, I have stuff to make a curry at the flat.”
Ben wrapped his arm around Stan’s shoulder. “When was the last time I told you I love you?”
“Creep,” Stan laughed.
Ben kissed him, and didn’t care who was watching.
Chapter Twenty One
Stan was still working through his feelings about Ben’s run-in with cocaine at the house party. Though Stan’s thoughts didn’t really matter while Ben was being slaughtered in the court of public opinion. He used to be able to tune out the vitriol that was directed towards the band from the press, but it was harder now he was more intimately involved with them again.
He turned off his news feed and deleted Twitter from his phone as a mental health concession to himself.
Tone and Ben had arranged a “bro-date,” and Ben had promised to talk to Tone about what had really happened at the party, as part of his no-more-lies promise to Stan. Usually the term “bro-date” would raise Stan’s hackles and set him off on the subject of fragile masculinity, but Ben and Tone were absolutely taking the piss out of the term instead of taking it seriously, so Stan let it go. He thought there probably wouldn’t be any long-term bad blood between them, but he also knew Tone was nearing the end of his patience with all of Ben’s bullshit. If Stan could help mediate—even a little bit—he would have achieved something.
While the boys were bonding, Stan went shopping.
He’d had chance to go through his wardrobe, sorting things he’d found in London and decided to bring home with him from New York. Some pieces he’d already set aside to donate or sell. They came with bad memories, like the suit he’d bought for an interview because he wanted to look more masculine. What was right for him at that time wasn’t right anymore, so he wanted to move on.
Stan headed back to Harrods because he was hoping to run into Olivia, and because his severance bonus had come in from New York and he was feeling flush.
He headed to womenswear, knowing most of what he was looking for would come from that department. For the first half hour or so, he meandered, peering into the shop windows in the designer section and lusting after a particularly stunning Moschino layered skirt.
Stan found Olivia at a till and sidled over, acting casual until she noticed him.
“You came back!”
“I did,” he agreed. “I’m shopping.”
“Want help?”
“Always.”
Olivia immediately abandoned her post and came to link her arm with Stan’s.
“You went to the show, I noticed.”
“I did. Thank you for the tip.”
“She’s good, hmm?”
“Very.” Stan stopped to admire a long satin dress in vivid blue. “I finished the article, and I’m shopping it around at the moment. No word yet if anyone will pick it up, but I’m hopeful.”
Olivia made an agreeing noise and led Stan back to a section with couture evening gowns.
“I’m not looking for eveningwear,” he said, immediately picking up a sparkling green dress.
“No one’s ever looking for eveningwear. It doesn’t mean we can’t look. So, tell me about the ex-boyfriend you’re seeing again.”
Stan rolled his eyes. Nothing got past Olivia. Not for long, anyway. “We’ve reconnected,” he said simply.
“And?”
“And, if you know Ben, he’s complicated and he comes with a lot of baggage. So we’ll see.”
“You’re such an enigma, Stan.” Olivia sighed. “Come on. If you’re not looking for dresses that you’ll look incredible in, I have some jeans that’ll make your ass look amazing.”
“I’m after dresses. Just not those kinds of dresses.”
Olivia raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow at him. “You want to let it all hang out?”
Stan laughed. “If you like.”
“Huh.”
“London is good for that kind of thing,” Stan said by way of an explanation. “I can get away with more here.”
“So you want something daring?”
“More edgy than daring.”
“I can work with that.”
Stan parted ways with Olivia an hour later and several thousand pounds poorer when she had to dash to a manager’s meeting. Which sounded deathly boring, and Stan was grateful he didn’t have to partake in that sort of thing. He took a break, heading down to the restaurants on the ground floor and finding a space at the sushi bar. He didn’t want to eat too much for lunch, not when Tone and Ben were preparing something of a feast back home.
He picked out a selection of delicious-looking pastries for dessert and had them keep his order in the fridge to collect later, then headed back upstairs.
The problem with moving so frequently, as Stan had done since he was a teenager, was that things tended to get lost or discarded as life and people moved on. Stan wasn’t particularly sentimental, so he didn’t put hold much attachment to physical objects. He’d always quite liked gifting things to friends when he moved and couldn’t take them with him.