“How would he feel now, though?” Stan said. “If he left a band that went on to be so successful? Anyway. We’d been arguing for a long time, and we weren’t having sex any more, and I spent more time with you and Summer than I did with Ben.”
“He was off with Geordie and the roadies.”
“Yeah. I didn’t know there was drugs involved at that point, but I think it’s likely.”
“Me too.”
“I asked him if he wanted me to come with you to wherever it was you were going next. And he said he didn’t care.” Stan shrugged. “I figured he should probably care, if I was his boyfriend. So when you got on the bus and left, I got a taxi to the airport and came back to London instead. Bought this place.”
“You stayed here for a while?”
“Another six months, yeah. Then I started moving around again. Paris first, then Asia, South Africa, then back to New York.”
Tone was quiet for a few moments, clearly lost in his memories. “I wish I could tell you something to make you feel better.”
Stan smiled. “It’s okay. I don’t blame anyone for what happened. It was just… just life, I suppose.”
Stan had sometimes wondered if it would have been easier if they’d broken up in some massive argument; something with screaming and crying and throwing plates at each other. At least then there would have been a definitive ending. As it was, the band’s success had stuck a wedge between them, one that had slowly but surely wrenched them apart, and by the time Stan came to terms with the fact that it really was over, months had passed.
“He was depressed for a while, after you guys split up. Then he seemed to get himself together. We all thought—shit, fucking finally, he’s here. I guess that was around the time he started taking coke.”
“Where was he getting it from?”
“Other bands. Roadies. Wherever. It was all over the place, Stan. We barely had to turn around and someone was offering it to us. We’ve all smoked weed since forever, Christ, but none of the rest of us touched anything stronger. Summer lost a lot of weight, and we thought she was taking shit at one point, but she swears she didn’t.”
“I thought she looked slim.”
“Is it fucked-up for me to be talking to you about this?”
“No,” Stan said easily. “I don’t mind.”
“Oh. Good. Ben got into a screaming match with her once, you know. Your name got thrown around.”
“I should be honoured,” Stan said drily.
“I’m sorry.”
“No, no. I’m always going to be a recovering anorexic, Tone. Talking about it is good. I’ve talked about it until I was blue in the face, actually, a lot of it in the context of the fashion industry. If we don’t talk about these things, then they stay hidden, which isn’t good.”
“You’re so clever.”
Stan laughed. “I’m not. I’ve just been through shit, same as you guys. Go on.”
“Ben isn’t a bad person.”
“I know that. He’s an addict.”
“Yeah.”
“He needs to accept that before he can get help. Same as I had to accept that I had an eating disorder before I could do anything to get better. Until he’s ready to accept his issues and seek out help for himself, there’s not much any of us can do for him.”
“So we—what—just try to keep him alive until he’s ready to ask for help?”
God, that was morbid. “We can try.”
“I don’t think I can do this for much longer, Stan.”
It sounded like that confession had been torn from Tone’s gut. For the first time, Stan looked at him properly. There had always been flecks of grey in Tone’s unkempt beard; time had added more. He had tired eyes too. Tone might claim that Ben was the one who had never chased after the glittering jewels of fame that the music industry offered, but Tone hadn’t either.
“He doesn’t deserve you,” Stan murmured.
“He didn’t deserve you either.” Tone grinned.
That made Stan laugh. “I thought we deserved each other. For a while.”
“Yeah.”
They fell into a comfortable silence. Stan thought that maybe, after all this was over, he might get to keep Tone as a friend. If that happened, it would all be worth it.
Chapter Six
Being alone was unnerving.
Silence on all sides.
Except the echoes.
The fridge hummed, and sometimes water rushed through the pipes from another flat in the building.
He didn’t have a TV. When he’d looked around the place, before he’d bought it, there was one mounted on the wall. But it had gone by the time he moved in. Now there were just brackets and holes in the wall where a TV should be.
Ben hadn’t ever liked TV that much.
About a week had passed since they’d all left him. Tone had gone, then Ben had spent four days off his face on drugs, then ran out and spent three days coming down again. Right now, his skin itched and his eyes ached and his tongue felt too big for his mouth. Despite having eaten very, very little, he’d been shitting up a storm.
Ben lay on his back, wearing just his boxers, staring at the beautiful crown moulding around the edge of the ceiling.
“You need to pull yourself together, mate.”
They were wise words, ones he wasn’t used to hearing in his own voice.
It was strangely cathartic, hearing things he needed to say and at the same time, being the one to say them.
“You’re fucked up.”
Very true.
It took a long time to get the next words out.
“I don’t want to die.”
The past five years had been a whirlwind, and the wind had stripped away all the elements of himself that Ben liked best. He imagined it like a tornado, peeling away his compassion and his sense of humour and his sense of charity. His politics were gone, his passion, his drive, his motivation.
And what was left was a guy who liked to divorce himself from reality by taking shitloads of drugs because that was easier than facing the truth.
When he finally decided to move, it took a very long time. Ben struggled to his feet, to the bathroom, and into the shower. He attempted to wash his hair, but it was all matted and gross. For the first time in a long time, he took stock of his body. Too skinny. Bad tattoos—some really bad tattoos. Bad decisions.
No track marks. The thought of injecting himself with anything turned his stomach, which was weird, considering the amount of needles he’d encountered getting the tattoos. Maybe that was one good thing he’d managed.
Ben huffed a humourless laugh. If the only good thing he could say about himself was at least he hadn’t started injecting heroin, then maybe he really had hit rock-bottom.
He dressed in clothes from his chest of drawers—too big for him and several years old, not feeling right on his body. Then he took stock and looked around.
Ben had no phone. No internet connection because he’d never bothered to get it installed. He needed food—decent food. He really didn’t want to go outside but life sucked, so he was going to have to. He dug his wallet out of his dirty jeans and shoved it into the pocket of the sweatpants, and didn’t bother to lock the door.