Alex,
Remember when we first moved to L.A. and promised ourselves we’d never change? That we’d still be the same blokes from the same shitty town with the mutual hate for Manchester FC (fuck ManU, man, fuck ’em). Well, I think it’s suffice to say we all broke that promise.
I’ll give you one thing—even when we stopped being mates and became competitors, you always had the upper hand. You got the better lass, and the better album, and the more prestigious Grammy. You got the Rolling Stone and NME covers, while I got the Billboard crap. You were still cool to the hipsters even when you broke into the mainstream, while I got invited to the Country Music Awards.
And you got our mates. All of them. Yours.
I want you to know how the idea of Indigo Bellamy started, and, more than that, that I am not your enemy. Never was. Never will be.
I think I owe you an explanation. You think I stole Fallon from you, when, in practice, all I wanted was to save you both. Do I love her? Yes. Will I ever have her, all the way, the way you did, the way you own everything? No.
The night Fallon was involved in that accident, she came back from my party in Calabasas. You were sick at home. She was doing drugs and going behind the wheel.
I knew that.
I let it happen.
I take full responsibility.
There were so many people, I didn’t really care who came and who went. But the day after the accident, she contacted me. Sought me out.
She panicked, and she knew you would leave her if she didn’t go straight to the police.
From that point on, Fallon and I started nurturing a toxic relationship. We became closer, and I fell more and more into her, while she fell more and more into drugs.
We cheated on you, and then the whole thing exploded. I don’t blame you for cutting me from your life. If anything, it’s probably best we stay far away from each other.
But I always knew about Indigo Bellamy’s parents.
And I know it might come and bite me in the arse, but it’s true. I did. I’m partly accountable. I’m a shameful, shameful man.
After everything with Fallon went down, Alfie, Lucas, and Blake said they’d never talk to me again. But they did. Sometime after you kicked your eighth babysitter to the curb, I contacted Jenna Holden, who ordered a meeting with Alfie, Blake, and Lucas. We all agreed that you were spiraling again, and I was the stupid idiot who’d followed Indigo and Craig around, feeling guilty and disheartened about what Fallon did and got away with, and their lives were shitty, too.
I said the plan would be perfect, and they agreed.
I wanted you to fall in love and to get better.
I wanted you to rival me in the Grammys, not in my nightmares.
I knew it would better your life, and Indigo’s life, and if everything went according to plan, maybe Craig’s, too.
Indigo didn’t know who circled that Wanted ad she ended up calling. She thought it was her brother or sister-in-law. It was Hudson who slipped that paper into her bike’s basket while she was shopping.
Not for one second did I think Fallon was still so into you. So fiercely in love with you. What kind of person confesses a crime like she committed? A desperately drugged one. That’s who.
You might look at this and see betrayal, but your mates only wanted the best for you. I did, too. I’m sorry it didn’t work out, and I’m somewhat relieved—although mostly terrified—for coming clean. Do with it as you wish. I’m done hiding. I’m done playing kismet. I’m done fucking up my life and others’.
But don’t take it out on your team. They love you. They chose you.
You win.
P.S.
I still pretend to spit every time someone mentions Alex Winslow’s name.
Faithfully,
William George Bushell
Here’s the thing about addiction: that arsehole friend who comes sneaking into your life when you’re down and low? That’s it. My addiction crawled in, because I could no longer purge it out. I had no reason to behave, because she wasn’t there, and everything felt hopeless, and wrong, and final.
So. Fucking. Final.
I found out a lot in the three weeks that marked the end of the tour. The first thing was that when you want to get your hands on narcotics, you do, even when the entire world and its sister are watching you. I snuck groupies into my room with coke stashed in their bras. I didn’t touch them, but I definitely touched the drugs. I downed a bottle of vodka in the bathroom in Canada and popped some Xanax in New York. When we landed in Tennessee, I dropped in to say hi to a country singer I mentored on a reality TV show and drank a bottle of whiskey in his bedroom. It was pathetically easy, almost to my dismay. I’d had my chances all along. I’d simply chosen not to use them for, I don’t know, whatever reason. Actually, the reason was crystal clear to me now. Her. Stardust. She kept me high on something much stronger than coke. Even before I’d gotten my hands on her little body, she was there to taunt, and fight back, and keep me entertained.
Once an addict, always an addict.
The worst part is that you don’t quite understand the severity of your addiction until it’s already five steps ahead of you, running toward the finish line, ready to ruin your life. I had my gaps between lines and bottles of alcohol, so I tried to convince myself I was still relatively sober, and when I was relatively sober, I called her. All the time. She never picked up. I got her email address from Blake and sent her messages. Stupid messages. Creepy messages. Messages that could have landed my arse in a lot of trouble.
Subject: I need you
I met Jesus at Times Square after a gig and he told me we were all going to die and that I should count my blessings, and I could only count one thing, and it was you.
Are you mad at me, still? Actually, don’t answer that. We’ll talk about it when I get there. I shouldn’t be contacting you. Blake thinks it’s an apology email, and I guess it is, but I’m not going to stop at that. He and Jenna are going to kill me if they know, but you and I, we are bigger than them. Bigger than this.
Jenna is pregnant with Blake’s baby, btw. She said not to tell anyone, so I’m telling you. Because you’re my someone. I think I’m going to circle back and delete this paragraph later. Too cliché. Did you know the album I had produced by that boy-band fuckboy was my best-selling one?
Huh.
Maybe I’ll keep this line in after all.
Alfie is on a pussy bender. Says he’s worried about me and that it’s his outlet. Blake is sleeping with his mobile pressed to his ear. Lucas rarely even talks anymore, and I…I drink.
It started with a vodka bottle the other day. I miss you. I didn’t know about what Fallon did that night. I swear. She’s in rehab. I gave her an ultimatum about coming clean. Please answer my calls. Or…not.
Don’t tell Blake.
A.
Subject: How?
I can’t believe this shit’s for real, Stardust. How can you not answer me? How can you not need me the way I need you? How is it fair that I found you, and you found me, and we both know damn well how rare what we have is, and you still let me go?
How do I let you go?
Stupid question, I don’t.
Two more weeks. I’ll be coming to get you. You know I will.
Yours (even if you think you don’t need me),
A.
Subject: I wrote a song
It goes like this:
Answer me.
Answer me.
Answer me.
Answer me.
Everyone and everything is falling apart. The Chicago gig was a shit show. I forgot most of the lyrics. Don’t ask why, Stardust. You know.
Hudson joined the tour to keep me from taking a shit on what’s left of my career, because Blake is back in L.A. playing baby daddy. I think Lucas and him are hooking up. Lucas and Hudson, that is. Not Blake. I hope they are. That’s good, right? That I’m wishing good things upon good people.
Oh. Side note. Lucas is gay.
I want you to know I thought about it, and even though I’m a sellout, I do love the rough material for the new album. It bleeds your personality. I can’t wait to share you with the world. Share your soul. You were right. It is your soul, but I told you I’d borrow it. You don’t mind, right?
I’m coming to L.A. in a week.
A.
Subject: Once upon a time there was a prince…
Remember, in The Little Prince, when the fox wants the boy to tame him so they’d always have each other? I think that’s what you did to me. You tamed me. I needed you. And you unleashed me back into the wild, domesticated and YOURS, and now I’m not sure wtf I need to do to survive. Which, I think you’d agree, is ironic. Everything considered and such.
I’m on the road from Chicago to Oklahoma on a tour bus. You would have liked it. We banned Alfie from Mexican food. I think about you a lot. I wank to our Polaroids a lot. I haven’t touched anyone since you left. Okay. Full disclosure: I cupped a tit while taking a photo with a fan. But she’d just had a boob job, and it was for her birthday. And I didn’t enjoy it. At all.
It’s so weird to be here, to do this, to not be chasing you like every bone in my body tells me to. Blake says to give you time, but what does he know about relationships? He and Jenna are a train wreck.
I saw a squirrel today. Its tail was cut. It was still furry, just…short. Ever seen a squirrel’s tail up close? It’s quite magnificent. I felt bad for the squirrel, but reminded myself it didn’t know that its tail was cut.
Then I realized I’m the fucking squirrel, Indie.
I’m the fucking squirrel who ran around with half a tail, and no one told me, so I lived in blissed ignorance. Then you came in, walked away, and guess what? Now I know. I know I’m incomplete and my soul, which I thought was dying, is actually in Los Angeles, riding a French bike in a ridiculous dress.
I know I’m making this about me, and I know you’re going through a load of crap right now, but I guess that’s what addicts do.
And I’m an addict. Again.
Four days, Indie. You. Me. Us. Always.
Blake came back from the OB-GYN appointment he had with Jenna the same week. When he found out what I’d been doing, he took away the laptop Indie had left behind and begged me to stop. Which, naturally, prompted me to call her some more and to order Jenna and Hudson—the latter had reluctantly dragged his arse back to L.A.—to check in on her every week. They said she was doing well. This, consequently, made me feel like shite. I wanted her to hurt like me, and I wasn’t even ashamed to think that. And that was a problem.
Oklahoma, then Texas, then straight back to L.A. By that time, I knew my cocaine and drinking habit was in full swing, but I had a bigger issue to tackle—win the girl.
Everything else—the drugs, the alcohol, the addiction, would be sorted out afterward. Love conquers all, and all that jazz.
The gigs were fine. The drugs pulled me through. But I no longer wrote songs, and I no longer gave the crowd the electric show they’d heard about when I’d toured Europe. “Letters from the Dead” officially featured a corpse—hah. I should write that down somewhere.
The flight to Los Angeles was wordless, and the first thing I did when I landed at LAX was give the driver Indie’s address. I didn’t even care that the others wanted to be dropped off at their flats. Fuck them. They’d sure fucked me over by introducing me to the blue-haired soul-thief.
I hadn’t come empty-handed. I’d thought about it long and hard, then gotten her the perfect present. I thought it symbolized what I wanted to say perfectly. Unfortunately, my gift had the potential of dying. I had no time to waste.
Indie lived in a shite neighborhood in an even shittier building. There was a strip club under her flat, so you had to go around through an alleyway to reach the rusty metal staircase leading up to her complex. I knocked on her door three times and rang the doorbell for good measure. I knew she was home. It was six o’clock. And she had nowhere to go. She didn’t have a job. I’d made Hudson check.
A blond, tall woman opened the door. Natasha. I recognized her from Indie’s laptop time. She arched one eyebrow and looked at me like I’d taken a shit on her welcome mat.
“Can I help you?” She acted like we hadn’t bantered on Skype before, and I wondered how much Stardust had told her.
She told her everything, you little twat. What do you think?
“I’m looking for Indie.”
“Indie doesn’t want to see you.”
“Indie will have to see me at some point, because I’m not going to stop until she does, and she’d probably need a restraining order against me if she really is serious about cutting me from her life. Side bonus”—I waved my full fist with her present, signaling Natasha that I hadn’t come empty-handed—“I made her something. She’ll understand what it means.”
Nat stared at my gift for a moment, looking torn and embarrassed for me. Even I was a little embarrassed for myself. I wasn’t entirely above begging at this point, and shit, if I didn’t look like an idiot holding my dripping, half-dead gift.
“Indie! It’s him,” she yelled into the small apartment.
Indie appeared at the door a few moments later. Was that all it took? I was confused. But then I saw the look on her face and the elation of seeing her after three full weeks evaporated completely. Her eyes—her expressive blues that shone when I played the guitar and wrinkled at the sides every time she came on my fingers and tongue and cock, were turned off. This woman in front of me was nowhere near as present and alive as the girl who’d left me in Europe.
I reached out and gave her the present before she could speak.
“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes the rose important,” I quoted The Little Prince, word-for-word, because it seemed important, somehow. She stared at the roses clutched in my palm, not exactly scowling, but far from touched. “Roses don’t have a blue gene,” I explained. “You can’t get them in that color. Fact. I dyed you some blue ones. It took me hours.” I followed every twitch in her face with hungry eyes, trying to decode what she was feeling, but I got nothing. I continued at double-speed, stumbling over my words. “See, I spent the time. On the roses. Because I care. About you. And I guess what I’m trying to say is, I deserve a second chance.”
I was pretty proud of that little speech. Which, in retrospect, goes to show how bloody out of it I’d been. I couldn’t read the situation, let alone read what was clearly written on her face. This wasn’t a rom-com, where the problem would solve itself with the help of a few roses and a Godiva box. She watched as my arm remained stretched with my offering, and when I thought she was going to collect the roses, she withdrew her hand and let them fall between us with a thud.
“Huh?” I huh’ed her. True story. Because in my stupid, dysfunctional brain, she was still my secret girlfriend. And this was a lovers’ quarrel, solvable and pregnant with the potential of leading to now-or-never, I’ve-seen-the-light-now-let’s-get-shagging, intense sex.
“How much did you drink and snort today?” she asked, her voice even. She looked good. Dressed in a kimono-style emerald dress.
“Not much,” I hiccupped, not realizing she could smell the alcohol from across the threshold. “I need you.”
“Right.” She shook her head, releasing a chuckle. “Listen to me, Alex, and listen good, because you can threaten to come here every day for the rest of your life, but it won’t change the outcome. I don’t want to hear from you. You’re the most self-absorbed, selfish man I’ve ever met. Don’t bother dropping by tomorrow, because I won’t be here. Wherever I’ll be, you will not be welcome there. Thanks for the flowers.” She kicked them out of the threshold.
Slammed the door in my face.
And locked the bolt from the inside.
Leaving me alone.
When I was a kid, maybe six or seven, my sister had forced me to watch Beauty and the Beast with her. I did it, for no other reason than she was older and knew how to make microwaved popcorn, and popcorn and a movie was some kind of Holy Grail in my books.
There was one part that really got me. The part I asked her about for days after. When Gaston finds the Beast’s castle, when shit hits the fan, when they’re engaged in a battle, there’s a part where the beast just…gives up. He allows Gaston to take him and win the fight.
“Why?” I asked for the four-thousandth time.
“Oh, my God, you little muppet. What’s not to understand? He lost the girl! His life is pointless! He’s better off dead than living like an old, lonely sod. Without her, he’ll stay a monster forever.”
No truer words have ever been spoken, even though these particular ones were uttered by someone who’d later on go and claim the questionable nickname TTB—The Town Bike, because everyone had a ride. Hardly an authority when it came to romance.
I don’t think I ever told Indie that story, and the thought I never would nearly suffocated me.
I was well into my second pack of smokes that day, wondering what was the point of all this. Of staring at nothing and watching time and air move—despite their invisibility—dragging like a dead, heavy body you had to carry with yourself everywhere. I was high on cocaine and drunk on whiskey.
And I had questions. So many. All of them the wrong ones.
Where was Indie?
What was she doing?
How was I going to make it work?
Did I even have a chance anymore?
I had one phone conversation with Fallon, and it was to tell her that if she wasn’t going to say anything about what had happened, I sure as fuck would. Consequently, Fallon had come clean and spilled everything to the police. She’d gotten a visit from plain clothed cops in rehab. Will had been there to hold her hand. She’d been given the opportunity to finish the rehabilitation process before being taken into custody. Blake said that legally, I was in the clear. Like I cared. Like I fucking cared.
I texted Indie to let her know about Fallon, even though Blake and Lucas told me not to. She hadn’t answered. I didn’t know if it made it better or worse for her. On one hand, I reopened her wound. On the other, I offered her some closure.
The doorbell rang three times. Old Alex—AKA Tour Alex—would’ve furrowed his brows. New Alex was the beast that didn’t care if Gaston was barging in. Someone was an enthusiastic bastard today. All the lads had a key to the apartment I’d rented when I got back to L.A. to be close to Indie, so it was probably a UPS bloke who was eager to get on with his route. Had I ordered something? I didn’t remember ordering anything.
Two more rings and a knock. Peeling myself off of the couch felt like trying to remove a hundred-ton brick from my shoulders. Since when was my body so heavy? I hadn’t eaten all that much since Paris, and had probably lost a few pounds, which prompted me to believe the feeling was exclusively psychological.
“I’m coming,” I groaned, shuffling to the door. I glanced through the peephole out of sheer habit. A guy with light brown hair and soft features stood on the other side. He was wearing sweatpants and a jersey and looked like a complete maniac. Beast or not, I wasn’t going to roll a red carpet down the hallway and invite him to slice me into pastrami.
“Who is it?” I asked. It was encouraging to know I still had a logical bone or two in my body.
“Craig Bellamy.” His head snapped up as he screamed—actually screamed—straight into the peephole, as if it were a mic.
Stardust’s older brother. He existed in my mind as a ghost, a pivotal tool that had brought us closer by fucking up so I could clean after his mess repeatedly. I’d hardly considered he was even real. I was just thankful he was the one little shit who’d actually behaved worse than I had. I knew I had to open the door. Even if he wanted to murder me—understandable, and I considered it poetic justice—maybe, just maybe, I could still find out where she was. Hell, I was half-elated with the idea of being punched by a person who shared her DNA.
I opened the door and said the stupidest thing to ever come out of my mouth, “Where is she?”
Craig ignored my question, pushing me deeper into my apartment. I let him, even though we were the same height—I might’ve been slightly taller, actually—and around the same build. I probably looked like I’d been run over by every lorry in the state, but he looked like he’d been living in a damp cave in the Afghan mountains for the past couple years. Indie deserved so much better than the men in her life.
“You know? My sister doesn’t open up to many people. She is guarded by nature. Growing up, every time I threw a party or had friends over, she’d lock herself not only in her room, but in her closet. And she would listen to music and sew. Some of the music she’d listen to was yours,” he said as he crowded me, making me walk backward.
I didn’t know how to respond to that, but Craig wasn’t waiting for an answer. He gave me another shove, and this time I stumbled towards the open-plan kitchen.
“I had parties almost every week to try to numb the pain away, but she never said anything about it. See, Indie is just that good. Even when I knocked Nat and dropped out of college three and a half years ago, and screwed up everything, she stood right by my side, squeezed my hand, and looked at me like I was important.”
The third push made my back crash against the kitchen sink. I barely winced, too engrossed in his story and where he was going with it. Craig got so close to my face, I could see the little hairs in his nostrils. He smelled of alcohol and sweat and the kind of desperation I recognized, because I’d worn it like a cologne for years.
“I knew she was going to give you her everything the minute she signed the contract. That’s my sister. A classic do-gooder. Always gets attached. I thought, fuck it. She ought to learn this lesson on her own, right? I thought you’d play with her, discard her, but we’d be there to pick up the pieces. And, eventually, she would move on and find a decent guy. You’d be a blip in her existence, a good story to tell her friends on a girls’ night out. Never in my life did I imagine you’d ruin her so profoundly. Not just her, but us. You and your cokehead girlfriend took a family, ripped it apart, and threw every single plan and dream we collectively had into the trash, then came back to cause more heartbreak. Now, you tell me, Winslow. How would you react if you were me?”
We stared at each other. His eyes were a shade lighter than Indie’s. Bluer. Commoner. Softer. They lacked that smart zing artists have. Suddenly, the need for him to hurt me was overwhelming. He felt like an extension of Indie, and I wanted her to purge all the shit I’d put her through.
“I’d kill me,” I said, my voice steady and dry. “Maybe not kill-me, kill-me, because jail time would be a drag, but I’d definitely leave a few forever marks. Fuck knows I left a few on your family.”
I’m not sure I even finished the sentence before his fist flew to my face. It was exactly how I’d imagined it would be. Shocking at first, then came the burn, then finally, the pain. The warmth of the blood trickling down from my right nostril prompted me to lick my upper lip, and I straightened back into position.
“You know?” He laughed to himself, shaking his head. “My mom could’ve been saved. She didn’t die immediately. If only she’d had the mercy of a selfish prick, she could be alive today.”
Another fist, this time to my stomach. I folded in two, coughing whatever oxygen I had in my lungs. Shit. Guy had some strength in him. I jerked back, my eyes blurry. I could still see him. I could still fight back. I could maybe even take him. My sister’s words came back to haunt me.
I’d lost the girl.
I was a monster.
And that was how Indie was going to see me. For the rest of our lives.
Craig tackled my midsection and threw me sideways to the floor. I made no effort to fight him off, letting him pound his fists into my face repeatedly, until I stopped feeling anything from the neck up. His face—at this point nothing but a pink swollen thing spitting animalistic growls—was contracted in pain. I wondered if he realized how alike we were. How we loved the same girl—granted, in very different ways—and how the same girl loved us, and wanted to save us, mainly from ourselves.
“Where is she?” I repeated, coughing up blood. Their mother could have been saved. I hadn’t known that back then. And if I had—would that have changed the way I’d reacted when Fallon came home that day? Yes. It would.
I’d begged her to tell me the truth. “Come on, darlin’. We can fix whatever shit’s happening, but I need to know.” I’d replayed that night countless times in my head since it happened. Even before Indie and Craig walked into my life. The answer had always been the same.
I would have compromised my relationship with my girlfriend and gone straight to the nearest police station to file a report. I couldn’t have done more than that—she’d been adamant that she hadn’t hurt any people, and maybe she’d been high enough to believe it at that time. But I wouldn’t let her get away with it, because that was where the spiral had begun.
That was the final step into the abyss. From there, everything fell down and crumbled like an elaborate beautiful castle made of fucking cards.
I had started snorting cocaine.
And speed.
And drinking even more than I ever had before.
I’d distanced myself from Fallon, not quite willing to let her go yet, but depressed enough that I didn’t want to touch her anymore.
I couldn’t write. Not anything decent, anyway.
Cock My Suck, my failure of an album, was supposed to be a huge fuck you to the Suits I worked with, but really, it was a massive, angry dick pissing on my own career. Because it was full of angry, empty, soulless songs.
Maybe I had invited Will Bushell to take Fallon away from me. Could I really blame her for choosing him? I hadn’t wanted to touch her. I was always too busy to actually deal with her. And he was responsible, smart, sober, and savvy. But this was ancient history, and now I had my future to worry about.
“I hate you so much,” Craig spat the same words his sister told me in my face, yet again not answering my question. It was weird, how I couldn’t feel my flesh anymore, but I did feel his warm saliva dripping on the side of my cheek.
“I know,” I ground out. Despite everything, it hurt to hear it. Not that I normally cared. I had people telling me I ruined music, people making voodoo dolls of me, and endless stalkers trying to harm me, and their existence was meaningless to me. But this was different. This was the guy whose sister I was in love with.
That was the first time the thought hit me fully, a wrecking ball straight to the brain, denting it well and good in the shape of Indie. I was in love. I’d known it, I’d felt it, but using the exact word at the exact time made everything clearer.
“You need to go to the hospital.” Craig sniffed, righting himself with a high stool by the kitchen island and standing up.
I made a humph noise, not bothering to move. The floor felt quite comfortable at that moment.
“Where is she?” I asked again.
He shook his head like I was a lost cause. “Seriously, man, what the fuck? Why didn’t you fight back?” He started coming back to my vision inch by inch. He looked like hell with stubble and dripped sour sweat right into the open wounds on my face. But he’d asked a question, so it was only fair I give him an answer.
“Because I love her,” I said. There was nothing to worry about when you told the truth. The truth was factual, and facts are things you can’t change or bend to your will. “Because I love your sister and because I deserved to get my arse kicked,” I finished.
Craig squatted down, squinting at me like I was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever seen. Maybe I was.
“You love my sister?”
“Probably more than I love sex and The Smiths and my Les Paul Gibson guitar combined.” I tried to nod, but that was a mistake. It hurt like a thousand bitches in heat.
“Then what the hell are you doing here sulking like a pussy? Didn’t you Brits write some good-ass, solid love songs back in the day? Get your ass in rehab. Get clean. Find her. Grovel to her. Win her back. And love her.”
“Rehab,” I repeated. The plan had always been to get her first. Who had time to rehab when you were on the edge of love?
“Rehab”—he gave me a curt nod—“That’s my plan anyway. I can’t lose what I have. I just needed to beat the shit out of you, making one last huge mistake before I start doing things right.”
It filled my stomach with something. Maybe it was an internal organ that had exploded there, but perhaps it was hope. Call me optimistic, but I suspected it was the latter.
Craig stood up again. “I’m calling you an ambulance.” His voice was detached.
I shook my head, but even that prompted me to wince. Had he broken my neck? I wouldn’t be able to breathe if he had. I tried to tell myself it was going to be one of the things we’d laugh about in the future. When Indie was pregnant with our kid and we’d be barbecuing in someone’s backyard. ‘Remember the time you almost broke my neck?’ Ha. Ha. Well, shit. I really did need rehab.
“Don’t call an ambulance,” I grunted, finally wiping his saliva from my face. “I deserve at least an hour more of sulking on the floor. But do me a favor and bring me my fags, yeah?”
He walked off and slammed the door behind him.
I started laughing.
Hysterically.
Madly.
Illogically.
The beast had a reason to wake up tomorrow morning. That was, if he’d ever make it to it.