Midnight Blue

“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.