“Says who?” He snorted, but didn’t argue. I knew he was toying with the idea. Nat told me. But I also knew Craig needed me to make him. Needed to rebel against me, just for the sake of it.
“Says the girl who’s going to kick you out of the apartment she will stop paying for if you don’t get cleaned up. Me.”
I did wake up that morning.
I woke up, and instead of hating the world, and my life, and the Suits, and even Indie for not being with me, I forced myself to say a little thank you—inwardly. In-fucking-wardly, of course—and called a cab to get me to the airport on my way to Bloomington, Indiana.
I was waiting by the locked iron gates of the fancy-schmancy condo with my Wayfarers and scowl intact when I saw him. Simply Steven: blogger, fashion-icon, and the bane of my existence. He loitered outside, hands shoved deep in his pockets, looking worried, anxious, and guilty.
I didn’t know why he’d be the latter. Last I checked, I was the one who’d planted a fist in his face. In my defense, his face looked better that way, and not because he was ugly, but because he was smug.
You know, the kind of smug that warranted a punch in the face. Really, I was doing some kind of public service. I didn’t ask for a thank you, but the arrest was a stretch.
Contrary to general belief and Us Weekly, what had prompted me to lose my shite on Simply Steven wasn’t, in fact, because he’d asked me how it felt to have my fiancée shagged by my best friend. No. It was afterward, when he yelled at me that my last album was depressing and that ‘music is supposed to be fun.’
On what planet was music supposed to be fun? He sounded like MTV after the Suits killed it and made it a reality TV channel for pimply teenagers. Music is supposed to be overwhelming and defeating and bone-crushingly moving.
So I punched him. Now he hates me. Which begs the eternal question—what the fuck?
“The Botox clinic is down the road.” I gathered phlegm in my throat and spat it on the ground. My back still felt naked and too light without Tania. How the hell was I going to face rehab without her?
“Ha-ha. I’m here for you.” He shifted a little and kicked a rock that clashed against my boot.
“Yay me,” I said flatly, putting a fag in my mouth and lighting up. “What do you want?”
“My sponsor says I owe you an apology.”
“You have a sponsor? What did you get addicted to, eyelash extensions?”
“Always the funny guy, Winslow. And, yeah. I was. It…was…heroin.”
I did not expect to hear that. Didn’t matter, though. This entire city was built on powder and coats upon coats of makeup. Nothing surprised me anymore, other than the sheer surprise of finding someone who still had their soul intact, like Indie. I tapped my cigarette with my finger, looking sideways. Where’s that cab?
“Apology accepted,” I said.
“You don’t know what I’m apologizing for,” he countered, sticking his head between the bars of the gate like a dumb puppy. As if that wasn’t enough, his eyes were sad. His malnourished body and too shiny hair and veneer teeth depressed me, and I wondered if I looked the same. Perfectly pathetic.
“What are you apologizing for?” Seriously, where was that cab?
“Hey, did someone beat you up?” He squinted at the blue and purple staining my face, then rattled the gate like a prisoner. I halted for a moment before opening the gateway and letting him in. Perhaps I was the one who’d had his arse kicked, but he was the one looking pitiful.
“None of your business.”
“You look rough, man.” He stepped inside the premises.
“Well, let’s just say Karma is a nasty bitch, and her brother, Fate, is not much better,” I muttered.
“Anyway.” He ran his fingers through his sunshine hair. It was obvious we were making conversation—maybe even an important conversation—but we were both locked inside our worlds. “The alcohol you had sent to your rooms…that was me. I hated you, Winslow. Still do. You humiliated me in front of the entire world and made me look like a pussy. Getting back at you was almost easy. Hotel staff would do anything for money. But, it was wrong, and I’m sorry.”
I finally stepped out of my own head, from my misery and doubt and worry over everything Stardust-related, to attend the shitshow in front of me. I turned around to face him.
“You sent the alcohol?” My head was pounding. I’d been so certain it was Will. Turned out, it wasn’t his doing, either. So what was Will responsible for, really, in terms of ruining my life? Just for taking Fallon. And even that had been a huge favor.
“I did. I wanted you to relapse.” He rubbed the back of his neck, sighing. “I wanted you sad. Like me.”
“You little…”
The cab arrived just then, the driver honking outside of the gate. I grabbed my duffel bag and slung it over my shoulder. “Fuck you.” I shoved my index finger to his chest, then left.
“Alex…” he called after me.
I would forgive him, later. Not today.
I rang Blake on my way to the airport, knowing he’d fill Alfie and Lucas in.
“We should probably report him to the police,” Blake said. “That’s what he did to you.”
“Nah. I’m better than the shithead,” I said, and at that time, it wasn’t true yet. But I knew I needed to be better than him, and better than most people, to redeem myself.
So I did.
The second time in rehab was different. I knew it was different because this time, I paid attention. Not that I’d had any reason not to give it an honest shot the first time around. I was simply too self-absorbed and full of words like ‘integrity’ and ‘artistic process’ and ‘Iggy Pop.’ The first time I’d had absolutely nothing to distract me. My last album had flopped harder than a Lindsey Lohan movie, Fallon was with Will, Blake and Jenna were putting out all of the fires I’d left behind, and all I’d been asked—literally, the only thing I was expected to do—was to come out of there in one piece.
This time, I had a huge album in my hands, my greatest masterpiece, waiting to be produced and released, and I just had to sit on it. I had a girl to win—Stardust—and the uncertainty of second-guessing whether she’d even hear me out consumed every millisecond of my day. Still, I knew rehab was important.
So I listened.
I went to every class.
I held hands with strangers. With suburban mummies who’d gotten addicted to prescription pills, and a preacher’s son who’d fallen into the arms of heroin, and a Russian oligarch’s daughter who, like me, had snorted pounds and pounds of cocaine to numb the feeling that the world was closing in on you from all angles. I wrote letters to my family and friends. Angry letters. Apologetic letters. Funny letters. Then I burned them all. I couldn’t write Stardust shite, though. Everything I had to say to her—every single groveling word—had to be said in person.
I took the extended rehab program—I call it the I-truly-give-a-shit program—despite my urge to win Indie—but also because of it—even though I knew every day I wasn’t releasing my new album, I was losing money, and sponsorships, and listeners, and fandom, and who the fuck knows what else.
Three months passed. I came out of rehab.
Blake wanted to pick me up, but I didn’t want to rehash the last time I’d gotten out. I thought it’d jinx the whole process, which, in itself, was a ridiculous thought, but I indulged myself anyway. I took a cab straight to the airport. I landed in New York a few hours later. Ate a gas station sandwich—because some things never change—then crashed for fifteen hours. I slept like I’d never slept in my life. Like I’d worked the entire three months in a fucking cornfield. Then I woke up, took the subway just to feel human again, pulling my beanie and hoodie all the way down, and showed up at the recording studio.
Two months passed. I recorded an album.
Another three months of promotions, and interviews, and magazine covers, and The Comeback of the Year! headlines. Alexander Winslow: An Artist, a Poet, and a New Man. And,
Guess Who’s Back? And, Will Bushell, Who?
I felt the time slipping between my hands, but Blake told me it was okay. That she would still remember. That real love never dies. That I needed to prove to her I was actually sober for long enough to make her believe it.
Now, let me tell you something about my album. Midnight Blue broke the record for fastest-recording album in the history of that Williamsburg studio. It took me one week to record and produce twelve songs.
The Little Prince
Chasing Asteroids
Under Darker Skies
Maybe It’s You
Was She Worth It?
Perfectly Paranoid
Oh, But You Are
A Different Kind of Love
Seek and Kill
Why Now?
Fool For You
Midnight Blue
Midnight Blue was the first single I dropped. Jenna and Blake flew into New York that weekend to remind my fragile ego and pompous arse that it was a process. That, at first, the radio stations run the song for trial on different hours of the day and see how it goes. That building hype takes time, and patience, and a lot of arse-kissing. But with Midnight Blue, I didn’t need any of it. The song just sort of exploded, the way my career had when I’d first broken into Billboard when I was twenty-one years old, and took over the charts like they’d been sitting pretty and waiting for me their whole lives.
And it was nice. And reassuring. And completely unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Don’t get me wrong—I recorded the album because I wanted to record it. It was a part of a bigger plan, a detailed, persevering, calculated one. I wanted Indie to know what she was to me. She wasn’t a dirty fuck, or a pristine secret, or a mistake. She wasn’t some roadie I’d climbed on top of every night because she was there and available.
She was my muse.
She was my life.
She was my all.
I took a plane back to Los Angeles nine months after I landed in New York. I was sober, on top of my game, and ready to chase what was mine.
Only Indie had never been mine. She was, in fact, the one thing I couldn’t even think about ever claiming, because I didn’t deserve her. But I finally understood what Will, Lucas, and Blake had wanted to do. Even more frightening than that—I was happy they’d done it, because if they hadn’t thrust her into my life, I would’ve never given rehab a second chance, I would’ve never written Midnight Blue, and I definitely wouldn’t have understood what this thing I made millions upon millions upon—Love—had meant.
“Alex Winslow! Looking mighty fine, dude.” An American paparazzo jumped into my face at LAX, followed by a bunch of paparazzi photographers. They all wore ball caps and black clothes and smiles that were a cross between taunting and downright smug.
“Never been better.” I smiled. Which was partly right, and partly so, so wrong. I was breezing through security, two nameless bodyguards by my side. I didn’t usually use them—I counted on my friends to throw off potential stalkers or overtly aggressive fans—but I needed to do this alone.
I slid into a rental car—I didn’t want a driver or anything else remotely fancy—and programmed Indigo’s address into my Waze app. I knew she still lived at her old place, even though she’d rented a better one for Craig, Natasha, and Ziggy. Because that’s the kind of person she was. Selfless. It’d been so many months, the thought she wouldn’t remember me occurred as I pulled out of the massive parking lot and into the constant, never-ending traffic of Los Angeles. It was utterly ridiculous to feel that way. Indie couldn’t have forgotten about the first man who’d fucked her—really fucked her—the first man she’d given her heart to, the first man who’d broken it without even meaning to, and the first man who’d ruined her life. Those were too many firsts. Good and bad. Fact.
I was all wired up and ready to explode in the car on my way to her. My foot kept bouncing on the brake pedal, which prompted the drivers behind and ahead of me to honk their horns and flip me the bird.
“You can’t rush love!” I popped my head out from the window, forcing myself to laugh.
“Holy shit, Mom! It’s Alex Winslow!” a teenybopper yelled from a Toyota Corolla next to mine amidst the traffic jam.
When I finally took a turn to her neighborhood, my heart started racing insanely fast. I didn’t know what the hell was going on, but I was worried it might be a heart attack. That couldn’t be too good. I already looked like shite. I had bags under my eyes from working nonstop and my hair needed a cut two months ago, straddling the line between a tousled mane and an almost man-bun. Not that I would ever collect my hair in an elastic. That was almost as unacceptable as making country music. Point was, I looked rough, and now I was also sweating like a pig. Great.
Come get it, Indie. A sweaty, ex-druggie with baggy eyes. Every girl’s dream.
It took me twenty minutes to find a parking space, and I was actually pathetically thankful for that, because it gave me time to stall. It gave me the chance to think about what I was going to say to her. You’d think I would’ve been more prepared, but you’d be wrong, because the conversation I wanted to have with her could go so many different ways, I constantly changed my mind about how to approach it.
I parked.
Got out of the car.
Heavy feet. Heavy heart. I climbed up the stairs, feeling irrationally hopeful and soul-crushingly disheartened at the same time. I knocked on the door. Stared at it for a few seconds, feeling a sweat drop slithering from my temple all the way into my right eye without moving an inch. I tried to listen to the sound coming from the inside, but the place was dead. I knew I would, and could, stay there. In the hallway. Waiting for her. There was something symbolic about it, too. But the truth was, I couldn’t endure another minute of waiting.
I’d waited for her in rehab.
And I’d waited for her when I recorded Midnight Blue.
I’d waited for her on every airplane I took, every interview I’d given, every fan I’d hugged, every hour I’d spent away from her. Every breath I’d taken without knowing what she was doing. I’d paid my dues.
I knocked again. The third time. Then rang the doorbell.
She wasn’t there.
I decided to get out of the building and walk around. Maybe she’d gone to the grocery store down the road. Maybe she would meet me halfway, and her big, blue eyes would widen, and she’d run toward me in slow-motion, and we would kiss slow and hard and wouldn’t even have to talk about any of the bad shit that had happened between us.
My legs carried me down her street. I passed the grocery, and the Israeli coffee shop, and the Korean nail salon. I knew these places because I may or may not have visited her neighborhood once or twice or twelve times before I’d finally dragged my arse to rehab. I cut a corner and stopped at a junction that kissed a small park with a few benches scattered around some swings and a slide. It was tiny, really, and wouldn’t have caught my attention in a million years if it weren’t for a bright blue pram parked beside a bench.
A bench on which my very personal Blue, Indie “Stardust” Bellamy, was sitting.
Cooing at the baby inside the pram.
A baby.
Not a toddler like Ziggy. A newborn baby.
She was wearing a big, floaty white dress, and her blue hair was braided and flung over one shoulder the way I liked it. I froze in my spot, unable to take a peek. But she did the job for me by rocking the pram back and forth. When she pulled it away from her, I got a decent look at the little human inside it.
He or she was so tiny.
My heart stopped. Literally stopped—and yes, I know what the word ‘literally’ means. It was too early in the day, after too many hours on a plane, to do the math. Was it mine? Was it someone else’s? God. Fuck. It couldn’t have been someone else’s. This baby was mine. Jesus Christ. I had a baby. Indie had a baby. And she hadn’t said anything. Not a phone call. Not a letter. No nothing.
She’d had so many ways of contacting me. I’d
made sure my whole staff was available for her. Blake checked on her every week to assure me she was fine. Jenna would accept any message she’d wanted to send me through her with open arms. Especially now, when she was a mother and actually resembled a warm and welcoming human being. Not to mention Indie had both my phone numbers, my email, and my secret Facebook account I’d only given ten people in the entire world. Anger swept through me.
Now I was moving, all right.
Back and forth, pacing on the sidewalk by the busy road like a bloody moron. She hadn’t seen me yet, but she would, soon, and what was I going to say? Cheers for letting me know I’m a father? Then again, she had a very good reason to be mad at me…
Fuck. Fuck.
We’d deal with it, I decided. We’d deal with the baby. He or she was so small, anyway. They wouldn’t even remember I hadn’t been present in their lives for the first few months or so. It was fine. We could pick up from where we left things off. If anything, wasn’t it an incentive for Indie to give me another chance? I was sober, richer than God, and desperately in love with her. Plus, I’d change diapers and do all the messy shite a lot of blokes shied away from. Hell, I hated that I saw the baby as a way to have leverage over her. I was thinking like high, manipulative Alex again, and I really wanted to leave that bastard behind, in rehab, when I left it.
I took a step into the park at the same time someone else did. But he was faster, not slowed down by the shock and horror at finding out what I just had.
He breezed past me.
Walked over to her.
Wrapped his arm around her shoulder.
Kissed her cheek…
It is scientifically impossible to die of a broken heart. I discovered it in that moment. Because if it was, I’d already be dead. Done. Over. That’s how much it had hurt to see them together. I watched them. She smiled at him as he sat down.