“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.