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.