Chapter 20
CHAPTER
TWENTY
IGGY
The bed was too big. Too cold. Wrong without Bodhi’s body filling the space beside me.
There was too much room to breathe, too much air where his warmth should have been.
After days of being constantly at his side, constantly wrapped around each other, sharing body heat and breath and small, unconscious touches, the emptiness felt obscene.
Arriving in Munich, we’d stayed in our own rooms after last night’s .
. . whatever that was. Not because we’d talked it through or come to some mutual understanding.
We’d just avoided each other. Carefully and deliberately.
Like two people circling a crack in the ice, pretending it wasn’t there in the hope it wouldn’t split open beneath our feet.
Because it had been a mess. I knew that.
Bodhi had come too close to a truth I hadn’t been ready to say out loud since the first pill Ghost handed me.
Since the moment pain management stopped being a necessity and started becoming an excuse.
Since relief blurred into something greedier, something familiar and dangerous, something I’d already fought once before.
A voice in my head, quiet and poisonous, whispered that I was already slipping. That I was one bad day away from saying fuck it and diving straight back into the cesspit I’d once barely crawled out of alive.
I didn’t want to hear it.
So I wrapped myself in a blanket of denial and refused to see the truth for what it was. That the real reason I’d acted the way I had with Bodhi was because he’d seen too much. He’d been standing right there, close enough to peel back the layers and see the cracks forming underneath.
He’d only ever known me in rehab. In the aftermath of my bad decisions.
The version of me already trying to be better.
He hadn’t seen me before. Hadn’t seen how good I was at hiding the high.
At smiling through the withdrawal. Laughing too loud.
Using sex and charm and chaos as distractions.
The old habits I’d sworn I was done with, resurfacing like muscle memory.
Realising I’d used those same tricks on him made bile rise in my throat.
The shame sat heavy and sour, so thick I wanted the floor to open up and swallow me whole.
Because Bodhi didn’t deserve that. Not when he was working so hard on his own journey.
He deserved someone solid, steady. Not someone balanced on the knife-edge between recovery and relapse, waiting to see which way they’d fall when a strong wind blew.
So, I avoided him.
I avoided him when I climbed onto the bus at the last possible second and disappeared into my bunk without even saying goodnight.
I avoided him again when I slipped off the bus without looking his way, terrified of what I might see in his face.
Anger, hurt, pity, worry. Any of it would’ve broken me.
I’d hidden in my room like a coward ever since.
Now it was five o’clock in the evening on our one day off, and Bodhi hadn’t knocked.
Hadn’t tried to talk to me or check in. Not that I deserved it.
It should have been me at his door, begging forgiveness.
Begging him not to stop worrying about me, because somehow he’d become the only person who ever really had.
More than my parents. More than the “friends” who were supposed to care.
I should’ve been on my knees, asking him to stay.
To hold me and kiss me. To not let me do this alone.
Most of all, I should have told him the truth. About how close I was to cracking. About how scared I was of myself. About how badly I needed his help.
But I didn’t.
And Bodhi didn’t come.
He sent one message. Just one, telling me he loved me. And then he let me sit alone with my guilt, licking my wounds in the quiet.
The light outside the room was fading, and I was still curled up in bed, staring at the crumpled box of co-codamol I’d bought in Zurich.
A two-week supply that was already far emptier than it should’ve been.
I watched it like it might speak to me. Weighed it in my mind.
Wondered if it would be safe to take more, just enough to slip back into sleep and disappear for a while.
To close my eyes and simply exist until tomorrow, until we had to go to the arena.
The knock at the door startled me out of it.
A quick taptaptap that had me peeling back the sheets and hurrying across the room, my heart kicking up as I reached for the handle. For one stupid, hopeful second, I thought it might be Bodhi on the other side.
But it wasn’t.
It was Trix, lead singer of Noctis’s support band, Half Life.
We hadn’t really talked much. Not since the first group lunch in Amsterdam weeks ago.
Mostly we’d just passed each other in corridors and backstage, exchanged smiles and quick hellos.
Both bands had their own rhythms, their own chaos.
And I’d been far too wrapped up in Bodhi to pay much attention to what anyone else was doing offstage.
“Hey!”
Her greeting cut through the silence like a firecracker, and I had to fight the urge to flinch. She leaned against the doorframe, grinning far too brightly for the doom cloud I’d been marinating in all day.
“How’re you doing?” she asked.
“Okay, I guess.”
Her eyebrow arched as she looked me up and down, silently calling bullshit.
“Yeah,” she said dryly. “Sure.”
She straightened and shoved her hands into the pockets of her joggers.
Pastel blue, patterned with white Hello Kitty faces.
She wore a pink cotton bralette that somehow counted as a top, and her aqua-blue hair was piled into messy space buns, silver glitter clips keeping stray strands out of her face.
“I told Bodhi I’d take you out to buy hair dye,” she said, reaching out to finger a section of my roots. “And babe, judging by this situation, it’s beyond overdue.”
I was too caught off guard to be offended.
“You spoke to Bodhi?” I asked, folding my arms around my middle.
She dropped her hand and shrugged. “Yeah. He asked me about it yesterday and looked like I’d just explained rocket science. Like, he really thought you just grab any old box of colour and hope for the best.”
The image of Bodhi standing in a pharmacy, wide-eyed and overwhelmed by an aisle of hair dye options, made my mouth twitch despite myself.
“So,” Trix continued, rocking back on her heels. “What do you say to a pamper night in my room?”
The thought of staying here alone any longer made my chest tighten. Even if I took a couple of pills and tried to sleep, the room would still feel too big. Too quiet. Too empty without Bodhi filling the extra space.
“Okay,” I murmured, brushing a piece of hair behind my ear. “That, uh . . . that sounds good.”
“Perfect,” she said brightly. Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out a black card, holding it up between two fingers. “Bodhi gave me this earlier and told me to get whatever we need.”
I spotted the American Express logo, his name printed neatly in the corner. Something warm unfurled in my chest, soft and unexpected, easing just a little of the leaden guilt sitting in my stomach.
“I’ll get changed and meet you in the lobby,” I said, gesturing vaguely at the rumpled clothes I’d slept in.
“Deal,” Trix replied. “Throw on your rattiest tee and comfiest bottoms. We’re doing this pamper shit properly.”
“Fuck, these are heavy,” Trix huffed, shifting the plastic bags from one hand to the other.
“Pass one to me,” I offered, even though my own fingers were already screaming, red and aching from the weight digging into them.
She waved me off. “Nah. We’re almost there.”
We spilled out of the lift onto Half Life’s floor and half jogged down the corridor to the room she was sharing with their guitarist, Bella. The moment the door closed behind us, we dumped the bags onto one of the double beds and collapsed beside them in a heap.
“I think . . .” Trix said between breaths. “We may have gone . . . overboard.”
I glanced at the four bulging plastic bags. Hair dye in multiple shades, face masks, nail polish, under-eye patches, and enough snacks and fizzy drinks to survive an apocalypse. The contents were already spilling out onto the duvet where the bags had finally surrendered.
I shrugged. “Guess we’ll have to commit.”
“The old college try,” she said solemnly.
I snorted. “Did you even go to uni?”
“Nah,” she replied, sitting up and stretching her arms above her head. “Parents got divorced. I lived with my mum in Birmingham. She wanted me to go eventually. I met Bella at a local performing arts college, and we quit halfway through second year to start the band.”
“Sounds fun.”
“Fuck no,” she laughed. “It was brutal. Took forever for anyone to notice us. We eventually moved to London, and my mum begged me weekly to come home.”
“What about your dad?” I asked, fishing a packet of cheese and onion crisps out of one of the bags.
“Haven’t heard from that asshole in years.” She stole a handful from my open packet. “He left when I was ten and moved to Benidorm. Last I heard, he was running some dive bar for sunburnt Brits and had spawned a few kids with an unlucky tourist.”
I crunched thoughtfully. “What a charmer.”
Bella joined us about half an hour later, fresh from dinner with their bassist, Ryan. She leaned in and kissed Trix, careful to avoid the indigo dye dripping from her hair. My eyebrows shot up before I could stop them.
“Never seen two girls kiss before?” Trix teased, nudging my leg with her toes.
I swatted her thigh and went back to scrubbing faint pink splotches from my neck with a wet wipe. “Fuck off. I just didn’t realise you two were a thing.”
“We’re not,” Bella said easily, flopping onto her bed. “We just fuck around on tour.”
She dragged her rucksack closer and rummaged inside. My body went tight the second she pulled out a neatly rolled joint and a lighter.
“Do you mind?” she asked, settling it between her purple-painted lips.