“I get that.”
“But whatever, she was an adult,” he says. “Wasn’t really up to me, yeah?” Alec squints behind me, to the waves crashing on the beach. “You probably know that Josef was in a band, the Tilts, that had a hit song before they dissolved.” He trails his fingers in the water and we float in tight silence for a minute, bobbing gently in the ocean. Alec continues to draw shapes in the water, and I wonder if he’s spelling something out. Somehow, even being an actor, he seems like the kind of person who first writes longhand what he wants to say in difficult moments like this.
“But he was the primary songwriter, and ‘Turn It Up’ is still played at nearly every major sporting event in the UK. It’s made him a good deal of money, and Josef invested very well. He channeled some of this income into Jupiter.”
It’s information I already have, but it still feels like a gut punch. “Right.”
He looks at me and reaches forward to absently stroke a hand along the goose bumps erupting on my arm. “When it really grew in popularity, he was there all the time.”
My stomach has burned away by now. I want to hear this—morbid curiosity and professional investment keep me riveted—but I also want Alec to rush through it just to be done, just to wipe the expression of bleak dread from his face.
“He and Sunny were together maybe a year and a bit before she ended things, and most of it was during the building and launch of Jupiter. There’s a lot Sunny won’t tell me, especially now. But I think the split had to do with how much time he was devoting to the club. That said, I got the sense that he didn’t want things to end with her. We all noticed that he was distraught.”
He adjusts his position on the float and angles his face up to the sky. I stare at his profile, at the carved hollow of his cheekbones contrasted with the plush fullness of his mouth. I feel his face imprinting in my brain.
“Around four months ago, Sunny got her first real blockbuster modeling contract—with Dior,” he says. “It seemed like she went from scraping to book every runway she could to being an absolute supermodel. She was in tube stations and billboards and in magazines. It’s been a huge deal.” For a moment his expression softens, and he looks over at me, grinning. “It’s really cool.”
“I bet,” I say. “That’s huge.”
“Yeah.” Alec moves again, restlessly slinging his arms over the floating pool noodle, leaning his chin on it. “Even though she’d broken things off, she still considered him a family friend, you know.” He swallows and then swallows again, clenching his jaw. Turning his eyes up to me, he says quietly, “This is really off the record?”
“Entirely.” I force my voice past the lump in my throat. “I promise.”
He looks back down at the water. “A couple months ago, another one of my mates from this group, Lukas, was staying with me. He’d moved to Berlin, but while he was in town, he wanted to check out Jupiter to see what Josef was up to. I didn’t much feel like going, but he and a couple of our friends went. A couple hours later, Lukas calls and tells me that Sunny had come in, but he hadn’t seen her in a couple hours, and when he had seen her, she looked already pretty drunk. He thought I might want to come get her.”
I feel like I’ve been punched. “No.”
“Sunny doesn’t drink much because she can’t handle liquor very well.” He goes quiet for a long minute, and I reach over, setting my hand on his back and rubbing lightly.
“We can do this later.”
“No. This is good. I need to do it.” He wipes a hand over his mouth, and the rest comes out robotically. “At first, I wasn’t worried. Like I said, it would be strange for her to drink a lot, but again—she was doing really well professionally. Maybe she just wanted to celebrate with Josef—they were still friends, after all. I went down there anyway, to check on her. Called Josef. No answer. Called Sunny. Her phone was turned off, so I couldn’t even locate her.” He rubs his face again. “I called Lukas, who came to find me, and together we started searching all of the VIP rooms.”
I exhale a quiet “Oh shit.”
“Yeah. We found her. It was a huge party, but it was like my eyes just immediately zeroed in on Sunny passed out on a couch. She was—” He cuts off, shaking his head. “Everyone scattered like roaches when I walked in. I picked her up, found her clothes. Took her to the restroom. She was completely unconscious. I put her…” He swallows, squinting unseeing into the surf, unable to finish the sentence, but I understand that he’s telling me he had to help get her clothes back on. “And I splashed water on her face. We sat there for a long time. I don’t know how long, but people knocked on the door. I turned off my phone. I just talked to her. Told her she was safe and had to wake up. Finally, she woke up enough to walk, but barely. I put my coat over her, walked her out a back entrance, and took her to hospital.”