He was quiet for a moment, his fingers running over my ribs. “I like wooing you.”
The thought crossed my mind that this could be dangerous. Not the ill-advised sex with the just-out-of-his-teens pop star, but the cuddling. The lying there, drinking in his scent, watching his chest rise and fall, allowing myself to bask in my own happiness. I could fall in love this way.
“May I ask you a question?” he asked. It was not his usual starter. “Is Daniel the last person you slept with?”
His query threw me. “Are you lying here thinking of Daniel?”
“I’m lying here thinking of you.”
The sun was shifting, casting the room in a pale pink hue. Like being inside a shell, a watercolor. I wanted to hold on to the moment, paint it.
“Yes … Does that change things for you?”
He shook his head, his fingers moving over the material of my dress. “No. So long as you’re all right with this.”
I probably should have asked him to define “this” exactly. It might have saved us a lot of confusion and heartache.
“I’m all right with this,” I said instead.
“You sure?”
I nodded.
“Let me know if that changes,” he said.
He took his time peeling off my dress, untying my bikini top, kissing and caressing every inch of me. My shoulder blades, my breasts, the dip at the base of my back, my hip bones, my knees, the insides of my wrists. He was so tender, so complete in his lovemaking. Someone had taught him well.
“Is there anything you have that I should know about?” I asked. He had fetched a condom from the canvas bag and was opening the wrapper.
“Other than a few thousand psychotic fans?” He smiled. “No.”
“Only a few thousand?”
“Who are genuinely psychotic? Yes,” he laughed. “Anything you have that I should know about?”
“A twelve-year-old daughter who will disown me when she finds out what I’m about to do,” I said, watching him roll on the condom. Condoms. Right. God, it had been a long time.
“I won’t tell her if you don’t.”
“Good. I won’t tell your fans.”
In that final minute, with Hayes above me, and my mind clear, I recalled an earlier conversation. “So this is just lunch. Right?”
He hesitated, and then smiled. “It might be more than lunch.”
That first moment of entry was everything. And after three years of nothing and ten years of Daniel—who was lovely, but definitely not Hayes—it was transcendent.
He was slow and gentle, and I knew immediately why he’d asked about my ex. Because he’d managed to make me feel like a virgin in his hands, in a way that I had not expected. I wanted to tell him that he need not be so delicate, but I was kind of enjoying it. I was kind of enjoying everything. The weight of him, the size of him, the smoothness of his back, the firmness of his ass … all of it. I didn’t even care that it hurt. Part of me wondered why I had waited so long. Perhaps what I had waited for was him.
*
We lay there, after, bathed in fractals of light, watching dust particles dance in the air, spent, happy.
“It’s a pity I don’t smoke,” I said eventually, “because I could really use a cigarette right now.”
“I have gum.”
“Gum?”
“Yes.” He rolled over, to fish through his trusty tote bag. What didn’t he have in there? “Solène, may I offer you a stick of postcoital gum?”
I laughed at that. “Why, yes, Hayes, I would love a stick of postcoital gum.”
“We should hashtag that. #stickofpostcoitalgum. Now trending.”
“Yes, your twenty-two million followers would love that.”
He stopped. “You know how many followers I have?”
I felt as if I’d been caught knowing something I was not supposed to know. Information that might have been valid for mass consumption by his fans, but not general knowledge to those who knew him personally. It was tricky, this celebrity thing.
“Do you follow me?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I follow about two hundred people. And they’re all in my industry.”
“Huh,” he said, watching me and doling out his postcoital gum. Hollywood, a French brand. So apropos.
“Would it be weird if I followed you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
He lay back then, interlacing his fingers with mine, holding our hands up toward the light. “Then again, I pursued you rather earnestly, so maybe not.”
“Rather,” I repeated. “My very posh Hayes.”
“Yes, well … It worked.” He looked over to me and smiled, one of his huge disarming smiles. “Because if you had told me that night in Las Vegas that I’d be lying here with you, naked, in a hotel room, in the South of France, in two months’ time … I would have told you, ‘No, it will probably take three.’”
I couldn’t help but laugh.
“I can’t even fuck with you properly,” he laughed, rolling into me. “You’ve totally thrown me off my game.”
“I know you too well.”
“Already, right? That happened surprisingly fast.”
“Don’t go falling in love with me. Hayes Campbell.”
“I’m not gonna fall in love with you. I’m a rock star. We don’t do that.”
“You’re a boy band member.” I smiled, fingering his hair.
His eyes widened and his mouth formed this perfect O. I assumed he was going to scold me, but then he stopped himself, his face settling into a wry smile. “Well,” he said, “I guess all bets are off then.”
west hollywood
“I met someone.”
It was late on Wednesday, the following week, and Lulit and I were winding down our June show. We had the long holiday weekend ahead of us, and the install of July’s joint exhibit, Smoke; and Mirrors. But in that dead period, coming down from the Basel high, the gallery was relatively quiet and I thought it might be the right time to broach the subject of Hayes.
“What? No. Who? When?” Lulit shut the office door. Matt and Josephine had already gone for the day, so I don’t know from whom she was hiding exactly.
“You have to promise me you won’t judge.”
“Judge? Why would I judge? He’s not an actor, is he? Please say no.”
I smiled at that. “No. But possibly worse.”
“Worse than an actor?” She was leaning against the wall, her long arms crossed before her narrow frame. “What? An artist?”
We both laughed—a shared joke. Artists: dashing, brilliant, crazy. We’d both gone down that road before and vowed never to return.
“Do you remember in the spring when I took Isabelle and her friends to Vegas to the August Moon concert?”
She nodded. I could see her focusing, trying to follow the thread. There was no way she could have predicted the direction in which it would go.
“Well, I kind of met one of the guys…”
“One of which guys?”
“The August Moon guys.”
Her eyes widened. “The boys? The boys in the band?” Coming out of her mouth it sounded dirty, wrong, possibly illegal. “I am going to need some wine. I’m going to the kitchen. You stay right here.”