“She’ll be there tomorrow evening? What are we telling her?”
“That you’re my client. That you’re a friend. That’s it.”
“She’s going to buy that?”
“Let’s hope so.” Daniel’s words were weighing on me.
Hayes was quiet for a second, his eyes searching mine. “Why haven’t you told her, Solène? You’re feeling guilty…”
I said nothing. Guilt did not scratch the surface.
“Are you trying to protect her? Or are you protecting yourself?”
“Both of us, maybe.”
The corner of his mouth curled slightly, more sorrow than smile. “Do you feel like if you just wait long enough this will be over, and you’ll get away with not saying anything at all?”
“I suppose that’s a possibility, isn’t it?”
He held my gaze, serious. “I’m still very much here…”
“So it appears…”
“Come here,” he said, tapping the duvet beside him.
My expression was beyond incredulous. There was not a chance in hell I was going to lie on Isabelle’s bed with Hayes. “Absolutely not.”
“Sorry.” He sat up. “I suppose that’s awkward.”
The doorbell rang. I had not been expecting anyone. “All of it’s awkward. I’ll be back in a sec.”
There was a fine art delivery service at the gate. I recognized them from the gallery. I had not arranged to have anything shipped, but Marchand Raphel was on the work order, so I signed for the package and led the two handlers in. The guys carefully positioned the large piece against one of the walls in the living room and cut away the cardboard packaging at my request. Josephine’s name was on the attached paperwork, but when the tableau was finally revealed my heart leapt. There, in my living room, was Ailynne Cho’s Unclose Me.
I began to shake.
“Hayes!”
It took him a moment to appear from the corridor, an impish grin on his face.
“Did you do this? Is this from you?”
“You said it was the one piece you loved.”
I nodded, and then, unexpectedly, I began to cry.
Hayes saw the embarrassed handlers to the door, and then returned to me, holding me in his arms. “Shhh.” He was kissing the side of my face. “It’s just art, Solène,” he teased.
I laughed. Through the tears and the waves of emotion and the realization that what he’d done was huge, I laughed.
“Thank you. You didn’t have to do this.”
“I know that. But I couldn’t give up the opportunity to make you feel—what was it you said?—‘everything.’”
My heart was melting. “You.”
“Me?”
“This is why they love you, isn’t it?”
“Who?”
“Everyone.”
He smiled. “Yes, everyone.”
I stood there for some time, losing myself in the seductive image. The garden, the woman, the light. The rush, the idea that it was mine. The realization: this was what it was like to be high, on art.
Hayes made his way back to the walls of glass to admire the vista. The sun was beginning to lower, casting the room in an apricot light. “Are you happy?”
“I think you know the answer to that.”
“Good,” he said. His eyes were still on the water, but I’d heard the change in his voice.
“When do you have to pick up Isabelle?”
“Six. We have a while.”
I watched him stroll across the room.
“Is this a midcentury dining table?” he asked, his finger running along the lines of the oblong Arne Vodder. I’d got it in the divorce—the furniture, the house. Daniel got the cottage on the Vineyard. And Eva.
“It is.”
“It’s nice,” he said.
“Glad you like it.” I made my way to him at the table’s head, where he was once again gazing out at the view: the lawn, the sky, the sea, the dipping sun.
Hayes reached for my hand, and then, without warning, twisted my arm, turning me away from him. He did not speak, letting my wrist loose and placing his palm firmly at the center of my back, folding me until I was bent completely over the table, the rosewood smooth and cool against my cheek.
He took his time.
His hands: climbing the sides of my thighs, lifting my skirt, peeling off my underwear. I could hear him unfastening his belt, unzipping his jeans, and then the maddening lull. My eyes were on the Cho piece, the colors blurring, evocative, while I anticipated the crinkle of the wrapper. It did not come. I felt him against me suddenly: hot, swollen.
“You’re not wearing a condom.”
“I’m not.”
I lifted my head to look back at him, but did not speak.
“I made a choice,” he said. His words sat in the air, heavy.
I didn’t stop him when he slid it in. Thick, smooth, deep. The feel of him, unadorned, raw, sent me spinning. Hayes, filling me. He pulled out for a moment and waited, teasing, before gliding it back in, slow. Deeper. And then withdrawing again.
The third time he did it, he spoke, low, “Do you want me to put one on?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
I could feel him at the opening, tempting. Fuck. Me.
“Yes.”
“Good,” he said, and then drove his dick in so hard and so fast, I bruised my cheekbone against the table.
In the middle of it—with his hands gripping my hips and the sound of his balls slapping up against my skin—I had the thought that perhaps this table had experienced this before. Some Danish 1950s housewife, her pale thighs banging along the smooth edge, making the most of the Scandinavian design, with a casserole in the oven and the kids upstairs in the playroom.
Hayes’s hand was in my hair, yanking my head up from the table. His breath hot on my neck, his teeth on my shoulder, his dick so deep it hurt. His arm wrapped around my ribs then, his fingers grabbing me through my blouse. And just the sight of the veins in his forearm, his watch, his rings, the size of his hand, was enough. I was done.
After, when he’d collapsed atop me and I was once again lying with my face on the cool rosewood, so close I could count the striations in the buffed grain, I had the realization: this was what it was like to be fucked, on art.
*
Joanna Garel was a Filipina model turned actress turned fine artist whose Pop Art–influenced pieces centered on Los Angeles beach culture. She’d created a series of iconic lifeguard towers in mixed media that was the basis of Sea Change, her first solo exhibition at Marchand Raphel. The turnout was impressive. Even before my boybander was added to the equation.
That night the gallery overflowed with Joanna’s photogenic multiracial family and model friends and an eclectic mix of our usual diverse clientele. And to me, it was the most lively, colorful crowd anywhere on our stretch of La Cienega. At some point early in the evening I hugged Lulit and thanked her again for birthing this idea. The desire to shake things up.