“Start from the beginning.”
Just then the cab pulled to a halt, and our Arab driver announced, “Trente, Rue du Bourg Tibourg.”
“Oui, merci, monsieur,” Hayes said, pulling out his wallet. His British-accented French, oh so charming.
We stepped out of the taxi and into the narrow street before Mariage Frères, the renowned teahouse. Of course he was taking me to tea. It was four o’clock, after all.
“Mariage Frères!”
“You know this place?”
“I love this place. My dad’s mom used to bring me here. And lecture me about being French. A hundred years ago … before you were born.”
He smiled wide, taking my hand and leading me inside. “I knew there was a reason I picked you.”
“You picked me?”
He nodded. We made our way back to the restaurant area of the shop and waited to be seated. Hayes gave his name. Apparently, he’d made reservations, which I found amusing, that all along he’d had the audacity to believe he was going to pull off this quasi-kidnapping.
“Why did you pick me, Hayes?”
“Because you looked like you wanted to be picked.”
I laughed, uneasily. Our fingers were still entwined. “What does that mean?”
“That means exactly what you think it means.”
He let that sit there for a while, saying nothing else.
The host seated us quickly, a small table toward the back. But the room was well lit, and there was no hiding who my date was. It might have been his height, his hat, his sunglasses, but heads were turning. Again.
“The best part,” Hayes said, leaning into me, after we were seated and given our menus, “was that you had all these adorable little rules that were completely arbitrary.”
“You don’t forget anything, do you?”
“I don’t. So don’t make me any promises you don’t plan on keeping.”
I wasn’t sure if he was saying it to be clever, but it stayed with me for a long time.
“So tell me,” he continued, “tell me why you don’t want to be seen with me. Is it the group? Is it the age difference? Is it the fame thing? Is it not having gone to university? Is it all of them combined? What is it?”
I smiled at the list he’d imagined in his pretty head. “Not having gone to university?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know how your mind works. Arbitrary, remember?”
I took a moment to drink him in. His hair sticking in twenty-one directions since he’d yanked off his beanie. His Botticelli face.
“I am entirely too old for you, Hayes.”
“I don’t think you truly believe that. I mean, do you like me? Do you not have fun when we’re together? Do you feel like I have a problem following the conversation?”
“No.”
“Then I don’t think you really believe that. If you did, you wouldn’t be here. I think you care what other people might be thinking, or saying, and that’s what’s fucking you up.”
I paused. “How do you not care?”
“Do you know how much shit gets said about me? Do you know how many fucks I give? Zero.”
I sat there, watching him finger his sunglasses on the table.
“Do you know what they’ve said about me? I’m gay, I’m bi, I’m sleeping with Oliver, I’m sleeping with Simon, I’m sleeping with Liam, I’m sleeping with all three at the same time. I’m sleeping with Jane, our manager, who is attractive, but no. I’ve slept with at least three different actresses I’ve never even spoken to. I have ruined no fewer than four marriages on three different continents, and I have at least two kids … I’m twenty. When the fuck would I have crammed that all in?”
I started to laugh.
“I wish I was making this up, Solène, but I’m not. Which is why you can’t believe everything you read on the Internet. Oh, and Rihanna may or may not have written a song about me. Because we may or may not have had sex…”
“Did you have sex with Rihanna?”
He gave me a look then that I could not quite decipher. It seemed equal parts How dare you think I did? and How dare you ask me?
“Does Rihanna even write her own songs?”
“You’re missing the point here.”
“I’m sorry. Go on.”
“I’m really happy when I’m with you. I get the feeling you feel the same way. And if that’s true, I don’t think you should give a fuck about what people may or may not think of our age difference. Furthermore, if our ages were reversed, no one would bat an eyelash. Am I right? So now it’s just some sexist, patriarchal crap, and you don’t strike me as the kind of woman who’s going to let that dictate her happiness. All right? Next issue…”
Our waiter came to the table then, and naturally neither of us had looked at the menu.
“Encore un moment, s’il vous pla?t,” Hayes said, dismissing him.
When he’d parted, Hayes leaned forward, grabbing both my hands. “I think when we go home, you need to tell Isabelle the truth. I don’t think we can do this again without telling her. I don’t think it’s fair to her. And I want to do this again.”
“We’re covering a lot today.”
“I’m trying to get it all in before you turn forty.” He smiled his half smile. “Plus when we’re at the hotel I can’t seem to manage a proper conversation because I have a hard time thinking about anything but fucking you.
“So…” He sat back, opening his menu. “Fancy a tea?”
*
After, outside, heading north on the narrow street, Hayes wrapped his arm around me, protective.
“Let’s find a tabac,” he said. “I want a cigarette.”
I looked up at him, amused. “Oh-kay…”
“I didn’t have sex with Rihanna,” he announced, and then he grinned. “But not for want of trying. Apparently, I’m not her type.”
“You’re not bad enough.” I smiled.
“I’m not bad enough.”
“You’re bad enough for me.”
*
We spent the early evening wandering through the Marais and over to the ?le Saint-Louis, where we strolled down the Quai de Bourbon to the Place Louis Aragon, the western tip of the island that looked out over the Seine and the ?le de la Cité and Notre-Dame and all the things about Paris that were magical to me. We sat there huddled on a bench, drinking in the view and each other, until our appendages were numb. It was the perfect place to watch the sun set on my thirties. And it very well may have been worth 60,000 euros.
*
Later that night, Hayes and I slipped into the bar at the George V for a drink and some inspired people watching. The room was insufferably old-world: cherrywood panels, stenciled parquet floors, velvet drapes. Charcoal drawings of foxhunts and eighteenth-century-style portraits gracing the walls. There were various couples dallying over thirty-dollar cocktails. Curious pairings, unexpected. Perhaps not unlike us. We surveyed it all from our perch on the chintz sofa beside the fireplace.