“It’s going to get bad.”
Up until now I had assumed the worst that could happen was Isabelle finding out and losing her mind. And I had barely survived that. I could not envision how anything could possibly be more traumatic. Clearly, I had just been na?ve.
“That’s it? That’s all you’re going to give me? You’re just going to send me out into the world with your psychotic fans and tell me, ‘It’s going to get bad, just ignore it’?”
He smiled, but there was something sad in his eyes. “Solène,” he whispered, taking my hands. “There’s no instruction manual for this. We make it up as we go. Here’s the deal: I don’t talk about my private life. Ever. I don’t release statements. I don’t comment on it. I don’t discuss it in interviews and I don’t address it on social media. You can choose what you want to do, but I find that’s the best way to deal with it. Otherwise, you’re just giving them fodder. Let them speculate. People are going to say a lot of things. Most of them will not be true. And much of it will not be nice. But you have to be strong enough to not acknowledge or address any of it. If you can ignore it completely, that would be best. But if you can’t, you just have to remember that these are people who don’t know you and don’t know me. And for the most part they’re just making things up to sell advertising. Got it?”
I nodded.
“And whatever you do, never ever, ever read the comments.”
“Okay.”
“You look terrified.” He smiled.
“Because I am. I wish you’d told me all this before.”
“Before when? Before you started falling in love with me?”
“Who told you I was falling in love with you?”
“It’s just a hunch.”
“It was the eight orgasms that gave it away, wasn’t it?” I deflected. My eyes were threatening to tear. There, among raindrops the size of pears, in the middle of Art Basel. “Fuck, Hayes.”
“Shhh.” He held my head, kissing my cheek. “It’s okay. One day at a time. Today we ignore the blind item.”
“Today we ignore the blind item.”
*
When we returned to our booth, Lulit was in the midst of showing the Invisible installation to a curator from the Whitney. They were deep in conversation about Anya’s work: part of a larger series of striking black-and-white portraits shot with either extremely high or low exposures, so her subjects, all women, were either blown out or reduced to shadows, both effectively rendering them near invisible.
“Lulit is sounding very serious.” Hayes came up behind me, close.
I shushed him. There were a handful of others admiring Glen’s gates. Matt had evidently stepped away.
“You know,” he said, low, “I adore you both, but you are not the women to sell this whole invisible rubbish. Have you looked at yourselves?”
It took me a moment to register what he was saying, the audacity.
“I know you probably mean that as a compliment, but I’m not taking it that way.”
“I’m just saying, it is quite likely that people will think you are taking the piss.”
“That we’re what? Taking the what?”
He smiled, adorable, even when infuriating. “Like mocking them. You are the two least invisible women in this entire convention center.”
“I’m not sure that’s true. But if it were, for the reasons you’re insinuating it is, it would give us more impetus to support this project.”
He was quiet for a bit, mulling the idea.
“You realize that we are currently the only gallery of our size owned by two women? If we’re not the ones to back this, I don’t know who is.”
I was proud of that fact. That Lulit and I had managed to make it work despite the odds. That we’d garnered a certain amount of respect, success in the ten years that we’d been doing this. That we’d birthed this idea—to fight for the underrepresented, the underappreciated—and we were winning.
“I did not know that. That kind of makes you hotter.”
I laughed at that. “Okay, go away. I need to work.”
He drew me into him, both hands on my hips. A motion that was decidedly suggestive. “Tonight I think we should go for nine.”
“I think you need to leave.”
“I think you need to lose this dress.”
“Go.”
“‘Look how sexy I am. But for the rest of you who are not so sexy, here’s this wonderful installation that addresses all your insecurities.’”
“Get out of here, Hayes. Being a woman is a complicated thing.”
“I bet it is.” He leaned in to kiss my nose. “Have a good day. I love you. Good-bye.”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing. I didn’t say that. Fuck. I didn’t say that. Good-bye.” His face was red as he backed out of the booth. And for a fleeting moment I considered following him. Anywhere.
*
“What is it you’re doing?” Lulit approached me shortly after the curator from the Whitney had departed. “This Hayes thing. What are you doing, Solène?”
I looked at her, not understanding. Was she not the one who’d fully endorsed this? Who’d told me to go and get my rock star?
“I thought this was just going to be a fling,” she said, soft. “Like for the summer … I thought it was temporary and you were having fun and that was great. And important. For you … to move on, and grow. But it’s now like serious, and you’re completely falling for him, and it’s affecting your decisions in not the best way. And he’s twenty, Solène. He’s twenty.”
I was speechless.
“And he’s going to fucking break your heart and I can’t sit and watch that happen again. And don’t tell me it’s just sex. Because it’s not just sex anymore. I’ve seen the way you look at each other … It’s not just sex.”
I wanted to be angry with her. I did. But I was terrified that everything she had said was right.
*
On Sunday, after a late brunch in the Design District, Hayes and I returned to find no fewer than two dozen young girls congregated outside at the front of the Setai.
They’d found us.
We managed to evade them by looping two blocks down to Eighteenth Street and using the beach entrance at the back. There were a handful of fans lingering there as well, and Hayes stopped and took a few photos. And then, just as we were about to maneuver our way through the gate, one of them asked, rather politely, “Is that your girlfriend?”
I felt it, every single hair on my arms and the back of my neck standing up. I spun to look at him, which was probably a rookie move. Hayes waved to his fans and smiled. “You guys have a good day, all right?” And then he shut the gate and it was over.
“Crisis averted?” he asked.
“Crisis averted.”