It started off small.
Rose’s parents would not let her come to New York for the boys’ premiere. Her father argued that she’d be missing two days of school, which was true. But I’d seen them pull her out a full week before spring break so they could make the most of their Kenyan safari, and I knew it had less to do with their concern of her being truant than my current relationship status.
On Twitter, I gained eleven new followers, none of whom I personally knew and all with anonymous handles like @Hayes_curls17 and @MarryMeCampbell. There was one random message in my notifications from an @NakedAugustBoyz that read: “Are you the one?” And for some reason, that simple question seemed terribly intrusive, personal. As if she’d reached out from wherever she was, and touched me.
And then, on my Instagram, beneath a photo I’d posted from Miami, of one of Glen Wilson’s pieces, someone with the peculiar handle @Holiwater had posted: “Hayes?” And nothing else.
Hayes had once explained how a certain subgroup of their fandom had fantasized all these perverse relationships between the guys. “They ‘ship’ us,” he’d said. “Like they think I’m having a relationship with Oliver or Liam or Simon, and they combine our names and they invent all these scenarios, and it’s very entertaining but it’s also quite crass.” And so I knew any handle with the name “Holi” in it was a “shipper” of Hayes and Oliver.
“That’s the most insane thing I’ve ever heard,” I’d said when he’d informed me. “Why would teenage girls fantasize about you having sex with your friends?”
“Absolutely no idea,” he’d said.
But I was still clueless as to how any of his fans might have identified me, and then I made the mistake of revisiting the blind item. And to compound it, I read the comments. All 128 of them. The majority of which had accurately named Hayes. There were no fewer than a dozen posters who had recalled his photo at Joanna Garel’s opening and inferred that it had to have been someone at Marchand Raphel. The rest was cake.
*
We arrived in New York late Tuesday night. The boys had shot The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon earlier in the day after a handful of interviews, their PR in overdrive in anticipation of the movie and album release. Hayes was exhausted but putting on a brave face.
“Text me when you’re close to the hotel,” he said, on the phone, shortly after we’d landed. “There are a slew of fans out front and I’m going to send someone down to meet you and the girls.”
“What’s a ‘slew’ exactly?”
He laughed. “A little less than all of them. But you’ll be okay, I promise.”
He was not exaggerating. There were easily over a hundred and fifty girls outside of the Mandarin Oriental, at eleven p.m., on a school night, in December. Where were their mothers?
“Oh my God.” Georgia’s face lit up on seeing the swarm. “How cool is this?”
Isabelle turned to me, and I could see the panic in her eyes. “Are we going to walk through that? Do they know who you are?”
“Yes, we’re going to walk through it. No, they don’t know who I am. We’ll be fine.” I tried to say it as convincingly as possible.
Then, like clockwork, as the car pulled up in front of the entrance on Sixtieth, I spotted Fergus exiting the building with a bellhop in tow. I’d never been so happy to see a familiar bald head.
“Well, hello there,” he greeted us, opening the car door.
The fans were barricaded on either sides of the entrance, but the hum of their excitement and squeals of “Who’s that?” and stomping of their feet and singing of “Sorrowed Talk” en masse was still unsettling.
We had almost made it safely to the entrance when a voice off to the side called “Solène,” and I turned to see whom I might have known who was also staying at the Mandarin Oriental. And then it dawned on me: I knew no one.
Someone yelled, “That’s her!” and there was a collective gasp and flashes were going off, and I realized in that moment that my life as I knew it was over.
*
The girls would not sleep.
Hayes had booked us adjoining rooms on the forty-sixth floor and then came by to make certain we were settling in. Two hours later, they were still on a high, giggling and plotting and cooing over their good fortune, and I could not effectively slip out of my room to meet him in his suite on the floor below.
“I’m knackered. Just wake me,” he’d texted. “Just crawl into my bed and do things…”
*
It was almost two when I finally made it to his room, and at that point I would have been happy to have him just hold me, and inhale him while he slept. But Hayes evidently had other plans.
“Hiiii.”
“I thought you were knackered.”
“I’m knackered, I’m not dead,” he said, wriggling out of his underpants.
“They ID’d me.”
“Who ID’d you?”
“Your fans.”
He smiled then, pulling off my T-shirt, pushing my hair out of my face. He was not completely awake. “It’s okay. You’re safe here. You’re safe here in my bed.”
“And when I leave?”
“And when you leave … if I’ve done my job … you’ll be happy.”
*
In the morning, Isabelle and Georgia went for a swim in the hotel pool while I ducked out for a long run. I bundled up, donned a set of headphones, and timed my departure with a group of German tourists, and none of the fandom seemed the wiser. And that hour or so alone was heaven. Up Central Park West, cutting in at Eighty-sixth Street, twice around the reservoir, and home. The air cold, crisp, perfect. I’d missed this. New York.
In the thirty-fifth-floor sky lobby, while waiting for an elevator post-run, I encountered a guest at the front desk who was having problems with his room key.
“This key card is a bit dodgy. Could you perhaps switch it for me?”
I smiled on hearing his accent: British, posh, desirable.
He ended up riding in the elevator with me. He was tall, rakish, a thick head of salt-and-pepper hair. Maybe fifty, if that.
“Good run?” he asked once we’d pressed our respective buttons.
“Very. Yes.”
“Where did you go?”
I told him.
“You did all that? This morning? Bloody hell, that shows dedication. Perhaps if you’d given me a wake-up call, I would have come with you.”
I laughed at that. He had kind eyes, an inviting smile.
“I didn’t get the wake-up call, I’m afraid.”
“Tomorrow…” I teased.
“Tomorrow,” he chuckled. “Room 4722. I’ll be waiting.”
“All right.”
“If my wife answers, just hang up.”
“Okay,” I laughed. “Will do.” We’d reached the forty-sixth floor. The doors were opening.
“You’re beautiful,” he said suddenly, as if he could not help himself.
“Thank you.”
“You have a lovely day.”
“You, too.”