“I know,” I said. “He is.”
“Jesus. How did you do it? I’m out here on Tinder, and I’m miserable…”
I nodded, empathetic. Amara was a few years older than me and had never been married. She had never wanted kids. But she had also never wanted to be alone.
“And with all these online dating services,” she continued, “so much comes down to your photos, your physical appearance, your face. Tinder is purely your face. It’s people swiping left and right in reaction to your face. And my face is changing. And people react to it differently. Men react to it differently. I used to be a hot young blonde, and I’m not anymore. Although I still think of myself that way on the inside,” she laughed.
“I think of you that way.” I smiled. It seemed to me that all my friends were going through this. The self-definition crisis.
“But I’m not. On the outside anyway. And it’s like I have this shifting identity. I’m not who I used to be. And ten years from now I might be somebody else altogether. Even if I never become someone’s mom or change my career or move to Idaho. My identity is different because the world responds to my physical appearance differently. And their response inadvertently changes how I see myself. And that’s kind of … crazy.”
“It is,” I said. “But we redefine ourselves. We evolve. That’s what people do.”
“But I want to evolve because I evolve. I don’t want other people to choose when that happens for me.”
She had a point. And I had to wonder if I was evolving. Or if this thing with Hayes was just one giant step back. Never mind how people were viewing it.
The DJ was playing Justin Timberlake, king of the boy band graduates. Justin, who had somehow settled down and was about to become a father. Clearly, he’d evolved.
“I think aging is hard for everyone.” Amara swiped a red bliss potato with crème fra?che and caviar off a passing tray. “But it’s definitely harder for women. And I think even more so for beautiful women. Because if so much of your identity and your value is tied up in your looks and how the world responds to your physical appearance, what do you do when that changes? How do you see yourself then? Who do you become?”
I paused, attempting to process all of it. Hayes was on the screen. His features blown up to ridiculous proportions, and the symmetry still, like art. His beauty clearly defining him. “I think I’m going to need more to drink.”
She laughed, popping the potato in her mouth. “Don’t worry. You have a couple more years left. Things don’t really start falling apart until forty-two.”
*
We spotted each other at the same time. He was engaged in conversation with two fetching twenty-somethings who were clearly smitten. But he waved and I inclined my head, and then he dismissed them before making his way over.
Oliver.
“This one is so fucking cute,” Amara said under her breath as he approached.
“Let it go. He’s trouble. But he does know his art.”
“Murakami.” She smiled. “You can just look at him and be happy.”
She’d said it casually, a throwback to an earlier conversation. But something about it resonated. Finding joy in art.
“Solène Marchand.” Oliver grinned. That he knew my last name threw me.
“Oliver Hoyt-Knight. This is my girlfriend Amara Winthrop. Amara, Oliver.”
He greeted her before turning his attention back to me. “Hi.”
“Hi.” I leaned in to kiss his cheek. And it wasn’t until he reached out for my waist that I realized I’d made a mistake.
“You look stunning,” he said in my ear, low.
I pulled back, and made a point of announcing loudly, “You clean up quite nicely yourself.”
He laughed.
“That’s a joke, Amara. Oliver always looks like this. When you first learn to tell them apart, you learn that Oliver is the dandy one.”
He was wearing a charcoal-gray three-piece suit, a dark tie, a coordinating pocket square. Posh sex on a stick.
“Who told you that? Beverly?”
“Is she your wardrobe person? Yes, then, Beverly.”
His hand was still on my hip.
“Also, we look nothing alike,” he said, hazel eyes piercing.
“Where’s your girlfriend?”
“She couldn’t make it. Exams.”
“I’m sorry.”
He let loose my waist then, sipped from his glass. “It is what it is.”
Amara spoke suddenly, and the fact that I’d nearly forgotten she was there was telling. “Dominic and Sylvia D’Amato are over at the bar. I’m going to say hello.”
It took a second to register: the owners of the Hamptons house. Mrs. D’Amato.
“You know them?”
“Please. They practically pay my mortgage.” She winked. And then I remembered: the Hirst, the Lichtenstein, the Twombly, the Murakami. Gagosian repped them all.
“Oliver, pleasure…” Amara said. “Solène.” She gave me a funny look. “You okay if I leave you for a minute?”
“I’m okay,” I laughed, downing my champagne.
“So,” he said once she was gone, “are you having fun?”
“Yes.”
“Are you being taken care of?”
“I am, thank you.”
“Yes, I heard.” He smiled, swilling again from his drink. “Thinner walls than you would think at the Mandarin Oriental.”
I froze, allowing it to sink in. The ease with which he’d transgressed. As if he’d reached out once again and touched me. “If I’d known you were listening, I would have made an effort to call your name.”
He laughed. It was not the response he was expecting. “Well, maybe next time I can watch.”
“Me?… Or Hayes?”
Oliver tensed. “What do you think?”
“I think it says something that I’m asking you to clarify.”
He stared at me for a moment. And then he smiled. It hurt that he was so good-looking, and still managed to be such an ass.
“Well, you know where to find me. When you’re ready for an upgrade…”
“I love your audacity, Oliver. I’m going to be nice to you, because I know how much you mean to Hayes. And because I like Charlotte. And because you’re cute. But I’m not going to let you cross the line…”
He paused, smiled, swilled from his glass. “I think you already have.”
“Ollie!” A voice called from off to the side.
He looked over, and I followed his line of sight to a striking young woman approaching us in a peacock-green dress. I took her for a model, but then thought she seemed far too self-possessed. And he seemed far too adoring.
“Hey.” She hugged him, mussed his hair. He kissed her cheek. And then I realized.
“Solène, do you know my sister, Penelope? Pen, this is Solène. She’s a friend of Hayes.” It seemed to me he said it pointedly, but I could not be certain as to why.
She was stunning.
She had her brother’s height and arresting hazel eyes, but the similarities ended there. She was sexier than I’d pictured, riper, darker, fuller lips. A young boy’s wet dream. I wanted to high-five Hayes’s fourteen-year-old self. I imagined his joy. And then it dawned on me that she may have very well been the prototype. The original Hayes fantasy.