*
On Monday, having sufficiently christened all the rooms in the house, we ventured out to explore the island. And sitting beside him, in our rented jeep, the wind in our hair, his arms bronzed and beautiful maneuvering the stick shift, driving on the left side of the road, felt like some kind of teenage fantasy realized. The boyfriend I never had in high school. And as trite as it sounded, I was content to live in that moment. Me, with my middle-aged self.
We spent the afternoon at a small whisper of a beach called Mimi’s Bay on the east end of the island. We’d whiled away an hour at the Anguilla Heritage Museum earlier, and Mimi’s was a stone’s throw away. It was secluded and required a drive up a barely navigable dirt road and a hike through brush to get there. Our entire MO on this trip was to not be identified. And when we arrived on the strip of white sand and found ourselves alone, Hayes high-fived me. Who knew he’d find such joy in escaping his celebrity?
*
“Remember the first time I was at your place and you told me not to do the baby-fantasy thing with you?”
It came out of nowhere. After swimming and sunning and downing the picnic lunch Hyacinth, our cook, had prepared, we were prostrate on our blanket, soaking up the late-afternoon sun, and he brought it up. The baby-fantasy thing. He’d managed to remember the exact phrasing.
“Did you just not want me to talk about it? Or did you not want me to imagine it at all?” he continued.
“Both.”
He turned to face me then, taking my hand. “Why does it scare you?”
I could not answer him. I could not tell him that still, even with my heart wedged open and him burrowing inside, even with him professing his love, still there could be no happy ending. That this teenage fantasy I was living out in my head was just that.
He repositioned himself, placing his head on my chest. “Are you just not going to discuss this with me? Are you just going to leave me wondering?”
“I’m forty, Hayes…”
“I know how old you are, Solène. And I imagine I know what’s running through your head…”
“You’re so young.” My hand was in his hair. His thick, beautiful hair. “You have your whole life ahead of you. Don’t rush it.”
He was quiet for a second, staring up at the sky. “Would you ever have another baby?”
“I don’t know … It would have to be the right circumstances. And it would have to happen pretty soon…”
“Did you and Daniel ever want another one?”
“At one point, yeah … but I also wanted to work. And he didn’t want me to do both.”
He took hold of my hand, squeezing it. “I would let you do both.”
It tickled me. That he was so infatuated he was incapable of thinking straight. That he just wanted to make me happy.
I loved him.
I had yet to say it, but I loved him.
*
On Wednesday, New Year’s Eve day, we chartered a fifty-two-foot speedboat to go island-hopping. Hayes nixed St. Barth and Saint-Martin because he wanted to avoid the paparazzi at all costs, so we kept it to a tour of Anguilla and its surrounding islands. We had lobster, we had champagne, we had each other, and we were happy. At some point in the afternoon, our captain, Craig, moored our boat just off the coast of Dog Island, and Hayes and I swam in to explore. It was an uninhabited islet that was so serene and raw in its beauty, we did not want to leave. The sand like talcum, the water an unfathomable blue.
“Let’s buy this place and live here and grow old together,” Hayes said. We were lying on the beach staring out at the sea.
“Like The Blue Lagoon?”
“The what?”
I laughed. That he did not get my pop culture references.
“What? Why are you laughing? Was that a movie?”
“Forget it.”
“Am I too young?”
“You’re not too young,” I said. “You’re perfect.”
*
Later, when we’d swum back out to the boat and were lying on the sun pads in the back, our captain otherwise engaged, Hayes was taking liberties. There were a handful of other boats that had anchored near us, including the sleek catamaran that we’d spotted earlier in the day at Shoal Bay, but none were close enough to detect him tracing the triangles of my bikini top with his finger. His touch at once faint and deliberate.
“Why are your bones all sticking out? You haven’t been doing some crazy juicing thing?”
I watched his hands descend over my ribs. Drops of water from his hair falling and pooling between my breasts. “No. But it might have something to do with the fact that your fans are calling me at work.”
“Are they?” He stopped. “I’m sorry. Are you talking to them?”
I shook my head. “They’re just leaving messages. Letting me know how they feel about me.”
“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I can’t imagine Lulit’s happy.”
“No. Lulit is very much not happy.”
“You should talk to them. Tell them I say hi. Tell them I send my love. Tell them, ‘Hayes says, “All the love,”’” he snickered, his fingers moving once again, traversing my belly, dipping in my navel.
“Are you just trying to make me laugh?”
“I’m trying to make you laugh. I’m sorry. I know you didn’t sign up for this…”
“I signed up for lunch.”
“Lunch, and some polite fingering?”
I laughed. “I thought that’s what lunch was.”
“It’s code, actually.”
“It’s boy band speak?”
“Not all boy bands. Just ours.” He repositioned himself, maneuvering on top of me, spreading my legs. “Dinner is something completely different.”
“Dinner is anal?”
“No, that’s dessert.”
I smiled, my hands exploring his back. Smooth, broad, firm. “I’m too old for this.”
“You keep saying that, but clearly you’re not.”
He lowered his head then to my hip bone and undid the string of my bikini bottom with his teeth.
“You. And your mouth.”
“You like my mouth…”
“… so fucking much.”
He undid the second string. And I remembered we were not alone on the boat.
“Can you see Captain Craig?”
He was pushing aside the fabric, his fingers unclosing me. “This isn’t Captain Craig’s first boat ride. He’s not coming back here. I can assure you.”
I stopped breathing in that moment that he lowered his head. Anticipating his arrival. Knowing how quickly he could make me come.
He did not disappoint. His lips wrapping around my clit, so wonderfully precise. That sucking thing he did. “Hiiii.”
“Hi. So is this dinner, then?”
“No.” He shook his head, letting me feel his tongue. “This is tea.”
I laughed, my hands in his hair, the sun beating down on us, the water lapping at the sides of the boat. His mouth.
Far into the future, when I thought of Anguilla, this was the moment I would think of. Whether I wanted to or not.
*
We stayed in on New Year’s Eve, forgoing celebrations at the Viceroy and Cap Juluca, to avoid the crowds, the madness, the cameras. “I just want it to be the two of us,” he’d expressed on the boat ride back into port. “I just want to be with you. Always.”