Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die.
The lengthy missives on Instagram: the questioning of my worthiness; the intra-group fighting among Augies; the damaged, the deranged. “Famewhore. You’re only after his money. You’re not even that pretty.” “Be nice to her. If she makes Hayes happy, shouldn’t that be what matters?” “I’m angry okay. I’m angry that I’ve been supporting him for 3 fucking years and then a fucking old bitch comes and ruins everything…” “Step off hayes” “Every time I cut myself I think of you. Hope your happy.”
And even those that were written with the best of intentions scared me, scarred me. “Just remember when you hold his hand, you are holding the entire universe. Please don’t break him.”
In the end, I froze all my accounts.
*
We hired security for the opening on Hayes’s suggestion. It was a larger turnout than we’d ever had previously. There were myriad girls crowded on the sidewalk in front of the gallery and a handful of paparazzi, who I’m guessing were disappointed to learn that my boyfriend was on the other side of the Atlantic. It was a huge nuisance, but we sold out the show in record time. And Lulit could not complain about that.
On Sunday, Georgia came over to hang out with Isabelle. They locked themselves in her room, and I could hear them laughing, and it sounded to me so sweet, so rare. And I wondered what it was Georgia had said or done to finally bring my daughter around.
Earlier in the week, I’d approached her. When the photos, albeit somewhat sanitized, ran in Us Weekly and People and the others, I could no longer just pretend it was not happening. I could not imagine the toll it was taking on her at school.
“I need to talk to you about what’s going on,” I’d said, sitting on one of her Moroccan poufs.
“I don’t want to talk about it…”
“I know you don’t, Izz. But it’s kind of a big deal and I don’t want you to have all these emotions bottled up inside. I can only imagine what’s going through your head.”
She looked over to me from her perch on her bed, beneath the “Keep Calm and Carry On” poster, and beside the nightstand where our meet-and-greet photo used to lie. She’d shredded it back in November.
“You’re an adult,” she said. “He’s an adult. You can do whatever you want, right? It’s not my business.”
It was not the response I was expecting. She sounded so mature, so altered. My little bird.
“I’m sorry it’s so public, Izz. I’m sorry it’s everywhere. That was never my intention.”
She shrugged. “He’s famous. That’s what happens when you’re famous.”
I nodded, slow. Who had she become? Wise and jaded.
“Hayes is really special to me, Isabelle. He makes me happy. And those people out there, the media and fans and whoever … they’re going to make it sound ugly. And what Hayes and I have is not ugly. I need you to understand that.”
She nodded then. “I’m trying, Mom. I’m trying.”
*
Leah came to pick Georgia up at the end of the girls’ playdate. She arrived with a bottle of Sancerre and chocolaty chocolate-chunk cookies from the Farmshop. “Let’s go admire your view,” she said.
We sat out on the patio, wrapped in blankets, watching the sun dip. I wanted to believe the bearing of sugar and alcohol was a friendly gesture, but I feared that as a former attorney and now president of Windwood’s parent association, she might have different intentions.
“So … are they asking us to leave the school?”
She smiled. “No.”
“Are they giving me a slap on the wrist and saying ‘Please don’t engage in sex acts with almost-minors in public places’?”
Leah laughed. She had warm nut-brown skin, her daughter’s curls. “Solène, you were on a private boat in the middle of the Caribbean. That hardly counts as a public place. In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s what the Caribbean was made for. Guys in the music industry have been having sex on boats in the Caribbean since the dawn of time. Mick Jagger, Tommy Lee, Diddy, Jay Z…”
I smiled. “You just assembled that list yourself?”
“Yes. And now, Hayes Campbell…” She grew serious then. “No one is talking about it.”
“You’re lying to me.”
“I’m telling you the truth. No one is talking about it. And if they are, they won’t be for long. In the ranking of scandals at L.A. private schools, yours rates pretty low. There are parents sleeping with other parents, and tenth graders going to rehab for porn addiction. There are eighth graders sexting and English teachers behaving inappropriately with underage girls and toxic crumb rubber on elementary school soccer fields. This is nothing. It’s cunnilingus on a boat. It’s not murder.”
I smiled at that. But as light as Leah made it sound, I knew things were not as breezy for my daughter.
“Has Georgia mentioned it to you at all? What’s going on at school … what Isabelle might be going through…”
“Barely. You know this age: secretive…”
I nodded, my eyes fixed on the water. “I want to know what the other kids are saying. To her. I assume they’re saying something.”
“Have you asked her?”
“She doesn’t want to talk about it.”
Leah nodded, picking at her cookie. “Does she have someone else she can talk to? Professionally?”
She’d said it tentatively, but I bristled at the implication. I did not want Isabelle to have to return to therapy because of this. Because of me. Because that would mean I’d failed her. And I would end it before it came to that.
“No,” I said. “I’m not ready to go there. Yet.”
*
Hayes came into town the last week of January. The guys had a bunch of press and meetings leading up to the Grammys and then they were heading to South America to embark on the Wise or Naked world tour. And there seemed to be no way to stop it. Time.
On Thursday night we celebrated his birthday with a festive dinner at Bestia. The restaurant was in an industrial space in the Arts District downtown. A converted warehouse turned foodie mecca. We were tucked away at the back of the patio. Hayes and I, the rest of the band, Raj, Desmond, Fergus, and a pretty redhead who answered to the name of Jemma and clung to Liam’s arm.
It was a fun evening: the cocktails, potent; the lights, low; the food, divine. The boys were loud and happy, and after so many phone calls fraught with tension, it was lovely to see Hayes once again at peace and comfortable in his skin.
He did not let go of me, his hand touching some part of my being throughout the night. I turned to him at one point when his thumb was tracing the inside of my wrist.
“You missed me,” I said, low. My face at his collarbone, inhaling his scent.
“I missed you. Is it obvious?”
I nodded. “You’re very touchy-feely. Even for you.”
He tipped my chin up to his face then and kissed me. As if we weren’t in a crowded restaurant. As if we didn’t already stand out as the table with the current most visible band in the world. As if we were not just in every tabloid on six continents blasted for our public display of affection. He kissed me as if none of that mattered.