I flew down to Buenos Aires the following Sunday to meet up with the band. In my absence, they’d performed in Peru, Chile, and Paraguay, with sightseeing detours to Machu Picchu and Chile’s Lake District. Hayes had been enthusiastic at the beginning, but his excitement had started to wane.
“It’s a little stifling here,” he’d said via phone, late Saturday night from Paraguay. “It’s been nearly impossible for us to get out because the crowds have been so deep. We go straight from the airport to the hotel and from the hotel to the venue and then back, and all the things that I’d hoped to see I’m not seeing. In Santiago, there were about seven hundred fans outside of the hotel and they refused to disperse. The other night they sang through all three of our albums, beginning to end. With Chilean accents. It was quite charming. But loud. And I got no sleep.”
“Métro, boulot, dodo,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“It’s a French saying. You get up, you go to work, you go home, you go to sleep. It’s kind of what the rest of the world does. Not what you signed up for, huh?”
He laughed at that. “I guess not, no.”
*
By the time I reached the Four Seasons in Buenos Aires, it was almost eleven-thirty on Monday morning and the guys had already departed for their sound check. It was just as well, because I relished the opportunity to take a much-needed shower and crawl into our bed and sleep.
I awoke some hours later to Hayes’s body sliding up against mine, his arm wrapping around my waist, drawing me into his warmth. Like being in a womb. His breath soft at the back of my neck.
“You came back to me,” his lips buzzed my ear.
“Of course I did. Liam.”
He laughed.
“Wait. Whose room is this?”
“Mr. Marchand’s.”
“Crap. I might be in the wrong room.”
He smiled, rolling me over to face him. “Hiiii.”
“Hi.”
“You want to come with me to an August Moon concert tonight?”
“It depends…” I said.
“It depends?”
“Do I have good seats?”
His finger was tracing my cheekbone. “You can sit on my face.”
“Okay. In that case I’ll come.”
*
The Estadio José Amalfitani was a massive stadium in the Liniers neighborhood of Buenos Aires that held just shy of fifty thousand people. August Moon had managed to sell it out two nights in a row. We arrived a few hours before showtime and already thousands of girls had lined up in the large thoroughfare leading to the structure. More fans than I had ever seen congregated in one place. The band and their entourage traveled by caravan: nine vans interspersed with motorcycle police. The cavalcade winding its way through throngs of screaming girls. Barriers holding back crowds near the hotel and the stadium. This was what Desmond had been referring to when he talked about Peru being crazy. This unimaginable level of idolatry and pandemonium. It was hard to wrap one’s mind around. I sat there in the van, holding Hayes’s hand and watching the madness unfold on either side of us, wondering what was going through his head. How did one even begin to process something like this? How?
He leaned into me then, sensing my anxiety. “You’ll get used to it, Sol.”
He said it so reassuringly, but I knew—I could never get used to this.
*
Inside, beneath the stadium, was a maze of winding tunnels. Utilitarian rooms and dank corridors that went on and on. The guys were set up in a series of large dressing rooms: wardrobe, hair and makeup, catering, a space for their band. I watched them prep and dress and psych one another up and carouse with their stylists and their handlers, and they struck me as young again, frenzied, like high school boys before a big game.
In the final minutes before they went on, when the guys were lining up and the crowd was so loud the ceiling seemed to be shaking, Hayes took me aside and handed me a box.
“Open this,” he said, “before we go onstage.” He was fiddling with the power pack at the back of his jeans and its accompanying belt.
“You bought me a gift?”
“Just something I promised I would get you … a very long time ago.” He leaned in and kissed me then, before backing up down the long corridor, security detail flanking his sides. “I love you. Enjoy the show.”
I watched him follow his bandmates around the bend until I could not see him anymore and he was sucked into the reverberating walls and the chants of fifty thousand girls. And only then did I open the box. Inside was a pair of noise-reducing headphones and a note: I told you there’d be a next time.
And so it was that I was just one of the many females in Buenos Aires that night crying over Hayes Campbell.
*
I fought my jet lag to make it to the hotel gym the next morning, and on the way back up to the room, I found myself alone in an elevator with Oliver. Even before the doors closed, I could feel the tension.
“How was your workout?” he asked. Like Hayes, his voice was gruff after a show.
“Fine, thank you.”
“Good.” He stood directly across from me on the opposite side of the lift. Long arms folded across his chest, eyes piercing. “You look good.”
“Really?” I laughed. “All wet and sweaty?”
“All wet and sweaty.” He smiled. “Is that how he likes you?”
I stiffened. And then I remembered we were in an elevator and there were cameras and he would not touch me. Here.
“I thought you weren’t supposed to be talking to me,” I said.
“I think the ban was lifted.”
“Did you lift it yourself?”
He shrugged.
“Why do you insist on fucking with me, Oliver?”
“Because I can.” He smiled, sly. “Because you let me. Guys will try to get away with as much as they think they can get away with. Even if it means screwing their friends. Ask your boyfriend. He wrote the book.”
And in that moment I knew. He knew about Hayes and Penelope. He was just biding his time.
The doors were opening on the seventh floor. One of the band’s security was standing watch. Omnipresent.
“I do find it sweet that you’re rather loyal. You get points for that,” Oliver said, stepping out. And then, just before the doors closed, he turned back to me. “Because most of the others … weren’t.”
*
I did not bring it up with Hayes immediately. Partly because I was being selfish and I wanted us to enjoy each other’s company without anything dark or subversive hanging over us. And partly because I did not want him to hurt. They were living in such close quarters, performing together every night. The very nature of their success made it imperative that they get along. But at the same time, I did not want Hayes to be blindsided. And I remembered what he’d said in Anguilla. That, given the chance, he thought Oliver would hurt him. And knowing that, I could not put it off for long.
*
On Wednesday, we flew private to Uruguay. Hayes and I sat toward the back of the jet, along with Simon and Liam, and when he excused himself to go to the loo, I took the opportunity to scold them.