“I am.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
And so we danced. And we drank. And we did not leave until close to three. Rory and Simon with two girls apiece. And I was not sure if they were wing women or what, but they certainly seemed committed. There were some high-level machinations as we slipped out through the back entrance to pile into our ride, and the girls left separately and took a cab to the hotel, where Trevor met them in the lobby, and it all felt so sordid and rehearsed, I wondered who they thought they were fooling.
*
“I’m sorry I’m keeping you from having two girls tonight.”
Hayes laughed. “Is that what you’re doing?”
We were back in our suite, on the sixteenth floor. Hayes was seated on the Knoll-style leather sofa, and I was standing above him, my hands on either side of his shoulders, my knee between his legs.
“You should be out there having fun.”
“Do you think I’m not having fun?”
“You’re twenty-one.”
“I know how old I am.” His hands were moving over the skirt of my dress, slipping beneath the hem, traveling up the backs of my thighs. He was drunk. We both were.
I kissed him. He tasted of rum and lime and sugar and happiness. And I wanted to lock it away and remember it forever.
His hands moved to my shoulders, and with little effort he peeled off my spaghetti straps and unhooked the back of my dress, freeing my breasts.
“What would I do with four boobs anyway if I only have one mouth?”
I laughed. His tongue was already at my nipple. “I think you’d figure something out.”
“Probably. But it wouldn’t be as fun without you.”
I was quiet then, listening to my own breath, smelling his hair. He had one hand on my breast and the other had returned to beneath my skirt, ascending, expertly tugging off my thong.
His eyes met mine. “See, right now I would just be learning their names and trying to keep them straight. I already know your name. We can skip all the formalities.”
I smiled, untangling myself from him, kneeling down and undoing his belt. He watched me, his eyes glazed, a half smile playing over his lips. I unfastened his pants and undid the zipper, and his penis was so unfathomably hard it seemed to me even larger than it was when we’d had sex earlier. And it was large then. There was something so appealing about the head cresting out of his underwear. Like a gift.
“Fuck, I love you,” I said, reaching into his pants.
“And see, that would be weird coming from the two girls I did not know,” he snickered.
“I love this dick.”
“I know you do.”
“I’m going to miss this dick.”
“It’s not going anywhere.”
“It’s going to Australia when I go to New York.”
“But then we’ll wait for you in Japan. I promise. Are you crying? Fuck, don’t cry.”
“I’m not crying,” I said. But I was.
“You’re not allowed to cry with my dick in your mouth … Solène.” His hand was in my hair. “That’s not cool. That’s really going to kill it for me.”
I laughed, wiping my eyes. “I’m sorry. Okay. Let’s do this.”
*
He came quickly. And I found myself appreciating the pineapple-and-mint juice he’d had at lunch.
“I fucking love you,” he said, after. His hands at the sides of my face, his mouth on mine. “You’re going to come to Japan, right? You promise?”
“I promise.”
“You’re not going to change your mind.”
“I’m not going to change my mind. I promise.”
Hayes wrestled out of his pants and hiked up my skirt, pulling me onto his lap. His thickness sliding into me. No recovery time necessary. And as inebriated as I was, I was glad I had the wherewithal to retain all that happened that night. Because I knew, in my heart, that we would not last. And because every moment of it was extraordinary.
*
I did not hear how the fight started.
Sunday evening, we were backstage at the Estádio do Morumbi, a stadium that held no fewer than sixty-five thousand attendees. It was the guys’ second night playing to a sold-out crowd in S?o Paulo. They’d already been through hair and makeup, and a meet-and-greet. Following their vocal warm-up, they were hanging in one of the dressing rooms, waiting to go on. Liam was doing push-ups, and Rory was strumming his guitar and sucking on a lollipop, and Simon and Hayes were chatting about something or another, their voices alternating between low whispers and loud guffaws. Oliver was standing not far from them. He’d been reading up until that point and had just put down his book. How he went from zero to sixty with fifteen minutes to showtime was beyond me. And as always there was the hum: the stomping and shrieking of the fans, the bass of the opening local band, the vibrations in the walls.
I had managed to tune it all out while composing work emails from my spot in the corner. It had come to be my ritual: attempting to run a business from backstage. And then I heard it, the shift in tone.
“Yes, Hayes is very good at keeping secrets. Aren’t you, Hayes?” Oliver had said.
“What does that mean?”
“I think you know what it means.”
“Do you have something you want to say to me? Then say it,” Hayes spat.
There was a measured pause, and then: “I knew, you bastard. I knew.”
My hairs bristled. They were doing this. Now.
“It was a long fucking time ago.”
“That’s not what I heard,” Oliver said. “I heard it was as recently as last year…”
The room fell quiet. Rory stopped strumming; Liam ceased to move. And I realized two things: none of the others knew what was going on, and I knew less than I thought I did.
“Who told you that?” Hayes said, slow, sharp.
“Don’t worry about it, mate. Just know that I know.”
“Who fucking told you that?”
Oliver turned to face him then, direct. “She did.”
“No, she didn’t.”
“She did. She said, and I quote, ‘Yeah, I shagged him, it was no big deal.’”
There was a second where I saw my boyfriend flinch. The slightest twinge in the corner of his left eye. I couldn’t be certain as to whether the others saw it, but to me, it said everything.
“She didn’t say that.”
“Really? You want to ring her? Ask?”
“Fuck you.”
“Fuck me? You sleep with my sister and you have the nerve to say fuck me? Fuck you, Hayes. Fuck you and your always getting your fucking way.”
“All right, enough.” Simon stood, wedging himself between them. Arms outstretched, making the most of his rower wingspan. “We’re onstage in fifteen minutes. Everyone just fucking calm down.”
But I could see Hayes still smarting, and I knew that was not going to happen.
“Really?” he said, taunting. “Was it me getting my way? Or your sister getting hers?”
Oliver’s eyes narrowed. And then, unexpectedly, he began to laugh. “Hayes Campbell. Doesn’t play well with others.”