He was turning away, a smug smile on his aristocratic face, when Hayes spoke. His voice low, but clear enough for us all to hear: “At least not in the way you’d like me to.”
There was a moment of quiet while we were all registering what Hayes had said, and then it happened in a flash. And I think none of us was more surprised than Oliver, the elegant. He spun around, his arm whipping back and then flying over Simon’s shoulder, catching Hayes in the center of his perfect face. It wasn’t skilled or pretty, but it had the desired effect. There was a popping sound and then blood … everywhere.
“Fuck!!”
“Holy shit!!!” Rory jumped on the other side of the room.
“Fuck! Fuck!! Fuck!!!”
“Raj!!!!!!” Liam yelled. A bit like a girl, I thought.
“Holy shit!”
“What the fuck?” Simon pushed Oliver in the chest, and he stumbled back onto the floor. “What the fuck are you doing?”
And Hayes, in the middle of it all, both hands to his nose, eyes wide and unbelieving, and the blood dripping down his forearms and his chin, onto his Saint Laurent shirt. And his boots, his favorite boots.
“You fucking hit me? You little bitch.”
I jumped up and grabbed a towel from the stack over by Petra’s table and went to him. “Tip your head back.”
“This fucking hurts.”
“I know, honey. I’m sorry. Come, sit. Liam, go find Raj or Andrew and tell them we need a medic. Rory, get us some ice. Now!”
Simon helped us over to the couch along the near wall, rolling a towel to support Hayes’s head. When he was done, he stepped back, watching me, a wry smile on his chiseled face.
“What?”
“You’re like the hot mum I never had.”
“Really? Not the ‘disappointed mum’?”
“Campbell.” He leaned over Hayes and gave him two thumbs up. “It’s like the MILF fantasy and the nurse fantasy rolled into one.”
“Simon…”
“Also, high-five on Penelope.”
“Simon, go away. And change your shirt. There’s blood on your shirt.”
“Change it for what? It’s not like we can go on without him.” He spun around to nail Oliver on the other side of the room. “You are in so much fucking trouble, HK.”
Andrew appeared then at the door with Liam and three security detail. “What the bloody hell happened?”
For a second no one spoke. Oliver stood with his arms crossed looking contrite. Simon shook his head. Hayes’s eyes were closed.
“Apparently, Hayes shagged his sister,” Liam said. And that was all he said.
Andrew’s look was incredulous. “Today?”
“Fuck,” Hayes said.
“I think a long time ago,” Simon volunteered.
“And they chose to fight over it today? There are sixty-five thousand girls out there who have paid good money and are screaming your names and waiting for you to go on in fifteen minutes, and this happens now? Are you mad?”
“No,” Hayes said, his voice muffled by the towel. “No more so than usual.”
*
August Moon went on without Hayes. Oliver had managed to fracture a bone in his nose, which swelled quickly, efficiently rendering Hayes’s voice useless for the next several hours. The show started almost forty minutes late, the guys scrambling with their vocal coach to see who would take which solos and which, if any, harmonies could possibly be rearranged in such little time. They pulled it off. Between the fans singing along loudly to everything, and screaming in the moments when they weren’t singing, Hayes’s absence was not a total deal breaker.
“Maybe we’re just better as four,” he said.
“Don’t be silly. They need you. They’re not the same without you. This is your brainchild, remember?”
It was later that evening and we were back at the hotel, rehashing the night’s events: the hours in the hospital, the agreed-upon story that he’d tripped and fallen during a rehearsal, the decision to hold off on realigning anything until he saw a specialist back in the States.
“Isn’t that a little excessive?” I’d asked him in the examining room, when we had a moment to ourselves, Raj stepping out for yet another call, Desmond and two other security guards directly outside the door.
“They’re taking it very seriously,” he’d said.
“Who? Management?”
“Management and…” He’d paused for a second. “Lloyd’s of London. It’s insured, my face.”
I could not help but laugh. “Of course it is, Hayes Campbell. Of course.”
*
But back in the hotel with his face swollen and changing colors, he’d become melancholy.
“Fucking Oliver…” he muttered for the thousandth time.
“You did sleep with his sister, Hayes. What did you expect was going to happen?”
He grunted in response. We were lying in bed, his head propped on a pile of pillows, a latex glove filled with ice straddling the bridge of his nose. He looked ridiculous and yet still darling to me.
“Why would she tell him?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “Maybe she thought it had been so long that he wouldn’t care. Or maybe she was mad at me and it was her way of getting back … I don’t know.”
“I’m sorry.”
He squeezed my hand.
“Why didn’t you tell me it was still going on?”
“It’s not still going on.”
“You slept with her last year.”
“It was before you. Does it matter?”
“You’d made it sound like it hadn’t happened in years…”
He sighed, deep. “It was once last year, Solène. Once. Over the Christmas holiday. It was before I even met you. And evidently, ‘it was no big deal.’ I don’t hold anything you did before me against you, do I? All the dicks you sucked in the nineties…”
“There weren’t many dicks…”
“Whatever. It was before me. I don’t care. Likewise, you shouldn’t care about Penelope.” He shut his eyes then, and for a moment neither of us spoke.
I lay there listening to the whir of the air conditioner. A siren rang in the distance, the pitch unfamiliar—a reminder that I was in a foreign city, far from home.
“What happened with you two, Hayes?”
“You know everything, Solène. There’s nothing more to tell.”
“Not Penelope. Oliver.”
His eyes opened and strained to look at me. “Nothing.”
“I’m not going to judge.”
He was quiet for a long time and then he repeated it. “Nothing.”
I wished I could have believed him. “Okay.” I nodded. “Okay.”
“You once asked me about my biggest secret,” he said, soft. “I told you what it was. Any others … are not mine to tell.”
*
In the morning, we flew to Rio. Hayes’s face an inspiring palette of purple and blue. And while the rest of the guys snuck out to see a couple of the sights, we stayed behind at the hotel, icing.