by Robinne Lee
And in the other corner, the French girls, Émilie and Carine. I’d mistaken them for twins, but Hayes disabused me of that notion. They were locals, friends of Rory, delightfully pretty and ridiculously young, in matching black bikini bottoms. And sunglasses.
“Ça va?” I nodded toward them. I’d grown up summering with girls like this. I had only stopped being intimidated once I’d realized that the particularly aggressive mixture of competitive tanning, cigarettes, and Bordeaux caught up with them at around age thirty-two. But I could appreciate them for all their nubile beauty now. I assumed Hayes could as well.
“Avez-vous du feu?” the one with the slightly more perfect breasts asked.
“Non, desolée. Je fume pas.”
“Tant pis, alors.” She tossed her blonde head.
Hayes called to me from the far side of the pool. Someone had set up a lovely spread: crudités, fresh fruit, a selection of chilled drinks. “Rosé?”
“What? No Scotch?” I made my way over to him.
“When in France…”
“So your friend Émilie—”
“Rory’s friend,” he corrected me, pouring the wine.
“Rory’s friend. She just vous-ed me.”
“So?”
“So I’m guessing she thinks I’m your mother. Or that I work here.”
“Really?” he said, handing me a full glass. And then, before I could take a sip, he grabbed my head in both his hands and kissed me firmly on the mouth. “Well … she doesn’t think that now.”
Somehow I’d managed to forget how wonderful his mouth was. Soft, enticing. “You should probably do that again. Just to be sure.”
“Just to be sure,” he repeated. And then he obliged me.
When he eventually pulled away, I could feel the girls’ eyes on us. Even Charlotte, who was still cracking pistachios.
“Not that that wasn’t fun,” he said, soft, “but you probably shouldn’t care what she thinks.
“Come.” He grabbed his glass. “Let’s go for a walk.”
“The French girls, what are they? Twelve?” I asked once out of earshot.
He laughed. “Eighteen.”
“You know that for a fact?”
“Desmond checked their IDs.”
I paused for a moment, making sense of it. “Is that what Desmond does? Does Desmond check IDs?”
Hayes smiled. “No one on the premises under eighteen. That’s the rule.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “No one asked for my ID.”
“I vouched for you. Come here.” He took my chin in his free hand and kissed me. “Twelve…” He laughed.
“They look twelve to me.”
“Isabelle is twelve. Isabelle is not that. Yet.”
I gave him one of my best withering looks.
“I’m kidding. Isabelle will never be that. She’s going to go from twelve straight to sixty. No stopping in between.”
I looked back toward the pool then. One of the girls was oiling the other’s back. Was this real life? “Aahhh, France…”
Hayes smiled, wide. “It’s like a gift.”
“I imagine it is. I imagine being in a boy band is like a gift as well.”
“Sometimes.” He sipped from his glass.
“Only sometimes? When is it not a gift?”
“When the woman you’re trying to impress reminds you that you’re in a boy band.”
“Touché,” I said. We were making the trek across the lawn down toward the south corner of the property. “Are you trying to impress me?”
“Was that not apparent?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
“But you didn’t bring any bags.”
“I’ve got this.” I smiled, proffering my purse: the Céline hobo bag in chamois, perfect for everything but holding a change of clothes.
“Does it have a toothbrush in it?”
“You’re bad—”
“If not, I’m not interested.”
“You would fuck me even if I didn’t bring a toothbrush.”
Hayes stopped in his tracks, pushing his sunglasses up on his head. “You just used the f-word.”
“Imagine that…”
“I have been. For two months now,” he admitted. “You realize this changes everything, right? I was trying to be a gentleman, but why bother?”
I smiled, swilling the wine. “I like that you’re a gentleman.”
“You, Solène Marchand, are very complex. Which I find incredibly appealing.”
“Like unfolding a flower?”
It took a moment, and then he remembered, smiling. “Like unfolding a flower.”
A sudden glare of light ahead caught our attention, and Hayes and I looked up to see a golf cart careening toward us from the direction of what I assumed were the tennis courts. Rory was at the wheel, Oliver beside him, long legs outstretched on the dash, and Raj was seated on the bench in the rear. They made for quite a sight. Bronzed youthful skin, chiseled features. Like they’d rolled out of the pages of a catalog …
“’Ello, chaps!” Rory called, bringing the cart to an abrupt halt alongside us. “Where are you two off to? Hi, I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Rory.”
“Solène.”
“Enchanté,” he said in a thick Yorkshire accent. He had a lopsided grin and random tattoos on his arms, and still I could see the appeal. The dark hooded eyes, the leather necklaces, the scruff on his otherwise youthful face.
“You have actually,” Hayes intervened. “In Las Vegas.”
“This year?”
“How was Switzerland?” Oliver asked, which threw me. We hadn’t spoken since that evening at the Mandalay Bay and here he knew my itinerary. It made me wonder how much these boys shared. My mind flashed back to the Crosby Street Hotel. What, if anything, had Hayes told him?
“Switzerland was lovely, thank you.”
He smiled, nodding slowly. I could not discern what was going on behind his gold-rimmed aviators.
“Good to see you, Solène.” Raj waved. In a polo and madras shorts, he seemed decidedly less business wunderkind and more sixth boy band member.
“Are you guys coming from the pool? Are the twins still there?” Rory raised an eyebrow.
“They’re not twins, you know, mate. They’re not even sisters,” Hayes laughed.
“Let me have the fantasy, man.”
“Simon, Liam, and the others are on their way back,” Raj said. “The match is at six. Benoît is grilling lobster. We can eat at eight. And Croatia and Mexico won’t start until ten.”
I felt like they were speaking in code. “What match?”
“Netherlands and Chile,” Hayes said. And when my expression indicated that I’d registered nothing, he added, “The World Cup.”
“Oh. Right.”
“It’s going to be a hell of a match,” Oliver said. “I hope you’ll stay.”
“We haven’t decided what we’re doing yet,” Hayes said, wrapping his arm around my waist in a manner that struck me as possessive. “We’ll let you know.”
“All right, we’re off!” Rory announced.
“Nice watch,” Raj called back as they peeled out.
Hayes laughed. “She’s keeping it warm for me. I can only wear one at a time!
“We don’t have to stay,” he said once we were alone again. “It’s going to be loud and crazy, and if you’d rather not, I certainly understand. We can go out for dinner. Or we can go back to your hotel, or … whatever makes you most comfortable.”
There was something about Hayes when he was being polite that was such a turn-on. The idea that no matter how famous he was he had this breeding that would endure.
“You know what? Why don’t we go to your room?” Even as I said it, I could feel my face flushing. It was not like me. But none of this had been. I was redefining. This was me trying to enjoy myself. This was me trying not to care.
His eyes widened. “Now?”
“Yes. Now. Why? Is it not tidy?” I smiled up at hi
m.
“Oh … it’s tidy.”
“Well, good then.”
“I just thought you wouldn’t want to … see it … so early in the day.”
“Well, we’re just looking at it, right?” I said, polishing off the rosé.
“Yep.” He nodded, all dimples. “We’re just looking at it.”
* * *
It didn’t take long to trek back to the house and up to Hayes’s suite. It was, like everything else at Domaine La Dilecta, lavishly decorated: an eclectic mixture of furniture, various objets d’art, trompe l’oeil on the walls.
“So this is where the magic happens,” I said, tossing my bag on an armchair in the corner. There was a sunken alcove off the main room, bright with magnificent wraparound views.
Hayes laughed, setting down his wine. “Magic? No pressure or anything.”
“None at all. Goodness, it’s like Versailles in here.”
“I think they were going for a thing.”
“A thing?” I approached him.
“A thing,” he repeated, reaching out for my waist and pulling me into him. “You are so fucking beautiful.”
“You said the f-word.”
“You started.”
“Maybe.” I flinched. His fingers had found their way beneath the hem of my blouse and were surprisingly cool against my skin.
“Are my hands cold? Sorry,” he said, but he did not remove them.
I stood there, breathing him in. Wondering at how effortlessly he managed to span my waist, making me feel fragile, breakable almost. His thumbs tracing over my bottom ribs, and alternately fondling the material of my shirt.
“I like this top,” he said.
The blouse was white, sleeveless, sheer in some places, ruffled in others, and altogether very feminine. I felt like a girl in it, which is admittedly why I’d bought it for this trip. So that I would not look like someone’s mother.
“Are you just going to stand there counting my ribs, or are you going to kiss me?”
He smiled at that, his eyes decidedly green. “You like me kissing you.”
“Well, I did come all this way…”
“I thought you came to return my watch.”
“You want it back?”
He shook his head. “I just want to look at you for a moment.”
“You’ve been looking at me for over an hour.”
“Yeah, but before I was trying not to be obvious about it. Come here.” He led me over to the daybed against the far wall and pulled me onto his lap.
I could feel him through his pants. Oh, the wonders of twenty.
“You want to be kissed, Solène?” His hands were in my hair, pushing it off my face, cradling my neck.
“Yes.” I nodded. “You think you can handle that?”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
* * *
We had not been at it for five minutes when I was distracted by a series of calls coming in to my phone. I could hear it vibrating in my purse. Across the room, in the chair, while Hayes’s mouth was on my neck, his hands up the back of my blouse. I attempted to ignore it.
The calls then switched to the text signal, one after another. I pulled away from him for a moment, trying to do the math. What time was it in Los Angeles? Boston?
“Do you want to get that?” His hands were on my breasts, over my bra, his thumbs rubbing my nipples through the sheer material. Black, silk, ridiculously overpriced, purchased expressly for this trip. Getting that was the last thing I wanted to do.
Eight twenty-five a.m., I registered. Eleven twenty-five Eastern. “No.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Okay.” He smiled and slowly lifted off my blouse. “Hiiii.” That face.
“Hi, yourself.”
His finger hooked beneath the shoulder strap of my bra, before running down over my breastbone and dipping inside the demi cup. Teasing. He looked up, as if to check in with me, before pushing the material to the side and lowering his head. My breath caught, his tongue on my nipple. Fuck fuck fuck. What was it about being with him that made me feel as if everything were happening for the first time?
My fingers entwined in his hair as he unhooked the clasp and cupped my breasts in his hands.
“God, everything about you is perfect,” he said. It was precisely what an almost forty-year-old woman wanted to hear about her breasts.
I was reveling in the smell of his hair and the feel of his mouth when I heard it again, my phone. Dammit.
I waited for two more text alerts before I attempted to stop him. “Hayes … Hayes.”
He lifted his head, slow.
“I should probably make sure that’s not an emergency.”
He nodded, his eyes holding mine as he completed removing the bra and placed it beside him on the bed. “Go,” he said, coy. “But come back to me.”
* * *
There were three missed calls and voicemails from Isabelle. Followed by five texts:
Where are you?
Please call me!!
It’s urgent!!!
Mom!!!!!!!
Mommy!!!!!
Shit.
“I’m sorry. I have to take this. It’s Isabelle.”
He was reclining on the daybed, arms clasped behind his lovely head, long legs hanging off the edge. “Do what you have to do. I’ll wait.”
She answered in a tizzy. Frenetic, which was not typical of her behavior.
“Heeey. What’s happening?”
“Why aren’t you here?”
“Because, honey, I had to come for Basel. You know that. Is everything okay? What’s going on?” I had this feeling in the pit of my stomach that it had happened, that Daniel had proposed. And that I was going to have to be strong for her, six thousand miles away and topless. And that I was going to have to lie and tell her that it wasn’t going to change anything, even though deep down I knew it would. And that Hayes was going to be witness to it all.
I folded my arm across my “everything about you is perfect” breasts and prepared for the worst.
“You should be here.” She’d begun to cry. “I need you.”
“Izz … what happened?”
“I got my period.”
I sank into the armchair then, relieved. “Izz, that’s great. That’s wonderful. Congratulations!”
“It’s not wonderful. You’re not here.”
“I know, honey, I’m sorry. But we thought there was a good chance it was going to happen this summer when you were in Maine anyway.” This was me trying to deflect the fact that I was an absentee mother out gallivanting in the South of France with rock stars while my daughter was experiencing her first true coming-of-age milestone. I sucked.
She was quiet for a moment. I was staring out at the lawn, the long drive winding down the hill, so much green.
“It got on the sheets,” she whispered.
“It’s okay, you can wash them. Use cold water. But do it now, okay. Don’t wait.”
“And I don’t have any, like, stuff here.”
“We’ll take care of that. Where’s Daddy?”
“He’s out running.”
“All right. He can swing by the drugstore before work.”
“I’m not telling him.”
I could feel her getting worked up again over the phone. “Isabelle, he’s your father.”
“He’s a guy.”
I smiled at that, looking over into the alcove. A guitar case was propped up against the far wall. Hayes was in the same position on the daybed, eyes closed. I wasn’t sure if he was sleeping or just lying very still, listening. “Honey, he’s your dad. He’s not just a guy. I promise.”
“No, I’m not telling him.” She paused. “You tell him.”
“Okay, I’ll tell him—”
“No, don’t tell him.”
I laughed. “Where’s Eva?”
“In the shower, I think.”
I hated going this route. I hated knowing that she would be
the one to hug her first, to share knowing looks and nudges and traipse with her through the aisles of CVS in search of Always with Wings. Like some chummy big sister or cool aunt and not the intellectual property tramp who was fucking her father. But it was not to be avoided.
“Do you feel comfortable talking to Eva?” I asked.
She was quiet for a moment. “I don’t know. I guess…”
“She’s not a guy.”
“She’s not my mom.”
That hurt and felt good at the same time. “I’m sorry I’m not there, Izz. Truly. I’m sorry. I love you.”
“I love you, too. Hurry up and come home, okay?”
Just then a black Range Rover came pulling up the drive followed by two smaller cars. Simon and Liam were back. The thought arose that maybe they could see into this window.
“I’ll see you Thursday, in Boston. And we’ll celebrate. Promise.”
“Okay,” she sighed. “Have fun. Don’t work too hard.”
The last bit was like twisting the knife.
“Bisous,” she said.
“Bisous.”
“Everything okay?” Hayes asked when I sat beside him on the bed.
“Yeah.”
“Girl stuff?”
I smiled, nodding. “She would die if she knew you knew.”
“I won’t tell her then.” He reached up to stroke my hair, his movements slow, lethargic.
“Your friends are back.”
“Yeah. The match is starting soon.”
“I don’t think this is going to happen right now,” I laughed, awkward, my arms still across my breasts. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.” He smiled. “It couldn’t be avoided. I’m sorry for Isabelle that you weren’t there.”
I felt my chest tighten then, and for a second I thought I might cry. “I’m sorry, too.”
“Come here.” He pulled me onto him. “Come lie down with me for five minutes. Before the madness…”
“The madness?”
He nodded. “There’s always madness.”
* * *
Hayes was right. There was a certain level of madness. Simon and Liam were loud, crazy. They’d returned from their jet-ski outing with two girls. Apiece. I wasn’t certain whether they’d just met them or they were prior acquaintances. I did not want to ask. But I had this moment of “What the fuck am I doing here?” followed by “Where are these girls’ mothers?” And I felt an intense need to chaperone them all.