by Robinne Lee
“We were playing football on Green, and it was Fifth Form.”
“No, we were Lower Shell that year, because Simon was Upper.”
“Right. And our headmaster said never in the history of the school had he seen such hooliganry. He was quite cross. Not even during the Greaze.”
“We won the hooliganry award. Unofficially.”
This, I was able to detect, was regarding an incident that had happened at school and not with the band, but it was difficult to keep it all sorted. And each time the others got the joke and I didn’t, I felt decidedly American.
Desmond had a raunchy sense of humor and peppered the discussion with sordid tales from the road, mainly the antics of Rory, which were easy enough to follow. Fergus had an infectious laugh, but spoke little. And Charlotte sat, taking it all in, a sweet smile on her delicate face. She clung to Oliver’s hand. And every once in a while she would look over to me, shake her head in feigned annoyance, and toss off something wry, like: “You’d think they’d tire of talking about themselves?”
When the sky was finally dark, around nine o’clock, and Desmond and Fergus had retired to watch a movie in the subterranean theater, the four of us relocated to the sofas and sat gazing at the stars, enjoying the breeze blowing in from the ocean mere blocks away. Oliver lit up a cigarette. The figure he cut, reclining—legs crossed in white trousers, linen shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows, golden hair pushed back off his brow—brought to mind another era. Like something out of a Fitzgerald world, if not Gatsby himself.
“I plan to lie by the pool and do nothing all weekend. And not sign one fucking autograph or write one tweet. Is that okay with everyone?”
“It’s a real tough life you lead, HK,” Hayes said, wrapping an arm around my shoulders. He occasionally called Oliver by the initials of his last name, Hoyt-Knight. And there was something about that that I found old-boy-ish and sexy.
“Yes, well, someone has to do it. And I brought three books, and I intend to crack at least one. Which I am sure is a hell of a lot more than those blokes are doing in South Beach.”
Hayes glanced at his watch. “I’m guessing they’re about three mojitos in, apiece. And they’ve got ten models with them.”
“Where are they staying? Soho House?”
“Yeah. Watch.” He pulled his iPhone from the pocket of his shorts and began texting. “How. Many. Models. Do. You. Have. With. You. Right. Now.”
“We have to do something absolutely mad so we can prove we had more fun.” Oliver flicked his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger. Charlotte tossed me one of her exasperated looks.
“I am having more fun,” Hayes laughed.
“Really?” I turned to him. “You wouldn’t rather be with ten models in South Beach?”
He looked at me for a moment, not speaking, one eyebrow raised. And then finally: “Do you not know me?”
“I do. I was just … teasing.”
He leaned into me so that the others could not hear. “I wouldn’t rather be anyplace else. Than here. With you.”
“Ditto.”
His phone buzzed in his hand. “Eleven!”
“Fuck!” Oliver laughed.
“Yes, I don’t know how you’re going to have more fun than that,” Charlotte said, straight-faced.
Oliver furrowed his brow, snuffed out his cigarette, and then pulled her onto his lap. “Charlotte, you know me. Models are like toffee. They often seem like a great idea, especially on holiday. But once you get them in your mouth, you remember that they’re cloyingly sweet and they stick to your teeth. Plus they’ve no nutritional value whatsoever … But they’re certainly very pretty in the window.”
It is likely I had never heard anything more perfect.
We laughed for a long time.
Hayes excused himself at some point and went inside, and when he reemerged five minutes later he had a bottle of Scotch in one hand and two glasses in the other. He was laughing to himself as he traipsed across the patio.
“What?” Oliver asked.
“Simon sent another text. He said, ‘We had eleven models and seven of them just left with Rory.’”
“Ha!”
“Wait, I have to read it to you,” he snorted, placing down the Scotch and pulling out his phone. “‘Liam was totally gutted and I had to remind him that he only has one dick … He thinks it might be Rory’s tattoos and now he’s considering getting one.’”
“Tell Liam he mustn’t forget where he comes from.” Ol smiled. “And to not fret if his type is not appreciated in South Beach, because it still has value in Courchevel.”
“‘We are this close to becoming a joke.’”
“How old is Liam?” I asked.
“Nineteen. God, that’s priceless.”
“Only two glasses?” Oliver sat up and began pouring the drinks with Charlotte still on his knee. Laphroaig 10. Neat.
“My hands are only so big, and I didn’t want to break Mrs. D’Amato’s crystal. Just double pour it and we’ll share.”
“Mrs. D’Amato?” Oliver mocked him. “She’s like in her forties, mate.”
“Great,” I said.
“Sorry,” Oliver said.
“But she looks like a Mrs. D’Amato. You don’t look like a Mrs. D’Amato,” Hayes explained.
“What exactly does a Mrs. D’Amato look like?”
“Like she’s done stuff to her face.” He gesticulated. “She’s like frozen things and puffed things up. Your face isn’t anything like that. Your face—”
“Your face is perfect,” Oliver interjected.
It was more than a little awkward.
“Thank you.”
Hayes spun to look at him. “Yes, Oliver. Thank you … And your face is perfect as well, Charlotte,” he added, pointedly.
Charlotte smiled, trying to make the best of the situation. “Thank you, Hayes. For noticing.”
“Bloody hell, I was just paying a compliment,” Oliver laughed.
Hayes held his gaze for a moment and then shook his head, as if he did not know what to make of him. “All right,” he said, grabbing one of the glasses, “we’re going for a walk. Don’t follow us.”
We trekked down across the lawn to the far side of the pool and installed ourselves on one of the lounges.
“I’m sorry about that. That was weird, right?”
“No weirder than Liam only having one dick.”
He laughed. “God, I love your humor.”
“I love hanging out with you. Thanks for inviting me. I’m glad I came.”
“I’m glad you came, too. And it is perfect … your face.”
I kissed him then. “Yours, too.”
We lay there for a bit, side by side on the lounge, kissing, and it felt like high school, innocent and pure.
He stopped at one point, reaching for the Scotch and taking a long sip before offering it to me.
“I’m not really a Scotch person…”
“How do you know? You weren’t a boy band person either, and now look at you. You’re like knee-deep.”
I laughed at that.
“You’re worse than knee-deep. You’re like up to your chin.”
“Fine.” I allowed him to serve me. It was hot going down, smoky, like all the goodness of the first fire lit in winter, bottled and put in my mouth. And suddenly, that night at the Crosby Street Hotel came rushing back. The nervousness of it, the newness, the postorgasmic freak-out.
“Well…?”
“It reminds me of you.”
“That’s good enough.” He placed the glass down and rolled me on top of him.
“I love this face,” I said, tracing my thumbs over his eyebrows. “I love the proportions of it. I love the symmetry. I love that it reminds me of a Botticelli cherub.”
He smiled. “I’m pretty certain I’ve never heard that before.”
“Can I tell you a secret?”
“Do.”
“That first night, in Las Vegas … I distinctly remember thinking,
‘God, I just want to sit on this kid’s face and pull his hair.’”
“What?” He began to laugh. “You thought what? That you would compare me to art and then consider desecrating it in almost the same breath is a little unnerving.”
“Sorry to have unnerved you.”
“And yet you made me beg you for a date…”
“I wanted to have sex with you, I didn’t want to date you.”
“I’m going to pretend I’m not offended by that … What made you change your mind?”
“What makes you so sure I have?”
He stopped laughing then and grabbed both my wrists, tight. “What are you afraid of? Right now, what are you afraid of?”
I didn’t say anything, but I knew it was written on my face.
“Yeah,” he said. “Me, too.”
* * *
Oliver and Charlotte turned in shortly after, and Hayes and I resumed our high school make-out session, which led, as high school make-out sessions are wont to do, to the inevitable blow job. There was something about it that was terribly amusing to me. Because I could not remember the last time I’d snuck through someone’s backyard on a balmy summer night to suck a dick in the dark. It felt almost nostalgic and it made me laugh.
“What’s so funny? Why are you laughing?” he asked, his hand on the top of my head.
“I’m too old for this.”
“No, really, I can assure you, you’re not.”
I laughed harder. “It’s not the dick sucking, it’s the sneaking around. It feels so nineties.”
“Fuck.” He tipped his head back, staring up at the stars. “I was born in the nineties.”
“Shhh. Okay, stop thinking,” I said, lowering my head, taking him again in my mouth.
“You were sucking dicks in the nineties?”
“No,” I lied.
“Yes, you were,” he laughed.
“Hayes, do you want this blow job or not?”
“I want it, I want it. Just give me a second to laugh. Please. I’m just processing this.”
I sat up then. “I’m going back up to the house.”
He reached out for my arms. “No, you’re not.”
For a second we sat like that, neither of us laughing, speaking.
“This is crazy,” I said eventually. “This is completely crazy. What the hell are we doing?”
He sat up then and kissed my forehead before leaning into my ear, the smell of Scotch on his breath. “I like you, so fucking much. I don’t give a damn what you were doing in the nineties. Or anytime, really … Please don’t go up to the house. Please.”
For a moment I did not move. I sat, letting him breathe into me, wanting him and knowing that we were both now in deeper than either of us had intended.
“Lie down,” I said.
He did. And he remained quiet while I finished what I’d begun. And it was just us and the sound of him moaning and crickets and the ocean and summer and his dick in my mouth. And it was perfect.
He came. And then held me afterward, a wide grin plastered across his face.
“Are you happy?” I asked, borrowing his line.
“Very.”
“Good. You wouldn’t happen to have a stick of postcoital gum on you, would you?”
He laughed, shaking his head. “No, sorry. Have some Scotch.”
“You. You’re supposed to be responsible for the condoms and the gum.”
“What do you bring?”
“I bring my mouth.”
“All right, then.” He nodded, smiling. “That seems like a fair trade.”
* * *
In the morning, I went on a long run and convinced Charlotte to join me. We were evenly paced, despite the fact that she was barely half my age, and I enjoyed her company. She shared that she was about to enter her third year at Oxford, where she was studying philosophy. She’d met Oliver through mutual friends who had attended Westminster with the boys, and they’d been dating for the better part of a year.
“I imagine you’ve seen a lot,” I said, alluding to life with the band.
She shrugged her shoulders, noncommittal. We were heading up Ocean Road, one tremendous lot after another. And passing each $15 to $20 million manse, I could not help but wonder what they had on their walls.
“Yeah,” I sighed. “I probably don’t want to know…”
“He’s a good guy, Hayes. He’s really sweet and respectful and responsible and … kind.”
I let that sink in for a bit.
“He’s different,” she continued. “I mean, the others are all lovely in their own way, and Oliver is Oliver. But Hayes is … different. He’s a little more mature and serious, which, you know, you’ve seen him, so that says a lot about the rest of them.” She laughed at that. I hadn’t seen her laugh much. It was beautiful on her.
“I think they all take the group seriously, but Hayes has this added pressure, because it was his idea, and he put the band together, and it was his mum who was longtime friends with their managers.”
“Really?” That I did not know. Outside of our first lunch at the Hotel Bel-Air, we had not discussed the nuts and bolts of how August Moon had come to be. “Hayes’s mother was friends with their managers?”
“Yes, the Lawrences. Alistair and Jane. You’ll meet them eventually. They’re very daunting,” she emphasized with a clenched jaw. She sounded to me like Emma Thompson.
“He doesn’t really talk about them. I know Raj and Graham.”
“Graham, blech,” she scoffed. “Graham is not particularly fond of girlfriends. Or girls at all, I presume. He and Raj are associates—or, as I prefer to call them, glorified minders. But Alistair and Jane own the company. Jane and Hayes’s mum, Victoria, grew up together. And when Hayes was seventeen, he came up with this idea and made a video and a PowerPoint presentation and sold Jane and Alistair on it. They did a search to find Rory, and it went from there. It was pretty brilliant on his part, because no one had ever thought of a posh boy band.”
“No. And why would you?” I laughed. It seemed far-fetched. But there was no denying the way it had caught on. The genius of it. Like bottling the appeal of a young roguish Prince Harry, multiplying it, and distributing it to the masses. With some infectious melodies, strong vocals, and clever lyrics thrown in. And just the right amount of edge.
“Yes, well, I think they all thought it would be amusing. They’d have lots of fun and there’d be lots of girls and it would be a cool way to see the world. I mean they certainly weren’t doing it for the money … But it was Hayes’s brainchild, so things tend to weigh more on him. Plus he’s serious about his music.”
I sat with that for a while. Replaying all our conversations about the group and the things that made him unhappy, the relentless touring and promotion, the idea of being crammed down people’s throats.
When we reached Route 27, we turned around and headed back toward the ocean. It wasn’t until we were bypassing our turnoff and continuing on to the beach that she spoke again.
“I have seen a lot.” She picked up our conversation with no lead-in, as if she’d been mulling it over for the past four miles. “You are his quintessential type. You’re just better at it than the others.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’re smarter, you’re wittier, you’re more sophisticated, and you don’t seem to get caught up in all the bullshit…”
“Oh.”
“You’re also older, and for some reason he likes that.” She’d said it plainly, but there was something there. “And, you know, your face is perfect.”
* * *
The boys were lounging by the pool when we got back to the house. They’d finished playing tennis and were sitting out in shorts and not much else soaking up the sun.
“How was your run?” Hayes pulled me onto his lap, nuzzling my neck. “Mm, you’re all sweaty.”
“So are you. Shower?”
He nodded. “Just a second.”
“What are you doing?”
>
He had his iPhone, poised down by his knees. “I’m Instagramming a picture of my feet.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“No. They love this rubbish. Watch … and ‘share.’”
I leaned in to see the image of his tanned feet with the pool as a backdrop. Hayes counted to ten and then pressed refresh. There were 4,332 likes. He counted again: 9,074.
“Holy shit.”
“That’s just my feet. Someday I’m going to put my penis on there and see what happens.”
“If you could perhaps time it with the release of Wise or Naked so we could all profit from it, that would be great,” Oliver quipped. Charlotte giggled.
Hayes turned to look at him and laughed. “I’m not sharing the proceeds from my dick with you. I’m saving that for my solo album.”
“Oh my God, you are twenty, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” He smiled, running his hand over my back. “And you still love me. We’re showering, right?”
“Maybe. Do you read your comments?”
“Sometimes.” He began scrolling through. “‘I love you so much. Come to Turkey.’ ‘Why are you so hot?’ Something in Arabic. ‘I wish I could show you how much I really love you. I’m not like the other fans, try me.’ ‘I want to lick you but your music sucks’—tell me how you really feel. ‘Can I sit on your big toe?’ Wow, part of me is horrified and part of me wants to check her picture. Is that bad? All right, continuing, ‘Dork ass—’ What? I can’t say … It says the n-word. Why are they calling me that? Something in Hebrew. ‘Your feet are sexy as fuck.’ ‘I just want to be you.’ ‘Hayes, if you see this, I love you.’ Aww, that’s sweet … Right then, so there you go. There’s a nice sample for you.”
I don’t know why, but I was stunned. The immediacy of it, the fact that our moment here was playing out around the world in real time. The idea that they could communicate with him, that they were anticipating his every action. It was unfathomable, this level of adoration.
“How many likes now?” Oliver asked.
Hayes pressed refresh. “Sixty-seven thousand six hundred and forty-three.”