by Robinne Lee
“I’m pretty certain I didn’t say ‘Sure.’”
“Actually, I think you said ‘Please.’” He smiled, coy. Dimples. “You like me an awful lot.”
“Don’t push your luck.”
He moved toward me then, reaching to hold my head in his hands. “Please,” he repeated, before kissing me on the mouth. So soft, so tender, I might have forgotten where I was.
“Cameras,” I whispered when we parted.
“I don’t care who sees us,” he said. And then he kissed me again. “We’ve got about two hours. Let’s go do something dirty.”
The doors were opening. There were two security guys I did not recognize on his floor. Different from the ones who’d done the night shift. I’d stopped trying to keep them straight. Staying in a hotel with Hayes and staying in a hotel with August Moon were two completely different things.
“Thank you, Simon Ludlow,” Hayes said, stepping out of the lift. “Your check is in the post.”
I froze, realizing what he’d said. “Did you … Did you arrange with Simon to take the girls?”
He was holding the doors open, waiting. “Maybe.”
“Hayes. That is totally inappropriate.”
“Is it?”
“You paid him?”
“He owed me.”
I could not help but laugh. “You are so fucking bad. You are the worst.”
“And that is why you love me,” he said. “Two hours. The clock’s ticking…”
* * *
The crowd at the Ziegfeld Theater for the premiere of August Moon: Naked was unlike anything I’d ever seen. There were thousands of fans swarming in every direction. Fifty-fourth Street completely closed off. Traffic at a standstill on Sixth Avenue and Seventh. A red carpet that extended a full city block, bleacher upon bleacher of photographers and press. Extensive security detail. For five guys who were schoolboys just a few short years prior, “playing football on Green,” I imagine it was overwhelming.
We arrived nearly two hours after the boys. Their time occupied with photo ops and walking the press line and engaging with their fans. Hayes had warned me that he would be consumed with promotional duties and suggested I would probably be happier if I brought a friend, and so two weeks earlier I’d called Amara and asked how she felt about being my wingwoman.
“Are you kidding me?” she’d laughed, on the phone. “The opportunity to cross that off my bucket list? Star-studded premiere of boy band documentary? Check. What are we wearing?”
The theater was huge, the crowd chaotic. Industry types and Brits and contest-winning fans and celebrities with their teen daughters. My own was on a momentous high. She and Georgia had been floating since their trip to the Apple Store. Replaying every moment of their afternoon. Everything Simon did, said, laughed at. They’d already experienced the unthinkable. The premiere was just icing.
It went quickly. The film was surprisingly well done: beautifully shot reportage of the band’s meteoric rise. Concert footage, intimate portraits, a compelling, almost wistful look at Augie mania in all its fervent glory. Much of it shot in artistic black and white. A series of flawless frames lingering on skin and lashes and lips. By the end I’d determined that she, the director, must have loved them all.
Amara agreed. “I feel like I just watched a ninety-minute Herb Ritts music video. Is it bad I want to lick them? Their skin … Did we not appreciate our skin when we were that young?”
“I don’t think we did.”
“Youth,” she laughed. “Wasted.”
* * *
I did not see him until the after-party. The guys, all seated together, were swarmed and swept up so quickly when the credits began to roll that there was no penetrating the thick wall of security and sycophants. But in the car, on the way over to the Edison Ballroom, he texted.
Where are you? Why aren’t you with me? I miss you. I need you.
Ditto.
What’d you think? Did you like it?
Loved.
xo
Find me. When you get to the party, find me.
* * *
I did. But it was no simple feat, in a sprawling two-story hall with atmospheric lighting and nine-hundred-plus guests. We navigated through the crowds and the waitstaff and the cocktail tables and the potted trees dripping with white lights, part sexy speakeasy, part winter wonderland. The DJ was blasting “All the Love,” the group’s next scheduled single. There was a large screen above the stage playing looped clips from the documentary, and I was keenly aware that everyone was there to celebrate my boyfriend, more or less.
At some point near the center bar, someone called my name, and I turned to find Raj. I had not seen him since Cap d’Antibes. He greeted me with a warm hug and introduced himself to Amara and the girls. And he was so affable and familiar I realized that for better or worse Hayes had likely been filling in some people on aspects of our relationship all along.
Raj led us through another level of security to the private booths off to the side. Each with its own reserved place card: “Universal,” “WME,” “Lawrence Management,” “Liam Balfour,” “Rory Taylor,” “Oliver Hoyt-Knight,” “Simon Ludlow,” and there, tucked in the most secluded corner, “Hayes Campbell.” He was standing with his back to me, engaged in conversation with a gentleman I did not recognize.
Raj called out to him, and the look on his face when he saw me made my heart smile. Surprise and happiness and wonder. As if he were seeing me for the first time. As if we hadn’t spent the afternoon doing naughty things.
And yet, despite the fact that I could read every emotion washing over his features, I was beside myself when he took my head in both his hands and kissed me. Before my kid, before my friend, before his businesspeople, before his fans, before every single fucking person in the Edison Ballroom.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi.” I beamed. He, in his Tom Ford suit and dazzling smile. “So … I guess we’re public?”
“I guess we’re public.” He leaned into me, his thumbs flicking over my earlobes, his voice low. “You look insanely beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
It was sublime, my dress. Lanvin. Midnight blue silk, draped, gathered, fitted, hitting me at the knee.
“Red lipstick?”
“I thought I would switch it up.”
“It just makes me want to do things to your mouth,” he said.
“As opposed to all the other times when you don’t?”
He laughed, withdrawing. “Hello, ladies!”
I looked on as he greeted Amara and the girls and introduced us to those in his booth: friends of his parents, a couple of reps from TAG Heuer, a publicist. Ever the host, he busied himself making certain we were all taken care of, pouring me and Amara flutes of champagne and the girls cranberry juice, even though he was drinking water.
“Fucking Graham,” he muttered to me, “he’s been on me and Liam like a hawk. Oh, girls.” He turned to Isabelle and Georgia. “Have you met Lucy Balfour? She’s Liam’s little sister. She’s thirteen. She flew all the way from London with her mum and dad and she’s miserable because she says she has no one here her age to hang out with. And when I pointed out that there were quite a few thirteen-year-old girls here, she complained that they were all ‘crazed, immature fans.’ And then I said, ‘Well, you haven’t met my friends Isabelle and Georgia, because they are certainly not that.’”
My girls were beaming. So very sweet in their dresses.
“Come, let us find Lucy!”
“Where the hell did you find him?” Amara asked. We had stepped away from the booth and were navigating a path toward the main floor. “He is really quite perfect.”
“I know,” I said. “He is.”
“Jesus. How did you do it? I’m out here on Tinder, and I’m miserable…”
I nodded, empathetic. Amara was a few years older than me and had never been married. She had never wanted kids. But she had also never wanted to be alone.
“And
with all these online dating services,” she continued, “so much comes down to your photos, your physical appearance, your face. Tinder is purely your face. It’s people swiping left and right in reaction to your face. And my face is changing. And people react to it differently. Men react to it differently. I used to be a hot young blonde, and I’m not anymore. Although I still think of myself that way on the inside,” she laughed.
“I think of you that way.” I smiled. It seemed to me that all my friends were going through this. The self-definition crisis.
“But I’m not. On the outside anyway. And it’s like I have this shifting identity. I’m not who I used to be. And ten years from now I might be somebody else altogether. Even if I never become someone’s mom or change my career or move to Idaho. My identity is different because the world responds to my physical appearance differently. And their response inadvertently changes how I see myself. And that’s kind of … crazy.”
“It is,” I said. “But we redefine ourselves. We evolve. That’s what people do.”
“But I want to evolve because I evolve. I don’t want other people to choose when that happens for me.”
She had a point. And I had to wonder if I was evolving. Or if this thing with Hayes was just one giant step back. Never mind how people were viewing it.
The DJ was playing Justin Timberlake, king of the boy band graduates. Justin, who had somehow settled down and was about to become a father. Clearly, he’d evolved.
“I think aging is hard for everyone.” Amara swiped a red bliss potato with crème fraîche and caviar off a passing tray. “But it’s definitely harder for women. And I think even more so for beautiful women. Because if so much of your identity and your value is tied up in your looks and how the world responds to your physical appearance, what do you do when that changes? How do you see yourself then? Who do you become?”
I paused, attempting to process all of it. Hayes was on the screen. His features blown up to ridiculous proportions, and the symmetry still, like art. His beauty clearly defining him. “I think I’m going to need more to drink.”
She laughed, popping the potato in her mouth. “Don’t worry. You have a couple more years left. Things don’t really start falling apart until forty-two.”
* * *
We spotted each other at the same time. He was engaged in conversation with two fetching twenty-somethings who were clearly smitten. But he waved and I inclined my head, and then he dismissed them before making his way over.
Oliver.
“This one is so fucking cute,” Amara said under her breath as he approached.
“Let it go. He’s trouble. But he does know his art.”
“Murakami.” She smiled. “You can just look at him and be happy.”
She’d said it casually, a throwback to an earlier conversation. But something about it resonated. Finding joy in art.
“Solène Marchand.” Oliver grinned. That he knew my last name threw me.
“Oliver Hoyt-Knight. This is my girlfriend Amara Winthrop. Amara, Oliver.”
He greeted her before turning his attention back to me. “Hi.”
“Hi.” I leaned in to kiss his cheek. And it wasn’t until he reached out for my waist that I realized I’d made a mistake.
“You look stunning,” he said in my ear, low.
I pulled back, and made a point of announcing loudly, “You clean up quite nicely yourself.”
He laughed.
“That’s a joke, Amara. Oliver always looks like this. When you first learn to tell them apart, you learn that Oliver is the dandy one.”
He was wearing a charcoal-gray three-piece suit, a dark tie, a coordinating pocket square. Posh sex on a stick.
“Who told you that? Beverly?”
“Is she your wardrobe person? Yes, then, Beverly.”
His hand was still on my hip.
“Also, we look nothing alike,” he said, hazel eyes piercing.
“Where’s your girlfriend?”
“She couldn’t make it. Exams.”
“I’m sorry.”
He let loose my waist then, sipped from his glass. “It is what it is.”
Amara spoke suddenly, and the fact that I’d nearly forgotten she was there was telling. “Dominic and Sylvia D’Amato are over at the bar. I’m going to say hello.”
It took a second to register: the owners of the Hamptons house. Mrs. D’Amato.
“You know them?”
“Please. They practically pay my mortgage.” She winked. And then I remembered: the Hirst, the Lichtenstein, the Twombly, the Murakami. Gagosian repped them all.
“Oliver, pleasure…” Amara said. “Solène.” She gave me a funny look. “You okay if I leave you for a minute?”
“I’m okay,” I laughed, downing my champagne.
“So,” he said once she was gone, “are you having fun?”
“Yes.”
“Are you being taken care of?”
“I am, thank you.”
“Yes, I heard.” He smiled, swilling again from his drink. “Thinner walls than you would think at the Mandarin Oriental.”
I froze, allowing it to sink in. The ease with which he’d transgressed. As if he’d reached out once again and touched me. “If I’d known you were listening, I would have made an effort to call your name.”
He laughed. It was not the response he was expecting. “Well, maybe next time I can watch.”
“Me?… Or Hayes?”
Oliver tensed. “What do you think?”
“I think it says something that I’m asking you to clarify.”
He stared at me for a moment. And then he smiled. It hurt that he was so good-looking, and still managed to be such an ass.
“Well, you know where to find me. When you’re ready for an upgrade…”
“I love your audacity, Oliver. I’m going to be nice to you, because I know how much you mean to Hayes. And because I like Charlotte. And because you’re cute. But I’m not going to let you cross the line…”
He paused, smiled, swilled from his glass. “I think you already have.”
“Ollie!” A voice called from off to the side.
He looked over, and I followed his line of sight to a striking young woman approaching us in a peacock-green dress. I took her for a model, but then thought she seemed far too self-possessed. And he seemed far too adoring.
“Hey.” She hugged him, mussed his hair. He kissed her cheek. And then I realized.
“Solène, do you know my sister, Penelope? Pen, this is Solène. She’s a friend of Hayes.” It seemed to me he said it pointedly, but I could not be certain as to why.
She was stunning.
She had her brother’s height and arresting hazel eyes, but the similarities ended there. She was sexier than I’d pictured, riper, darker, fuller lips. A young boy’s wet dream. I wanted to high-five Hayes’s fourteen-year-old self. I imagined his joy. And then it dawned on me that she may have very well been the prototype. The original Hayes fantasy.
“Pleasure,” she said, extending her elegant hand.
I could feel her assessing me and then remembered that I was not supposed to know their story and could not openly assess her in the same way.
“Are you from New York?” she asked.
“Los Angeles,” I said, and she nodded.
“Did you like the film?”
“Very much…”
There was something unnerving about being in her presence. Knowing who she was and what she’d represented to Hayes. And the idea that she knew him. She knew his mouth, she knew his dick, she knew his hands. She knew what I was going back to at the hotel. She knew him.
This seemed to be happening over and over again.
“Did you like it?” I asked.
“It was fun.” She smiled. “They’re a fun bunch.”
“Yes,” I said, turning to look at her brother. “That they are.”
“Ha!” Oliver smirked. And as much as I might have wanted to, I could not hate him. Becau
se he had that thing. That cocky thing I fell for. Every single time.
“Liam, especially,” Penelope continued. “He’s quite rascally, that one.”
I nodded, taking her in. Round breasts, narrow waist. I wondered if she’d slept with Liam, too. Lanky Liam with his darling freckles, angelic voice, and winsome smile. And then I realized how outrageous that sounded. But it was all a wee too incestuous for me. I needed to get out of there.
“If you’ll excuse me,” I said, “I have to check on my daughter. Penelope, it’s been a pleasure. Oliver, I’ll see you around.”
* * *
I found Hayes back up near the booths, engaged in conversation with a bunch of women I did not know. They could have been publicists, industry execs, ex-girlfriends, fans. I’d stopped caring.
His face lit up when he saw me, and he managed to remove himself from his admirers. “Where did you run off to? You okay?”
“Penelope is here. I just met Penelope.”
“Yeah…”
“Did you know she was going to be here?”
“I found out yesterday.”
“Were you not going to tell me?”
“I didn’t want you to worry unnecessarily.” His hand was by my face, tucking my hair behind my ear, subtly transmitting our relationship to all.
“Have you seen her yet?”
“Briefly. In the theater.” He reached out for my wrist, fingering my cuff, familiar. “Solène … It’s been over for a long time…”
“I understand that.”
He was quiet for a moment, and then: “I’m sorry you keep bumping up against my past.”
I nodded. It was something I had not had much experience with. When I married Daniel, there were only fourteen girls that he’d slept with, and they were all on the East Coast. Except for that one in Capri.
“Come,” he said. “My mum and dad are over there. I want you to meet them. Have you had a sufficient amount of alcohol?”
“Probably not.”
“Let’s get you some more champagne then, and we’ll go meet my parents.”
* * *
They were standing over near Hayes’s table. I could see her face in profile as we approached. She had lovely bones and flawless skin, and she looked like the boy I had come to love, and that, in itself, was unsettling. She was laughing at something and I could see her dimples, and for a moment I thought I might not be able to go through with it. But Hayes called to them and they both turned around and there was no time to run. Not that my feet could have moved if I’d willed them, because standing next to Hayes’s mother was the rakish Brit from the hotel elevator.