by Robinne Lee
“He won’t be there. They’re in Ibiza for the week. Everyone is in Ibiza this week. I think Diddy’s throwing a party. Which means the Hamptons will be quiet.”
I paused, deliberating. I so wanted to see him, but I wanted it to be just us. I wanted to hole up in a hotel room with him somewhere and forget the rest of the world existed. “And the madness?” I asked.
“No madness. It’s just me and Ol and Charlotte. The others are heading down to Miami.”
I was quiet for a moment, and he jumped on it. “Good. It’s decided then. My assistant, Rana, is going to call you and arrange your ticket. She’ll get it all sorted. I’ll see you Friday.”
* * *
I took the red-eye, because I didn’t want to lose another full day of work. Like all galleries, we were closed on Mondays, but I was blowing off Friday and Saturday, and I did not feel wonderful about it, despite Lulit’s understanding.
“Go and have great sex and come back and tell me what it was like,” she had said.
“You have an amazing husband,” I reminded her.
She did. A doting husband, no kids. Exactly the way she wanted it.
“Which is great for like five years, and then it’s just the same guy,” she laughed. “I mean I love him to death. But it’s the same guy. Go. Have fun.”
* * *
Hayes was staying in one of the sky apartments at the London in midtown. A massive suite high above everything with stellar views of Central Park. He’d already departed for the studio by the time I arrived, and I made my way past the forty or so fans camped outside at nine a.m. and to reception, where I met up with Trevor, one of their security. Trevor was formidably tall and not easy to miss. He wasn’t as bulky as Desmond, Fergus, and Nick, but Hayes had said he was some sort of Krav Maga expert, and at six foot seven, he was certainly intimidating. He waited for me while I picked up the key card for “Scooby Doo’s” suite and accompanied me in the elevator to the fifty-fourth floor.
The doors rolled open, and standing in the corridor before us in full workout gear and with large headphones hanging from his neck was Simon. Even without an accompanying entourage or screaming fans, he was remarkable. Tan and blond and athletic with deep blue eyes and razor-sharp cheekbones. If Hayes was swagger, and Oliver was dandy, and Rory was the bad boy, then Simon Ludlow was definitely the David Beckham one.
“Hey.” He appeared to recognize me, extending a strapping arm to hold the doors as Trevor filed out with my bags. “You just getting in?”
“Yeah. Red-eye.”
“Ooo, brutal. Sorry.”
“Are you not in the studio today?” I asked.
“They don’t need me until eleven. I’m heading down to the gym.” This he directed at Trevor. “I’m meeting Joss there. It should be fine.”
Joss, Hayes had told me, was one of their trainers.
“Ring me if anything comes up,” Trevor said.
“Will do.”
Simon was only a couple of inches shorter than Hayes, but broader and clearly capable. It seemed bizarre to me that these guys would need bodyguards. As if a slew of thirteen-year-olds lying in wait could conceivably overwhelm them. But then I recalled that morning at the Four Seasons and the terror I’d felt; perhaps it was possible.
He stood in the frame of the elevator doors for a moment longer, as if he were trying to remember something. “How’s your daughter?” he said, finally.
“She’s fine. Thanks.”
“Good.” He smiled. “Good. Right. Have fun in the Hamptons.”
“Have fun in Miami.”
“Oh”—his smile widened—“we will.”
* * *
I wasted no time showering and climbing into Hayes’s unmade bed. Left on the pillow, on hotel stationery, was a handwritten note:
Sorry I’m not there to greet you. Feel free to keep my bed warm. Back after 1. —H.
His penmanship was surprisingly neat. All that posh schooling. Perhaps it had been spanked into him. I smiled at the thought and curled up in the linens, reveling in the smell of his sheets, his pillow, his life.
It was the feel of him that awoke me. The inexplicable sense that the atoms of the room had rearranged themselves somehow. For a moment I was not sure where I was or how long I’d been sleeping, but finding him there, seated at the foot of the bed, watching me, filled me with such an intense happiness I was immediately fearful of it.
“Hi.” He smiled. “Nice nap?” His hair was standing on end, his youthful skin poreless in the soft blue light of the room. And I was once again overcome by his beauty.
I nodded. “You have a very nice bed.”
“It’s much nicer with you in it.”
“That’s what all the boys say.”
“Really?” He raised an eyebrow. “And what about the girls?”
I laughed at that. “There haven’t been too many girls.”
“Pity. You don’t know what you’re missing.”
“I think it’s too early for this conversation.”
“Too early in the day or too early in our relationship?”
“Both.”
He glanced down at his watch, one of the preferred TAG Heuers. Masculine, mature. “All right, that’s fair.”
“Are you going to come here and kiss me, or are you going to spend my entire visit at the other end of the bed?”
“That depends … What are you wearing under there?”
“Tank top. Underwear.”
“Hmm. That’s going to be a problem.”
“Is it?”
“We’ve bumped up our departure time. We chartered a seaplane. It leaves in an hour. The car’s on its way. I’m going to kiss you, but I’m going to show incredible restraint and not get into that bed. Do you think you can handle that?”
“I don’t know. You’re awfully irresistible when you’re being obnoxious.”
“You,” he said, inching toward me.
“Me?”
“You.” He kissed me, slow. He tasted like mint. Stick of postcoital gum. “You. Are going to have to wait.”
“Fine,” I said, peeling back the Italian sheets and heading across the room to the bathroom. It was a sheer tank, La Perla panties. “So are you.”
* * *
There was an art to traveling with the band. A calculated series of staggered entrances, exits, timed departures. There was no walking out onto the street and flagging a cab, not with two hundred girls swarming the exterior of one’s hotel. Someone—there were more security guards than I could keep track of—took our bags down ahead of time. Hayes and I rode down to the lobby with Trevor, where we met up with Oliver and Charlotte, and were then escorted out. Charlotte and I first, one after the other. Trevor leading us, a handsome black guard pulling up the rear. There were girls lining barricades on both sides of the entrance and across Fifty-fourth Street. All manners of dress, all complexions, loud. They did not seem fazed by the fact that it was ninety degrees and unbearably humid, the joy of New York in the summer.
They identified Charlotte immediately, which surprised me. I had not realized she was such a fixture in Oliver’s life. She smiled and waved faintly beneath her wide-brimmed hat, ever the duchess in training. And they, in turn, were surprisingly respectful: “Hi, Charlotte!” “How are you, Charlotte?” “Charlotte, you look beautiful!” “I love your dress!”
They ignored me.
It was probably for the best.
When we were ushered into the waiting Navigator, I allowed myself to exhale. “You handled that quite well.”
“This isn’t bad. Paris … Paris is bad. Girls running in the streets and paparazzi on scooters. The roads are narrow and there’s nowhere to go and you fear for your life. They’re particularly aggressive there. Anytime you’re walking eight security deep and it’s not enough … it’s a problem.” She said it so casually it struck me as odd. But then I thought: one would have to be terribly nonchalant to be in a relationship with one of these guys and put up with this madness on
a regular basis. Or, perhaps, insane. I was not sure I was either of those.
The volume outside of the SUV rose considerably, and I looked out to see two more security emerging from the hotel. Oliver was in tow. He had a slow gait and a sly smile, and the way he walked with his hands in his trouser pockets was so effortlessly elegant and entitled, I could feel my eighteen-year-old self swooning. He was prince-like in his demeanor. As if he were strolling the grounds of Kensington Palace, engaging his subjects, and not holding court at the London. And in that moment he reminded me of a young Daniel, right down to the aristocratic nose. How I had loved him. Controlled, powerful, elegant. My Princeton fencer. Ol stopped to take a few photos, and all I could hear was “OliverOliverOliverOliver” until the pitch changed and there were incoherent shrieks and I knew without even looking that my date had exited the building.
It was strange to see Hayes from this perspective. The way he smiled easily and turned on the charm. Perfect teeth, dimples, his long torso angling over the barricades to fulfill every selfie request and hug. Like a demigod. They swayed and scrambled and screamed “Iloveyou Iloveyou Iloveyou.” “Hayes, here. Hayes, over here. Over here, Hayes!” “Hayes, I love you!” And my heart broke for every one of them.
And it broke a little for me.
And then the doors were opening and they were filing into the car, Desmond and Fergus accompanying them. When they shut the door, Trevor banged thrice on the side of the SUV and our driver pulled out.
“All good?” Hayes turned back to check on me. There was lipstick on his face, a frosty pink that I would never have worn on one side, a deep plum on the other.
I gave him a thumbs-up from the third row, and he winked in return.
“The adventure begins.” He smiled.
Three dozen or so girls were following the Navigator. Running alongside us as we headed east on Fifty-fourth. Banging on the doors each time we slowed, holding up their phones, pleading for the guys to roll down the windows.
“Is this okay? Are we okay?”
“We’re okay. They can’t see you.”
But it did not feel okay. The panting, painted faces pressing up against the window, desperate, deranged. Was this what his life was like? All the time?
“You get used to it,” Hayes said, as if reading my mind. “And this is nothing compared to Paris. You’ll see.”
“Or Peru,” Oliver tossed over his shoulder.
“Oh God, Peru,” Hayes laughed. “Desmond, remember Peru?”
Desmond looked back from his position in the front seat and grimaced. “Fucking crazy bastards.”
Somewhere around Fifth Avenue we lost the last of the fanatics and then proceeded down to Twenty-third and the FDR Drive unscathed. But my mind was still on Paris and the promise Hayes had made.
* * *
It took us forty-five minutes to get to Sag Harbor via seaplane. The flight out was calm, the skies clear, and the views traversing Long Island’s North Shore sublime. Sprawling mansions and fields of green, the colors vibrant and exaggerated like a David Hockney. He held my hand the entire trip, squeezing it at times, and the gesture seemed so natural and comfortable, one would have thought we were an established couple and not two mismatched people navigating an illicit arrangement.
I smiled to myself at one point during the ride, somewhere over Sands Point.
“What’s so funny?” he asked, leaning into me close, his nose buzzing my neck.
“I could be your mother.”
“You find that amusing now, do you?”
I nodded. “Just a little.”
He smiled, wry. “I’m going to make you forget that … if it’s the last thing I do.”
* * *
The house in Bridgehampton was a sprawling nine-thousand-square-foot shingle-style manse on 3.3 acres of manicured lawn, complete with pool, pool house, tennis courts, a putting green, formal gardens, and home theater. Naturally, it was fully staffed. We would want for nothing.
But what impressed me most was the D’Amatos’ contemporary art collection: Cy Twombly, Kara Walker, Damien Hirst, Takashi Murakami, Roy Lichtenstein. I found myself salivating at every turn. Furthermore, it was well curated. Not cluttered or intentionally ironic, but all coexisting beautifully. Each piece allowed to breathe in its own space. The D’Amatos not only had taste; they had restraint.
“What’s the wife’s name again?”
We were in our bedroom, an airy suite with views overlooking the putting green and the stretch of lawn extending to the pool. On the far wall, above the sitting area, was a framed pigment print of Kate Moss, taken by the legendary Chuck Close.
“Sylvie … Sylvia … One of those. Do you want me to introduce you?” Hayes was lying on the chaise longue, watching me unpack.
“I’d like that. Yes.”
“Where is she getting her art?”
I did a quick mental compute. “Mainly Gagosian, and probably some auctions.”
“Like that?” He nodded toward the Moss photo.
“No. That’s Chuck Close. He’s with Pace in New York. She probably bought it from them or at auction.”
“Is that Kate Moss? She looks weird.”
“It’s the process he uses,” I explained, “like a daguerreotype. The way you can see every pore on her face. Age spots that the naked eye probably can’t even pick up yet.” I made my way back across the room to the closet.
The Close piece was haunting. Mostly because Kate was my age. She couldn’t have been more than thirty in the photo, and yet I could see everything that she would become. Everything that I, we, probably already were. I wondered if Hayes could see it, too. The opposite of youth.
“I used to love her as a wee lad.”
“Yes. Well, who didn’t?”
“Come here,” he said. It was the way he said it. I knew that we’d stopped talking about Kate. That we’d stopped talking about art.
I made my way over to him, and he extended a languid arm, his hand wrapping around the back of my thigh, beneath the hem of my dress.
I did not speak as his fingers moved up my leg, arriving at my underwear, slipping beneath the fabric. “Hiiii.”
“Hi.” I smiled.
“I missed you.”
“That’s … apparent.”
He nodded, his fingers moving against me. “It’s been three weeks. That’s like decades in the music industry.”
“I imagine it is,” I said. But I could not imagine it was as he was saying it. Had he not been with anyone? Or just not with me?
I was quiet for a moment, listening to him breathe, listening to my heart beat, watching his hand move beneath my dress. Possessing me.
The bedroom door swung wide open suddenly, and Fergus was standing there at the threshold, his bald head buried in a pile of magazines. Hayes’s arm was back at his side before I could even register what was happening.
“Hey, mate, we picked these up for you,” Fergus said, finally looking up. “Sorry. Door was ajar.” He stepped into the room and very casually tossed a handful of magazines onto the credenza before turning and leaving. As if he hadn’t just walked in on us.
“We should probably lock that,” Hayes said, calmly.
I nodded. “We should.”
* * *
It was hours before we left the room.
I had the thought that, regardless of how unconventional or ill-fitted the two of us together seemed, the chemistry was like nothing I’d ever experienced. And by the way he responded to me, it appeared that for him it may have been the same.
He lay there at one point, staring at the ceiling.
“What?” I asked, my fingers tracing his ample mouth. “What are you thinking?”
“Just … I don’t know. I don’t want to say the wrong thing again.”
“Okay.”
He reached for my hand then, stilling me, his eyes intense. “This thing … us … It’s more than I expected.”
I hesitated, not wanting to misread the moment. Something
had shifted. “Yeah,” I said, “for me, too.”
* * *
We went for a walk before dinner. Down the winding tree-lined drive and out onto Quimby Lane.
“So I’m going to do the TAG Heuer thing,” he said, his fingers entwining with mine.
“Really? That’s good.”
He shrugged. “Expanding my brand, right? Life outside of August Moon…”
“You’re not thinking of quitting the band?”
“No. I couldn’t … Not now … No. It’s my band. I can’t leave them. Contractually or otherwise …
“And all this.” He waved his free hand in the air, gesturing at our surroundings: massive hedges hiding estates, endless green. “All this stuff that kind of falls into your lap. All this is because of them. Us. I’m not ready to end us.
“When Ol and I first started writing music together, we never imagined this. We fancied ourselves a modern-day John and Paul. But really we were just a couple of posh toffs sitting around our parents’ country homes writing songs about love and loss and things we hadn’t actually experienced because we were thirteen.” He laughed then, trailing off.
I squeezed his hand but said nothing.
“How’s Isabelle doing?”
“Good. I told her.”
He stopped, his eyes wide. “No fucking way.”
“I told her you were a client, so … not exactly everything.”
“Not anything at all actually,” he laughed.
“Baby steps…”
We began walking again, east, toward where the road dead-ended.
“So, a client, huh?” he said, after a minute. “I’m afraid to see what you do for your friends.”
“What was it you said? ‘I have a lot of friends. Most of them I’m not fucking.’”
“Did I say that?”
“You said that.”
“Hmm.” He smirked.
“Yeah, well … I’m not fucking any of my friends.”
“Just me?” He squeezed my hand.
“Just you.”
* * *
We had dinner at the house. The D’Amatos’ chef—they had two: one they’d taken with them to Ibiza, and a second they were kind enough to leave with us for the weekend—prepared a paella feast that we downed on the back patio beneath a lilac sky. The conversation flowed, lubricated by endless pitchers of sangria. Oliver and Hayes held court, regaling us with stories from their travels and school and growing up in London. They’d shared such a long, entangled history, and they seemed to speak in code, like something out of Hogwarts:
