by Robinne Lee
The air left my lungs.
“Mum, Dad, this is Solène,” he said proudly, his hand at the small of my back, encouraging, protective.
“Victoria.” She took my hand in hers, warm. Warmer than I’d expected. “It’s a pleasure.”
“Likewise,” I said.
“Ian,” Mr. Campbell said, never breaking character, his two large hands pumping mine. “Lovely to meet you, Solène.”
“My pleasure.” I might have smiled a smidge too wide. Blame it on the awkwardness, the champagne, the fact that I’d openly flirted with Hayes’s father.
I thought back to the first time that I’d met Daniel’s parents at their house on the Vineyard, and how daunting they’d seemed to me then. It felt like I was there again. Except these people were technically my generation. And I knew they were likely thinking, What the fuck are you doing with our child?
“Our son is quite fond of you,” Victoria said.
“Is he?” I turned to him, and the way he was looking at me brought to mind his expression in the photo he’d shown me with his mum and Churchill. So much adoration and awe. That it was directed at me was staggering.
“He’s pretty wonderful, your son.” I hoped I was not giving too much away. “You must be very proud of him.”
“We are,” Ian said. “Did you enjoy the film?”
“Very much, yes. It was artsier than I expected.”
“It was. Hayes says you’re in the art world?” Victoria was twirling the string of pearls around her neck. Her dress, black, classic, I recognized as Chanel. Of course.
“I am.”
“A gallerist?” Ian asked.
“Solène’s gallery is in this fantastic industrial space. And she and her partner solely represent artists that are women or people of color, which is pretty extraordinary on their part.”
“That’s rather noble,” Ian added.
“Noble?” Hayes laughed. “It’s tremendous.”
“Hayes says you have a daughter?” Victoria took it upon herself to change the subject.
“Yes. Isabelle. She’s here with a girlfriend, flitting about somewhere.”
“They’re with Lucy Balfour. They hit it off quite well.”
“How old?”
“Thirteen.”
“Thirteen.” She smiled knowingly. “It goes by quickly.”
Ouch.
“Campbell!” Rory Taylor was leaning in over the velvet rope. All gussied up, but still every bit the bad boy. He was tan, dark hair slightly disheveled, stubble, black suit, black shirt partially unbuttoned, chest tats peeking out. Was that a butterfly? A bird? “Sorry to interrupt. Hi, Mrs. Campbell, Mr. Campbell, Solène … Hayes, they want us to come up to the stage. Some introduction thing.”
“All right. I’ll be back. Don’t go too far.” He kissed me. In front of his parents, he kissed me. And part of me wanted to crawl under the fucking booth and die.
* * *
“So you’re the girlfriend?”
Sometime after the band and the director and a handful of studio execs had officially thanked everyone for coming out and posed for a bunch of photos onstage, I ran into Ian near a side bar.
I was three champagnes in and looking for my fourth. “I’m the girlfriend.”
“Wow. That’s impressive. Even for him. However did he…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “Never mind. I’m not sure I want to know.”
I don’t know why I hadn’t seen it before, but it was all there: Hayes’s nose, Hayes’s jawline, Hayes’s hands, Hayes’s fingers …
“So, I take it we’re not running tomorrow,” he laughed.
I shook my head, smiling. “Probably not…”
“Yes, that’s probably for the best.”
I could see Hayes across the room, whispering something in Simon’s ear, laughing. His hand dwarfing the mouth of his glass. He’d managed to get himself something besides water, Graham be damned. What were they discussing? I wondered.
My attention turned back to Ian. “Was that your real room number, 4722?”
Hayes’s father smiled, then swilled from his glass. “I’m not going to answer that question.”
“Yes,” I said, “that’s probably for the best.”
* * *
Toward the end of the night, when Amara had parted and the girls had returned to the hotel under the supervision of Liam’s parents, Hayes and I sat together in one of the booths. We were alone, but it felt false. The velvet rope, Desmond standing a few feet away with his back to us. Like exotic animals in a cage.
“You know tonight changes everything, right?”
“Because I’ve met your parents?”
“No.” He smiled. “Because there are people with cameras here. And press. People are going to talk. And it’s going to be more than a blind item.”
“I know that.”
“And it’s going to be more than one or two fans calling your name outside of a hotel. It’s going to feel really different. I’m just warning you.”
“Are you trying to say it’s too late to turn back?”
He laughed, kissed me. “It’s definitely too late to turn back.” His hand had found its way to my knee beneath the table. “Jane and Alistair are giving me dirty looks from across the room.”
“Are they?”
Hayes inclined his head to the ballroom floor, where, sure enough, his managers, a commanding couple, were in conversation with some record people but clearly staring daggers in our direction. Hayes put on one of his megawatt smiles and waved. “Hello, Jane and Alistair, I know I’m going against your boy band playbook by consorting with someone completely age inappropriate in a public setting and we’re going to lose a bunch of young fans in the Bible Belt. Sorry.”
I laughed, grabbing his waving hand. “Stop that.”
“Do you think they can read my lips?”
“I think they can read your cheeky attitude.”
He turned to me then. “I like you.”
“I know you do.”
“Thank you for coming. It really meant a lot to me that you were here.” He smiled slowly, his hand reaching to stroke the side of my face. “I more than like you. You know that, right? I’m not going to say it right now … but I do.”
We sat there for a bit, disappearing in each other.
I spoke first. “I’m really proud of you…”
“For putting on a suit and showing up?”
“For all of this. None of this would have happened if it weren’t for you, and your idea.”
He squeezed my hand and smiled. “It might have been a wee selfish on my part. Plus, it’s not exactly rocket science, is it?”
“It’s art. And it makes people happy. And that’s a very good thing. We have this problem in our culture. We take art that appeals to women—film, books, music—and we undervalue it. We assume it can’t be high art. Especially if it’s not dark and tortured and wailing. And it follows that much of that art is created by other women, and so we undervalue them as well. We wrap it up in a pretty pink package and resist calling it art.”
Hayes was quiet, processing.
“That’s part of why I do what I do … to push back on that, to combat it. And that’s why you should be a little more proud of what you do…”
I could see him searching for a response. The start of a smile playing over his lips. “Remind me again. How did I find you?”
“My ex-husband bought you in an auction.”
He laughed, his head angling back. His jaw. “We probably should thank him then.”
“We probably should … Let’s go back to the hotel. We can thank him properly there.”
“Yes.” He smiled. “Let’s.”
anguilla
They were eloping. Daniel and Eva. They’d made plans to do it in Maui the week after Christmas. Evidently Daniel liked his women pregnant in Hawaii. At least he’d had the decency to choose a different island.
He’d informed me the Saturday after we returned from New York. Str
aight, no chaser. “It’s going to be a tiny ceremony, and I’d like Isabelle to be there.”
“Of course,” I said, attempting to hide all emotion.
We were in the kitchen. He, standing with his arms across his chest, looking ever awkward. His eyes roaming the space, the unfamiliar postcards and photos tacked to the fridge. This was no longer his home.
“She says she had a great time in New York…”
“She did.”
“Did you have a good time?”
I paused at my spot before the stove where I’d been stirring risotto. Was he trying to parse out information about Hayes and me? Or was he genuinely interested in my happiness? “I did. Thank you.”
“So … this is really a thing?”
“This is really a thing.”
He nodded, leaning back on the island, stroking his chin, watching me.
“What, Daniel? What do you want to say?”
“I want to know how you see this playing out. Even if she says she’s okay with it, I want to know how having a boyfriend that famous is not going to fuck up our daughter. And when he ends it and breaks your heart, and is photographed with some nineteen-year-old model on the cover of Us, I want to know what you think it’s going to do to Isabelle to watch you go through that.”
The risotto was boiling. There was nothing to say.
“I want you to be happy, Solène. I do. But not at the expense of our daughter.”
* * *
By Sunday, four days after the premiere, things had begun to change. Drastically. I logged on to Twitter for the first time since New York and found I had 4,563 followers. Up from my previous high of 242. I thought perhaps it was an accident until I saw my notifications, which were too many to count, too much to process. I began to scroll through them, against my better judgment and Hayes’s advice, and was shocked by what lay within.
Fuck u, u fucking bitch.
You’re pretty but you’re old af.
wtf is all this shit about you and hayes can you just confirm something so i can go on with my life, thanks
When he cums does he scream “Mommy”?
u r so pathetic. I’d be so embarrassed if you were my mom. I bet your daughter hates your guts
Don’t listen to all those bitches, Solne, they’re just jealous. You seem nice.
hi December girlfriend
What does he see in you? I can’t imagine your old ass is worth it. What are you, 50?
Holi is real. Holi is real. Holi is real. Holi is real.
Instagram was no better. Whoever held the account @Holiwater had returned to comment on every one of my photos of the past two and a half years with her signature inquiry: “Hayes?” Another, @hayesismynigga, had written “bitch,” “salope,” “connasse” over and over and over again. And yet another, @himon96, took the opportunity to write in all caps on at least a dozen photos “VINTAGE VAGINA.”
When Hayes called from his place in Shoreditch that night, the sprawling loft that I had yet to see with the Nira Ramaswami and the Tobias James gracing the walls, I tried not to let him hear the anxiety in my voice. The band was both dropping the album and premiering the movie in London on Monday, and I knew he was already overwhelmed. But immediately he sensed something was off.
“What’s wrong?”
“Twitter.”
“I’m sorry, Sol. I’m sorry.”
“They’re animals.”
“Not all of them.”
“Just the ones who write on my page?”
“I told you not to read the comments. They can be really toxic. I’m sorry.”
* * *
I thought about closing both accounts, switching them to private settings, blocking every hateful Augie. But in the end, I just put down my phone and walked away. They could not reach me if I did not let them.
* * *
On Tuesday I arrived at work shortly before ten. The others had already arrived, but the gallery was strangely quiet. I was going through my emails in the office when Lulit slipped in and shut the door.
“Hey. How are you feeling?” It was an awkward greeting.
I looked up from my computer, aware that something was amiss.
“I’m fine, thanks. Why?”
She braced herself, crossing her arms, leaning up against her desk. I knew her well enough to know that this was her confrontational pose. “Our voicemail was full when Josephine got in this morning,” she started. “Our voicemail is never full. About a third of them were hang-ups, a third of them were press wanting to know if you could confirm whether or not you were dating Hayes Campbell, and a third were very rude girls leaving explicit comments. And that’s just on our main line.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Oh?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Solène—”
“I know. I know what you’re going to say, Lulit … I’m sorry. I’m sorry they’re calling. I’m sorry it’s bleeding over into my work. I’m sorry.”
She was quiet for a moment, staring off to the side. Who knew what was going through her pretty head?
“What are you going to do?” she spoke eventually. She’d asked it as if it only pertained to the phone calls, but I knew she meant about everything.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. Tell Josephine to tell them ‘No comment.’”
* * *
In the end, it did not matter whether or not Hayes and I commented because the tabloids picked up the story, what little of it they actually knew, and ran with it. And although I did not once search for material online, I’d heard the news from Amara. There was a series of shots of us exiting the Edison Ballroom that ran in Us Weekly, and People, and Star.
“You look exquisite,” Amara said Wednesday morning on the phone. “He’s leading you by the hand. His suit jacket is over your shoulders. He’s turning to look back at you. You’re smiling at each other and you both look ridiculously in love.”
“Shut up. Don’t say that.”
“Sorry. It’s true. It’s a great shot. You should see it.”
“I don’t want to see it,” I said. I was in traffic on the 10. Running late after my SoulCycle class. My in-box overflowing with old friends and acquaintances from out of the blue: “Hey, I see you have a new boyfriend.” The day already weighing on me. And Hayes, a million miles away.
“You look like the Kennedys.”
“You mean if John-John had dated his mom?”
“Yes, exactly,” she laughed. “Shit, I’ve gotta go, it’s Larry. Hang in there. Beware the wrath of teenage girls.”
* * *
That evening, I got caught up on a phone call with Hayes, who was in Paris and flying to Rome the next morning, and I was late picking up Isabelle from fencing. Again. He’d made arrangements for us to spend a week in Anguilla over the holidays. He’d wanted to surprise me, but quickly discovered that negotiating Christmas trysts with a woman who had a teenage daughter and an ex-husband in the picture was not for the faint of heart.
“Well, if this was easy, then it wouldn’t be worth it, would it?” he’d said, which made me laugh.
“You like me complicated, don’t you?”
“I like you complex. I don’t like you complicated.”
“I like you every way possible,” I said, and I could hear him smiling.
“Woman, I have to go to sleep. It’s bad enough I’m in Paris and you’re not here. Don’t tease me.”
* * *
I was still thinking about him and the lure of a week in the Caribbean later that night when Isabelle called me from her room, a distinct panic in her voice.
“Mom! Mom!!”
I found her seated at her desk, her laptop opened, an amateur handheld video playing on YouTube.
“What is that? What are you watching?”
“Us. You.”
It took me a moment to register what I was seeing. A group of people in conversation from a distance. A vast well-lit space. And then it came togeth
er. The lobby of the Mandarin Oriental. The morning Simon took the girls to the Apple Store. Hayes and I had our backs to the camera. The others were facing us, their features coming in and out of focus. I couldn’t make out any of our conversation, but it did not matter. The girls doing the recording had included a precise play-by-play.
“Is his hand on her ass? Holy shit, his hand is on her ass. Are you getting this? Shhh, I’m getting it. His hand is totally on her ass. Shhh. Did she just say ‘Mom’? Did she call her ‘Mom’? Oh my God, is that her daughter? No way! Holy fuck, that’s her daughter. Duuuude, your mom is fucking Hayes Campbell. Whoa. Sucks to be her. Um, she just got into an elevator with Simon, I don’t think she’s hurting right now. But still, imagine your mom is fucking Hayes Campbell. That’s like the fanfic that writes itself. She probably gets to call him ‘Daddy.’ ‘Hey, Daddy.’ ‘Hiiiiii, Daddy.’ ‘I have an itch that needs scratching, Daddy.’ ‘Daddy, why don’t you—’”
“Turn it off. Turn it off turn it off turn it off!” I slammed the laptop shut so forcefully, Isabelle’s canister of markers flew off the desk. “Ignore it, Izz. Ignore it. No one’s looking at that.”
“Really?” She looked up at me, her eyes welling. “Because apparently it already has thirty-four thousand views.”
I was shaking. “Please don’t watch that. Promise me you will not watch that.”
“It’s out there, Mom.”
“It’s out there, but we don’t have to let it in here. You have to promise me, Izz.” I stooped to her level, taking her hands in mine. “You have to promise me that you will not search for those things. You will not go looking for those things. You will not Google. Because it’s only going to hurt you. It’s only going to hurt us. Those people don’t know us. They don’t know you. They don’t know me. They don’t know Hayes. They’re going to say some really hurtful things and we just have to ignore it. Okay?”
