The Idea of You: A Novel
The Idea of You: miami

Things were not perfect. I did not kid myself into believing that Isabelle would miraculously be okay with the idea of Hayes and me, just because Hayes had willed it so. But I had hoped she would ease into it. Make her peace, gradually. Like she had with the divorce. But she had been younger then, less sensitive, less likely to view things as a personal affront. It had been surprisingly easy to rationalize with her. Now everything was the end of the world. Battle Hymn of the Teenage Girl.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked, at least once a day.

“No,” she said each time, slipping into her room. “I’m okay.” And then the door would close and the Taylor Swift would begin.

We were not yet out of the woods.

*   *   *

Daniel broke the news to her about Eva. According to him, she’d sobbed and wailed that everything was changing. And he’d agreed that it was, but that we would never love her any less and that she would always be our firstborn. She would always be the first best thing that had happened to the two of us. She would. She was.

That Sunday evening, after he’d dropped her off, she came into my room and curled up on my bed like a snail and cried. And the fact that she let me comfort her was progress. The fact that she let me hold her and breathe her in and marvel at the beauty of her was its own sweet reward.

“I’m sorry,” she said eventually. Her voice hoarse, broken. “I’m sorry about Daddy. I’m sorry about Eva. I’m sorry about everything.”

My heart ached for her. Her world was shattering, unrecognizable, and there was little I could do to fix it. I lay there, my body curled around hers, wondering at how we’d gotten here. Our family so fractured and rearranged. Like the faces in a Picasso.

“I love you,” I said.

She nodded, threading her fingers slowly in between mine. “I love you, too.”

“We’re going to be okay, Izz. We’re going to be okay.”

*   *   *

We spent the first week of December in Miami for Art Basel. On the flight out, Lulit gave me a stern talking-to.

“You’re not leaving me this go-round,” she said. “We’re a team. No afternoons off to go gallivanting with your boyfriend.”

“Okay.” I nodded.

Hayes was in New York that week doing the press junket for August Moon: Naked. But he was slipping out on Thursday to spend the weekend in South Beach.

“I know you’re totally into each other, and I know you don’t see him that often, but I need your help,” Lulit continued. “I need you. I didn’t get into this to do it by myself. We’re a team. We work well as a team. We have fun as a team.”

“Okay,” I repeated. “I get it.”

*   *   *

She was right. We had fun. Miami was one nonstop party: cocktails and dinner and ridiculously late nights. Having Matt on hand made juggling the workload that much easier. We wined and dined and schmoozed and sold art. And it was good.

I booked an ocean view suite at the Setai while the rest of the team set up camp in a rental. I knew Hayes would appreciate the relative calm and privacy. He showed up in Miami on Thursday evening, a little weary from the onslaught of press. Interviews, photo shoots, answering the same questions over and over. If you weren’t doing this, what would you be doing? Would you ever date a fan? Have you ever been in love? What’s your favorite word for boobs? Soft-shell tacos or hard?

“It’s such mindless drivel,” he said, watching me dress for dinner. “Kind of makes me envy my mates at uni.”

“Who I’m sure envy you…”

“Because I’m in South Beach with the world’s hottest gallerist?” He smiled.

“Yes,” I laughed. “Because of that.”

He paused then, taking a deep breath. “So I have something of interest to tell you … My parents are coming to the premiere.”

I spun to look at him. He was reclining on the bed, long legs crossed, hands folded behind his head, completely at ease. A pose incongruous, I thought, with the subject matter at hand.

“Fuck.” It was barely a whisper.

“It’s okay, I’ve already prepared them.” Sᴇaʀᴄh thᴇ FindNʘᴠᴇl.nᴇt website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

“You told them how old I was? You told them about Isabelle?”

He nodded slowly.

“Did they freak out?”

“Define ‘freak out’ exactly … No, I’m playing with you. They did not freak out. They were surprisingly … okay.”

“‘Okay’?”

“Okay,” he repeated, a small smile on his lips. “It’s going to be okay.”

But I doubted that. Highly.

*   *   *

We decided to skip the flurry of industry parties that night and went to a late dinner at Casa Tua on James. We’d only just arrived at the restaurant and were snaking our way through the candlelit tables in the courtyard garden when someone called Hayes’s name. I turned to find him stopped alongside a table of what looked to be three young models. Accompanying them was a middle-aged gentleman. Perhaps an agent, a father, a predatory paramour. It gave me pause. Was this what I had become? Middle-aged?

The girl closest to Hayes was fine-boned, blonde, beautiful. Her thin hand was wrapped around his wrist. “Amanda,” she was saying. “We met at the Chateau a couple of weeks ago.”

I watched him register, smile. “Amanda. Yes. Hi. How are you?”

“Wonderful,” she said. Of course she was. She had flawless skin and a smattering of freckles over her delicate nose. And she was young enough that she could get away with going out at night in South Beach with not a lick of makeup.

“We were just talking about you,” she cooed. “I believe you know my friend Yasmin.” She gestured to the girl seated across from her.

A brunette, slightly older, vaguely ethnic, large wide-spaced eyes and a pornographic mouth.

Hayes took a moment, placing her, and then he nodded, slow. “I do.”

“Hi.” Yasmin smiled, flicking her hair.

“Hi.” He grinned. He’d fucked her. That much was apparent.

It was in the shift in his body language, and the way she refused to hold his gaze. And it struck me, that I was able to tell so quickly, that I knew him that well. My boyfriend.

I had not, for the most part, expended much energy worrying about the women of Hayes’s past. Because the past was the past. And since September, I had tried not to worry about the women of the present, because he promised me there were none. He’d asked me to stay off the Internet and not read tabloids and to trust him, and for the most part I did. But all I had was his word.

*   *   *

“Do we need to use a condom?” I had asked him earlier that evening. It had become something of a ritual.

He had cocked his head, wily. “I don’t know. Do we?”

“I’m asking you.”

“Have you done something you’re not proud of?”

“No,” I’d said. “But I’m not the one in a band.”

“If I do something I’m not proud of, I’ll let you know,” he’d said, flipping me onto my stomach.

“I’m trusting you, Hayes.”

“I know you are.”

*   *   *

But there, in the garden of Casa Tua, beneath the stars and the sprawling trees and the Moroccan lanterns, the reality hit me. That there had been many, that there would always be, that they would be everywhere. Hayes’s conquests. Creeping, entangling him, like ivy.

“Are you here for Basel?” Amanda asked. She’d pronounced it basil, which was irksome.

“Yes,” Hayes said.

“Cool.” Her skinny fingers were still encircling his wrist, serpentine. “Where are you staying?”

He paused for a moment, his eyes scanning the faces at the table and then landing on me. “With a friend … I’m sorry, I’m keeping her waiting.” His attempt to untangle. “Good to see you. Yasmin. Amanda. Enjoy your dinner.” He waved at the others and pulled away.

*   *   *

Later, over the burrata and a bold Cab, Hayes felt the need to explain himself. “So, Amanda … She’s Simon’s friend.”

“I didn’t ask.”

“I know you didn’t. But I didn’t want you wondering.”

“And Yasmin? Simon’s friend, too?”

He swished his wine in his glass. “No. Yasmin wasn’t Simon’s friend.”

“Yeah, that was evident.”

“Sorry … It was a long time ago.”

I nodded, swilling from my wine. “I thought you didn’t like models.”

He laughed. “I’m pretty sure I never said that. Who doesn’t like models?”

“Oliver.”

Hayes grew serious, fast. “Yes, Oliver. He knows his art and he’s too sophisticated for models.”

The way he’d said it surprised me.

He reached out then and grabbed my hand on the table. “I don’t have a problem with models. They are, for the most part, quite pretty. But given the choice, I’d rather be with someone who’s lived a little, has something interesting to say, and isn’t just eye candy.

“Do you know what girls like that talk about? Instagram and Coachella … That’s good for like a night. Which was what Yasmin was. A night.”

My eyes were on his hand holding mine. His long, thick fingers. His two rings: silver, patterned, one on his ring finger, one on the middle. He switched them up so often.

“I thought you loved Instagram,” I said.

“I do Instagram because our team makes us. You know what I like about you? That you’ve never been to Coachella and the only thing you Instagram is art.”

“You were looking at my Instagram?”

“Maybe…” He smiled, coy. “I’m thinking about taking a page out of your book and segueing into artsy photos.”

I laughed. “What? No more body parts? No more ‘Hayes, can I sit on your big toe?’”

He shuddered. “That’s really … I don’t quite have the words for what that is. Sometimes our fandom scares me.”

“Yes,” I said. “Me, too.”

*   *   *

I awoke the next morning to a phone vibrating. The shades were drawn and I could not determine the time, but it felt early. Too early for the phone. After numerous rings, Hayes answered, annoyed. There was a pause and then he bolted upright.

“No. Fucking. Way.”

“What happened?”

He looked to me, eyes wide. His hair was unruly and his voice croaked, but his smile was glorious. “It appears I’ve been nominated for a Grammy.”

*   *   *

August Moon was in the running for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance for their song “Seven Minutes.” The ballad, which Hayes alone had written with one of their producers, was also up for Song of the Year. It was, in every way, a big deal.

*   *   *

We dined at the Bazaar at SLS that night with Lulit, Matt, our artist Anya Pashkov, and Dawn and Karl Von Donnersmarck, a couple of New York collectors. The mood was decidedly festive.

“Your life, Hayes, will be even crazier if you win?” Lulit said over cocktails, her pitch rising at the end. As if at the last moment she’d decided to make it a question.

“Oh, we won’t win. Boy bands don’t win Grammys. This alone is huge. I’m rather chuffed.” He beamed. “It might earn us a bit more respect. But still, we are pretty much at the bottom of any respectability charts.”

Dawn laughed loudly, raising her glass. “I love that you’re so good-humored about it. And you, Anya, kudos to you.”

Artnet had posted a favorable write-up on Anya’s installation that morning. Invisible was a conceptual video exploring how women of a certain age cease to be seen. How society sweeps them under a rug, ignores them, discards them once past their prime. She’d curated a series of portraits of women middle-aged and older, spliced with media images and common advertising tropes, and layered a soundtrack above of real women speaking about their experiences, their fears, their insecurities. It was painfully, brutally honest.

“My friends and I discuss this all the time. It’s like you cease to exist,” Dawn continued. Dawn was a patrician blonde, New York born and bred. Tall, capable. If she was older than me, it was not by much. “How many times do you find yourself in a room or at a party and you’re thinking, ‘Am I here? Can anyone see me? Hello!’”

Karl, quiet, bookish, wrapped his arm around her, smiling. “I see you, hon.”

“You know what I mean, Karl.” She turned to me then. “Like the guys who typically talk to you on the streets … Not the catcalling construction workers, but the doormen who generally say ‘Good morning’ … That just stops. It stops. Do I no longer warrant a ‘Good morning’? There’s something very disturbing about them not even registering you anymore. Like shit, when did this happen?”

Hayes was holding my hand beneath the table. He squeezed it suddenly, and I looked over to him, wondering what it was he’d read on my face. The uncertainty of it all. The idea that my own invisibility might be around the corner. Around the block. Miles away. But still, inevitable.

“It’s groundbreaking what you’re doing, Anya,” I said.

“Thank you, Solène.” She was sitting across from me, nursing a vodka tonic. Anya’s features were sharp, memorable. Fair skin, black hair, red lips. She had a few years on me, but she seemed to have it figured all out. While I was still reeling from the news about my ex-husband’s pregnant fiancée and trying to hold together a heartbroken teen while bedding her twenty-year-old idol, Anya was taking on the future of womankind.

“We sent out press releases to the women’s magazines in addition to the usual art publications because they’re in a unique position,” I continued. “Sure, some are partly to blame, but they have this opportunity now to kind of turn it on its head. To further the discussion. The fact that we continuously equate beauty and desirability with youth. That we beat ourselves up instead of embracing the inevitable. And these are women running these magazines. Why do we do this to ourselves?”

“Because we’ve been brainwashed,” Lulit said, sipping her mojito. “But this is the beauty of art, right? We hold up a mirror to ourselves and say, ‘Who the hell have we become?’ That’s what we do.”

I looked to her then, my partner in crime, my best friend. “That’s what we do.”

*   *   *

After dinner, the others decided to head over to Soho House for a party where the Roots’ Questlove was spinning, but Hayes assumed it would be too much of a scene and so we opted out.

“I’m seeing him next week. We’re doing The Tonight Show,” he said, as if that were a normal thing.

“What a thrilling life you lead.” Dawn smiled. We were standing by the valet, waiting for their Uber. “Well, you two have fun. I’m going to go be invisible at Soho House.”

I laughed at that. “You’re not invisible, Dawn. You’re wearing Dries Van Noten.”

“Ha!” She threw back her blonde head, her punchy floral dress in high relief. “Thank you for noticing! Thank you for seeing me.”

“I see everything,” I said. “That’s my job.”

*   *   *

“I love that you love what you do,” Hayes said, sometime later. We were tucked into a corner of the Setai’s courtyard bar—low lights, reflecting pool, palm trees. The vibe more Mooréa than Miami.

He was sipping from his Scotch. Laphroaig 18. “What do Isabelle’s friends’ mums do? Do they work?”

“The majority of them, no.”

“My mum didn’t go back to work after I was born. She rode horses and did charity stuff and … had lunch,” he laughed. “I don’t know what she did, come to think of it. I don’t know how she filled her days.”

“Would you describe her as a good mum?”

“I guess so. I turned out all right. I mean, you like me.”

“I do.” I smiled. “Do you think she was happy?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Are you happy?”

“Right this moment? Yes.”

He was quiet for a minute, watching me. “Do you think you’d be as happy if you weren’t working?”

I shook my head. “Maybe if I’d gotten married and had kids older, I would have felt the pull to settle down. But I had all this education and energy and desire and there was more life to live than that. And now it’s so much of my identity. And yeah, sometimes I feel guilty that I wasn’t the mom serving hot lunch at private school. But who’s to say that would have made me a better mom? I probably would have just been restless and unhappy. And resentful.”

He nodded, his fingers tracing over my cuff. “Yeah, I get that.”

“If you hadn’t done this, what would you be doing?”

“Ha! Press junket questions. I’d be at Cambridge with half my year, sleeping in the same five-hundred-year-old college four generations of Campbells have slept in, playing football, chasing skirts, rowing, and having a grand time.”

“Interesting,” I said. I could not picture him doing any of that. “Hard or soft-shell tacos?”

He laughed. “Soft.”

“Ever been in love?”

“No.”

I stopped. It was not what I was expecting. “No?”

He sipped from his drink, placed the glass on the table before us. “No.”

“Never? Really? Wow.”

“Do I strike you as someone who’s been in love?”

“You strike me as someone who knows what he’s doing.”

“I’ve had some good teachers. Some of whom have said, ‘Don’t fall in love with me.’” He let that stand in the air, accusatory.

“Did I say that? I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I didn’t really listen to you anyway.” He said it with no pretense. His hand had found its way beneath the table, to my knee, to the scalloped lace hem of my dress. “I’ve thought I was in love. Turns out I was wrong.”

“Penelope?”

“Penelope.”

My mind paged through the times he’d said he was falling, at the Chateau Marmont, at the George V. I was weighing them differently now, those proclamations. I’d written them off as infatuation. Things a young boy might say. But perhaps he’d been revealing more of himself all along.

A sultry breeze blew up from the ocean. The air was moist, balmy. Hayes’s fingers slipped beneath my hem and I flinched. For a long time neither of us spoke. He held my gaze as he forced my knees apart, uncrossed my legs, pried open my thighs.

There was another couple on the banquette not far from us. A group of Basel types across the reflecting pool. We were not alone. And yet I did not stop him.

“I take it we’re done talking about Penelope…”

He chuckled, sly. His fingers pressed up against me, inside me. “We are very done talking about Penelope.”

He leaned into me then, his mouth near my ear, his breath hot on my neck. The thought occurred that I would miss this when he moved on. When he was with someone ten years my junior, and I was somewhere invisible. I was going to miss his hands.

This.

His thumb on my clit and my heart in my throat and the humidity enveloping us like a blanket.

When I thought it might happen, that I might come right there in the courtyard of the Setai, he stopped, pulling away. I reached for his arm. “Where are you going?”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said. And then he took his hand from between my legs and rubbed his wet fingers over my mouth. My lips, my tongue … I sat, speechless.

He smiled his half smile, took a swig of Scotch, and then kissed me. Deep.

“You,” I said, when I found my voice.

“Me.”

“You. Are so fucking dirty.”

He leaned in again to suck on my lip. “Am I?”

“Can we go back to the room now?”

“Not yet.” He was smiling when his hand returned between my legs, his fingers slipping beneath my underwear, sliding up inside of me, effortless. “You. Are so fucking wet.”

I sat there for another minute, lost in him. And then I grabbed his wrist. “Pay the bill,” I said, “and then meet me upstairs.”

“Okay.”

*   *   *

It took him longer than I would have liked to arrive at the suite. But the sight of him at the bedroom entrance—black dress shirt slightly unbuttoned, glass still in hand—gave me such a rush, I forgot to question where he’d been.

“Candles?” he said, taking in the room, taking off his boots. “Were you hoping for something romantic?”

“Actually, I was just hoping you’d bring your mouth.”

He smiled at that. “I bet you were.”

From my position on the bed, I watched him make his way toward me, his body long, lithe, beautiful. He took a moment to hook his iPhone up to the speakers. Then, as the music started, some evocative baseline I did not recognize, he took a sip of Scotch and drank me in.

“Are you going to make me wait, Hayes Campbell?”

He grinned, setting down his glass. “Maybe. Just a little.”

The vocals kicked in then. A haunting, familiar voice. Bono. Although nothing I’d ever heard before. Raw, sexy, disjointed lyrics.

“U2?”

“U2.”

Hayes joined me on the bed, took his time unzipping my dress. His fingers warm against my flesh. A driving guitar, his hands unclasping my bra, his mouth on my breasts. His tongue … He lowered himself, eventually, index finger running along the waist of my panties, from hip bone to hip bone and back. Bono’s voice, lulling. Sleep like a baby, tonight …

He paused for a second, his eyes finding mine, and then he bowed his head, took the material in his teeth, and slowly, slowly pulled them off. When he’d succeeded in getting them down to my ankles, he sat back and crossed his arms over his chest. His expression almost smug.

“What? What are you thinking?”

“I want to see what you do when I’m not with you.”

It took me a minute to register his request. “Now?”

“Now. Show me.”

*   *   *

When i got to our booth at the fair just before eleven the following morning, Matt was already there poring over his laptop. Lulit had yet to arrive.

“You want the good news or the bad?” he greeted me.

“No ‘Good morning’?”

He smiled, pushing his glasses up onto his face. “Sorry. Good morning. Good news: We’re going to sell a lot of art today.”

We’d been doing well thus far. Glen Wilson’s installation Gatekeeping was striking. Salvaged chain-link fences, with large-scale portraits woven throughout the steel mesh, symbolic of the gentrification transforming the artist beach community of Venice. The pieces representing the remnants of once-affordable properties and their displaced residents. It was political, powerful art.

“So what’s the bad news?”

“You’re a blind item,” he said, positioning the laptop so I could view the screen.

“A what?”

“Jo just sent this.”

The browser was opened to a website I didn’t recognize. Blind gossip something or another. At the top of the page there was an item titled “Naked Lunch.”

Which pretty boy with a penchant for mature women has been moonlighting as a collector in South Beach this week? Is he fulfilling his artistic desires or that of his amorous dealer?

I stared at it for a moment, trying to compute. It seemed so esoteric to me, random. “Is there a photo?”

“No.”

“Is my name up there?”

“Not yet. But it’s a matter of time before someone guesses.”

“How did Josephine know it was us? It could be anyone.”

Matt sighed, shutting the window. “The clues: Wise or Naked, August Moon, Petty Desires. It’s all in there.”

“Fuck,” I said. We’d been so careful. So lucky. “Who reads that thing?”

“Pretty much everyone who cares about gossip,” he laughed. “Sorry.”

I nodded. It was bound to happen. “‘Amorous dealer.’ Great.”

Matt smiled. “It could have been much less favorable. Lulit doesn’t know. We don’t have to tell her.”

“Okay,” I said. “Maybe that’s best.”

*   *   *

My pretty boyfriend showed up sometime after two, wanting to see me, to see the fair. There was something of a lunchtime lull, and so we slipped away with Lulit’s permission.

“This dress,” he said as we meandered through the neighboring booths.

“What about it?” It was a cream-colored crepe shift. Sleeveless, short.

“It’s rather … wee.”

“That it is.” I smiled over at him.

As always I was aware of the eyes on Hayes. Poufy curls, skinny jeans, boots. A walking exclamation mark. But for the first time, and I wasn’t sure if it was just my imagination, it seemed that people were looking at me as well.

When we finally snaked our way over to the Sadie Coles booth to see Urs Fischer’s Small Rain installation—a thousand cartoonish green plaster raindrops suspended from above—I leaned into him. “We’re a blind item.”

“You and I?”

“No, you and some other chick you were with the last couple of days in Miami.” I paused. “You weren’t with some other chick the last couple of days in Miami? Right?”

He smirked. “I’m trying to imagine when I would have squeezed that in. Perhaps when you passed out after your eighth orgasm? I slipped out and headed over to Soho House to see what trouble I could get into. By the way, that, I think, might be our new record. Although I can’t truly take credit for the first two because you were pretty much on your own … Can we do that again, tonight?”

“Can we not discuss this here?”

“You’re being very short with me.” He smiled. “Almost as short as this dress.”

“I’m a little on edge.”

“Because of the blind item?”

“Yes.”

He nodded slowly. “Can I give you some advice? Ignore it. It’s going to get worse. It’s going to get really bad.”

I turned to him. “What do you mean? How bad is it going to get?”

“It’s going to get bad.”

Up until now I had assumed the worst that could happen was Isabelle finding out and losing her mind. And I had barely survived that. I could not envision how anything could possibly be more traumatic. Clearly, I had just been naïve.

“That’s it? That’s all you’re going to give me? You’re just going to send me out into the world with your psychotic fans and tell me, ‘It’s going to get bad, just ignore it’?”

He smiled, but there was something sad in his eyes. “Solène,” he whispered, taking my hands. “There’s no instruction manual for this. We make it up as we go. Here’s the deal: I don’t talk about my private life. Ever. I don’t release statements. I don’t comment on it. I don’t discuss it in interviews and I don’t address it on social media. You can choose what you want to do, but I find that’s the best way to deal with it. Otherwise, you’re just giving them fodder. Let them speculate. People are going to say a lot of things. Most of them will not be true. And much of it will not be nice. But you have to be strong enough to not acknowledge or address any of it. If you can ignore it completely, that would be best. But if you can’t, you just have to remember that these are people who don’t know you and don’t know me. And for the most part they’re just making things up to sell advertising. Got it?”

I nodded.

“And whatever you do, never ever, ever read the comments.”

“Okay.”

“You look terrified.” He smiled.

“Because I am. I wish you’d told me all this before.”

“Before when? Before you started falling in love with me?”

“Who told you I was falling in love with you?”

“It’s just a hunch.”

“It was the eight orgasms that gave it away, wasn’t it?” I deflected. My eyes were threatening to tear. There, among raindrops the size of pears, in the middle of Art Basel. “Fuck, Hayes.”

“Shhh.” He held my head, kissing my cheek. “It’s okay. One day at a time. Today we ignore the blind item.”

“Today we ignore the blind item.”

*   *   *

When we returned to our booth, Lulit was in the midst of showing the Invisible installation to a curator from the Whitney. They were deep in conversation about Anya’s work: part of a larger series of striking black-and-white portraits shot with either extremely high or low exposures, so her subjects, all women, were either blown out or reduced to shadows, both effectively rendering them near invisible.

“Lulit is sounding very serious.” Hayes came up behind me, close.

I shushed him. There were a handful of others admiring Glen’s gates. Matt had evidently stepped away.

“You know,” he said, low, “I adore you both, but you are not the women to sell this whole invisible rubbish. Have you looked at yourselves?”

It took me a moment to register what he was saying, the audacity.

“I know you probably mean that as a compliment, but I’m not taking it that way.”

“I’m just saying, it is quite likely that people will think you are taking the piss.”

“That we’re what? Taking the what?”

He smiled, adorable, even when infuriating. “Like mocking them. You are the two least invisible women in this entire convention center.”

“I’m not sure that’s true. But if it were, for the reasons you’re insinuating it is, it would give us more impetus to support this project.”

He was quiet for a bit, mulling the idea.

“You realize that we are currently the only gallery of our size owned by two women? If we’re not the ones to back this, I don’t know who is.”

I was proud of that fact. That Lulit and I had managed to make it work despite the odds. That we’d garnered a certain amount of respect, success in the ten years that we’d been doing this. That we’d birthed this idea—to fight for the underrepresented, the underappreciated—and we were winning.

“I did not know that. That kind of makes you hotter.”

I laughed at that. “Okay, go away. I need to work.”

He drew me into him, both hands on my hips. A motion that was decidedly suggestive. “Tonight I think we should go for nine.”

“I think you need to leave.”

“I think you need to lose this dress.”

“Go.”

“‘Look how sexy I am. But for the rest of you who are not so sexy, here’s this wonderful installation that addresses all your insecurities.’”

“Get out of here, Hayes. Being a woman is a complicated thing.”

“I bet it is.” He leaned in to kiss my nose. “Have a good day. I love you. Good-bye.”

“What did you say?”

“Nothing. I didn’t say that. Fuck. I didn’t say that. Good-bye.” His face was red as he backed out of the booth. And for a fleeting moment I considered following him. Anywhere.

*   *   *

“What is it you’re doing?” Lulit approached me shortly after the curator from the Whitney had departed. “This Hayes thing. What are you doing, Solène?”

I looked at her, not understanding. Was she not the one who’d fully endorsed this? Who’d told me to go and get my rock star?

“I thought this was just going to be a fling,” she said, soft. “Like for the summer … I thought it was temporary and you were having fun and that was great. And important. For you … to move on, and grow. But it’s now like serious, and you’re completely falling for him, and it’s affecting your decisions in not the best way. And he’s twenty, Solène. He’s twenty.”

I was speechless.

“And he’s going to fucking break your heart and I can’t sit and watch that happen again. And don’t tell me it’s just sex. Because it’s not just sex anymore. I’ve seen the way you look at each other … It’s not just sex.”

I wanted to be angry with her. I did. But I was terrified that everything she had said was right.

*   *   *

On Sunday, after a late brunch in the Design District, Hayes and I returned to find no fewer than two dozen young girls congregated outside at the front of the Setai.

They’d found us.

We managed to evade them by looping two blocks down to Eighteenth Street and using the beach entrance at the back. There were a handful of fans lingering there as well, and Hayes stopped and took a few photos. And then, just as we were about to maneuver our way through the gate, one of them asked, rather politely, “Is that your girlfriend?”

I felt it, every single hair on my arms and the back of my neck standing up. I spun to look at him, which was probably a rookie move. Hayes waved to his fans and smiled. “You guys have a good day, all right?” And then he shut the gate and it was over.

“Crisis averted?” he asked.

“Crisis averted.”

We were meandering back through the sultry lobby when I spotted her: a striking brunette, with olive skin and exquisite bones. She looked to be early thirties, slender, sexy. Not the kind of person you could overlook, and yet Hayes did not seem to see her. He was doing that thing that celebrities sometimes do, purposefully avoiding eye contact with strangers so they wouldn’t assume they had permission to start a conversation. I’d seen him do it before, in crowds, in public spaces. Shutting out the world. This time, his iPhone was the distraction.

But I noticed her right away. I saw her see us, see Hayes, and then I watched as a million emotions washed over her face. She looked away quickly and then turned back, as if drawn against her will. Her eyes scanning, scrutinizing, looking away again. And then I understood. She was too old to be a fan. She knew him. She knew him.

“Do you know this woman who’s riveted by you?”

He looked up, his eyes landing on her just as she glanced over. I watched it register on his face. The recognition, the history. He’d slept with her. He might have even loved her. Whether or not he would call it that.

“Fee,” he said. “Yeah.”

She smiled faintly, and he, we, made our way in her direction.

“Hey,” he greeted her, slightly flustered, leaning in to kiss her cheek. “Fee.”

“Hayes.” She said it slowly, the hint of an accent.

“How are you?”

“Good. I’m good.”

“That’s good.” He was tugging at his hair, uncomfortable. “Um, Solène, this is Filipa. Fee, this is my friend Solène.”

She smiled at me, her eyes missing nothing. And likewise, I found myself assessing her, wondering, reading between the lines. Whatever it was going back and forth between them, it was intense.

Is this how it would be, were I to randomly bump into him years from now when at least one of us had moved on? Would he be anxious and awkward and pulling at his hair? Would my eyes betray both my desire and contempt? I saw my face in hers and it scared me.

“Are you here in town for a while?” she asked.

“Just a few days.”

“Work?”

He shook his head. It was painful to watch.

“Um, I need to check in with Matt,” I said, excusing myself. I wanted to give them a moment alone.

But even from my perch a few yards away, where I was scanning aimlessly through emails, I could feel the weight of their conversation. Of them. And it struck me, how much she looked like me. How he had a type. How perhaps we were all versions of this Hayes Campbell ideal. Yasmin, too.

Eventually, they parted and Hayes collected me to head up to the room.

He didn’t speak until we were in the elevator. “Sorry about that. That was…”

“Yeah, it was kind of obvious what that was.”

He sighed, and then reached for my hand, squeezing it.

When we got to the suite, Hayes made his way out onto the balcony, where he stood staring at the ocean for a good ten minutes before finding his way back inside to me.

“So, Fee…” he said, clearing his throat.

“I don’t need to know,” I said.

“I need you to know … Full disclosure: I kind of fucked up her marriage.”

I looked over from where I was standing near the bedroom entrance. “You kind of fucked up her marriage? Either you did or you didn’t.”

He paused, tugging at his lower lip. We were back to that. “I did.”

“I thought you said those were just rumors.”

“Most of them are. That one wasn’t.”

I took my time processing. “Just so I’m aware, are we going to continue to bump into people who you’ve fucked … up?”

“That’s not fair.”

“Isn’t it?”

“You’re not jealous…”

“I’m not jealous.”

“I like you.”

“I don’t doubt that…”

“I’m here with you.”

“That’s not the point.”

“What’s the point, then? I’m confused.”

“Never mind,” I said, because I wasn’t sure. And the point may have very well been that I wasn’t sure about anything. That I wasn’t sure about us. That the idea that this would continue to happen, always, might have been more than I signed up for. That I wasn’t ready to exert the energy in comparing and competing, and maybe, just maybe, I’d made a mistake.

“Perhaps I hadn’t thought this through,” I said.

“What does that mean? Why are you saying that?”

“I know you want me to think of you as just Hayes, but every time we step outside, you are also Hayes Campbell. And that comes with a lot of baggage, and some of it is harder to carry than others.”

He stood there, watching me, the vast Atlantic behind him. “Are you saying you don’t want to do this?”

“I’m saying when we’re alone in our little cocoon, it’s perfect.”

“And when we’re not?”

“And when we’re not, it’s less so.”

I could see him growing angry, frustrated. “What are you doing, Solène? Are you trying to push me away?”

“I’m not trying to push you away.”

“Well, then, what are you doing? None of this should come as a surprise to you,” he said. “You knew what I did. What I do. You knew getting into this.”

“I know that.”

“It’s complicated, yes. There’s baggage. But there’s a lot on your end, too. And I’ve accepted that … and I’m half your age.” He let that sit there. Stinging. “I’m going for a walk,” he stated, terse.

He seemed to have taken the air out of the room with him, because suddenly I could not breathe. His absence, stifling.

I knew I was wrong. My way of coping. To distance myself before the inevitable. In some ways, I had done the same to Daniel. I had pushed. And now he was getting married and fathering someone else’s child. And that could not be undone.

It would cost me nothing to push Hayes away. To not have to think about random women in hotel lobbies. And reptilian models. And the numerous fans who would have eagerly taken my place. To be rid of all of that. His fame, cumbersome, like a fucking steamship. I wondered then who he would have been without it.

The door flew open, and Hayes came charging in. It had been minutes.

“I can’t even go for a fucking walk!” His eyes were wet, his voice quaking. “I forgot my sunglasses and I haven’t a hat and I can’t even go for a fucking walk!”

He hadn’t a hat.

I would have smiled at him if I did not think it would upset him more.

“I fucking hate this,” he said before I could speak. And I wasn’t sure if he was referencing our spat or his inability to walk out on it without being recognized.

“I know what you’re doing, and I’m not just going to stand here and let you push me away. You’re trying to push me away.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“Why?”

“You’re a rock star—”

“I’m a person. First and foremost. And I have feelings. And I know this career comes with a lot of baggage, but don’t write me off just because I’m in a fucking band. It’s what I do, it’s not who I am. It doesn’t—what is it you say?—it doesn’t define me.

“What happened?” he asked. “It was going well.”

“It stopped being just sex.”

“It hasn’t been just sex in a long time, Solène.” His words hung there, heavy like the Miami air.

“Where are we going with this, Hayes?”

“Where do you want to go with this?”

“Where do you want to go with this?”

“I want to go all the way.” In that moment he sounded so sure of himself, despite his tears. So certain of the possibility of us.

I was still. Quiet.

“You afraid?” he asked.

I nodded.

“So am I. But I’m all right with that. If I get hurt, I get hurt. It happens, right? Someone always gets hurt. But I don’t want to miss out on us because I was afraid.”

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