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.”