“I’m really happy when I’m with you. I get the feeling you feel the same way. And if that’s true, I don’t think you should give a fuck about what people may or may not think of our age difference. Furthermore, if our ages were reversed, no one would bat an eyelash. Am I right? So now it’s just some sexist, patriarchal crap, and you don’t strike me as the kind of woman who’s going to let that dictate her happiness. All right? Next issue…”
Our waiter came to the table then, and naturally neither of us had looked at the menu.
“Encore un moment, s’il vous plaît,” Hayes said, dismissing him.
When he’d parted, Hayes leaned forward, grabbing both my hands. “I think when we go home, you need to tell Isabelle the truth. I don’t think we can do this again without telling her. I don’t think it’s fair to her. And I want to do this again.”
“We’re covering a lot today.”
“I’m trying to get it all in before you turn forty.” He smiled his half smile. “Plus when we’re at the hotel I can’t seem to manage a proper conversation because I have a hard time thinking about anything but fucking you.
“So…” He sat back, opening his menu. “Fancy a tea?”
* * *
After, outside, heading north on the narrow street, Hayes wrapped his arm around me, protective.
“Let’s find a tabac,” he said. “I want a cigarette.”
I looked up at him, amused. “Oh-kay…”
“I didn’t have sex with Rihanna,” he announced, and then he grinned. “But not for want of trying. Apparently, I’m not her type.”
“You’re not bad enough.” I smiled.
“I’m not bad enough.”
“You’re bad enough for me.”
* * *
We spent the early evening wandering through the Marais and over to the Île Saint-Louis, where we strolled down the Quai de Bourbon to the Place Louis Aragon, the western tip of the island that looked out over the Seine and the Île de la Cité and Notre-Dame and all the things about Paris that were magical to me. We sat there huddled on a bench, drinking in the view and each other, until our appendages were numb. It was the perfect place to watch the sun set on my thirties. And it very well may have been worth 60,000 euros.
* * *
Later that night, Hayes and I slipped into the bar at the George V for a drink and some inspired people watching. The room was insufferably old-world: cherrywood panels, stenciled parquet floors, velvet drapes. Charcoal drawings of foxhunts and eighteenth-century-style portraits gracing the walls. There were various couples dallying over thirty-dollar cocktails. Curious pairings, unexpected. Perhaps not unlike us. We surveyed it all from our perch on the chintz sofa beside the fireplace.
For all its pomp, Hayes seemed decidedly at home in the stodgy bar, swilling from his Scotch like one of the landed gentry. He was so poised and comfortable in his skin; so natural, it was beautiful to watch.
I assumed his family’s country home, somewhere in the Cotswolds, was not too different from this. And for a minute I deigned to imagine what that life would look like. A life with him. Weekends in the garden and corgis and sheep. Dinner parties in London during the Season. And then, just as quickly as I’d entertained it, I shook it off. What the hell was I thinking?
“Is this a trend?” he said. We’d been there for the better part of an hour, listening to the band’s music drift in from the Galerie. Standards mixed with watered-down contemporary pop, “Mack the Knife” and Pharrell’s “Happy.”
“Is what a trend?”
“This.” Hayes angled his head, gesturing subtly to the rest of the room. Among the clientele, there were no fewer than seven mixed-race couples. And five of them were comprised of sixty-something white men with forty-something Asian women.
“It’s kind of par for the course in California.”
“This exact age spread? It’s a little peculiar, no?”
I shrugged, sipping from my champagne cocktail. “Eva, Daniel’s girlfriend, is Asian. Half.” I had not made it a habit of discussing Eva. In all the months we’d been together, I’d mentioned her half a dozen times in passing.
He squeezed my hand. “Sorry. For bringing that up. Does it bother you?”
“It bothers me that she’s young.”
“How young?”
“Thirty.”
Hayes chuckled. “Thirty is not that young.”
“Shut up. It is.”
“Well, look at it this way: You’ve won, right? Because I’m considerably younger than that.”
I smiled at him. The thought had not crossed my mind. I’d never set out to get back at Daniel so much as I’d set out to get on with my life. It was not a competition. But that was part of the beauty of Hayes being twenty. That occasionally we saw the world completely differently, and at times it was refreshing.
“Hayes, you know when you’re forty, I’m going to be sixty, right?”
“I love it when you talk sexy,” he laughed.
“Just stating a fact.”
He took a sip of his drink then and leaned into me. “You understand that you’re going to be attractive well into your fifties.”
“Well into my fifties?” I laughed. “That old?”
“Yes.” He smiled. “Michelle Pfeiffer…”
“What about her?”
“In her fifties. Still fucking sexy. Julianne Moore, Monica Bellucci, Angela Bassett, Kim Basinger … Not saying they’re age appropriate for me. Just saying those women aren’t going to stop being sexy anytime soon.”
I sat there, drinking him in. His cheeks flushed, his hair standing on end. His young face in this very grown-up room. “You carry this list around in your head?”
He smiled. “Among other things.”
“Have you ever been in therapy?”
He laughed, loud. “No. Are you trying to tell me something? I’m surprisingly well-adjusted. Have you ever been in therapy?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm…” He cocked his head. “Interesting…”
“How old is your mother, Hayes?”
He paused for a moment, and then: “Forty-eight…”
Shit. It was uncomfortably close. Although certainly not surprising. “Do you have a picture of her?”
He picked his iPhone up from the coffee table and began scrolling through. Eventually he handed it over. It was the two of them, in what I gathered was the countryside. Hayes was wearing a Barbour jacket and Hunter Wellies and looked ridiculously English. She, Victoria, was suited in full riding regalia. She held her helmet in one hand, and the lead to a handsome horse in the other. Hayes’s head was turned to face her, and the look in his eyes was one of complete and utter adoration.
She was beautiful. Tall, reedy, with porcelain skin and an unruly ponytail of wavy black hair. She had his wide smile, his dimples, his eyes, although the crow’s-feet were more pronounced. Her features were slightly softer, but there was no mistaking this was his mother.
“Who’s the horse?”
He smirked. “That would be Churchill. And I’m quite sure she loves him more than me.”
I laughed. “Now, that’s something for your future therapist.”
Hayes collected the phone from me and stared at it before closing the image. Quiet.
“What is it about you and older women, Hayes Campbell?”
He took the time to empty what was left in his glass and sign the check, a wry smile spreading across his mouth. “Who have you been talking to?”
“No one.”
“You were Googling.”
“You told me not to. Remember?”
He bit down on his lip, shaking his head. “Nothing. There’s nothing about me and older women.”
“You’re lying.”
He started to laugh. “Let’s go upstairs.”
“I’m not letting you off that easy.”
His sigh was audible. “I like all kinds of women.”
“You like older women. You have a definite type.”
“Are you my type?”
“I’m guessing so.”
He smiled, sinking back into the couch. “You think I meet plenty of hot, almost forty-year-old divorcées on the road?”
“I don’t know. Do you?”
He snorted, crossing his arms in front of his chest, defensive. It was not his typical stance.
“Tell me about Penelope,” I said.
“What about her?”
“Where did it happen, the first time?”
“Switzerland.”
“Switzerland?”
He nodded. “Klosters. I went with Ol’s family on a ski holiday.”
I started to laugh. “The family invited you to ski in Switzerland, and you fucked their daughter?”
“To be fair, she fucked me.”
For a moment, neither of us spoke. He sat there, guarded, a cryptic smile on his perfect face. And all I could think about was sitting on it.
“Okay. Let’s go upstairs.”
* * *
I turned forty. And the world did not end. The firmament did not move. Gravity did not suddenly forsake me. My breasts, my ass, my eyelids were all pretty much where I’d left them the night before. As was my lover. In our big, big bed, his head on my pillow, his arm draped over my waist, clinging. As if maybe he were afraid to let me go.
It was indulgent, as birthdays go. There was pampering and lovemaking and foie gras and a two-hour stroll along the Seine and autumn in the air and Hayes. Adoring, attentive, kind Hayes.
In the early evening, while I prepped for our celebratory dinner, he watched me from his perch against the counter in the master bath. The room, like everything else in the penthouse suite, was luxurious. Exceptionally appointed, flawless marble, an infinity tub. Although Hayes would not give me an exact figure, I knew it was costing him thousands of dollars a night. Which was absurd, despite the fact that TAG Heuer was picking up half the tab.