“Hi, Isabelle,” he said, sitting beside her on the lounge. His voice raspy, comforting, familiar.
She smiled at him, faint. And then she started to cry.
Hayes, apparently, was used to girls crying around him. Girls crying because of him. I watched as he wrapped his arm around her shoulders and tucked her head into his neck, and repeated, over and over, “It’s okay, it’s okay,” while stroking her hair. And it was like magic. Everything she would not allow me to do for her, she accepted willingly from him. And he sat like that, still with her, for a very long time.
“You all right?” he said eventually.
She nodded. “You came all the way here to see me?”
“I heard you were upset.”
Isabelle looked over to where I was standing by the sliding doors. She started to say something and then stopped. “You guys were really good last night,” she mustered instead.
“Thank you. Did you see me almost trip? That was classy.” He was quiet for a moment and then: “So … this is weird, right? I know. It’s kind of weird for me, too.”
“Except you don’t have all my albums, and pictures and stuff. You never stayed up late watching my videos and planning how you were going to marry me and my friends. So no, it’s not weird for you in the same way.”
“All right.” He smiled at her. “Point taken.” And then, after a very long pause: “I really like your mum.”
Isabelle did not speak. She was avoiding eye contact, fingering her friendship bracelet, the lone survivor from summer camp. The others had all unraveled.
“I’m sorry that upsets you, but it kind of just happened. And sometimes you can’t plan these things.”
He allowed her to sit with that for a bit. Not forcing the issue. He was so good at this. And in that moment I recalled our conversation in the bar of the George V. I’m surprisingly well-adjusted, he’d said.
“But look, it’s just me, right? And I’m here. And I’m kind of in your mum’s life. Which means I’m kind of in your life. For the time being, anyway. And I’d really like for us to be friends.”
I could sense my eyes welling.
“I know right now you feel like shit…”
Isabelle smirked.
“Sorry,” Hayes apologized, “like crap. But when you’re feeling better, if you’re up for it, we have a movie coming out next month and they’re premiering it in New York, and I would really love for you to come. And maybe you can bring a friend or two. But you have to promise me you won’t cry. No crying on the red carpet. Can you do that?”
She giggled, hiding her braces with her hand. I hadn’t seen her smile in eight days.
“You also have to promise you’re going to be nice to your mum. Because she never wanted to hurt you, and it’s killing her that you’re so sad. All right? Can you promise me that?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” he said. “What are you working on?”
“Math.”
“Maths? Ech. I sucked at maths.”
She laughed at that.
“I am sorry that you are being subjected to that … torture. I’m very sorry.” He reached into his pocket. “Fancy a stick of gum?” He offered it to her, and while she was opening the wrapper, he glanced over his shoulder at me and stuck out his tongue. Still my Hayes.
Later he joined me in the kitchen, where I was making tea.
“That was amazing. How did you do that?”
He smiled, shrugging. “I’m good with people.”
“Was that on your list?”
“Probably. I’m like … a fixer.”
“A fixer?” I laughed.
He nodded, watching me pour the hot water. “I’m like the one they send in to calm down all the crazed hyperventilating fans.”
“I thought you didn’t do well with women who freak out.”
“I don’t do well with women who freak out. But I can handle girls.” He smiled, easy.
“Thin line…”
“Sometimes.” He moved toward me then, wrapping his arms around my waist. “And, you know, I make all the girls so happy…”
“Apparently,” I said, kissing him.
“And occasionally, I make their mums happy, too.”
“Very…”
“Very.”
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.”
“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.