Work Text:
new york
“Solène.”
I hadn't heard that voice for over ten years, but before he finished pronouncing my name I had already recognized him. I knew who I was going to find when I turned around. I no longer cared about the Vanity Fair photographer I was chatting with, because I had goosebumps, surprised by his presence.
I could hear him, like a whisper above the conversations. A deep and slightly broken voice.
I was in New York for a charity gala. The gallery had made a name and it was common for us to be invited to events of all kinds, to which we attended not only gratefully, but also to meet people. The charity dinners were fun and I enjoyed them, but they were also full of millionaires who didn't know what to do with their money —maybe they could decide to buy some art by an Asian NB painter.
“Solène.”
I took a deep breath before turning around, putting on my best smile.
There he was.
Ten years after everything.
"Hayes," I greeted back.
He was the same, but different at the same time.
“I should have imagined that I could find you in a place like this.”
He still had a wide smile and unruly hair, under a layer of product that kept it tamed.
He was gorgeous, as always. With a custom-made black suit, a white linen shirt and mother-of-pearl buttons. Vintage but with taste. He was still wearing his boots. He was already thirty years old but even then, refused to wear a tie.
Instead of trying to remark how he had changed, I found myself worrying about what he was seeing. Ten years had passed for me too. Ten years with lots of bad days, a lot of loneliness and a lot of work. I felt skinnier than ever, more wrinkled than ever. I had long ago given up on gray hair and had stopped dyeing; my hair was now a little unruly, sprinkled with white strands. Each year I felt older than the last, and when I looked at photos from five years before I wished I had enjoyed my youth. I thought it when I entered my forties, looking at the ones from when I had thirty-five. A week before turning fifty, it was happening again. How fantastic I was and how unaware I was.
I left the glass of champagne on the bar because my hand had started to shake.
"You know, I never waste an opportunity to wear a good dress," I joked.
He bit his lower lip, in a gesture I got know so well. He glanced sideways before fixing his eyes on me.
“Are you coming to sit at a table with me? Just for a while.”
Yes, yes, yes, everything inside me screamed. Take me by the hand and guide me. Sit next to me, touch my knees, play with the hem of my dress, like you used to do.
I considered it for half a second. I also instinctively looked to the sides. It seemed like no one had noticed us. I asked myself what was the worst that could happen, but I hadn’t time to look for an answer. I nodded, he started walking and I followed him through the people.
The gala was taking place in a large, opulent hall in this faux eighteen-century style that only Americans could build. Excessive, golden, shiny, with false frescoes on the walls that wanted to bring together all the styles and ended up forming one that did not exist. There were even chandeliers with hundreds of small crystals hanging from them. A string quartet played in the background, on a small stage. Hundreds of people, of all ages, but especially in their sixties, chatted animatedly between drinks and waiters with trays of tiny portions of food, oblivious to the earthquake that was unleashing inside me.
Hayes was ahead, and I could swear he was a little taller. Of course at twenty years old he still hadn't stopped growing. I had to hold back a nervous laugh just for thinking about it.
He was wider than the last time we met. He had much more broad shoulders, and muscular arms that I didn't get to know. I wished I could touch them, to be able to feel them thoroughly. I tried to correct myself as soon as it occurred to me.
I hadn't been with him for even two minutes and I was already losing my mind.
We sat at an empty table, in a corner of the huge room. He picked out a chair for me and pulled one out for himself.
He sat staring at me, very serious. With those blue eyes, making me feel nervous, insecure in his presence. How could he have so much poise. After everything we've been through. After what I put him through.
“How have you been?”
"Fine," I lied. Or not really, because, after a while, it was true: everything was fine again.
“And Isabelle?”
“Isabelle is fantastic,” I never missed the opportunity to show off my daughter. “She came to New York to college. She now lives in the city, she works in the legal department of a film distribution company,” I didn't tell him how much it had stung that she followed Daniel's career path and not mine.
“I'm so glad to hear that. She was a very intelligent girl.”
Hayes was always easy to talk to. I wanted to ask him how he had been, what projects he had going on, but he guided the conversation and I let him. After a first awkward few minutes, the words were flowing again.
While he told me what brand had dragged him to the gala, I was able to notice all the new details about him.
He was the same, but he had changed in subtle ways. He was taller, a little bigger overall. He had lost some of his angel cheeks and was developing cheekbones that, like everything about his face, were absolutely enviable. He still had the same refined English posh school manners, but I noticed that his accent had softened.
I also realized that what I saw as confidence was nothing more than an appearance, because once seated he was unable to keep his hands still and was sitting on the edge of the chair, almost as if he was ready to run away.
After saying goodbye that last night, I tried to isolate myself from him, but the world kept showing him to me. Continuously, over and over again. On the radio, on street billboards, on social media. Each picture was a small sting that didn't let me heal my wounds. I tried not to know anything about him, but it was not possible to escape the most famous boy band in the world.
August Moon had lasted one last album and two more years. Then some of my predictions came true: Rory left the band. Liam began pursuing a career of his own. I haven’t heard anything that Oliver was working on for years. After having spent so much time with them, when I felt strong again, I allowed myself to search, from time to time, what had happened to those kids I got to know, and rejoice in their achievements.
Hayes began his solo career. Songs, tours, ad campaigns, TV. He had the stronger media presence of all of them -viral songs, big ad campaigns, sold out stadiums, all that stuff. He stopped being omnipresent but it could also feel that way because it didn't hurt as much anymore. But even then, every time I saw his pictures or ads, I passed them as quickly as I could.
If something important happened, Isabelle told me. She would emerge from her room, simply say something like "they just announced that Liam will be performing at the Oscars," and go back into her room. Isabel, despite everything, never stopped adoring the group and the boys. I admired her for that. August Moon was not a phase for her either.
And what had I done?
I had finished raising a wonderful daughter who was succeeding in life. I had met my ex-husband's new son. I continued working on growing the gallery and we managed to open a second one, small but very worthy, in New York.
After crying what had seemed oceans, I was able to breathe again. Hayes' absence stopped suffocating me, and I was able to return to my normal self, to who I was before going to the Las Vegas concert. The whispers around me disappeared. I went back to running on weekend mornings without worrying about the paparazzi. I went back to sleeping the recommended hours, I went back to working more hours than recommended.
I went out with a couple of men. Lulit convinced me that I had to meet people again. She introduced me to Michael, but I lost interest after the two most soporific dates in history. I never knew if he was that way or that I wasn't ready to adapt to anyone again and just wasn't curious to find out who he was. I simply got bored and forgot about him. "You can't ghost someone just like that, Mom," Izz had told me. I didn't know it had a name. In any case, I forgot to reply to a message and we never saw each other again.
At Isabelle's graduation I met Arthur. For a few weeks I thought I was myself again, that I was ready to let myself be known to someone again. He was nice, cultured, had good manners, was a little older than me and his daughter was the same age as Isabelle. It seemed he was the perfect man. We dated for a few months, but broke up when I realized that I only had an orgasm a third of the times we slept together.
It wasn't worth it.
I didn't know what had become of Hayes's personal life. He continued his policy of not talking about his private life in public. Isabelle, if she ever knew anything, had made the correct choice and didn’t tell me.
As I talked to Hayes, we began to relax. He stopped moving his hands and compulsively grabbing everything, and mine stopped shaking. I got carried away by his conversation, little by little I lowered the barriers that I had put up. He told me unimportant things, as who he had been talking to at the gala and how many days he planned to stay in New York. I almost forgot where we were and all the time that had passed.
He had the same smile and the same dimples. When he became serious, he looked to the floor.
“You were right.”
He caught me off guard. He grabbed my wrist and ran his thumb over my pulse, stroking my skin inside the bracelet. It was a motion that came out from him naturally, without thinking. Even after all this time. I realized that it was the first time he had touched me since he found me at the bar. I didn’t want to think about how much I missed his touch and the emptiness it had left in me. I noticed that he no longer wore rings.
“You were right. In everything," he confessed. “The band didn't last much longer, but I would have regretted leaving it. Just...”
I looked at him surprised. I wasn’t expecting to have this conversation with him.
“I just... I wish everything had been different.”
He stopped smiling, and looked at me with brimming eyes.
My boy. My poor boy.
"We couldn't do anything to change it," I told him just like I had told myself so many times.
Hayes shook his head. I smiled bitterly at him.
I didn't know what else to say. I had thought that I had healed, that I could bear his presence. At least, I had gotten used to the media. He was once again a stranger on a poster, a foreign name in the mouth of a radio announcer. He had stopped being my Hayes, and became again the Hayes Campbell that the rest of the world knew.
But defeated in that chair, with teary eyes and looking as if he could see through me was not the famous boy from the posters and record signings. He was the boy I kicked out of my house one April night, the one who made me smile with a look, the one who made me feel the dirtiest and sexiest woman alive. He was my Hayes.
We sat there, in silence, for a few moments. We looked at each other. I didn't know what he was thinking about. It was difficult for me to even think because everything was hurting again.
We were politely interrupted by a woman in her thirties. She approached with her cell phone in sight, and we all knew that she was going to ask to take a picture with him. Within seconds, Hayes switched. He put on his talking-with-fans smile again, he turned to charming and indulgent in just a few seconds. I went blank for a moment, but she tried to make conversation and I took the opportunity to get up from the table.
I walked among the people who were still chatting, with the string quartet in the background. I went to the bar, where the glasses of neatly poured champagne were piling up, and as I was grabbing one to test my shaking hand, a deep voice whispered in my ear:
“I'm staying at the Crosby Street Hotel.”
Hayes brushed his hand against my neck as he pushed my hair back, leaving me gasping for air and he disappeared into the sea of suits and dresses, glasses and jewelry.
***
I didn't consider whether I was doing the right thing. I didn't think about what would happen the next day, if I would regret it. All I knew, and all I cared about, was that after I got to my hotel room and took off my heels, I could still feel his hand on my skin. His thumb on my wrist. I looked for more comfortable shoes than the heels I had been wearing all afternoon and called a uber.
The receptionist gave me a copy of his room card. I still remembered the silly alias that he leaves on the hotel desks.
I got out of the elevator and there was no security. There were no fans at the hotel door waiting. I didn’t think that he would still be here, but it felt like something was missing, expecting to see Desmond in the corner and discovering that he wasn't. The hotel hallway was empty and quiet. It was after three in the morning.
The card clicked as it opened the lock, and I could hear hurried footsteps toward the door.
Hayes hugged me with a sigh, as big as if he had been holding his breath since I ran away at the gala.
His body completely wrapped me. He put his arms around me. One hand on my waist and another on my hair. He held me against him. I inhaled him and his smell was just as I remembered —cedar, sandal, a little lime and beneath them, him. I skipped a breath. I held on to him as if I was going to fall at any moment, as if I needed him.
Before his breathing returned to normal, he slowly pulled away. He cupped my face with both hands and with his thumbs he wiped the two tears that were rolling down my cheeks. I wasn't aware of crying, nor did I know when they got there. Looking into my eyes, he kissed me. It was a kiss I recognized, slow and deliberate. Not like the ones he gave me when we met in hotels after weeks apart. It was much more like the ones before saying goodbye —and I was surprised that I remembered so much, that I had been unable to erase so many things about him.
We stumbled into the room without stop kissing. He unzipped my dress while I undid the button on his pants. He had already unbuttoned his shirt before I arrived. He slid the thin straps of my dress off my shoulders and it ended up on the floor. He looked at me in my underwear, for a couple of seconds, with all my imperfections and ten more years.
-You are perfect.
Another hotel room, like so many others that had seen our clothes on the floor. Again at the Crosby Street, of all the hotels on the world. Another room on the upper floors, full of warm light, with big windows showing the little lights in the city. A bed with soft, white sheets, sofas in neutral tones and pristine, modern but timeless furniture. Like so many others before. But again, just the two of us, without people from wardrobe, without security detail, without fans in the street singing his songs like a distant murmur. Simply, Hayes and Solène.
Then he kissed me like before, like when we met again after weeks longing to be together. Fast, soft, touching our entire bodies. Like making up for the time we lost apart. Before, it was weeks —this time we had to make up for ten years.
He laid me on the bed but I couldn't stand seeing him on top of me, so I turned him over and sat on his hips. I took a moment to run my hands over his chest, caressing all the skin I could reach. I discovered his new arms, I went down to the edge of his underwear. It felt so good to feel him under me again. I found out that he had tattoos, little variations on his skin that I didn't know about. On the forearm, inside the biceps and above the heart. I approached my lips and kissed them.
Lying beneath me he was as handsome as ever. Disheveled, desperate, with reddened lips half open for me. Quite a vision. He grabbed my hips and started moving against me, still wearing his underwear. As impatient as ever.
I could feel him hard, agitated, against me. I didn't want to make him wait.
“You should grab a condom.”
“It's not necessary but if you want...”
I didn't stop to consider what it meant, I just urged him to put it on.
We still fit together, like our bodies were made for each other. He grabbed me and guided me, and I let myself go, enjoying all the sounds I knew so well. Enjoying that body that became usual to me, and that, despite its differences, remained as I remembered it.
I leaned over him, breathing against his lips. I buried my fingers in his hair, while he continued telling with his body what he wanted. He wanted more. He wanted to feel my lips on his neck, my hands in his hair, my legs on the sides of his hips. He was mumbling and repeating something under his breath, something that sounded like "you are perfect," over and over again.
The first one was quick. We got carried away, we lost our way and it didn't take us long come. First, him. Then, just from seeing him lose control and fall apart beneath me, with his eyes closed, moaning and undone, me.
I fell next to him on the bed. I tried to catch my breath at the same time as him. Disheveled, blushing, beautiful and smiling. The Hayes that I loved so much. That I love.
He approached to my mouth and kissed me slowly. He only pulled away to smile.
I didn't know if he still needed time to recover. I didn't need to know, because I snuggle up to him, hugged him with my legs and didn't stop kissing him. We could have kissed for hours.
Part of me knew we shouldn't be doing this. But I couldn't remember why. If he thought the same, he didn't tell me.
We hugged and rolled around in bed for a while. I didn't want the night to ever end.
Hayes brushed my hair behind my ear and said in his deep voice:
“I was afraid you wouldn't come. I was almost convinced you wouldn't do it.”
“It's New York. I always go up to your room in New York.”
I didn't want to talk about the past. I didn't want to think about the future. I preferred to focus on the miracle I had in my arms, between my legs. His eyes were shining. I wanted to capture his image in a painting so I could always see him again, just like that, whenever I wanted.
“Do you think you're ready for a second round?”
I laughed and for a moment I didn't feel a one-ton anvil pressing down on my chest. He always managed to make me laugh.
He must have thought it was enough, because with one hand he began to caress my stomach. Soft, like a feather. Around the navel and up to the chest. Then he went back down. The hair on my entire body stood up and I enjoyed the touch. He repeated the movement, slowly and focused. But then he went a little further down. When I was about to start sighing, he said in my ear:
“Don't be impatient.”
He ran the tips of his fingers over my entire body, going lower and lower between my legs.
I closed my eyes and when I felt his fingers, the ones he let rest for a moment just to make me ask for more, I shivered in his arms.
He chuckled and in one movement he turned me around. He pressed his chest against my back and with that same hand he lifted my leg.
I knew it was going to be a long night. I pressed my hands against the sheets, holding on to them knowing what was going to happen next. At least for the next few minutes.
Tomorrow, we'll see.