“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 knowwhatshe did, come to think of it. I don’t knowhowshe filled her days.”
“Would you describe her as a good mum?”
“I guess so. I turned out all right. I mean,youlike me.”
“Ido.” I smiled. “Do you think she was happy?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Areyouhappy?”
“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.
