“Mr. Marchand’s.”
“Crap. I might be in the wrong room.”
He smiled, rolling me over to face him. “Hiiii.”
“Hi.”
“You want to come with me to an August Moon concert tonight?”
“It depends…” I said.
“Itdepends?”
“Do I have good seats?”
His finger was tracing my cheekbone. “You can sit on my face.”
“Okay. In that case I’ll come.”
The Estadio José Amalfitani was a massive stadium in the Liniers neighborhood of Buenos Aires that held just shy of fifty thousand people. August Moon had managed to sell it out two nights in a row. We arrived a few hours before showtime and already thousands of girls had lined up in the large thoroughfare leading to the structure. More fans than I had ever seen congregated in one place. The band and their entourage traveled by caravan: nine vans interspersed with motorcycle police. The cavalcade winding its way through throngs of screaming girls. Barriers holding back crowds near the hotel and the stadium. This was what Desmond had been referring to when he talked about Peru being crazy. This unimaginable level of idolatry and pandemonium. It was hard to wrap one’s mind around. I sat there in the van, holding Hayes’s hand and watching the madness unfold on either side of us, wondering what was going through his head. How did one even begin to process something like this? How?
He leaned into me then, sensing my anxiety. “You’ll get used to it, Sol.”
He said it so reassuringly, but I knew—I could never get used to this.
Inside, beneath the stadium, was a maze of winding tunnels. Utilitarian rooms and dank corridors that went on and on. The guys were set up in a series of large dressing rooms: wardrobe, hair andmakeup, catering, a space for their band. I watched them prep and dress and psych one another up and carouse with their stylists and their handlers, and they struck me as young again, frenzied, like high school boys before a big game.
In the final minutes before they went on, when the guys were lining up and the crowd was so loud the ceiling seemed to be shaking, Hayes took me aside and handed me a box.
“Open this,” he said, “before we go onstage.” He was fiddling with the power pack at the back of his jeans and its accompanying belt.
“You bought me a gift?”
“Just something I promised I would get you… a very long time ago.” He leaned in and kissed me then, before backing up down the long corridor, security detail flanking his sides. “I love you. Enjoy the show.”
I watched him follow his bandmates around the bend until I could not see him anymore and he was sucked into the reverberating walls and the chants of fifty thousand girls. And only then did I open the box. Inside was a pair of noise-reducing headphones and a note:
I told you there’d be a next time.
And so it was that I was just one of the many females in Buenos Aires that night crying over Hayes Campbell.
I fought my jet lag to make it to the hotel gym the next morning, and on the way back up to the room, I found myself alone in an elevator with Oliver. Even before the doors closed, I could feel the tension.
“How was your workout?” he asked. Like Hayes, his voice was gruff after a show.
“Fine, thank you.”
“Good.” He stood directly across from me on the opposite sideof the lift. Long arms folded across his chest, eyes piercing. “You look good.”
“Really?” I laughed. “All wet and sweaty?”
“All wet and sweaty.” He smiled. “Is that how he likes you?”
I stiffened. And then I remembered we were in an elevator and there were cameras and he would not touch me. Here.
“I thought you weren’t supposed to be talking to me,” I said.
“I think the ban was lifted.”
