He came quickly. And I found myself appreciating the pineapple-and-mint juice he’d had at lunch.
“I fucking love you,” he said, after. His hands at the sides of my face, his mouth on mine. “You’re going to come to Japan, right? You promise?”
“I promise.”
“You’re not going to change your mind.”
“I’m not going to change my mind. I promise.”
Hayes wrestled out of his pants and hiked up my skirt, pulling me onto his lap. His thickness sliding into me. No recovery time necessary. And as inebriated as I was, I was glad I had the wherewithal to retain all that happened that night. Because I knew, inmy heart, that we would not last. And because every moment of it was extraordinary.
I did not hear how the fight started.
Sunday evening, we were backstage at the Estádio do Morumbi, a stadium that held no fewer than sixty-five thousand attendees. It was the guys’ second night playing to a sold-out crowd in São Paulo. They’d already been through hair and makeup, and a meet-and-greet. Following their vocal warm-up, they were hanging in one of the dressing rooms, waiting to go on. Liam was doing push-ups, and Rory was strumming his guitar and sucking on a lollipop, and Simon and Hayes were chatting about something or another, their voices alternating between low whispers and loud guffaws. Oliver was standing not far from them. He’d been reading up until that point and had just put down his book. How he went from zero to sixty with fifteen minutes to showtime was beyond me. And as always there was the hum: the stomping and shrieking of the fans, the bass of the opening local band, the vibrations in the walls.
I had managed to tune it all out while composing work emails from my spot in the corner. It had come to be my ritual: attempting to run a business from backstage. And then I heard it, the shift in tone.
“Yes, Hayes is very good at keeping secrets. Aren’t you, Hayes?” Oliver had said.
“What does that mean?”
“I think you know what it means.”
“Do you have something you want to say to me? Then say it,” Hayes spat.
There was a measured pause, and then: “I knew, you bastard. I knew.”
My hairs bristled. They were doing this. Now.
“It was a long fucking time ago.”
“That’s not what I heard,” Oliver said. “I heard it was as recently as last year…”
The room fell quiet. Rory stopped strumming; Liam ceased to move. And I realized two things: none of the others knew what was going on, and I knew less than I thought I did.
“Who told you that?” Hayes said, slow, sharp.
“Don’t worry about it, mate. Just know that I know.”
“Who fucking told you that?”
Oliver turned to face him then, direct. “Shedid.”
“No, she didn’t.”
“Shedid. She said, and I quote, ‘Yeah, I shagged him, it was no big deal.’”
There was a second where I saw my boyfriend flinch. The slightest twinge in the corner of his left eye. I couldn’t be certain as to whether the others saw it, but to me, it said everything.
“She didn’t say that.”
“Really? You want to ring her? Ask?”
“Fuck you.”
“Fuck me? You sleep with my sister and you have the nerve to say fuck me? Fuckyou, Hayes. Fuck you and your always getting your fucking way.”
“All right, enough.” Simon stood, wedging himself between them. Arms outstretched, making the most of his rower wingspan. “We’re onstage in fifteen minutes. Everyone just fucking calm down.”
