“I always have a choice, Hayes.”
He let that sit there for a moment. “God… It’s really too bad you’re so knackered. It would be nice to finish what we started…”
“If you were to come upstairs now, you’d miss all of the Croatia-Mexico game.”
“Somehow I think it would be worth it.”
I took his hand from my hair then and held it to my mouth, inhaling new car leather. “I will… see you… tomorrow,” I said, and kissed his palm. Twice.
He grinned, his head reclining on the headrest. “Now you’re just teasing me.”
“Tomorrow,” I repeated.
“So you’ll come to Saint-Tropez?”
“I’ll come to Saint-Tropez.”
Not that I couldn’t have enjoyed a day alone decompressing from Art Basel at the hotel’s beach club, downing Campari and orange juice and luxuriating in all that was good about Cannes in its off-season. But that was not the purpose of this trip.
And I was reminded of that again, sailing through the sapphire waters of the Mediterranean under a cloudless sky. The jaggedcoastline bathed in Riviera light stretched out alongside us, offering up lush pines and terra-cotta rooftops. The extravagance of endless Moët & Chandon Rosé Impérial aboard a sixty-three-foot crewed yacht. The indulgence, the beauty—made all the more so with him.
It was just us, Oliver, Charlotte, Desmond, and Fergus. The others had opted to drive the Grande Corniche to Monaco and take their chances in the casinos for the day. And so, as Hayes had promised, it was tranquil. We took our time getting there, drinking in the sun and the views. And when we passed Saint-Raphaël, the town where I’d spent every summer from one to twenty-one, I felt not just a little nostalgic.
Hayes and I separated from the others in Saint-Tropez, sharing a quiet lunch on the Place des Lices and strolling the narrow cobblestoned streets. It was almost like having him to myself. And the dozen or so times he was stopped to pose for a picture, he was so gracious and his fans so adoring, I could not begrudge them the moment.
It became apparent that this, whatever it was we were doing, would never truly be just the two of us. So long as he was in August Moon, Hayes was someone I would share with the world. And I understood then why it was so important to him that I separate Hayes from Hayes Campbell.
“How do you do it?” I asked. “How do you always say yes?” We were leaving Barbarac, a gelateria, where we had been stopped by a Belgian family with two teenage girls. Hayes had obliged them with photos and autographs while I attempted to be inconspicuous, selecting gelato flavors until they were done.
He shrugged then, licking his cone. “I figure that a gesture that might take two minutes out of your life could be a much more significant moment for someone else. So you kind of don’t want to ruin it for them.”
I peered over at him: backwards baseball cap, sunglasses, dimples. That he was this sensitive, conscientious soul only sweetened the deal.
“What are you thinking?” He smiled. “You want a lick of my ice cream, right?”
“Yes,” I laughed. “I want a lick of your ice cream.”
The plan was to meet up with the others on the boat at four. England was playing Costa Rica at six o’clock, and the guys did not want to miss it. We had just exited Rondini, the handmade leather sandal boutique, where I’d purchased matching pairs for Isabelle and myself, and were heading down Rue Georges Clemenceau when Hayes stopped short at the corner in front of Ladurée.
“Fuck.”
“What? Did you forget something?”
“Fuck,” he repeated.
And then I saw it. The dock where we’d moored was swamped with photographers: ten to fifteen paparazzi with massive cameras and two dozen cell-phone-laden tourists.
“Where the bloody hell did they come from?” He grabbed my hand and turned me back up the narrow pedestrian street and into Rondini again.
“I’m sorry, Solène. So much for a holiday…”
I watched him whip out his iPhone and text Desmond, while the salt-and-pepper gentleman who’d assisted me before asked in French if everything was okay.
“Oui, pas de problème, merci. On attend quelqu’un.”
Hayes’s tall frame filled the space in the tiny boutique, and after a minute or so, he took a seat on one of the few chairs and pulled me onto his lap. The intimacy of the act rattled me. There were only a handful of others in the store, but the light was bright and we were in front of the shop window and it just feltpublic.
I tensed.
