“You don’t want me to see where you live? What are you hiding over there? Another boy band?”
“Yes. You’ve found me out. I’ve got the Backstreet Boys in the attic.”
He paused for a second and then began to laugh. “The Backstreet Boys? How old are you again?”
“Shut up, Hayes.”
“You sure you don’t have the Monkees over there as well?”
“I’m hanging up.”
“Chateau Marmont. Tomorrow. Nine o’clock. I’ll leave a key for you at the desk.”
On Thursday, I met Daniel for lunch at Soho House. I dreaded the place. For all its aesthetic appeal, I couldn’t help but be aware of everyone checking everyone else out, calculating one another’s box office, posing, judging. The air of self-importance. Daniel had joined when it first opened despite my many pleas, and conducted almost as much business there as he did at his firm in Century City. He called it a necessary evil of being an entertainment lawyer. But I knew that deep down he enjoyed it.
I was already planning my escape as I made my way down the narrow corridor to the rooftop restaurant. The walls famously covered with black-and-white Polaroids from the club’s photo booth, various members having immortalized themselves for posterity. Many of them drunk.
Daniel had birthday gifts for Isabelle that he wanted me to deliver Parents’ Weekend. I was okay with the handover, but I feared he was going to use this opportunity to inform me about him and Eva. It was just like him to choose someplace public and impersonal where he could avoid any show of emotion.
I spotted him immediately, staked out at his favorite table in the southeast corner of the room. It really was a beautiful space: wicker lanterns dotting mature olive trees, potted herbs and floor-to-ceiling windows offering up the best of West Hollywood and the Sunset Strip. And my ex-husband.
He was buried in aNew York Times. It was one of the things I still liked about him. That he hadn’t given over completely to the digital age, that he didn’t have to fill his silences with an iPhone.
I’d begun snaking my way in Daniel’s direction when a large table near the koi pond in the center caught my eye. There were eight of them, loud. I did not recognize the faces in my line of sight, but the back of one head struck me as familiar. And then I heard the laugh.
My chest tightened. I had ceased to breathe, inching around theperimeter of the table. And as I arrived on the opposite side he raised his head, his eyes meeting mine. The two of us, paralyzed.
“Hi.”
“Hi.” Hayes’s lips curled into a wide smile. “What are you doing here?”
“Meeting… I’m meeting… someone…” I was tripping over my words. I could not even register the others at the table. It was just him and me. In this space. And yet I was painfully aware that I could not touch him. That people would talk, that people would judge.
He stood, pushing his chair back.
“No, don’t get up…”
“Where are you sitting?”
I gestured vaguely toward the corner.
“I’ll come say hi.”
I nodded, and then remembered the rest of the table. “Excuse me. Sorry to interrupt.”
There were two women, three men I did not recognize, one who looked familiar, and seated beside Hayes was Oliver, whom I had somehow managed to overlook.
“Hi.”
“Solène.” He smiled. I’d last seen him when we got off the boat in Antibes, when I was smelling of salt and sun and high on champagne and the promise of what was to come. A world away.
I excused myself and made my way over to Daniel, but from that moment on, my mind was elsewhere. We talked about the necessary things: Isabelle, the weather. My back was to Hayes. I was out of his earshot, but I couldfeelhim. And just knowing he was there put me on edge. Especially in the presence of my ex.
“Are you okay? You seem distracted,” Daniel said, sometime after we’d put in our order. He was, as usual, impeccably groomed—smooth skin, chiseled jaw, not a hair out of place—the years had been good to him.
“I’m fine.”
“Work?”
